Lazarus
The short answer
Ask "who is Lazarus in the Bible?" and you actually get two answers. The first Lazarus is a real man in John's Gospel: the brother of Martha and Mary, living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. When he falls deathly ill, his sisters send word to Jesus. Jesus arrives after Lazarus has been in the tomb four days, weeps at his grave, and then calls him back to life—the most dramatic sign in John's Gospel, and the event that sets Jesus' own death in motion.
Here is the surprising detail: this Lazarus never says a word. In the whole of John 11, he has no lines. The great conversation belongs to his sister Martha, who meets Jesus on the road, presses him with her grief, and hears him declare, "I am the resurrection and the life." Lazarus is not the theologian of the story. He is the one things happen to—the loved one who is lost, mourned, and given back.
The second Lazarus appears in a parable Jesus tells in Luke 16: a poor man covered in sores, lying at a rich man's gate, longing for scraps from the table. When both men die, the beggar is carried to comfort at Abraham's side while the rich man suffers. Strikingly, this is the only parable in which Jesus gives a character a personal name—and it's the beggar, not the rich man, who gets one.
The name itself may be the point. Lazarus comes from the Hebrew Eleazar, meaning "God is my help." Whether it's the silent brother in the tomb or the beggar at the gate, both figures share the same shape: a man past all human helping, whose story turns entirely on what God does for him.
What scholars say
These two excerpts take up each Lazarus in turn: Jaime Clark-Soles observes that Lazarus never speaks in John 11—it is Martha whose confession anchors the chapter—while William Barclay asks why the beggar is the only named character in any of Jesus' parables, tracing the name to Eleazar, "God is my help."
“J ohn 11 opens with these words: “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary 1 and her sister Martha. . . . So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’” Chapter 11 is often called “The Raising of Lazarus.” It’s true that Lazarus is raised along the way, but Lazarus never actually speaks in the passage. Martha, in fact, is the one who engages Jesus at a deep theological level and receives one of the great “I am” statements from Jesus (this should sound like a familiar pattern if you’ve read the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4). “The Confession of Martha” might be a better title.”
“This is the only one of Jesus’ parables where any of the characters is given a proper name. Although custom calls the rich man Dives, which is the Latin word for rich, that name is not in the parable; but Lazarus is named. Why should that be? We cannot say for certain; but Lazarus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Eleazar, which means, “God is my help.” And the name may well be to emphasize the truth that even if the poor righteous man has no other helper, God is his help.”
What it means for you
Lazarus is a comfort for anyone who feels they have nothing to offer—no eloquent faith, no strength, no standing. He never preaches, never performs; in one story he cannot even speak, and in the other he cannot even eat. Yet both stories insist that God sees him, names him, and acts for him.
If you're in a season where all you can do is be helped—grieving, sick, depleted—Lazarus suggests that this is not a failure of faith. Sometimes the truest thing you can say is his name: God is my help.
In context
John 11 sits at the hinge of John's Gospel: the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest of Jesus' signs, and it convinces the authorities that Jesus must die. Martha's exchange with Jesus on the road—echoing his long conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4—carries the chapter's theological weight. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus belongs to Luke 16, amid Jesus' teaching about wealth, and turns on the reversal of the two men's fortunes after death.