Jesus Wept

Jesus wept (Jn 11:35). Why? His friend, Lazarus, was dead. Mary, Martha, and many Jews who came to join them for the funeral were all mourning. Any of us who have lost someone dear to us can immediately identify with mourning. Sin’s death has separated us from our loved one and, with him/her, has taken a piece of us that can’t be replaced. Death should be mourned. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t be grieving at a funeral because your loved one has gone to a better place or has received his healing. Those things are true, but mourning is a proper response to death. This is not the way things are supposed to be. One day, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for all those remnants of the old creation will have passed away (Rev 21:4). That is our hope. Consequently, we mourn in hope (1 Thess 4:13), but we mourn nevertheless because our hope remains in the future.

But why is Jesus weeping when he knows that he is about to raise Lazarus from the dead? Shouldn’t he be strutting in among all the mourners with utmost confidence and maybe a bit of joviality? Not at all. It is not appropriate for the situation. Jesus’ tears come from his “groaning in his spirit” and being “troubled” (Jn 11:33, 38). The word translated as “groan” has more of the idea of being angry. Jesus has immersed himself in the world of affliction and tastes the bitterness of death. He is angry and torn up inside because the one who has the power over death, the devil (Heb 2:14), creates this disorder, destruction, and with them, pain. Jesus has come to undo the effects of sin and its death, but until the work is completed through his own imminent death and our final resurrection, there is grief.

When we imagine this scene in our mind’s eye, we see the human Jesus weeping at the tomb. But John wants us to see more. Jesus’ weeping isn’t merely the display of his humanity. Jesus’ weeping is the perfect revelation of the Father. Jesus is the heart of the Father and reveals the Father (Jn 1:18). Jesus isn’t crying as a mere human experience. He is revealing the grief of God. God himself grieves with those who grieve.

Many Christians, especially those of the Reformed persuasion, have an Aristotelian view of God as the Unmoved Mover. God is without “passions,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, and we take that as God having no emotions. Any time God is described with any emotion, it will be said that these are anthropomorphisms, describing God in human terms. One major problem with that is that we are made in the image of God–theomorphs–not the other way around. We have emotions because they reflect something true about God himself.

God is not aloof. He is not the unmoved God watching as we writhe in grief. Jesus reveals that God weeps with us.

We do not understand why God ordered history the way he did, allowing evil that causes our pain and grief, so that even he suffers with us. His ways are incomprehensible to us. God became flesh to enter our suffering with us and for us to lead us through it to resurrection.

Mourn, but mourn in hope

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