Luke 16:20

And a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores.

Lazarus ... This is the only example of Jesus using a proper name to identify a character in one of his parables, and there must have been a good reason for this. It cannot be made the basis for advocating the parable as an historical event, as noted above; but there is quite possibly, in this, a prophecy of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11). True, the Lazarus raised from the dead was presumably rich; this Lazarus was a beggar; but the use of a proper name for one who the rich man pleaded would be sent back from the dead to warn his brothers cannot fail of suggesting the fact that a Lazarus did rise from the dead, and true to the Lord's prophecy here, the Pharisees did not believe, but instead plotted to kill him!

The conviction expressed here is that by the use of this proper name, Jesus clearly hinted at what John recorded in that famed eleventh chapter. Nor is this the only hint of that "seventh sign" recorded by John. In his first open break with the Pharisees, after healing the man at Bethesda, Jesus promised the Pharisees "that greater works than these" the Father would show, that the Pharisees "may marvel" (John 5:20). By such a promise, Jesus meant that he would raise the dead; for he immediately foretold a time when all the dead on earth would "hear the voice of the Son of God, and COME FORTH" (John 5:29), those last two words being exactly the ones he cried in a loud voice over the grave of Lazarus (John 11:43); from this, it is mandatory to believe that Jesus had in mind to raise Lazarus at least three years before the event took place; and, knowing what he would do, and as the time for Lazarus' resurrection was then approaching, it was most significant that Jesus, contrary to all other usages in his parables, would throw in this word "Lazarus."

"That there is indeed here a suggestion of the great seventh miracle in John is implicit in the fact of the critical scholars' allegation that John's great miracle was only a drama invented to illustrate the point Jesus made here, a conceit that may be rejected out of hand (see comment on this in my Commentary on John, en loco). The exegesis here points out the true connection between this parable and the wonder of Lazarus' resurrection.