What Makes Jesus Cry?
When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.
They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept.
JOHN 11.33-35
He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.
REVELATION 21.4
We cry for all kinds of reasons — when we watch sad movies, when we’re celebrating joyous occasions, when we graze our knees, when our feelings get hurt, when we’re reunited with people we love, and when we say good-bye.
The Bible tells us about several times that Jesus cried. Jesus was fully human, with emotions like ours. What brought Jesus to tears? Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. But in some ways that’s strange, because Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. So why would he cry?
It troubled Jesus deeply when he saw Mary’s despair over her brother’s death and when he saw the wailing mourners with her. Perhaps he could see in her weeping and hear in their wailing a kind of unbelief. This unbelief robbed them of being able to grieve with hope and left them with only despair. As followers of Christ, we can’t escape the pain of grief. But it is different for the believer than it is for those who do not know Christ — at least it should be. Jesus’ tears weren’t just because he was frustrated over their despairing grief. Jesus wept because he was personally pained at the hurt that death caused to people he loved. His tears were tears of compassion for Mary and Martha, and tears of determination, perhaps, to finish the work he came to do — to win a victory, once and for all, over the power of death. It breaks the heart of God that death has so much power to hurt those he loves. We see tears on the face of God because he feels the hurt and emptiness that death leaves in its wake, and he longs with us for the day when death is destroyed forever.
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