Jesus wept.
Parallel Translations
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Jesus wept.
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And Iesus wept.
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And Iesus wept.
Cross-references (16)
Passages linked to John 11:35 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Luke 19:41 When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it,
- Hebrews 4:15 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.
- John 11:33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,
- Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.
- Psalms 119:136 Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law.
- Jeremiah 13:17 But if you will not hear it, my soul will weep in secret for your pride. My eye will weep bitterly, and run down with tears, because Yahweh’s flock has been taken captive.
- Job 30:25 Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy?
- Hebrews 2:16-17 For most certainly, he doesn’t give help to angels, but he gives help to the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.
- Genesis 43:30 Joseph hurried, for his heart yearned over his brother; and he sought a place to weep. He entered into his room, and wept there.
- Psalms 35:13-15 But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I afflicted my soul with fasting. My prayer returned into my own bosom. I behaved myself as though it had been my friend or my brother. I bowed down mourning, as one who mourns his mother. But in my adversity, they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together. The attackers gathered themselves together against me, and I didn’t know it. They tore at me, and didn’t cease.
- Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
- Jeremiah 14:17 “You shall say this word to them: “ ‘Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound.
- Jeremiah 9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
- Lamentations 1:16 “For these things I weep. My eye, my eye runs down with water, because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me. My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.”
- Romans 9:2-3 that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh
- Luke 19:11 As they heard these things, he went on and told a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that God’s Kingdom would be revealed immediately.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 35 Jesus wept.
35 Jesus wept.
Ver. 35. Jesus wept] He wept with those that weep. And the same tenderness he retains still toward his afflicted. As Aaron, though he might not lament his two sons slain by God’s hand in the sanctuary, Lev 10:3, yet he had still the heart of a father within him; so hath Christ now, in the heavenly sanctuary; he hath lost nothing by heaven.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Jesus wept - Out of sympathy with those who…
Jesus wept - Out of sympathy with those who were in tears all around him, as well as from a deep sense of the misery sin had brought upon human nature.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 35. Jesus wept.] The least verse in the…
Verse 35. Jesus wept.] The least verse in the Bible, yet inferior to none. Some of the ruthless ancients, improperly styled fathers of the Church, thought that weeping was a degradation of the character of Christ; and therefore, according to the testimony of Epiphanius, Anchorat. c. 13, razed out of the Gospel of St. Luke the place (Lu 19:41) where Christ is said to have wept over Jerusalem.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Jesus wept - It has been remarked that this…
Jesus wept - It has been remarked that this is the shortest verse in the Bible; but it is exceedingly important and tender. It shows the Lord Jesus as a friend, a tender friend, and evinces his character as a man. And from this we learn:
That the most tender personal friendship is not inconsistent with the most pure religion. Piety binds stronger the ties of friendship, makes more tender the emotions of love, and seals and sanctifies the affections of friends. It is right, it is natural, it is indispensable for the Christian to sympathize with others in their afflictions. Rom 12:15; “rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” Sorrow at the death of friends is not improper. It is right to weep. It is the expression of nature and religion does not forbid or condemn it. All that religion does in the case is to temper and chasten our grief; to teach us to mourn with submission to God; to weep without complaining, and to seek to banish tears, not by hardening the heart or forgetting the friend, but by bringing the soul, made tender by grief, to receive the sweet influences of religion, and to find calmness and peace in the God of all consolation. We have here an instance of the tenderness of the character of Jesus, The same Savior wept over Jerusalem, and felt deeply for poor dying, sinners. To the same tender and compassionate Saviour Christians may now come Heb 4:15; and to him the penitent sinner may also come, knowing that he will not cast him away.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Jesus wept. A mark of his human nature, when…
Jesus wept. A mark of his human nature, when he was going to give them a proof of his divinity, in raising the dead to life. (Witham) --- The tears of the disconsolate sisters called forth tears from the tender commiseration of Jesus. Nor was it unworthy the Son of God to shed tears. See Luke xix. 41. About to give proofs of his divinity in raising the dead, he is pleased to give, first, undoubted proofs of his humanity, that he might shew himself both God and man.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Jesus wept--This beautifully conveys the sublime brevity of the…
Jesus wept--This beautifully conveys the sublime brevity of the two original words; else "shed tears" might have better conveyed the difference between the word here used and that twice employed in Joh 11:33, and there properly rendered "weeping," denoting the loud wail for the dead, while that of Jesus consisted of silent tears. Is it for nothing that the Evangelist, some sixty years after it occurred, holds up to all ages with such touching brevity the sublime spectacle of the Son of God in tears? What a seal of His perfect oneness with us in the most redeeming feature of our stricken humanity! But was there nothing in those tears beyond sorrow for human suffering and death? Could these effects move Him without suggesting the cause? Who can doubt that in His ear every feature of the scene proclaimed that stern law of the Kingdom, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23), and that this element in His visible emotion underlay all the rest?
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 35. Jesus wept—It was in walking from his place…
35. Jesus wept—It was in walking from his place of stoppage to the tomb that Jesus wept. It was a strange and most heartless objection of Strauss, that the tears of Jesus could have no reality for a friend he was about to restore to life. That restoration to life sprang from the same sympathy for human woe which produced the tears. O the truly, deeply human Jesus!
How divine the thought, that the Divine could be so human as to blend his tears with ours and make our sorrow sacred! How infidel the heart of the man whose speculations would so coldly analyze as to destroy the blessed fact.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 35. Jesus wept] Or, shed tears. The word occurs…
35. Jesus wept] Or, shed tears. The word occurs nowhere else in N.T.; it expresses less loud lamentation than the word used in Joh_11:31; Joh_11:33. He sheds tears on His way to their brother’s grave, not because He is ignorant or doubtful of what is coming, but because He cannot but sympathize with the intensity of His friends’ grief. “The intense humanity attributed to Jesus, His affection, His visible suffering, the effort with which He collects Himself, are all strong marks of authenticity, and the more so because they might be thought to conflict with the doctrine of the prologue. But this is but one more proof how little that doctrine has disturbed the Evangelist’s true historic recollection.” S. pp. 186, 7.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (35) Jesus wept.—The word is different from that which…
(35) Jesus wept.—The word is different from that which is used to express weeping in Joh_11:33; but this latter is used of our Lord in Luk_19:41. The present word means not the cry of lamentation nor the wail of excessive grief, but the calm shedding of tears. They are on the way to the sepulchre, near to which they have now arrived. He is conscious of the power which He is about to exercise, and that the first result will be the glory of God (Joh_11:4); but He is conscious also of the suffering hearts near Him, and the sympathy with human sorrow is no less part of His nature than the union with divine strength. Men have wondered to find in the Gospel which opens with the express declaration of the divinity of our Lord, and at a moment when that divinity was about to receive its fullest manifestation, these words, which point them still to human weakness. But the central thought of St. John’s Gospel is “The Word was made flesh,” and He is for us the Resurrection and the Life, because He has been manifested to us, not as an abstraction which the intellect only could receive, but as a person, living a human life, and knowing its sorrows, whom the heart can grasp and love. A “God in tears” has provoked the smile of the stoic and the scorn of the unbeliever; but Christianity is not a gospel of self-sufficiency, and its message is not merely to the human intellect. It is salvation for the whole man and for every man; and the sorrowing heart of humanity has never seen more clearly the divinity of the Son of Man than when it has seen His glory shining through His human tears.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Jesus wept. The shortest verse, but one of the…
Jesus wept. The shortest verse, but one of the most suggestive in the entire Scripture. The great wrath against death is subdued now into tears of love, of sympathy, and of deep emotion. Jesus shed tears of sympathetic sorrow. This is in sacred and eternal refutation of the theory which deprives the incarnate Logos of St. John of human heart and spirit. These tears have been for all the ages a grand testimony to the fullness of his humanity, and also a Diving revelation of the very heart of God. (see Isa_25:8) It was not a klauymov , as the weeping over Jerusalem, (Luk_19:41) but profound and wondrous fellow-feeling with human misery in all its forms, then imaged before him in the grave of Lazarus. It is akin to the judicial blindness which has obscured for the T school so much of the glory of Divine revelation, that Baur should regard this weeping of Jesus as unhistorical.
The tears of Jesus.
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Thrice in the gospel narrative is Jesus recorded to have wept; viz. over the unbelieving and doomed city of Jerusalem, by the grave of his friend, Lazarus of Bethany, and in the garden of Gethsemane, when enduring the agony which all but overwhelmed his soul. Much valuable and consolatory reflection is suggested by the simple record, Jesus wept.
I CHRIST"S CAPACITY FOR TEARS.
1. It is obvious to say this capacity lay in his true human nature. As we read in Job, "Man is born to sorrow;" as our poet sings, "Man is made to mourn." Jesus was "a Man of sorrows.
2. Christ was capable of human sympathy. Men weep for themselves, and they weep for others. The tears of Jesus were tears shed, not for himself, but for members of this race whose nature he assumed.
3. This capacity lay yet deeper in our Lord"s Divinity. It is unjust to represent God as unfeeling; he is susceptible of some deep "painless sympathy with pain." He pities and grieves over the sorrow he nevertheless in wisdom and in love permits.
II THE OCCASIONS OF CHRIST"S TEARS. The narrative reveals:
1. His personal sorrow for the death of his friend. He had been wont to come to Bethany to meet with a cordial welcome and a friendly smile from Lazarus. And as he knew the joys of friendship, so did he experience the distress of bereavement. There was justice in the exclamation of the Jews, "Behold how he loved him!
2. His sympathy with the grief of the bereaved sisters. Mary and Martha were nearest in kindred and in affection to the deceased Lazarus; and Jesus, who loved all three, could not but feet for the sisters whom he found in sorrow and in tears.
3. Consciousness of the power of sin. Nothing less than this can account for the prevalence and the bitterness of the heart"s anguish. Jesus, who knew all things, knew this; it was sin which "brought death into the world with all its woes." In every instance of human mortality Jesus could not fail to discern the bitterer root of fruit so bitter. Hence the strong emotion he displayed, as he groaned and was stirred and moved by the mighty wave of feeling which swept over his soul.
III THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME OF CHRIST"S TEARS. There are cases in which tears are a substitute for help. It was not so in the instance before us. The heart that found expression for its woe in tears, found expression for its sympathy and pity in the reaching out of a hand of help. Jesus first wept, and then succored the sorrowful and raised the dead. Christian sympathy should be like Christ"s sympathy, which was not content with words and tears, but made for itself a way of practical compassion.
IV THE SIGNIFICANT LESSONS OF CHRIST"S TEARS.
1. They assure us that we have in him a feeling Friend, who in all our afflictions is afflicted.
2. They teach us a lesson of sympathy that we should weep with those who weep.
3. They remind us by contrast of that state where "all tears shall be wiped from off all faces." "The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. T.
The Savior"s tears.
"Jesus wept." Who wept? Jesus, the Son of God, the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and who was God! What made him weep who is the Delight of heaven, and ever sets its golden harps to the tune of happiness and joy? What could bring tears into the eyes of him who wipes away the tears of thousands, and hushes the sighs of millions of the children of fate? How could he weep? In human nature, on his way to the grave of a friend, we are told that Jesus wept. Notice his tears
I AS EXPRESSIONS OF HIS DEEP SYMPATHY WITH THE SISTERS. They were in the depths of trouble and grief. They had lost:
1. A brother. Their brother Lazarus was dead, and now in his grave. A brother is one of the nearest and dearest relations of life. It is not a neighbor or a friend that was cut off by death, but a brother.
2. An only brother. To lose one out of many is a great trial, but in such a case there is an alleviating consideration there are others to share the grief, and to whom wounded affection may still cling. But these sisters, as far as we can see, had lost their only remaining brother. As they returned from the graves of dear ones before, they had Lazarus with them as the center of their human affections, the healer of their grief; but now he is under the cold hand of death.
3. A most kind and good brother. Even the death of an undutiful and prodigal brother is keenly felt, for he is a brother in spite of all. But the death of a good brother is more keenly felt still. Lazarus was a model brother. The natural relationship was intensified and endeared by sweetness of temper, kindness and goodness of nature, and piety of character, which made him not only their support, but their chief solace and sunshine.
4. Jesus deeply sympathized with them.
(1) With their personal and social loss and grief. They were left lonely and undefended in the world.
(2) With their utter helplessness in the face of death. In themselves they were entirely helpless in this circumstance. They could do nothing but weep, and he wept with them.
(3) He sympathized, as they represented the grief and bereavements of the whole human family. The death of Lazarus was only a specimen of the ravages and the universal reign of the "king of terrors" on earth, which he had come to abolish; and the grief of these sisters was only a specimen of the universal grief of the human race whose nature he had assumed, and whose sorrow he carried; and he could not contemplate all this without expressing his sympathy.
5. This expression of sympathy is most tender. Jesus was not only sympathetic, but most tenderly sympathetic with all human woes. Many have sympathy, but they manifest it awkwardly and even roughly; it is spoilt in transmission. But Jesus manifested his sympathy with these sisters most tenderly; he conveyed it to them in tears. "Jesus wept.
II AS EXPRESSIONS OF STRONG AND GENUINE FRIENDSHIP. Jesus wept, not only in sympathy with the bereaved sisters, but in friendship to their departed brother. The Jews were right for once in their interpretation of Jesus when they said, "Behold how he loved him!" Lazarus was the special friend of Jesus. Their friendship was not long.
1. It was very intimate and sincere. It was the highest and purest friendship, arising from a general agreement in temper, taste, character, principles, and sympathies. In Lazarus Jesus could see his image; and in Jesus Lazarus could see a perfect Model, and all that his heart could wish. So intimate and sincere was the friendship, that Jesus could not refrain from weeping for the temporary separation of his friend. And his were not mercenary tears he was not a paid mourner but they were tears of genuine friendship.
2. It was very valuable. The friendship of Lazarus was very valuable to Jesus during his active ministry. His foes were many, but his friends were very few; he had only one Lazarus. Many a time had he sheltered from the storm under the wing of his friendship, and there tasted of the sweets of human kindness in a hostile world; these reminiscences now crowded his memory, filled his heart with sorrow, and his eyes with tears.
3. It was most intense. If it had been only of a short duration, this was amply made up in depth, breadth, and intensity. Jesus could love in an hour more than we can in an age. His love to Lazarus must be intense ere he would weep. Small natures can weep often, but great ones only weep on extraordinary occasions. Only twice it is recorded that Jesus wept. Once over a spiritually dead city; now near the grave of a departed friend. One was the wail of pity, and the other the wail of personal and wounded love; and so intense were his feelings that they could not be suitably expressed but in tears, nor find relief but in a wail of sorrow.
III As EXPRESSIONS OF HIS THOROUGH HUMANITY.
1. It is characteristically human to weep. We know not of any other being that can weep but man. Angels, perhaps, have not the power to weep; they certainly have no need. Devils have need, but not the inclination and power. Man has the need and power to weep. Jesus was a thorough Man; he wept.
2. It is human to weep with those that weep. Human sorrow is ever contagious. Tears are its natural language. A thorough man will ever be impressed by the emotions of his fellows, and will express them, as well as those of his own, in the general language of tears.
3. Jesus was thoroughly human. "Jesus wept." We are glad in a sense that he wept; we rejoice in his tears, for in them we meet him as a thorough Man. A Savior who could not weep, could not be a perfect Savior for us; but in tears we embrace him as our human Friend. We scarcely know which to admire and adore most Jesus on his way to the grave, in his thorough humanity weeping; or Jesus at the grave, in his thorough Divinity calling the dead to life. In the one he is our God, in the other he is our Brother; and in both he is our perfect Savior.
IV AS EXPRESSIONS OF DIVINE COMPASSION.
1. His compassion was Divine. The tears were human, but the compassion and sympathy were Divine as well. God, as such, cannot shed tears cannot weep; but he can sympathize, pity, and sorrow. The tears of Jesus were virtually those of incarnate Deity, they were faithful and expressive translations of Divine emotions into human language, and a revelation of the Divine in the human.
2. His compassion was practical. Our compassion often begins and ends in tears. We are helpless. We weep over the graves of departed friends; we can do nothing else. Our tears cannot restore them to life and society. But the tears of Jesus did this. They became unbearable to Heaven; they moved Divine power, and Lazarus had to return. They were divinely practical, and practically Divine. Jesus does not literally weep now, but in his friends, and this wail shall by-and-by bring about the great resurrection and the grand reunion at the last day.
LESSONS. It is natural and right to weep after departed friends.
1. Although we know that they are in happy existence, far happier than on this side. Jesus knew that Lazarus was so; still he wept.
2. Although we know that we shall soon meet again. Jesus knew that he should soon meet Lazarus even on this side; still he wept.
3. When we weep after our departed friends, who are also the friends of Jesus, we are not alone. Jesus wept, and virtually weeps still, and shall not cease till all his friends are fully with him, and with each other, and death swallowed up in victory. B.T.
Why these tears?
This is the only occasion on which Jesus is recorded as having shed tears; for although the Passion in Gethsemane is alluded to in the Epistle to the Hebrews as having been a scene of strong crying and tears, yet this is too general and rhetorical an expression to be taken literally. (In Luk_19:41, eklause is used, not edakruse , as here) But Jesus, going to the grave of Lazarus, did manifestly shed tears, and this intensity of emotion was noticed. Why, then, was he moved to this extent?
I A TESTIMONY TO THE FULLNESS OF HIS HUMANITY. These were the tears of friendship. Many a time Jesus must have been filled with profound pity for human suffering and bereavement, but that by itself would not cause him to shed tears. Jesus was on terms of loving intimacy with the family at Bethany. Every bit of evidence should be welcomed that deepens the impression of this; for to be sure that Jesus had special friends is to make us feel that he was a true, full Man. Every true man must have some who are dearer to him than others. A Jesus without intimate friends would have been a contradiction to all that is best in humanity.
II A TESTIMONY TO FULL COMMUNION OF FEELING. In one sense there was no need for these tears. In a few minutes many tears might be shed, but they would be tears of joy over the restored relative. Jesus knew what was going to happen; why, then, did he seem as if plunged in the very depths of sorrow? The answer is that he really was in the very depths of sorrow, in full communion of grief with the two sisters who were his friends. Jesus behaved in all respects naturally and tenderly.
III We must not, however, forget that these were THE TEARS OF JESUS. They are part of the proof of his humanity, but they must be looked at in the light of the whole of that humanity. They were the tears of a sinless Jesus. Tears must be looked at according to their cause. Oftentimes they express the most utter selfishness. The passion of grief, natural and inevitable as it is, brings out the whole man by the very violence of its expression, and so enables us to see how much evil there is in the heart. People can hear with equanimity of deaths all round them; it never strikes them there is anything wrong-anything that wants explaining. The problems and the mysteries of life are as if they were not. But let the blow break their own circle, and utterances the most reckless and purely self-regarding come from their lips. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Jesus wept.
Joh_11:35
Jesus wept.
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- The word is different from that used to express weeping in Joh_11:33; but this latter is used of our Lord in Luk_19:41. The present word means not the cry of lamentation, nor the wail of excessive grief, but the calm shedding of tears. Men have wondered to find in the gospel, which opens with the express declaration of the Divinity of our Lord, and at a moment when that Divinity was about to receive its fullest manifestation, these words, which point them still to human weakness. But the central thought of St. Johns Gospel is The Word made flesh, and He is for us the Resurrection and the Life, because He has been manifested to us, not as an abstraction which the intellect could receive, but as a Person, living a human life and knowing its sorrows, whom the heart can grasp and love. A God in tears has provoked the smile of the stoic and the scorn of the unbeliever; but Christianity is not a gospel of self-sufficiency, and its message is not merely to the human intellect. It is salvation for the whole man and for every man; and the sorrowing heart of humanity has never seen more clearly the Divinity of the Son of Man than when it has seen His glory shining through human tears. (Archdeacon Watkins.)
Christs tears
(Text, and Luk_19:41; Heb_5:7):--It is a commonplace to speak of tears; would that it were a common practice to shed them. Whoever divided the New Testament into verses seems to have stopped in amazement at the text, making an entire verse of two words. There is not a shorter verse in the Bible nor a larger text. Christ wept thrice. The tears of the text are as a spring belonging to one household; the tears over Jerusalem are as a river, belonging to a whole country; the tears on the cross (Heb_5:7) are as a sea belonging to all the world; and though, literally, these fall no more into our text than the spring, yet because the spring flows into the river and the river into the sea, and that wheresoever we find that Jesus wept we find our text, we shall look upon those heavenly eyes through this glass of His own tears in all these three lines. Christs tears were
I. HUMANE, as here. This being His greatest miracle, and declaring His Divinity, He would declare that He was man too.
1. They were not distrustful inordinate tears. Christ might go further than any other man, both because He had no original sin within to drive Him, and no inordinate love without to draw Him when His affections were moved. Christ goes as far as a passionate deprecation in the passion, but all these passions were sanctified in the root by full submission to Gods pleasure. And here Christs affections were vehemently stirred (Joh_11:33); but as in a clean glass if water be troubled it may conceive a little light froth, yet it contracts no foulness, the affections of Christ were moved but so as to contract no inordinateness. But then every Christian is not a Christ, and He who would fast forty days as Christ did might starve.
2. But Christ came nearer to excess than to senselessness. Inordinateness may make men like beasts, but absence of affection makes them like stones. St. Peter tells us that men will become lovers of themselves, which is bad enough, but he casts another sin lower--to be without natural affections.
The Jews argued that saw Christ weep, Behold how He loved him. Without outward declarations who can conclude inward love? Who then needs to be ashamed of weeping? As they proceeded from natural affection, Christs were tears of imitation. And when God shall come to that last act in the glorifying of man--wiping all tears from his eyes--what shall He have to do with that eye that never wept?
3. Christ wept out of a natural tenderness in general; now out of a particular occasion--Lazarus was dead. A good man is not the worse for dying, because he is established in a better world: but yet when he is gone out of this he is none of us, is no longer a man. It is not the soul, but the union of the soul that makes the man. A man has a natural loathness to lose his friend though God take him. Lazaruss sisters believed his soul to be in a good estate, and that his body would be raised, yet they wept. Here in this world we lack those who are gone: we know they shall never come to us, and we shall not know them again till we join them.
4. Christ wept though He knew Lazarus was to be restored. He would do a great miracle for him as He was a mighty God; but He would weep for him as He was a good-natured man. It is no very charitable disposition if I give all at my death to others, and keep all my life to myself. I may mean to feast a man at Christmas, and that man may starve before in Lent. Jesus would not give this family whom He loved occasion of suspicion that He neglected them; and therefore though He came not presently to His great work, He left them not comfortless by the way.
II. PROPHETICAL--over Jerusalem. His former tears had the spirit of prophecy in them, for He foresaw how little the Jews would make of the miracle. His prophetical tears were humane too, they rise from good affections to that people.
1. He wept in the midst of the acclamations of the people. In the best times there is ever just occasion of fear of worse, and so of tears. Every man is but a sponge. Whether God lay His left hand of adversity or His right hand of prosperity the sponge shall weep. Jesus wept when all went well with Him to show the slipperiness of worldly happiness.
2. He wept in denouncing judgments to show with how ill a will He inflicted them, and that the Jews had drawn them on themselves (Isa_16:9). If they were only from His absolute decree, without any respect to their sins, could He be displeased with His own act? Would God ask that question, Why will ye die? etc., if He lay open to the answer, Because Thou hast killed us?
3. He wept when He came near the city: not till then. If we will not come near the miseries of our brethren we will never weep over them. It was when Christ Himself, not when His disciples, who could do Jerusalem no good, took knowledge of it. It was not when those judgments drew near; yet Christ did not ease Himself on account of their remoteness, but lamented future calamities.
III. PONTIFICAL--accompanying His sacrifice. These were expressed by that inestimable weight, the sins of all the world. And if Christ looking on Peter made him weep, shall not His looking on us here with such tears make us weep.
1. I am far from concluding all to be impenitent who do not actually shed tears. There are constitutions that do not afford them. And yet the worst epithet that the best poet could fix on Pluto himself was a person that could not weep. But to weep for other things and not for sin, this is a sponge dried into a pumice stone. Though there be good tears and bad tears, yet all have this degree of good in them that they argue a tender heart; and the Holy Ghost loves to work in wax not in marble. God made a firmament which He called heaven after it had divided the waters: after we have distinguished our tears worldly from heavenly then is there a firmament established in us, and a heaven opened to us.
2. I might stand long upon the manifold benefits of godly tears, but I contract all into this, which is all--godly sorrow is joy. (J. Donne, D. D.)
Christs tears
In our recoil from Socinianism we are apt to go too far to the other extreme. This accounts for our surprise at reading that Jesus wept. We are not surprised that Jeremiah wept, or that Paul or Peter wept. Why be surprised to hear that Jesus wept, except that we do not acknowledge His manhood? On three occasions Jesus wept. To each of these I wish to call your attention.
I. TEARS OF SYMPATHY. Three thoughts are suggested.
1. It is not sinful to weep under afflictions.
2. The mourner may always count on the sympathy of Jesus. Jesus thought not of these sisters alone. There sounded in His ears the dirge of the ocean of human misery. The weeping of Mary and Martha was but the holding of the shell to His ears. That tear of love is a legacy to every Christian.
3. When our friends are mourning we should weep with them. The truest tenderness is that which distils in tears. When the heart feels most keenly, the tongue refuses to do its bidding, but the tear expresses all. The tear is never misunderstood.
II. TEARS OF COMPASSION (Luk_19:41). He was about to enter Jerusalem over Mount of Olives. Before His vision, instead of the fair scene, He saw the legions of Rome, etc. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, etc. It was baffled affection.
1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews and neglected. Who shall say what glory had been Jerusalems had she heard the prophets and Jesus? All hearers of the Word have privileges and visitations.
2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost. He saw that the chance to save was past forever. He abandoned the effort in tears.
III. TEARS OF PERSONAL SUFFERING (Heb_5:7). The tears Paul speaks of very probably referred to Gethsemane.
1. Think not because you suffer that you are not chosen. As Christ was made perfect in His work, through His suffering, so are we thus to be led.
2. Nor are we to think that we are not Christians because we feel weak. Tears are liquid emotion pressed from the heart. It is not murmuring in you to feel the sting of suffering. Yet the undercurrent must always be, Thy will be done. Patience is not apathy. Rest sure of this, the prayer cable is not broken. The Gethsemane angel has gone on many a strengthening mission since that day in Gethsemane. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The tears of Christ
I. HE WEPT FROM VERY SYMPATHY WITH THE GRIEF OF OTHERS. It is of the nature of compassion to rejoice with those, etc. It is so with men, and God tells us that He is compassionate. We do not well know what this means, for how can God rejoice or grieve? He is hid from us; but it is the very sight of sympathy that comforts the sufferer. When Christ took flesh, then, He showed us the Godhead in a new manifestation. Let us not say that His tears here are mans love overcome by natural feeling. It is the love of God, condescending to appear as we are capable of receiving it, in the form of human nature.
II. HE WEPT AT THE VICTORY OF DEATH. Here was the Creator seeing the issue of His own handiwork. Would He not revert to the hour of Creation when He saw that all was very good, and contrast man as He was made innocent and immortal, and man as the devil had made him, full of the poison of sin and the breath of the grave? Why was it allowed? He would not say. What He has done for all believers, revealing His atoning death, but not explaining it, this He did for the sisters also, proceeding to the grave in silence, to raise their brother while they complained that he had been allowed to die.
III. HE WEPT AT HIS OWN IMPENDING DOOM. Joseph could bring joy to his brethren at no sacrifice of his own. The disciples would have dissuaded Christ from going into Judaea lest the Jews should kill Him. The apprehension was fulfilled. The fame of the miracle was the immediate course of His seizure. He saw the whole prospect--Lazarus raised, the supper, joy on all sides, many honouring Him, the triumphal entry, the Greeks earnest to see Him, the Pharisees plotting, Judas betraying, His friends deserting, the cross receiving. He felt that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus had left. (Cardinal Newman.)
The tears of Jesus
I. CAUSES OF CHRISTS SORROW.
1. The possession of a soul. When we speak of the Deity joined to humanity we do not mean to a body, but to manhood, body and soul. With a body only Jesus might have wept for hunger, but not for sorrow. That is the property not of Deity or body, but of soul. The humanity of Christ was perfect.
2. The spectacle of human sorrow.
(1) Death of a friend (verse36). Mysterious! Jesus knew that He could raise him. This is partly intelligible. Conceptions strongly presented produce effects like reality, e.g., we wake dreaming, our eyes suffused with tears--know it is a dream, yet tears flow on. Conception of a parents death. Solemn impression produced by the mock funeral of Charles V. The sadness of Jesus for His friend is repeated in us all. Somehow we twine our hearts round those we love as if forever. Death and they are not thought of in connection. He die!
(2) Sorrow of His two friends. Their characters were diverse: two links bound them together: love to Lazarus, attachment to the Redeemer. Now one link was gone. His loss was not an isolated fact. The family was broken up; the sun of the system gone; the keystone of the arch removed, and the stones lose their cohesion. For the two minds held together only at points of contact. They could not understand one anothers different modes of feeling: Martha complains of Mary. Lazarus gave them a common tie. That removed the points of repulsion would daily become more sharp. Over the breaking up of a family Jesus wept. And this is what makes death sad.
II. CHARACTER OF CHRISTS SORROW: Spirit in which Jesus saw this death.
1. Calmly. Lazarus sleepeth in the world of repose where all is placid. Struggling men have tried to forget this restless world, and slumber like a babe, tired at heart. Lazarus to his Divine friends imagination lies calm. The long days work is done, the hands are folded. Friends are gathered to praise, enemies to slander, but make no impression on his ear. Conscious he is, but not of earthly noise. But he sleeps well.
2. Sadly. Hence, observe
(1) Permitted sorrow. Great nature is wiser than we. We recommend weeping, or prate about submission, or say all must die: Nature, God, says, Let nature rule to weep or not.
(2) That grief is no distrust of God--no selfishness. Sorrow is but love without its object.
3. Hopefully--I go, etc. (Joh_11:11). Thy brother (Joh_11:23).
4. In reserve. On the first announcement Jesus speaks not a word. When He met the mourners He offered no commonplace consolation. He is less anxious to exhibit feeling than to soothe. But nature had her way at last. Yet even then by act more than word the Jews inferred His love, There is the reserve of nature and the reserve of grace. We have our own English reserve. We respect grief when it does not make an exhibition. An Englishman is ashamed of his good feelings as much as of his bad. All this is neither good nor bad: it is nature. But let it be sanctified and pass into Christian delicacy. Application. In this there is consolation: but consolation is not the privilege of all sorrow. Christ is at Lazaruss grave, because Christ had been at the sisters home, sanctifying their joys, and their very meals. They had anchored on the rock in sunshine, and in the storm the ship held to her moorings. He who has lived with Christ will find Christ near in death, and will find himself that it is not so difficult to die. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The import of Jesus tears
The weeping was preceded by groans. After the groans come tears--a gentle rain after the violent storm. Jesus in this, as in all things, stands alone.
1. Different from Himself at other times.
2. Very unlike the Jews who came to comfort the two sisters, and
3. unlike the sisters themselves. Jesus tears imply
I. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE MIND (Lam_3:51). Tears are natural. The relation existing between matter and mind is inexplicable. Yet it exists. From this fact we can reason to the relation existing between God and the material universe.
II. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE. Here we have a proof of His humanity. What more human than weeping? Following this manifestation of humanity is the manifestation of divinity. We should guard against the old errors concerning the constitution of Christs person; for they appear from age to age under new forms:
1. Arianism--denying His proper Divinity.
2. Appolinarianism--denying His proper humanity.
3. Nestorianism--dual personality.
4. Eutychianism--confounding the two natures in His person.
III. THE RELATION BETWEEN CHRIST AS MEDIATOR AND HUMANITY, IN GENERAL, IN ITS MISERY, AND HIS PEOPLE, IN PARTICULAR, IN THEIR AFFLICTIONS.
1. The question, why He wept? is here answered.
(1) He was sorrowful because of the misery caused by sin. As Jerusalem was before His eyes when He wept over it, so here humanity in its sin and all its misery passed in review before His face.
(2) His weeping was a manifestation of His sympathy. No comparison between His consoling, comforting tears and those of the Jews.
2. The intercessory work of Christ as our High Priest in heaven is here implied. He is the same there as when here upon earth (Heb_13:8). Has the same heart beating with ours. He is our sympathizing Friend and Brother there. APPLICATION:
1. Have you wept on account of your sins? They have caused, and are still causing, Jesus to weep.
2. Do you realise Christs friendship for you?
3. Let us learn from His example to sympathise with the sorrows of our fellow men. (T. E. Hughes.)
A unique verse
I have often felt vexed with the man whoever he was, who chopped up the New Testament into verses. He seems to have let the hatchet drop indiscriminately here and there; but I forgive him a great deal of blundering for his wisdom in letting these two words make a verse by themselves, Jesus wept. This is a diamond of the first water, and it cannot have another gem set with it, for it is unique. Shortest of verses in words, but where is there a longer one in sense? Let it stand in solitary, sublimity and simplicity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Embodied sympathy powerful
Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them. They pass athwart us in this vapour and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh, they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft, responsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones. They are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, and we are drawn after them with a gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. (George Eliot.)
Jesus sympathizes with all who suffer
If a man be found weltering by the roadside, wounded, and a stranger comes along, he will pity him, for the heart of man speaks one language the world over. But if it were a near neighbour or strong personal friend how much more tender the pity. That of the mans own father far transcends those. But the noblest heart on earth is but a trickling stream from a shallow fountain compared with the pity of God, which is wide as the scope of heaven and abundant as all the air. (H. W. Beecher.)
Christ satisfying the instinct of sympathy
There is a word in our language--the iron Roman had to arrange many circuitous approaches to it--we borrow it straight from the plastic, responsive Greek--the word sympathy
I. THE INSTINCT. The word has gone through one process since it left its root to suffer, which root does not mean suffering in our common sense, but being affected. So sympathy does not mean fellow suffering, but community of affection. It may be
(1) A community of congruity. There is sympathy between two persons where there is such a likeness of disposition that they are mutually drawn to each other.
(2) A community of contagion. You sympathize with a person when in some particular sorrow or joy you share the feeling arising out of circumstances not your own.
1. As a community of disposition, sympathy is
(1) The spring of all love. We see in the soul which looks through those eyes, its windows, the very counterpart and complement of our own. Even beauty acts through sympathy. It is not the flesh, grace, colour, etc., but the idea or promise of beautiful qualities which wins the heart. Another may be more comely, but we are not attracted because we read not the disposition which ours craves. We blame ourselves for not loving. Why do we not love? For the lack of that sympathy of congruity represented by the word liking.
(2) The inspiration of eloquence. What is there in that insignificant figure, uncomely countenance, unmusical voice which nevertheless sways multitudes as the orator lists. An empire has hung in suspense while one man has talked to 10,000. Why? Because of the charm of sympathy.
(3) The secret of power in poetry and fiction. What is it which draws tears from eyes which know they are Witnessing imaginary sorrows? It is the skill with which genius draws upon the resources of human feeling. The moment the tragical passes into the artificial, the tear dries of itself.
(4) The explanation of all magnificent successes. A want of sympathy accounts for the failure of men possessed of every gift but one. You see it in oratory: there is learning, industry, etc., but the audience is unimpressed because there was no heart. You see it in action: there is education, character, opportunity, etc., but coldness of temperament chilled the touch of friendship.
(5) This sympathy has its excesses. It is so charming and remunerative that some men are guilty of practising on good impulses, and become insincere, and destroy others by means of the souls best and tenderest affections.
2. Sympathy of contagion, too, is an instinct. To feel is human; we call a man unnatural, unhuman who cannot pity. But some men feel without acting, and consequently feeling is deadened. Others keep away from them what will make them feel, and waste the instinct. To this kind of sympathy belong all those efforts by which we throw ourselves into anothers life for benevolent influence. This alone renders possible an education which is worthy of the name, the teacher sharing personally the difficulties, games, weaknesses, etc., of the taught.
II. CHRIST SATISFYING THIS INSTINCT.
1. He presented Himself to us in one thrust, as possessing all that beauty which has a natural affinity to everything that is noble and true.
(1) He appeals to the instinct in its form of likeness. We must be cautious here, a not confuse the ruined will, the original temple. Still there is no one who has no response in him to that which is lovely and of good report. The instinct finds not its rest here below. Some profess to be satisfied: they have what they want. They are happy--might it but last; were there no storms and eventual death. But for the rest care, toil, ill-health, bereavement have forbidden it, or they have not yet found the haven of sympathy. The first movement of such in hearing of Christ satisfying the wants of the soul is one of impatience: they want something substantial. What they really want is community of affection. There is offered to them a perfect love.
(2) Christ guides and demands sympathy. He makes it religion, which is sympathy with God; liking the drawing of spirit to spirit by the magnet of a felt loveliness. I drew them with cords, etc. Without this religion is a burden and bondage.
2. Christ satisfies the sympathy of contact. We might have thought that the Creator would shrink from the ugly thing into which sin has corrupted His handiwork. But He never heard the lepers cry without making it a reason for drawing nigh. Again and again He went to the bereaved, and it was to wake the dead; and this not officially, as though to say, This proves Me the Christ. Jesus wept. There was no real peril or want with which He did not express sympathy. He loved the rich young man; He wept over Jerusalem with its unbelief and hypocrisy; He was in all points tempted, and so is able to sympathize with our infirmities. What He sympathized with was poor sin-spoilt humanity, and for that He died. Conclusion: What Christ did He bids us do not in the way of condescension, but as men touching to Him, not loving the sin, yet loving the sinner. Lonely people cease to be alone. Rejoice with them that rejoice, etc. (Dean Vaughan.)
The tears of the Lord Jesus
I. JESUS WEPT; FOR THERE WAS CAUSE WORTHY OF HIS TEARS. The finest, noblest race of Gods creatures dismantled, sunk in death before Him, all across earth and time from the worlds beginning. Tears, we know, show strongest in the strongest. When you see the strong man broken down beside his sick babe you cannot but feel there is a cause. Whatever else there may be in the man, you see that he has a heart, and that his heart is the deepest, is the Divine part of him. As the fathers tears over his child testify the fathers heart, so the tears of Jesus testify that He has a heart which beats with infinite love and tenderness toward us men. For we are His, and in a far more profound and intimate sense belong to Him, than children can to an earthly parent. And the relation into which the Lord Jesus has come with our humanity is closer and tenderer than that of earthly parent. We speak of Him as our Brother, our Elder Brother; but the truth is, Christs relation to us is Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Husband, Friend, all in One. But He knew--further--that a sadder thing than death and its miseries lay behind, even sin. This touched and affected Him most, that we were a fallen and dishonoured race, and therefore death had come upon us and overshadowed us. Why else should we die? The stars do not wax old and die, the heavens and the earth remain unto this day, though there is no soul or spirit in them. Why should the brightness of an immeasurably nobler and more exalted creature like man wax dim? Stars falling from heaven are nothing to souls falling from God. The one are but lights going out in Gods house, the other the very children of the house perishing. Jesus wept then for the innermost death of all death, the fountain misery of all miseries But while in His Divine thought and sorrow He penetrated to the root and source of that evil and of all evil, the mighty attendant suffering awoke in Him the truest and deepest compassion and sympathy. He wept, then, with each one of us; for who has not been called to part with some beloved relative, parent, partner, companion, guide, or friend? With all sorrowing, desolate hearts and homes of the children of men He then took part. Again, the Lord Jesus felt how much the darkness and sorrows of death were intensified and aggravated by the state of ignorance and unbelief in which the world lay. How mournful to His spirit at that hour the realization of the way in which the vast bulk and majority of the human race enter the world, go through it, leave it 1 for He knew, better than any other that has been on earth, mans capability of higher things and of an endless life and blessedness. Like sheep they are laid in the grave, says the writer of the 49th Psalm, What a picture! Like that abject, unthinking, and helpless animal, driven in flocks by awful forms, cruel powers, they can neither escape nor resist, to a narrow point and bound, where all is impenetrable darkness.
II. Let us consider THE TEARS OF JESUS AS REVEALING THE DIVINE HEART. Are we to believe that He out of whose heart have come the hearts of all true fathers and mothers, all the simple, pure affections of our common nature and kinship, of the family and the home; are we to believe, I say, that God has no heart? Some one may say, There is no doubt God can love and does love--infinitely; but can He sorrow? Now, my friend, I pray you, think what is sorrow but love wanting or losing its objects, its desire and satisfaction in its objects, and going forth earnestly in its grief to seek and regain them? Sorrow, suffering, is one of the grandest, noblest, most self-denying, and disinterested forms and capabilities of love, apart from which love could not exist, whether in nature or in name.
III. THE TEARS OF JESUS ARE THOSE OF A MIGHTY ONE HASTENING TO AVENGE AND DELIVER. They are not the tears of one whose pity and sympathy can only be thus expressed, but who has no power--whatever may be his willingness and desire--to help. The tears of Jesus are those of a hero over his native country and kingdom laid waste by an enemy whom he hastens to meet and avenge himself upon. There is hope, there is help for our world; Jesus Christ weeps over it, and He will restore all things of which we have been robbed and spoiled.
IV. HENCE WE LEARN OUR TRUE SOURCE OF COMFORT, HELP, AND RESTORATION. He who wept and bled and died for man has proved Himself to be our great Deliverer. Do we ever feel we can go anywhere else but to Him when sickness and death threaten and invade us and ours? (Watson Smith.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 35. Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible…
35. Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible and one of the most touching.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.