Jesus Grieves With Us

 

"Jesus wept." John 11:35

Deeper Reading: John 11:1-44 (The story of Lazarus' death)

In the eleventh chapter of John, we see Jesus weeping for His beloved friend, Lazarus. He truly felt the sadness that we all experience at the sight of a loved one dying. Friends, Jesus knew He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead! He knew that his death was not permanent, and yet He still wept. So why would He mourn a death that wasn't permanent? 

I think there are three plausible reasons that Jesus wept: compassion for His grieving friends, grief over death in general as it relates to sin, and sadness over His friends' lack of faith. I haven't done enough deep diving into this to tell you which reason is accurate - and since the Bible does not elaborate I don't know that anyone besides Jesus Himself can say for certain. Let's dive into all three...

Compassion stems from love, and we know that Jesus loves deeply. He loves us in a way that we will never fully comprehend because we have nothing to compare it to! No person we will encounter in our lifetime will come close to loving us as deeply, thoroughly, or intimately as our Savior. So, it could be said that Jesus felt the power of his friends' grief so profoundly that He wept out of compassion for the pain they were in. 

Grief over death for Jesus would not likely be the same as our grief. Jesus knows that sin caused death to enter this world. The God who created us did not intend for us to die an earthly death. This in turn caused Jesus to die a horrific death, in order to win a victory over sin (and death) so that we may spend eternity with Him. He the battle would be hard; He knew the cost of death was His own life, yet He still willingly died for us on the cross. It could be speculated that He was grieving that sin had entered the world, and because of it people, like His good friend Lazarus, people who loved God deeply still had to experience physical deaths.

However, based on other encounters in the Gospels, I believe the reason that may make the most sense would be overwhelming sadness at their lack of faith. How many times, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do we see Jesus call out His followers for their lack of faith? As He approached His friends, who were grieving Lazarus' death, they each said to Him, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." Now, I am not saying that I would have reacted differently - I can't know how I would have reacted. 

I think the reaction, especially from someone mourning the death of a love one, is one we can all relate to. Even if we know that we will see someone again in heaven, we have sadness with that joy. We will miss their physical presence in the meantime. Sometimes we mourn the things we didn't get to do with them while they were alive on earth. Often we grieve the hole in our lives that was left behind when they died. We know we will see them again, but we don't know how long it will be until we do.

Jesus' friends that were mourning the death of Lazarus had limited their faith in a way. They believed that if Jesus had been with them when Lazarus got ill then Jesus would have healed him. Jesus told Martha that Lazarus would rise and she essentially brushed Him off, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." I think if this happened in 2023 she might have prefaced it with, "yeah, yeah, yeah..." This happened before Jesus wept. 

If you read the whole story of Lazarus' death, in John Chapter Eleven, you will see that Jesus knew for days before He went to Lazarus' family. He found out about Lazarus' death long before He wept. He wept after His encounters with His closest friends. After, in their grief, they brushed Jesus off...and if we're honest it kind of seems like they blamed Him too. So Jesus wept. 

If we are honest with ourselves, in a round about way (or for some in a blatantly obvious way) we blame God for the deaths of our loved ones too, don't we? Who here has said, or heard, "God called them home," or "Jesus brought them to heaven?" And ultimately it is in God's hands, and at God's timing that He allows our earthly deaths to happen. In an age where we are pushed to find blame in every circumstance, on some subconscious level we are just like Mary and Martha saying, "Lord, if You had been here this wouldn't have happened." 

Friends, we must recall God's promises! Even though we cannot physically see Jesus, He is always with us. There is never a time when He has forgotten His precious people! We have to see death for what it is: a release from this sin-broken world! "Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may dies, he shall live."" (John 11:25) Death is a release from sin, and it is a beginning to a brand new, perfect life. A life in the actual, visible presence of our awesome God! Grieving is a gift, one that, when experienced through the lens of faith, is covered with hope.