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John 11:38-44 vs. “Rise Up (Lazarus)”

CAIN · checked 2026-09-06

What we checked

PassageJohn 11:38-44 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on John 11 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumRise Up · 2021
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The song never presents its words as scripture. There is no chapter and verse and no quotation framing, so nothing in it is passed off as the text of John 11
  • It keeps the calling with Jesus. In the chorus CCLI prints, He is named in the third person as the voice that calls, rather than given lines to speak
  • The title names Lazarus rather than hiding the borrowing. A listener who wants the story behind the song is told which one to go and read
  • Logan Cain's own account of the song has been published. He describes what it came out of, so the reading can be checked instead of guessed at

⚠ Cautions

  • The phrase the song repeats is not the command at the tomb. There Jesus says come out, or come forth in the KJV. He does say earlier that Lazarus will rise again (11:23)
  • In the passage the dead man does not raise himself. He is called by name, comes out still bound hand and foot, and other people are told to unwrap him. Read verses 43 and 44
  • The scene has a stated purpose the song does not carry. Jesus prays aloud so the crowd will believe the Father sent Him (11:42). Worth saying before a congregation sings this
  • The chapter and verse come from other people, not from the song. The song has the grave, the stone, a name spoken and Lazarus. It never gives a reference

Verse Proof

John 11:38-44

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Jesus, once again deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” Jesus said. “Lord, by now he stinks,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man. “It has already been four days.” Jesus replied, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted His eyes upward and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I say this for the benefit of the people standing here, so they may believe that You sent Me.” After Jesus had said this, He called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The man who had been dead came out with his hands and feet bound in strips of linen, and his face wrapped in a cloth. “Unwrap him and let him go,” Jesus told them.”

Bethany, at the tomb of Lazarus. He is the brother of Mary and Martha, and Jesus knew the family well (11:1-5). The sisters sent word that he was sick. Jesus stayed where He was for two more days before going (11:6). By the time He reaches the tomb Lazarus has been in it four days (11:17). Verses 38 to 44 are what happens at the entrance. Jesus tells the people to move the stone. He prays out loud, and He says why He is praying out loud: so the crowd will believe the Father sent Him (11:42). Then He calls the dead man by name. The man comes out with his hands, feet and face still wrapped, and Jesus tells the people standing there to unwrap him.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is an exhortation. It speaks to a listener rather than to God, and it tells that listener to get up. Jesus is named in the third person. In the chorus that CCLI prints on its WorshipFuel page, His voice is the one doing the calling. The grave is the place someone is called out of. Lazarus appears as a comparison. The song says a listener is like him. It never says it is quoting him, or the chapter he is in, and no chapter and verse is cited anywhere in it. Logan Cain has told the story behind the song on the record. Logan Cain describes feeling separated from God in “cycles of destructive behavior & sin”, and says “the voice of Jesus is always gonna call me to rise up”. He names no passage in that account.

Nothing here is offered as scripture, so no wording shifted. What moved is the command. In John 11 the command at the tomb belongs to Jesus, and He speaks it to a dead man by name. In the song the command belongs to the singers, and it is aimed at whoever is listening. That is why this entry is filed as “not a quote” rather than “first-person God”. In the chorus CCLI prints, no line is set as God speaking, and a review that prints the whole lyric shows the same, with no line anywhere given to God to speak. The words differ as well. In the WEB and the BSB, Jesus says “come out”. The KJV has “come forth”. “Rise up” is the song's own phrase, and it is the title.

· Not a quote: The song cites no chapter or verse and never says it is quoting. It borrows the tomb scene from John 11 and uses Lazarus as a comparison. In the passage the command is to come out, and Jesus speaks it to a dead man.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

In John 11 the dead man is called by name, and he comes out still tied up.

Why it matters

A song can use a Bible scene without quoting it. This one does, and that changes what there is to check. The question is not whether the words match, because the song never offers them as the text's words. The question is whether the picture is used the way the scene works. In John 11 the raising is a sign, and Jesus says out loud what the sign is for. He prays where the crowd can hear so they will believe the Father sent Him (11:42). The song uses the same scene to speak to a person's own condition. A reader who wants the sign's stated purpose has to open the chapter and find it.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

Repetition here plants two things. One is an instruction pointed at you: get up. The other is a name, and the claim that the voice calling is Jesus's. Both are in the song, and a singer carries whichever one sticks. If you dwell on this one, dwell on the voice. That is where John 11 puts the power. The man in the tomb had been dead four days. He came out because he was called, and he still needed other hands to get the wrappings off. Read verses 43 and 44 next to the song and you will see who did the work.

Helpful comparison

Who points at John 11, and who does not. The song names Lazarus in its title. In his published account of writing it, Logan Cain talks about cycles of sin, and about the voice of Jesus calling him to rise. He names no chapter and verse there. Other people supply the reference. CCLI's WorshipFuel page prints the chorus, which names Lazarus, though its own note points at Jesus rising rather than at the Lazarus account. The Berean Test review indexes it against John 11 and a long list of other passages. A teaching podcast by Michelle Nezat walks the song through Ephesians 2, Romans 6 and Galatians, and reads John 11 last. So the passage on this page is a fair one to check the song against, and readers rather than the song put it there.

Two release dates are in circulation, and both are right. The song was released on CAIN's self-titled EP on 6 March 2020, and it went to Christian radio on 17 April 2020. It also titles the band's first full-length album, released 7 May 2021. The track before it on that album is called “Come Forth”, which is the KJV wording of Jesus's command in verse 43.

Sources

Corrections

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

~ FAITHFUL “Behold the Lamb of God” Andrew Peterson John 1:29-31 Sing it. The summons is the Baptist's own sentence, narrowed from the world's sin to ours and joined to other true titles of Christ. Read John 1 once, so you know the pointing began at the Jordan, not the manger.

✓ The refrain's summons is the Baptist's sentence in recognizable King James wording, and every stacked title is scripture's own: life and light of men, Son of God, Son of Man, Emmanuel

⚠ The world's sin becomes our sin. Nothing false enters, but the Baptist's clause is wider, and the width is the startling part of verse 29

 ~ FAITHFUL “Just As I Am” Charlotte Elliott (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) John 6:37 Sing it. The clause it was printed under is quoted accurately, and the hymn answers that clause honestly. Read the whole verse once. The half the hymn leaves out is the half that makes the half it sings hold.

✓ The epigraph is a real citation, printed with the hymn at its first confirmed publication, and its clause is quoted word for word.

⚠ The epigraph names the address and not the version. Its wording is King James (KJV); a singer who looks the verse up in a modern Bible will find different words for the same clause.

 ~ FAITHFUL “God So Loved” We The Kingdom John 3:16-17 Sing it. The chorus walks through John 3:16 clause by clause, lightly reworded and never labeled. The verse's own alternative, shall not perish, stays unsung, so read the whole sentence once for yourself.

✓ The chorus keeps John 3:16's clauses in the verse's own order: love, gift, belief, life

⚠ No translation is named, so the near-quotation has to be recognized rather than checked

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “In the Garden” Alan Jackson John 20:14-17 Sing it as one man's picture of Mary's morning, not as a garden you can walk back into. Nothing here is quoting. Remember that John 20:17 ends that scene with an errand, not a stay.

✓ Never says it is quoting. No verse is cited, no scripture framing is used, and nothing is presented as the Bible's own words

⚠ Written in the first person and the present tense, so the singer stands where Mary stands, in a scene John 20 records happening once

 NOT A QUOTE “To God Be the Glory” Fanny Crosby (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) John 3:16 Sing it. Nothing in it is offered as scripture. Stanza one restates John 3:16 in Crosby's own words, and the tie to that verse was made by hymn scholars, not by the song.

✓ Nothing in the sung words is offered as a quotation. No verse is named, and no line is framed as scripture, so nobody is asked to take a paraphrase for the text

⚠ Stanza one restates John 3:16 without the two outcomes the verse ends on. Crosby's text never uses perish, eternal or everlasting, in the two sung stanzas or in the third

 NOT A QUOTE “Held” Natalie Grant John 11:33-35 Sing it. It quotes no verse and never says it is scripture, and what it does say holds up. Scripture promises God's presence in trouble, not a way around it. John 11:35 is the scene where that is shown.

✓ The song's central statement is one scripture makes in as many words. Isaiah 43:2 promises company through the water and the fire, not a detour around them, and John 16:33 says the trouble is coming

⚠ The statement arrives with no address. Nothing in the song points at a verse, so a listener who wants to check it has to be told where to look

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