“Jesus Wept”

The shortest verse in the Bible is just two words: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

Despite how short it is, this verse contains important lessons for all of us—both lessons about who Jesus was and lessons that we can apply in our own lives in times of crisis.

Join Jimmy Akin as he explores the mysteries of the shortest verse in the Bible.

 

Transcript:

Coming Up

The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35.

It’s just two words: “Jesus wept.”

And the question we want to ask today is . . . why?

 

Question from a Viewer

A viewer of the podcast writes:

Did Jesus know he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead?

If so, why did he weep? Is there a deeper meaning there for us?

This is an interesting issue, and to answer these questions, let’s read through the text of John 11, which tells the story of the raising of Lazarus.

 

Before Lazarus Dies

The passage begins this way:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.

So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:1-4).

So Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick, but he says that this illness won’t lead to death. Instead, God is somehow going to be glorified through it.

You might interpret that to mean that Jesus doesn’t think that Lazarus is going to die, and that’s very likely what the disciples thought at this point, because we read:

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was (John 11:5-6).

John thus makes it clear that Jesus really does love the Bethany family. He really does love Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Yet he doesn’t drop everything to go visit them.

That was what they were obviously asking him to do when they sent the message that Lazarus—whom he loves—was sick. When you send a message like that to someone who has a reputation for being a healer—like Jesus does—that’s what you’re asking him to do: Please come and heal him.

But Jesus said that the illness won’t lead to death, and he stays where he was for another two days. In the disciples’ minds, that would make sense. If Lazarus isn’t going to die, then there’s no hurry to go heal him. So it’s still looking like Jesus thinks Lazarus will be fine.

 

A Proposal To Go To Judea

But now things take a different turn.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”

The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” (John 11:7-8).

This is a reference to the events that happened at the end of John chapter 10, where Jesus went to the feast of Dedication—or Hanukkah—in Jerusalem, and some of the Judeans picked up stones to stone him.

The disciples are thus surprised when he proposes going back there and possibly facing death again. But there’s a reason Jesus wants to go back.

He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”

The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.”

Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep (John 11:11-13).

Jesus thus tells the disciples that Lazarus has died, but he uses the euphemism of sleep for death, and the disciples misunderstand him. A euphemism is when you use more pleasant language to refer to an unpleasant reality, and since dead people often look like they are asleep, the biblical authors frequently use the pleasant language of sleep to refer to the unpleasant reality of death.

Now, thinking about this from the disciples’ point of view, Jesus has already said that Lazarus’ illness won’t lead to death, and then he acts like Lazarus’s illness is no big deal by doing other things for two days. But then he proposes going back to Judea—a place of danger—and says Lazarus has fallen asleep and he’s going to wake him up. So the disciples are confused and say that, if Lazarus has just fallen asleep, then he’ll naturally recover. They don’t pick up on the euphemism of sleep for death given what’s preceded this.

So Jesus has to be blunt with them.

Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him” (John 11:14-15).

This makes it clear that Jesus has known the whole time that Lazarus had died. He’s clairvoyantly aware of that, and he also knows what he’s going to do: He said back in verse 11 that he would go awaken Lazarus, so he’s also planning to raise him from the dead.

We thus have the answer to the first question the viewer asked: Yes, Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus. He was planning to do this before he even set out to go visit him.

This also sheds light on some of his other comments. When Jesus originally said that Lazarus’ illness wouldn’t “lead to” death—or literally from Greek that his illness “is not to death”—but for the glory of God, he means that Lazarus’s illness won’t ultimately result in death but in God’s glorification, because Jesus is going to raise Lazarus from the dead. The ultimate end of the illness isn’t death but glory.

That’s also why Jesus says he’s glad for the disciples’ sake that he wasn’t there when Lazarus was ill. Because then he would have just healed him. That would have glorified God a little by showing Jesus as a healer, but it wouldn’t show that—through Jesus—God can bring people back from the dead. So this will be an even stronger proof that God is working through Jesus, and Lazarus’s resurrection will glorify God even more and give the disciples even more reason to believe.

 

A Remark from Thomas

But even at this stage, not everyone understands everything fully.

So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16).

Thomas is famous for the fact that—later in John 20—he refuses to believe the initial reports of Jesus being resurrected. That’s why he’s called “doubting Thomas,” and I’ve long wondered if a similar element of doubt may be present here. In other words, I’ve wondered whether Thomas is being sarcastic. The disciples have pointed out that Judea is a dangerous place, and so maybe this is a sarcastic remark. I mean, “Oh yeah, let’s all go, so we can all die together.”

Of course, Thomas is going to go with Jesus and the other disciples to Judea, but I’ve often wondered if this is a kind of gallows humor line reflecting on their situation.

However, most commentators don’t seem to think so. In fact, the commentators I’ve read don’t even seem to consider this possibility. Instead, they interpret Thomas as expressing his willingness to die with Jesus here, in a straightforward and unironic way.

But regardless whether Thomas is being sarcastic or serious, I think there is more to this line than at first meets the eye. In John, people often say things without realizing their full significance, and that is definitely happening here.

For example, this is going to be Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem. The raising of Lazarus is one of the events in John’s Gospel that leads to the Crucifixion of Jesus. So Jesus is going to die on this trip to Judea, and this line by Thomas foreshadows that.

On the other hand, the disciples aren’t going to die with him. Jesus’ death is unique and will not be shared the way Thomas suggests.

In fact, when confronted with the reality of arrest and death, the other disciples are going to run away. Neither Thomas nor the others are as brave as Thomas is making it sound—at least not at this point in their careers. This is kind of like Peter’s later statement that he’s willing to die with Jesus, even though he’s actually going to get scared and deny him three times.

However, there’s also an echo here of the fact that—to be a true disciple of Jesus—you need to be willing to give up your life if called upon to do so, and after they see Jesus risen from the dead, Thomas and the other disciples will be willing to become martyrs for him.

So there is a lot going on in this verse in light of the other things we know.

This verse also may be setting up something else—particularly if Thomas is being serious rather than sarcastic—which is that our reactions to death can be different when it’s at some distance versus when we are staring it in the face.

Keep that in mind, because we’re going to touch on it again soon.

 

“In the Tomb Four Days”

In any event, Jesus and the disciples then go back to Judea.

Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days (John 11:17).

This gives us an important piece of chronology that sheds light on the surrounding text.

Judea was the southern part of the overall area, and it was where Lazarus and the Bethany family lived.

However, Jesus was not in Judea when this sequence of events began, so it took time for Mary and Martha’s messenger to reach Jesus with word that Lazarus was sick. Jesus then did other things for two days before making the return trip to Judea.

It thus looks like these events have taken place over a period of four days:

• On Day 1, messengers make the trip to Jesus to tell him Lazarus is sick
• On Days 2 and 3, Jesus attends to other things
• On Day 4, Jesus and the disciples make the return trip to Judea

But when Jesus arrives in Judea, Lazarus has been buried for four days. That suggests Lazarus died just after the messengers left. This means that Jesus was not waiting around for Lazarus to die. That was not the purpose of his two-day delay. Lazarus was already dead, and Jesus knew it.

So what was its purpose?

One possibility is that it just wasn’t as urgent as the other things Jesus was attending to. We’re not told what those things were, because they’re not central to the story John is relating, but if Jesus had dropped everything and started the trip to Judea as soon as he got word, it would not have saved Lazarus’s life. Lazarus was already dead before the messengers even arrived, as suggested by this chronology, and Jesus already knew this, as indicated by his statement that Lazarus had fallen asleep and he would wake him up. So maybe the other things were just more important at the moment.

It’s also been suggested that the two-day delay may have made the raising of Lazarus more impressive and brought more glory to God. According to some Jewish sources, the soul remains around the body for three days after death, hoping to re-enter it and return to life. But when the body’s appearance starts to change due to decomposition, the soul concludes this is impossible and moves on in the afterlife. On this theory, by raising Lazarus on the fourth day after death, it shows Jesus was truly reaching into the afterlife since Lazarus’s spirit was no longer hanging around.

It’s also possible that both of these explanations are true—that Jesus’ other tasks were more urgent and it made for a more impressive miracle.

 

Meeting with Martha

Now we’re starting to get into the territory of the other questions the viewer asked—why Jesus wept and whether there is a deeper lesson for us here.

Thus far, Jesus hasn’t displayed any emotion about Lazarus’s situation. He’s been very matter of fact about it.

But this isn’t the case with Mary and Martha, who have been confronted with the reality of their brother’s death.

Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (John 11:18-27).

Martha’s statement that “even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” is a hint that Martha wants Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead, and Jesus says that Lazarus will rise.

Martha replies that she knows he will rise at the resurrection of the dead like everyone else, which suggests that she’s hinting that she wants Jesus to raise Lazarus now. After all, this is at the end of his ministry, and Jesus has already raised people like Jairus’s daughter and the widow of Nain’s son, so Martha is hoping he can do the same for Lazarus.

Instead of replying directly, Jesus declares himself to be the resurrection and the life and says that those who believe in him will never die, and Martha confesses that she believes this.

 

Meeting with Mary

Having met with Martha, Jesus now arranges to have a meeting with her sister, Mary.

When [Martha] said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

And he said, “Where have you laid him?”

They said to him, “Lord, come and see” (John 11:28-34).

So Mary says the same thing to Jesus that Martha had: If you had been here, our brother would not have died.

She then breaks down and continues weeping, as do the other Jews who had come to console her and Martha.

Jesus sees this, so he is now brought face-to-face with the sorrow produced by Lazarus’s death, and John says that “he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” So the burden of sorrow at Lazarus’s death is starting to affect Jesus as well.

Jesus asks to be shown Lazarus’s grave, and they take him to it.

 

“Jesus Wept”

We now come to the key verse that we’re here to talk about.

Jesus wept (John 11:35).

Yes, Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, but that didn’t stop him from experiencing the grief of his death in the here and now. And the onlookers recognize the significance of this.

So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” (John 11:36).

Jesus is thus just like us in his emotional reactions. For Jesus—as for Mary and Martha—weeping over the death of Lazarus is a sign of how much they loved him, and in the same way we weep when we have lost people who we love.

Now, the story goes on from there. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, this causes many people in Judea—not just Galilee—to believe in Jesus, and that leads the Jewish ruling council or Sanhedrin to begin plotting his death.

 

Jesus’ Emotions

We can talk about those things another time, but what we’re interested in here is Jesus’ emotional reactions.

We’ve already seen that they follow the same pattern that normal humans’ emotions do. Jesus weeping for Lazarus is a sign of his love for Lazarus.

Also, Jesus does not weep until he sees Lazarus’s grave. When he’s far away, Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead and that he’s going to raise him from the dead, but he does not weep. Then, when Jesus comes close and sees how Mary and Martha and the other Judeans are weeping for Lazarus, he is deeply moved and troubled. He’s starting to choke up. And finally, when he is brought to Lazarus’s tomb itself, Jesus openly weeps for Lazarus.

This reveals a normal human emotional reaction to death.

 

Our Own Example

All of us know that—one day—both we and all of our loved ones are going to die, but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying life or being with them in the here and now. We know about death, but when we’re not face-to-face with it, we don’t experience intense emotional anguish.

That starts to change when we start getting closer to death. Let’s say that you get word that your parent, your spouse, or your child may soon get a frightening medical diagnosis. You start to feel a greater degree of anxiety and anguish.

Then, if your loved one actually dies, we fall off an emotional cliff, and we really break down and cry. We may have been crying even before their death, but it’s in the wake of a loss—when we’re fully face-to-face with the reality of death as an accomplished fact—that we’re hit the hardest and start bawling our eyes out.

Afterward, as the death starts to recede in the distance, the grief starts to recede, and we cry less often. Time heals, and that greater distance from death means we feel the loss less intensely and we cry less often.

 

My Own Example

All of this mirrors what I went through with the death of my own wife, Renee. When we were first married, I knew that one of us would eventually die, but I didn’t know which of us or when it would happen.

Then, Renee started feeling bad, and at first we thought it was just a flare up of an ongoing health problem she had. But it turned out to be more than that, and eventually Renee received a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer.

In just two months, Renee went from perfectly healthy—as far as we knew—to her deathbed. And throughout this time, complicated by the fact that I needed to stay strong for her as she went through this, my emotions—my anxiety and anguish—began to escalate.

Then, when she actually was on her deathbed—and especially after she had died and I had definitively lost her—that was when the water works really turned on and I cried my eyes out.

Then—slowly—I began to heal and began to cry less often, though even today, more than 30 years later, sometimes rare, surprising things can happen that momentarily cause me to tear up.

 

Jesus’ Own Death

We see Jesus going through the same sequence of emotions not just with Lazarus’s death but with his own. For example, after he asks the disciples who people say that he is, we read in Mark chapter 8:

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And he said this plainly.

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:31:33).

So at this early stage, Jesus knows that he’s going to suffer “many things” and be killed. He says all this plainly, and without apparent emotion. He even maintains all this in a determined manner when Peter contradicts him. Jesus is stoically determined that this is all going to happen.

But he’s less stoic when his death is actually approaching. Later—in Mark 14—we read:

And they went to a place called Gethsemane.

And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

And he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.

And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”

And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:32-36).

So as death approaches, Mark says Jesus begins to be “greatly distressed and troubled.” He says his soul is “very sorrowful, even to death.” That means he’s in so much pain that the pain is figuratively killing him. It’s like saying, “I’m hurting so much I could die.” Then, going farther by himself, he actually falls down on the ground and prays to his Father, asking him to remove the cup if possible, yet submitting his will to that of the Father.

Jesus thus doesn’t reject the Father’s will for him. He’s still willing to go through this, but he’s acknowledging the emotional anguish that he feels in this moment.

This is very different than the stoic Jesus contemplating his death from a distance. When it was off in the future, he accepted his death with equanimity, but when it’s about to arrive, he feels the motional weight of it happening.

 

Lessons for Us

All of this provides lessons for us. One lesson these passages reveal is that Jesus was fully human in his emotional reactions. Like us, the greater distance he had from the death of a loved one—or his own death—the smaller the emotional impact on him was. But the closer he was to the reality of death, the more of an emotional impact it had.

Another lesson is that all this is okay. If it’s okay for Jesus to have these reactions, it’s okay for us to have them, too.

When the deaths of our loved ones—or ourselves—are distant in the future, it’s okay for us not to feel the burden of them. As Jesus himself says in Matthew 6:34,

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:34).

Yes, there will be trouble in the future—including suffering and death—but that doesn’t mean that we should take that suffering on ourselves now. In fact, we should not do so. Instead of worrying about what will happen in the future, it’s okay to live in the now and not be burdened by what will happen in the future.

That’s the only way to get through life—to not be paralyzed by what’s going to happen tomorrow. That’s how God designed us to work, and that’s how Jesus himself worked. Don’t take tomorrow’s troubles on yourself today. As I often put it, “Don’t cross your bridges before they arrive.”

Instead, do what you need to do today, and trust God to give you the strength you need to deal with things at the time you actually have to deal with them.

On the other hand, when the day of trouble does arrive, it’s okay to feel it. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to have pain. It’s okay to cry. All of those are normal human emotions that God designed into us. Jesus himself experienced them.

So we don’t need to twist ourselves into some super-optimistic, happy-clappy state where we can’t acknowledge the reality of the pain we’re in.

St. Paul is right when he says in Romans 8:18 that

The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

And he’s right when he says in 2 Corinthians 4:17 that

This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17).

From an eternal perspective, those things are true, and no matter what happens to us now, things will work out in the future.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt now, and we don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t. As St. Paul also says, in Romans 12:15,

Weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

When we’re staring suffering and death in the face, it’s okay to acknowledge and express the negative emotions we feel. Doing that is an important part of being emotionally healthy, and Jesus did the same thing—both at Lazarus’ tomb, in the case of a loved one’s death, and as his own death approached.

Therefore, it’s not just okay but also proper for us to proportion our emotions to the proximity of our problems. When the problems are far away, we should not dwell on them and try carrying their emotional weight before they actually arrive. But when problems are near, we should acknowledge and express what we’re feeling. That’s just how God designed us to work.

As it says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3:

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together (Ecclesiastes 3:1-5a).

Turn, turn, turn.

* * *

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God bless you always!