Two passages in the Gospels and one in the Epistles teach that Jesus wept. In the Gospels our Lord wept as He looked on man’s misery, and both instances demonstrate our Lord’s human nature, His compassion for people, and the life He offers to those who believe. When Jesus wept, He showed all these things.
John 11:1–45 concerns the death and resurrection of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha and a friend of our Lord. Jesus wept when He gathered with the sisters and others mourning Lazarus’s death. Jesus did not weep over the death itself since He knew Lazarus would soon be raised and ultimately spend eternity with Him in heaven. Yet He could not help but weep when confronted with the wailing and sobbing of Mary, Martha, and the other mourners. The original language indicates that our Lord wept “silent tears” or tears of compassion for His friends.
If Jesus had been present when Lazarus was dying, His compassion would have caused Him to heal His friend. But preventing a death might be considered by some to be a chance circumstance or just a “minor” miracle, and this was not a time for any doubt. So Lazarus spent four days in death’s grave before Jesus publicly called him back to life. The Father wanted these witnesses to know that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus was sent by God, and that Jesus and the Father had the same will in everything. Only the one true God could have performed such an awesome and breathtaking miracle, and through this miracle the Father and the Son were glorified, and many believed.
The Lord is making His final trip to Jerusalem in Luke 19:41–44, just before He is killed at the request of His own people, whom He came to save. The Lord had said before, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that stones those sent to her and murders the prophets! I frequently want to assemble your kids in the same way a hen gathers her brood beneath her wings, but you refused to allow me to do so. “He saw the city and wept over it” refers to how our Lord felt as He got closer to Jerusalem and remembered all those lost souls. We know that Jesus wept openly in agony for the fate of the city since this term is also used to describe Mary and the others’ tears in John 11:33. That future was less than forty years away; during one of the bloodiest sieges in recorded history in the year AD 70, almost a million people lost their lives in Jerusalem.
Because the everlasting consequences in these two cases were completely different, Our Lord cried in distinct ways. While most people in Jerusalem did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and as a result were without life, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus were granted eternal life because of their faith in Him. Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,” and this still holds true today.
📌FOR FURTHER STUDY
📖 Jesus Wept: God’s Tears Are For You