"Jesus wept" (John 11:35)
Just two little words. In fact, this is the shortest verse in the Bible. As brief as this verse is, and seemingly insignificant, it is a profound verse. Let us look a little deeper into it.
Jesus Wept
The Greek of "wept" here literally means burst into tears. It is not just a little sob, but rather it is an all out bawling. The kind you witness at a funeral by the loved ones of a dead relative.
We all weep sometime in our lives. But here we see Jesus Himself weeping. If He were just a man, it would not surprise us, but Jesus was not just a man. He was also fully God. Prior to this event Jesus taught, prayed, cleansed the temple, calmed a storm, fed five thousand with a packed lunch, turned water into wine, healed the sick, caused the blind to see, and the lame to walk. Things that you would expect God to do.
But here Jesus surprises us. What kind of god would show his emotions? What kind of God would cry? As God, surely He expected this to happen and knew what He was going to do? This certainly seems out of character.
So We Did Jesus Weep?
I believe for three reasons. Firstly, Jesus wept because someone had died. Lazarus was a good friend. Jesus had stayed in Lazarus' house. Lazarus' sisters, Mary and Martha, were good friends who trusted in Him.
Death is real. We all realise that, but we wish that it was not true. Everyone we know and care about will one day die. And even when it comes at the end of a prolonged illness, nothing can truly prepare us for it. Here we see Jesus was prepared for the death of His beloved friend (John 11:11 & 14), yet He still wept. But His weeping went deeper than that, and it was not merely due to His lack of being prepared for it.
Secondly, Jesus was empathising with Mary and Martha who were clearly distraught by Lazarus' death. In the Jewish culture, family and friends will go and sit with a person who has lost a close relative and cry with them (called sitting shiva). Jesus knew exactly what He was going to do for them. He knew Lazarus' death was not final, yet He still wept with and for them. So there was obviously still something more to His weeping.
Finally, we are told in verse 46 onwards that due to the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees sought all the more to stop Jesus. For them, this was the event that broke the camels back so to speak. It was the miracle that began Jesus' final journey to His death. Jesus, being fully God and knowing that His time on earth was nearing its end, knew what the result of this miracle would be. At this point we see as we read the story that certain people still did not fully understand what Jesus' purpose for coming to earth was. Mary, Martha, Thomas, and the rest of the disciples made comments that clearly show this.
Therefore we see here that Jesus was grieving not only for the death of a beloved friend, and not only in sharing in the grief of the death, but also because of what was to come and the obvious unbelief of everyone else. Shortly after this event we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane going through turmoil, sweating drops of blood. Jesus was weeping in anticipation of what was to come.
A Sympathetic Saviour
Here at the raising of Lazarus we see not only a God who can do great things, but also a God who sympathises with our suffering. Jesus, fully man and fully God, creator of the universe, Saviour of the world who will come again as King and Lord of all, weeping, showing sympathy for man, yet agonising over His own death.
Jesus truly was "A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isa 53:3).
Just a Thought!
© 2012
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