Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 11:35

Jesus wept.

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.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Joh 11:35

Jesus wept.

– 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.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

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.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

35. Jesus weptThisbeautifully conveys the sublime brevity of the two original words;else “shed tears” might have better conveyed thedifference between the word here used and that twice employed in Joh11:33, and there properly rendered “weeping,” denotingthe loud wail for the dead, while that of Jesus consisted of silenttears. Is it for nothing that the Evangelist, some sixty yearsafter it occurred, holds up to all ages with such touching brevitythe sublime spectacle of the Son of God in tears? What a sealof His perfect oneness with us in the most redeeming feature of ourstricken humanity! But was there nothing in those tears beyond sorrowfor human suffering and death? Could these effects move Himwithout suggesting the cause? Who can doubt that in His earevery feature of the scene proclaimed that stern law of the Kingdom,”The wages of sin is death” (Ro6:23), and that this element in His visible emotion underlay allthe rest?

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Jesus wept. As he was going along to the grave, see

Joh 11:28; as he was meditating upon the state of his friend Lazarus, the distress his two sisters were in, and the greater damnation that would befall the Jews then present, who, notwithstanding the miracle, would not believe in him. This shows him to be truly and really man, subject to like passions, only without sin.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Jesus wept ( ). Ingressive first aorist active indicative of , old verb from or , a tear (Ac 20:19), only here in N.T. It never means to wail, as sometimes does. “Jesus burst into tears.” is used of Jesus in Lu 19:41. See Heb 5:7 “with strong crying and tears” ( ). Apparently this was as Jesus started towards (see verse 38) the tomb. In a sense it was a reaction from the severe strain in verse 33, but chiefly it was the sheer human sympathy of his heart with Martha and Mary touched with the feeling of our common weakness (Heb 4:15). Often all that we can do is to shed tears in grief too deep for words. Jesus understood and understands. This is the shortest verse in the Bible, but no verse carries more meaning in it.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Wept [] . A different verb from that in ver. 31. From dakru, tear, and meaning to shed tears, to weep silently. Only here in the New Testament. Klaiw, to weep audibly, is once used of our Lord in Luk 19:41. “The very Gospel in which the deity of Jesus is most clearly asserted, is also that which makes us best acquainted with the profoundly human side of His life” (Godet). How far such a conception of deity is removed from the pagan ideal, may be seen by even a superficial study of the classics. Homer’s gods and goddesses weep and bellow when wounded, but are not touched with the feeling of human infirmity 37 (see on 3 16). “The gods,” says Gladstone, “while they dispense afflictions upon earth, which are neither sweetened by love, nor elevated by a distinct disciplinary purpose, take care to keep themselves beyond all touch of grief or care.”

“The gods ordain The lot of man to suffer, while themselves Are free from care.” ” Iliad, ” 24, 525.

So Diana, when appealed to by the wretched Hippolytus for sympathy, replies :

“I see thy love, but must not shed a tear.” Euripides, “Hippolytes,” 1396.

The Roman satirist unconsciously bears witness to the profound truthfulness and beauty of this picture of the weeping Savior, in the words : “Nature confesses that she gives the tenderest of hearts to the human race by giving them tears : this is the best part of our sensations” (Juvenal, “Satire” 14 131 – 133).

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1 ) “Jesus,” (ho lesous) “Jesus (the Savior)” the Redeemer, Mat 1:21. This is the shortest, yet most eloquent, of all verses in the Bible, Isa 63:9; He was that Savior and Redeemer.

2) “Wept.” (edakrusen) “Shed tears,” shed soft tears of human sorrow, touched with the feelings of the infirmity of Martha and Mary, Heb 4:15. He was as human as this, and as Divine as this, Luk 19:41; Heb 2:16-17.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

(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. Johns 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.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

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.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Joh 11:35. Jesus wept. It appeared on this occasion, that our blessed Lord was possessed of the most delicate sensibility of human passions; for, when he beheld Martha and Mary and their friends around him all in tears, the tender feelings of love, of pity, and of friendship, so moved him, that he mingled his sympathetic tears with theirs: Jesus wept. In this grief of the Son of God there was a greatness and generosity, not to say an amiableness of disposition, infinitely nobler than that which the Stoic philosophers aimed at in their so much boasted apathy. It would be easy to descant on this striking instance of our Lord’s philanthropy; but this is not the place for such discussions: and indeed what Christian heart can be insensible to the force of this striking example? We observe only, that the power which Jesus exerted on this memorable occasion did not more strongly evince him to be the Son of God, than the tears which he shed conduced to demonstrate that he was the Son of man; a most merciful and compassionate man, touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 11:35 . . .] He weeps, whilst on His way to the sepulchre, with those who were weeping. Note the eloquent, deeply-moving simplicity which characterizes the narrative; and remark as to the subject-matter, how, before accomplishing His work, Jesus gives full vent to the sorrow which He felt for His friend, and for the suffering inflicted on the sisters. It is also worthy of notice, that is here used, and not again ,

His lamenting is a shedding of tears in quiet anguish, not a weeping with loud lamentation, not a as over Jerusalem, Luk 19:41 . It is a delicate discrimination of expressions, unforced, and true. According to Baur, indeed, tears for a dead man, whose grave was being approached in the certainty of his being raised to life again, could not be the expression of a true, genuinely human fellow-feeling. As though such feelings could be determined in a manner involving such deliberation, and as if the death of His friend, the grief of those by whom He was accompanied, as well as the wailings of the sisters, were not sufficient, of themselves alone , to arouse His loving sympathy to tears! It is precisely a genuine human emotion, which neither could nor should resist the painful impression produced by such a moment. But those obliterate the delicate character of this trait with their hard dogmatic hand, who make the tears shed by Christ refer to “the misery of the human race pictured forth in Lazarus” (Hengstenberg, comp. Gumlich).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1668
SYMPATHY

Joh 11:35. Jesus wept.

THE Holy Scriptures are, beyond all comparison, superior to any other book; in that they reveal to us truths which human reason could never have explored, and administer consolations which no human composition could ever have imparted. But it is not merely on these accounts that they are to be valued. Taking them as records only, they are deeply interesting, because of the incidents which they bring to our view, and the simplicity which pervades the narration of them. The history of Joseph, for instance, stands unrivalled in this view in the Old Testament, as does the account of Lazarus in the New. By what is related concerning him, we are introduced into the bosom of a pious family, the happiness of which is interrupted for a time by the disease and death of its chief member; and is afterwards exalted a hundred-fold, by the restoration of that person to life. We forbear to enter into the particulars of that history, as they may be read by every one at home: but we would call your attention to that particular incident mentioned in our text, Jesus wept.

In these words we have,

I.

A memorable occurrence

Only reflect on the person of whom this is spoken. He was no other than our incarnate God; who, being absolutely perfect in every respect, was far above the reach of those passions with which we are apt to be transported, and had all his feelings in perfect subjection: yet of him it is said, that, at the grave of Lazarus, he wept.
But from whence proceeded these tender emotions? They arose,

1.

From sympathy with his afflicted friends

[Such was his regard for Lazarus and his sisters, that his friendship for them was a matter of public notoriety [Note: ver. 3, 5.]. And now that death had made an inroad on their happiness, and reduced the surviving sisters to deep distress, he could not but feel for them, and participate in their sorrows. In truth, sympathy is a necessary fruit of love, and altogether inseparable from it. When, therefore, our Lord saw these friends weeping so bitterly, and their friends and attendants weeping also, he could no longer refrain, but had his own cheeks also suffused with tears [Note: ver. 33.]. To this principle the spectators ascribed his tears: they all exclaimed, Behold, how he loved him [Note: ver. 36.]!]

2.

From compassion for their remaining infirmities

[After all that they had seen and known of him, they should have assigned no limits either to his power or grace. Yet behold, though they did believe that he could have preserved their brother from death, they had no conception that he was able to restore him from the grave. Though he had intimated to them his intention to do so, they could not believe him: and when he actually prepared to do so, they imagined that the period which had elapsed since his death, and which, according to the common course of things, would have caused the body to decay, was an insurmountable obstacle to his purpose [Note: ver. 39.]. Well might this give pain to his holy soul. And that it did so, we see from the reproof which he administered: Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? With his own Disciples, also, he was frequently grieved on the same account [Note: Mat 8:26. Mar 16:14.].]

3.

From grief for the obduracy of those, who, he knew, would be yet further hardened by this miracle

[This, I doubt not, entered deeply into his feelings at this time. It was for their conviction that he had refrained from healing Lazarus at first, and had afterwards delayed coming to his friends till he had been four days dead [Note: ver. 6, 15.]. It was for the very same end that, instead of exerting his own Almighty power in the way that he usually did, he prayed to his heavenly Father to effect the miracle; shewing thereby the Fathers union with him in all that he did, and thus placing beyond all reasonable doubt the truth of his own Messiahship [Note: ver. 4143.]. But he knew what was in man: he knew that this stupendous miracle would only enrage some of them the more, in proportion as it carried conviction to the minds of others; and that, instead of converting their souls, it would only precipitate, them into more heinous guilt and wickedness. All this it eventually did [Note: ver. 4650, 53, 57. with 12:10, 11.]: and all this he foresaw. We wonder not, then, that he wept; seeing that the very means he was using for the salvation of men, would issue, with respect to many of them, in their more aggravated condemnation. Nor were these things of rare occurrence. They prevailed amongst the great mass of his hearers, and proved a source of continual sorrow to his soul [Note: Mar 3:5 and Joh 13:21.].]

But in these words we have, also,

II.

An instructive lesson

Were we to trace this occurrence in all its bearings, we should scarcely know where to begin, or where to end. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with noticing only two or three things which naturally arise out of it.
We see then from it,

1.

That there is no condition in this life, in which men are exempt from sorrow

[Had there been any exception from the common lot of all men, we should have looked for it in such a family as that of Lazarus, where there was such ardent love between all the members of it, and so peculiar an interest in the favour of the Lord Jesus; or, at all events, we should expect to find it in our incarnate God. But death invaded their peaceful mansion; and filled the surviving sisters with distress, in which also the Saviour himself participated. Who then, amongst us, can hope for freedom from the general lot? Truly, this is a Bochim [Note: Jdg 2:5.], a vale of tears, to every child of man. However prosperous our condition may be, no one knows what a day or an hour may bring forth. Either in our own persons, or in our families and connexions, it will be strange indeed if something do not frequently occur to damp our joys, and to remind us that this is not our rest: for man is born to trouble, as naturally and as certainly, as the sparks fly upward.]

2.

What is of necessity the operation of divine grace in the soul

[The sum and substance of all practical religion is love: and wherever love exists, there will be sympathy: for it is impossible but that the members of the same body should have a community of feeling with each other [Note: 1Co 12:25.]. To rejoice with them that rejoice, and to weep with them that weep, is the necessary fruit and consequence of grace in the soul [Note: Rom 12:15. See instances Heb 10:31. Php 2:26-28.]. The man that is devoid of these holy feelings is destitute of piety altogether [Note: 1Co 13:1-3.]. In truth, for our griefs and sorrows we have the very same occasions as at this time presented themselves to our blessed Lord. There are troubles and calamities all around us: and if we have our souls duly impressed with them, we shall be able to say, with holy Job, Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor [Note: Job 30:25.]? But if there are no particular troubles that come under our cognizance, who can open his eyes and not see to what an extent sign reigns in all the world? And should not that move us? Should not rivers of waters run down our eyes, because men keep not Gods law [Note: Psa 119:136.]? Should we not say with the Prophet Jeremiah, O that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the sins and miseries of my people [Note: Jer 9:1.]! Nor should the defects of those who profess godliness escape our notice. When Paul marked the conduct of some at Philippi, he was quite distressed in his soul because of the delusions by which they were blinded: Many walk, says he, of whom I have told you often, and tell you now even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, and that their end is destruction [Note: Php 3:18-19.]. And so tenderly did he enter into the concerns of all, that he could say, Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not [Note: 2Co 11:29.]? This is the mind that was in Christ Jesus; and in this every true disciple will resemble him [Note: Php 2:4-5.].]

3.

What a Friend we have, before whom to spread all the sins and sorrows wherewith we are oppressed

[Has any temporal calamity befallen you? He who wept at the grave of Lazarus invites you to call upon him: Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will hear thee; and thou shalt glorify me [Note: Psa 50:15.]. Are you loaded with a sense of guilt? The same Almighty Friend says to you, Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden; and I will give you rest [Note: Mat 11:28.]. Very remarkable is that expression of his pity for Ephraim of old: Surely I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus .Is not Ephraim my dear son? is he not a pleasant child? For, since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: yea, my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord [Note: Jer 31:18-20.]. And do you think that he will exercise less compassion towards you? O, know for a certainty, that you have not a High-Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of your infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as you are, yet without sin [Note: Heb 4:15.]. Be it so, that your sins appear to be of more than ordinary enormity, because of the circumstances under which they have been committed: shall you therefore despond? Be assured, that He who wept over the murderous Jerusalem [Note: Luk 19:41-42.], has lost none of his compassion, but is alike willing to exercise his mercy towards you. He is justly called the Consolation of Israel: and, if you seek him, he will be found of you: though you were dead, yet should you live: and if you will truly believe in him, you shall assuredly behold the glory of God [Note: ver. 25, 40.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

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 10:3Lev 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.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

35 38. ] It is probable that the second set of Jews ( Joh 11:37 ) spoke with a scoffing and hostile purport: for John seldom uses as a mere copula, but generally as but; see Joh 11:46 ; Joh 11:49 ; Joh 11:51 .

It is (Trench, p. 407, edn. 2) a mark of accuracy in the narrative, that these dwellers in Jerusalem should refer to a miracle so well known among themselves, rather than to the former raisings of the dead in Galilee (Strauss has made this very point an objection), of which they probably may have heard, but naturally would not thoroughly believe on rumour only. Again, of raising Lazarus none of them seem to have thought, only of preventing his death.

This second of our Lord I would refer to the same reason as the first. , . Euthym [160] Only he assigns a didactic purpose, to teach us moderation in our tears; I should rather believe the self-restraint to have been exercised as a preparation for what followed.

[160] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

The caves were generally horizontal, natural or artificial, with recesses in the sides, where the bodies were laid. There is no necessity here for supposing the entrance to have been otherwise than horizontal, as the word would lead us to believe. Graves were of both kinds: we have the vertically sunk mentioned Luk 11:44 . See on the whole subject, Winer, Realw. art. ‘Grber:’ and cf. Isa 22:16 : 2Ch 16:14 ; 2Ki 23:16 .

Probably, from this circumstance, as from ‘the Jews’ coming to condole, and the costly ointment (ch. Joh 12:3 ), the family was wealthy.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

wept = shed tears. Greek dakruo. Occurs only here. The noun dakru or dakruon occurs eleven times, and is always translated by plural “tears”.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

35-38.] It is probable that the second set of Jews (Joh 11:37) spoke with a scoffing and hostile purport: for John seldom uses as a mere copula, but generally as but; see Joh 11:46; Joh 11:49; Joh 11:51.

It is (Trench, p. 407, edn. 2) a mark of accuracy in the narrative, that these dwellers in Jerusalem should refer to a miracle so well known among themselves, rather than to the former raisings of the dead in Galilee (Strauss has made this very point an objection), of which they probably may have heard, but naturally would not thoroughly believe on rumour only. Again, of raising Lazarus none of them seem to have thought, only of preventing his death.

This second of our Lord I would refer to the same reason as the first. , . Euthym[160] Only he assigns a didactic purpose, to teach us moderation in our tears; I should rather believe the self-restraint to have been exercised as a preparation for what followed.

[160] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

The caves were generally horizontal, natural or artificial,-with recesses in the sides, where the bodies were laid. There is no necessity here for supposing the entrance to have been otherwise than horizontal, as the word would lead us to believe. Graves were of both kinds: we have the vertically sunk mentioned Luk 11:44. See on the whole subject, Winer, Realw. art. Grber: and cf. Isa 22:16 : 2Ch 16:14; 2Ki 23:16.

Probably, from this circumstance, as from the Jews coming to condole,-and the costly ointment (ch. Joh 12:3),-the family was wealthy.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 11:35. , [wept] shed tears) not cried aloud [lacrymatus est, non ploravit]; nor did He weep at once; nor yet did He weep only after [not until after] He had seen Lazarus, but at the exact time when it was seasonable. He wept, lovingly, as Joh 11:36 testifies, on account of the death of Lazarus; not on account of his return to this life.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 11:35

Joh 11:35

Jesus wept.-[The shortest verse in the Bible, but one of the most touching. How precious those tears which assure the real, tender, loving, sympathizing humanity of Jesus in the very moment in which he is preparing to exert his omnipotence !] This was an overflow of sympathy for the sorrow of the sisters. The grief and sorrow shown on this occasion must have grown out of sympathy for the grieving sisters, not from sorrow for the dead brother. He knew, even before he came that he was dead, and that he would raise him to life, and he was glad for the sake of his apostles that he was not there before he died. He had often shown his power to heal sickness. He now wishes to show his power to raise the dead-his power over death-I am glad for your sakes . . . to the intent ye may believe. (Joh 11:15). [Jesus had both sorrow and gladness in the death of his friend.] This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. (Joh 11:4) His weeping shows his kind sympathetic nature. He did not weep because Lazarus was dead and he would see him no more, for he knew he would restore him to life, but in sympathy for the sorrows of others. Only on one other occasion is it said that Jesus wept, then he wept over wickedness and sins and consequent sorrow that must come upon the city of Jerusalem. (Luk 19:41-44). On Jerusalem God had bestowed his most abundant blessings and sought its good, but the Jews of the city had rejected him and brought upon themselves his direct curses.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Tears of Jesus

Jesus wept.Joh 11:35.

In this text, containing only the two words Jesus wept, we have not before us the whole character of Jesus Christ; we have but one aspect of His many-sidedness, but one point in His very complex character. Yet the text is worth separate and careful study, for it is only by studying the seemingly small points that we shall in time arrive at any just appreciation of the wonder of Christ.

The subject divides itself into three branches

I.The Causes of Christs tears.

II.Their Nature.

III.Their Lesson to us.

I

The Causes of Christs Tears

1. Christs humanity.It is difficult to realize the fact of our Lords true humanity. It fades away from our view in the splendour of His divinity, so close was the union of man with God. But it was nevertheless a distinct manhood, as perfect in itself as that worn by any of our race. The entire record of Christs life proves the assertion. He was born as the children are borna partaker of their flesh and blood; and He was nursed as the children are nursedgrowing in wisdom and stature. He was hungry, and He ate; He was thirsty, and He drank; He was weary, and He lay down: He was fatigued, and He slept; He was smitten, and He died. Still it is no easy task to picture to ourselves the merely human sensations and tendencies which characterized the man Jesus. We believe that His human nature, sin excepted, was as ours; but it is scarcely possible for us to feel it and imagine it, from the overshadowing glory of His higher essence. In consequence of this failure, we are apt to miss no little instruction and comfort as we read the incidents and travel over the scenes of His life. We invest the man with attributes belonging to the God, and unconsciously deify His humanity.

But the Evangelist, from the first, lays down the principle: The word was made flesh. It is not with a heart of stone that the dead are raised, says Hengstenberg; and Heb 2:17 teaches us that he who would help the unhappy must first of all surrender his heart to feel that very suffering from which he desires to deliver them. It is a remarkable thing that the very Gospel in which the Deity of Jesus is most clearly asserted is also that which makes us best acquainted with the profoundly human side of His life.

At first sight, it seems a profane absurdity to talk of God being ignorant, or in sorrow; in pain, or in sickness. Yet we are told that there was no human emotion, in itself sinless, which Jesus could not feel. Hunger, thirst, weariness; the daily discomforts of life, as well as the anguish of the passion and the cross, were as real to Him as to any one of us. Thus there were, no doubt, moments when the manhood asserted itself so strongly as for a little while to dominate, if the word be permissible, over the Godhead. We may find a parallel, though but faint and imperfect, in our own experiences. It occasionally happens that though we are intensely interested in some piece of work, we are compelled to lay it aside, because we are exhausted by hunger. Our intellectual, our real self, chafes and frets at desisting from the fascinating task, but the exhausted body refuses to continue; the brain itself even shows signs of flagging.1 [Note: Canon Bonney.]

2. Christs pity.Why did the Son of God become Son of man? Among other reasons, that He might be in perfect sympathy with us; that, as Bone of our bone, and Flesh of our flesh, He might be able to feel, not merely for us but with us, in all our difficulties and sorrows and pains. Christs tears do not mean here what His tears meant when He wept over Jerusalem. He wept then as foreseeing what calamities their hardness of heart would bring upon the people whom He had sought to save; as thinking what might have been, had they known, in their day of grace, the things which belonged to their peace. There would be no such thought in His mind as He drew near to the grave of His faithful servant. What drew those silent tears from Jesus was His sympathy with the mourning sisters. His tears were the answer of His human heart to the appeal of their sorrow.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.1 [Note: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.]

Jesus wept not merely from the deep thoughts of His understanding, but from spontaneous tenderness; from the gentleness and mercy, the encompassing loving-kindness and exuberant fostering affection of the Son of God for His own work, the race of man. Their tears touched Him at once, as their miseries had brought Him down from heaven. His ear was open to them, and the sound of weeping went at once to His heart.2 [Note: J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, iii. 133.]

3. Christs sorrow.Christs sorrow was twofold.

(1) To begin with, may we not say that Jesus wept here for pity of the frailty of man, and the victory of death? Of course He does not stand alone in this feeling; all serious men share it with Him more or less, and the profoundest souls feel it deeply. The great literatures of the world are all shadowed by the sense of the shortness of mans life on earth, and the most moving poetry in particular vibrates to this deep undertone. And naturally so; for the fact goes deep into human existence, and shapes and colours it all through. Even the most unthinking of us feels it in his own commonplace way.

(a) The tears of Jesus were then in part caused by the thought of all the humiliation and suffering which sin had brought into His once so happy world, as exemplified in the death of Lazarus, and the bereaved and desolate home. We know that sin did cause The Holy One of God deep pain, though we can never tell how deep; and we may be quite sure that what He saw of its effects here did touch, and wring, His loving heart.

(b) He saw visibly displayed the victory of death. Here was the Creator of the world at a scene of death, seeing the issue of His gracious handiwork. Would He not revert in thought to the hour of creation, when He went forth from the bosom of the Father to bring all things into existence? There had been a day when He had looked upon the work of His love, and seen that it was very good. Whence had the good been turned to evil, the fine gold become dim? An enemy hath done this.

Weep not for broad lands lost;

Weep not for fair hopes crost;

Weep not when limbs wax old;

Weep not when friends grow cold;

Weep not that Death must part

Thine and the best-loved heart;

Yet weep, weep all thou can

Weep, weep, because thou art

A sin-defild Man 1:1 [Note: Trench, Poems, 145.]

(2) But there was still another thought to call forth Christs tears. This marvellous benefit to the forlorn sisters, how was it to be attained?At His own cost. Joseph knew he could bring joy to his brethren, and at no sacrifice of his own. Christ was bringing life to the dead by His own death. His disciples would have dissuaded Him from going into Juda, lest the Jews should kill Him. Their apprehension was fulfilled. He went to raise Lazarus, and the fame of that miracle was the immediate cause of His seizure and crucifixion. He felt that Lazarus was wakening to life at His own sacrifice; that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus left. He felt that Lazarus was to live and He to die; the appearance of things was to be reversed; the feast was to be kept in Marthas house, but the last passover of sorrow remained for Him.

Is it impossible to think that Christ may have felt the shadow of His own great Passion reflected in some small degree in the scene before Him? Jesus wept; but are the tears any less real that they are shed perhaps to some extent for His own sorrow? He is rather by that very fact enabled to sympathize more truly with the griefs of others.

Pain is a mere word to the being that never felt pain. Have you ever been laid up yourself, sir? a young man on his death-bed asked another young man who visited him by way of comfort. It revealed a longing for exact appreciation of the situation, and an instinct that true sympathy could come only from actual knowledge.2 [Note: H. Black, Comfort, 108.]

II

The Nature of Christs Tears

1. Jesus wept calmly.In Gethsemane, Christs own anguish, endured indeed for us, wrung the bitter drops from His eyes. On Olivet, He wept for foes resolved and doomed to perish. Near the grave of Lazarus, He wept in sympathy with loved friends. In approaching the sepulchre, He felt a tender sympathy for the grief which had possessed the heart of His friend at the moment of separation, and that which the two sisters were at that very moment feeling. The word () to weep, does not (like ) indicate sobs, but tears; it is the expression for a calm and gentle sorrow.

But His calmness was not attained without an effort. We read that He groaned in the spirit and was troubled and the words indicate a physical commotion, a bodily trembling which might be perceived by the witnesses of this scene. Such grief would have been excusable in view of all that the present scene meant to Jesus, but He mastered His most bitter grief. Jesus wept, but the tears have nothing in them of weak or unreasonable anguish; Jesus by the grave of a dead friend, amidst the sorrow of the world, in the shadow of His Passion, could still weep calmly.

Grief should be

Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate;

Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;

Strong to consume small troubles; to commend

Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.1 [Note: Aubrey de Vere.]

2. Jesus wept reservedly.In the sorrow of our Lord there was no ostentation. It was necessary that our Lords grief should be manifested for the comfort of the mourners, and for the trial of the hearts of the spectators; but beyond this He had no wish to exhibit His sorrow. The affectation and vain-glory which court applause for any quality whatever, were utter strangers to His meek and lowly mind.

St. Francis is said to have shed so many tears that they affected his power of vision. Of a certain St. Abraham it is recorded that no day passed after his conversion without his shedding tears. Bishop Andrewess Devotions were so blistered with tears that his editors could scarcely read them. Of an old Scotswoman, turned from a life of great sin, it is told that she actually wept her eyes out. From all such tears, of course, our Saviour was free.1 [Note: T. Marjoribanks, In the Likeness of Men, 41.]

3. Jesus wept unashamedly.Jesus wept and was not ashamed of His human weakness. He could have repressed His tearsmany men do so habitually. No doubt there may be great sorrow, very great sorrow, where there is no open expression of it. The Saviour could doubtless, if so He wished, have hidden His grief; but He did not choose to do so, for He was never unnatural. Jesus wept, as the mourners about Him wept. The sight of such sorrow overpowered Him, and He could not refrain. That was a true manhood which felt this touch of nature, and broke into tears. There was no stoicism in His constitution. There was no attempt to restrain His sympathies, and educate Himself into a hard and inhuman indifference. Neither was He ashamed of possessing our ordinary sensibilities. He felt it no weakness to weep in public with them that wept.

It is no part of heroism to affect insensibility to suffering. The strongest manhood has its roots in tender feeling. The ideal mans emotional nature is as quick, powerful, urgent, undeniable as his intellect is lofty and his will unbending. The patriarchs are all represented as men of tender feeling. Abraham came to weep. Jacob lifted up his voice, and wept. Joseph fell upon his fathers face, and wept.2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 176.]

The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight.3 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.]

III

The Lesson of Christs Tears

1. They are a pledge.Christs tears speak about the future, and show us what Jesus will always be. Everything done by Christ on earth was done for all time. The meaning of His actions was not confined to the persons and the places of the hour. They stand out as parables to teach the world. When Jesus wept with Martha and Mary, His tears promised that all His suffering followers to the end of time should have His pitying regard.

Jobs rebellion came from the thought that God, as a sovereign, is far off, and that, for His pleasure, His creature suffers. Our own theory comes to the mourner with the assurance, Your suffering, just as it is in you, is Gods suffering. No chasm divides you from God. He is not remote from you even in His eternity. He is here. His eternity means merely the completeness of His experience. But that experience is inclusive. Your sorrow is one of the included facts. I do not say, God sympathizes with you from without, would spare you if He could, pities you with helpless external pity merely as a father pities his children. I say, God here sorrows, not with but in your sorrow. Your grief is identically His grief, and what you know as your loss, God knows as His loss just in and through the very moment when you grieve.1 [Note: J. Royce.]

It is our great mistake, I think, to set Divine suffering in a bare fact of history come and gone, an episode of once and no more, and to preach our sharing of it only as an emotional transaction and an effort of the good will. It is this, but more, far more. I share all my pain with God, and He bears our griefs whether we see Him or are blind. Not over against me, holding back a hand which might help, but side by side, nay, closer than breathing, within the inmost hiding-place of my suffering self, He suffers too and bears all pain with me. Therefore, if I will, His strength may be my strength, His love may succour me; new life and light may arise within me to be and to remain my own, and to turn even suffering into joy.2 [Note: A Modern Mystics Way.]

2. They are an example.

(1) The following of Christ does not free us from suffering. It often leads to it. Not only are we liable to the ills which press upon humanity, but special chastenings are set apart for us. Believers have sufferings in common with others; but they have also trials adapted particularly to themselves. The object of Christianity is to train the soul; and it takes advantage of suffering to aid it in the process of tuition. It works in the sphere of experience.

Genuine grief will have genuine vent; it demands expression. It is right to grieve, and even deeply grieve, over the sorrows that befall us as we go through the world. It is an inhuman spirit that says, I will not grieve, whether the determination springs from a proud defiance of fate, or from an exaggerated view of the nothingness of the creature before the Creator, or from an impossible attempt to ignore the bitterness of the means He uses in the great worthiness of the ends He is bringing about. On the contrary, grief is natural and right for the human spirit. It is the confession of the subordination of our lives to the heavenly will, and, at the same time, of the existence in us of those strange capacities of pain and anguish, through which the perfecting of our nature is so largely brought about.

Christ, the model of manhood, the mirror of all that was noble and dignified, did not deny Himself the relief of tears; and shall men be looked upon as effeminate, as falling from the dignity of their sex, if, with emotions like Christ, they shed tears like Him? No. He who would aspire to a transcendental apathy that man was not made for, and which Jesus despised, he who would do such violence to his nature insults his Creator, and would foolishly set himself above the example of his Redeemer. Instead of raising himself above humanity, he sinks beneath its level. The brow that never wore a smile, is not more unnatural than the eye that never glistened with a tear.1 [Note: J. Eadie, The Divine Love, 294.]

(2) Once more the tears of Jesus bid us sympathize with all sad hearts, and seek to comfort them. For here, as always, He is an example to the sons of God. Our sympathy is, indeed, a weak thing, compared with the sympathy of Jesus; yet it can do something to help others. We are made for one another. We have a common root. Life is the whole of life. There is a circulation of the blood of the race as well as of the body. We have no exclusive rights to our sorrows, nor has any trouble exclusive rights over us. That which Christ did He bids us do. He bids us follow Him in His sympathy. He bids us have sympathy with man; not in the way of condescension; not as angels stooping to condole; not as the pure mourning over the impure, but as men touching to heal; as men not loving the sin yet loving the sinner; not as breathing by choice infected air, but as infected men nursing, cherishing, giving ourselves for the infected.

The practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark, scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own, but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform.1 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens.]

The Tears of Jesus

Literature

Arnot (W.), Roots and Fruits of the Christian Life, 224.

Banks (L. A.), Christ and His Friends, 310.

Belfrage (H.), Sacramental Addresses, 241.

Eadie (J.), The Divine Love, 268.

Fry (J. H.), Tears, 21.

Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 53.

Knight (G. H.), In the Cloudy and Dark Day, 149.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.xiv., 91.

Marjoribanks (T.), In the Likeness of Men, 39.

Martin (A.), Winning the Soul, 265.

Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iii. 128.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, i. 89.

Roberts (A.), Sermons on Gospel Miracles, 247.

Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 108.

Smith (D.), Mans Need of God, 79.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxv. (1889) No. 2091.

Swing (D.), in The American Pulpit of the Day, i. 271.

Vaughan (C. J.), Christ and Human Instincts, 111.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1874) No. 874.

Wood (G. R. H.), Miracle Messages, 63.

Christian World Pulpit, xii. 217 (Skinner); xiii. 67 (Heard); xxxvi. 15 (Spurgeon); l. 199 (Thomas); lxx. 93 (Swanson).

Church of England Pulpit, li. 85 (Bonney).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

Joh 11:33, Gen 43:30, Job 30:25, Psa 35:13-15, Psa 119:136, Isa 53:3, Isa 63:9, Jer 9:1, Jer 13:17, Jer 14:17, Lam 1:16, Luk 19:11, Luk 19:41, Rom 9:2, Rom 9:3, Heb 2:16, Heb 2:17, Heb 4:15

Reciprocal: Gen 23:2 – mourn Gen 50:1 – wept 2Ki 8:11 – wept Psa 88:9 – Mine Mar 7:34 – he sighed Luk 6:21 – ye that weep Joh 11:15 – I am glad Joh 13:21 – he was Phi 2:26 – ye had Heb 5:7 – tears

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE TEARS OF CHRIST

Jesus wept.

Joh 11:35

The emotions of Christ were perfectly true to nature. The Saviour dissolved in tears, presents a spectacle of apparent effeminacy of character not in keeping with His dignity and greatness. Yet, was it really so? Tears are not always marks of weakness, they are oftener evidences of power. Springing from the depths of the soul, they are sometimes the exponents of great thoughts, of mighty purposes, of manly feelings, and have a language and a meaning more eloquent and effective than ten thousand tongues. Such were the tears of Jesus.

I. They were tears of sympathy.We must not omit the sympathetic in Christs present emotion. His heart was not only touched with a sense of His own personal affliction, but it was also touched, deeply touched, with sympathy for the sorrows of others: He wept because the mourning sisters wept. He mingled His tears with theirs. This is true sympathy, weeping with those that weep, making their sorrow our own. How really our Lord does this with His people! Our present griefs are so entirely absorbed in Him, that, softened by His love, soothed by His sympathy, succoured by His grace, trial is welcome, affliction is sweet, and the rod of a Fathers chastening buds and blossoms into delectable fruit.

II. Bereaved mourner! the sympathy of Christ is yours!The Saviour who wept at the grave of Bethany, now shares your grief and joins your tears. Deem not your sorrow is lone, or that your tears are forbidden or unseen. You have not a merciful and faithful High Priest Who cannot be touched with your present calamity. There exists no sympathy so real, so intelligent, so deep, so tender, so sanctifying as Christs. And if your heavenly Father has seen it wise and good to remove from you the spring of human pity, it is but that He may draw you closer beneath the wing of the God-mans compassion, presence, and love. O child of sorrow! will not this suffice, that you possess Christs sympathy, immeasurable and exhaustless as the ocean, exquisite and changeless as His being? Yield your heart to this rich compassion, and then, though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold.

III. Learn a lesson from the practical sympathy of Jesus.Compassion is as luxurious an emotion of our nature as it is manly and graceful in him who shows it. To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend (Job 6:14). What a sacred privilege to imitate Him Who went about doing good! To visit the widow and the fatherless in their distress, the prisoner in his dungeon, the bereaved in their grief, the sick in their solitude, the poor in their need, the fallen in their self-reproach; in a word, to be an angel of comfort to some child of woe from whose bosom hope has fledthis, oh! this is sympathy.

Rev. Dr. Octavius Winslow.

Illustration

Tears of love! behold them flowing

From the Elder Brothers eye!

See Him as a mourner going

To the grave at Bethany!

He, Who through its shadowy portal

Summond back the freed immortal

He, Whose all-commanding word

Sheathed the gloomy victors sword

There, where buried friendship sleeps,

He, our own Immanuel, weeps.

Tears of pity! see them gushing

From their pure and sacred fount!

Angels! your hosannas hushing,

Bend ye from the holy mount.

Stoop to read the wondrous story,

How the Fathers brightest glory

At a sinners grave can stand,

Mourner mid a mourning band,

With the heart, the voice, the eye

Of a perfect sympathy!

Tears of Jesus! while I ponder,

Blessed comfort let me reap;

That same Jesus liveth yonder

Who on earth was wont to weep.

Though His brow the rainbow weareth,

Yet my thorny crown He shareth;

Yet that loving heart Divine

Throbs responsively to mine:

Not a struggling sigh can rise,

But tis echod in the skies.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

TEARS OF SYMPATHY

There is scarcely a more precious gift of God than tears. How precious, none know but those who would give the world for tears, and cannot find them.

I. It is a blessed thing to have a tearful nature.We all have tears in childhood. Why does the man weep less than the babe? Has he less cause to weep? Is it a stern law of nature that is given to infancy, and denied to our maturity? Or is it the hardening process which has been going on ever since we left our mothers knee? The rough contact of life, the schoolroom, the playground, the associations of early life, the habits of youth, the infection of the world: of its money, its dissipations, its cares, its hardness? Softness is a bud which needs cherishing, and which will go if it is not carefully watched, and if it does not find itself in a genial atmosphere! It is a bloom which must be protected, or it will be brushed off! I speak earnestly to those who are just passing out of childhood. Keep jealouslyjealouslythat sweetest treasure which you carry with you from your nurseryan eye that can weep, a cheek that can blush, a heart that can melt! A poor bargain will it be, if you barter those tears, for all the excitement that amusement can ever give; or for all the possessions which money has ever bought! Young man! never be ashamed of tears. It is the highest honour of a manto have a mans strength with a womans softness!

II. Tears belong to Jesus.It was His unfallen humanity that was so exquisitely tearful. It is by union with Jesus that you will get back tears. You will recover your childhood, and so you will partake in Christs gentle, gushing nature. Is not this part of what is meantthat you must become as a little childthat you may cry? The world, the flesh, the devil, kill tears. Every sin you do kills a tear. Jesus is their resurrection. You must not only go to Himyou must be in Him. Still do you say, I have no tears? Think of Jesus. Perhaps one of those many tears He shed on earth is for you. Tearsyes, blood; for that dear Lord wept blood! At this moment, if you could see Jesusas He looks on you even in heavenI believe there would be a tearfulness. But still no tears? What, and if Jesuss tears may stand for ours, even as His righteousness is our righteousness? Then, in Him my tearless being has tears. Those tears are mine. I do not weep, I cannot weep; but I weep in Him, and God accepts the weeping.

III. You will do well distinctly to understand that Jesuss tears at the grave of Bethany were purely tears of sympathy. Jesuss heart beat at once with the hearts about Him. He wept because others wept. Not Mary and Martha only, but many. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid Him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. It would be a beautiful and Christ-like thing to go about life with a tearful sympathy, carrying everywhereto the sad and the sorrowfulnot words, not comfortingtears! To the sinnernot words, not reproaches, not preachingtears! There is a sympathy which is hard to rouse, and which very soon goes to sleep; which has in it more of duty than feeling; which fixes objects; which is very capricious in its work; which seldom rises to any loving height; which has a great deal of self and pride in it. I am not speaking of that. I speak of a sympathy which has fine, delicate cords running into every ones heart, which goes out, in a moment, to any one; to the happy, as to the unhappy; to the wicked; to the repulsive; which is set to every nature; which has a word, a thought, a feeling, which fits into every part of our common manhood: which can weep with all that weep, and, higher still, which can rejoicehowever dull itselfwith all that rejoice: nay, which can also still, in purest sympathy, rejoice with the weeperfor every weeping has its rejoicing; and weep with the rejoicerbecause every rejoicing has its sorrow. The soul that does thatfor Jesuss sakehas an immense amount of Jesus in it. Do not be content with a low level of sympathy. Sympathy is not worth much unless it bring a tear to the eye.

Rev. James Vaughan.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

5

Such a look as the preceding verse describes was doubtless on the faces of these sisters as they led Jesus to the tomb of their brother. There could be no question as to the sincerity of that look or of the tone of voice when they bade the Lord to “come and see.” Jesus wept. The second word is different from the one in verse 33. It is from DAKRTJO, which Thayer defines, “To weep, shed tears.” This is the only place in the Greek New Testament where this word is used. It does not indicate any audible expressions. Jesus had restrained himself from such demonstrations, even when he saw Mary convulsed in sor-sow, because he wanted to ignore the hypocritical performances of the Jews. But the sight of these sorrowing sisters, and the pathos in their sweetly-sad voices, was so overyhelming that he burst into tears that were so generous that they could be seen.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Vv. 35-37. Jesus wept. 36. The Jews therefore said, Behold how he loved him. 37. But some of them said, could not he who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that this man also should not have died?

The storm has passed; on approaching the tomb Jesus feels only a tender sympathy for the grief which had filled the heart of His friend at the moment of separation and for that which the two sisters had experienced at the same hour. The term , to weep, does not indicate, like (Joh 11:33), sighs, but tears; it is the expression of a calm and gentle grief. Baur does not allow that one can weep over a friend whom one is to see again. This feature, according to him, proves the unauthenticity of the narrative. Assuredly, if this Gospel were, as he believes it to be, the product of speculative thought, this thirty-fifth verse would not be found in it; Jesus would raise His friend to life with the look of triumph and a buoyant heart, as the true Logos who had nothing human but the appearance of man. But the evangelist has said from the first: The Word was made flesh, and he maintains the proposition with perfect consistency. One does not raise the dead with a heart of stone, says Hengstenberg. Heb 2:17 teaches us that he who wishes to assist an unfortunate one, should, first of all, sink deeply into the feeling of the suffering from which he is about to save him. It is a strange fact that it is precisely the Gospel in which the divinity of Jesus is most strikingly affirmed, that leads us also best to know the profoundly human side of His life. The very criticism of the German savant proves how little such a Jesus is the child of speculation. The solemn brevity of the clauses in these verses, Joh 11:34-35, must be observed.

Even at the side of this tomb we find the inevitable division which takes place about the person of Jesus at each of His manifestations in acts or words. Among the Jews themselves there are a certain number whose hearts are moved at the sight of these tears; sympathy for misfortune is neutral ground, the purely human domain, on which all souls meet which are not completely hardened. But some among them find in these tears of Jesus a reason for suspecting His character. One of two things: either He did not have the friendship for Lazarus which he now affects to feel, or He did not really possess the miraculous power of which He claimed to have given the proof in the healing of the man born blind; in any case, there is something suspicious in His conduct. Some interpreters give a favorable meaning to this question of the Jews, Joh 11:37 (Lucke, Tholuck, de Wette, Gumlich and also, up to a certain point, Keil). But the evangelist identifies, by the very form of the expression (some among them), these Jews of Joh 11:37 with those of Joh 11:46.

And with this sense it is not easy to understand the relation which can have existed between this question of the Jews and the new emotion of Jesus, Joh 11:38. Strauss finds it strange that these Jews do not appeal here to resurrections of the dead which Jesus had accomplished in Galilee, rather than to the healing of the man born blind. But it is precisely an evangelist of the second century who would not have failed to put into the mouth of the Jews an allusion to these resurrections, which were at that time well-known throughout all the Church by the reading of the Synoptics. The historical fidelity of the narrative of John appears precisely from the fact that the inhabitants of Jerusalem appeal to the last striking miracle accomplished by Jesus in this very city and before their eyes. This healing had occasioned so many discussions and so many different judgments that it naturally presents itself to their thought.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)