Jesus Wept (J43)

Mary and Martha were deep in mourning;
Lazarus had lain in the tomb four days;
When Christ neared the house where grief was storming,
Martha met Him first while still on His way.
“Lord, if you’d been here, he would not have died,
But I know that whate’er you ask, God will give,”
The woman in mingled grief and hope cried!
Jesus said, “Again, your brother shall live!”
She went and told Mary, “He asked for you.”
Mary left quickly, and fell at His feet,
Weeping; the friends with her were crying, too;
He was moved in spirit, and troubled deep!
In the annals of God where peaks are kept,
It must be recorded that Jesus wept!

Scripture Quoted: John 11:20-27 (NIV)
“When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ [meaning Messiah], the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’ “ [Brackets added]

Commentary: John 11:17-37 (NIV)
Some ungodly individuals have written and made a movie about a supposed sexual or erotic love affair between Mary and Jesus based on her actions in Mark 14:3, here, and certain other reports not included in the Bible. Some Christian women in that day and since may have loved Jesus erotically, being confused about the agape love that the Savior showed to them while He was on earth or contained in the Bible today. Make no mistake about this: Jesus loved Mary with agape love that was platonic, even though she might have felt erotic about Him.

When He told Martha her brother would rise again, she did not understand that He intended to bring him back to life immediately, after four days in the tomb. By saying “even now’, though, she revealed her hope that He would work some kind of miracle. However, when He said an individual who believed in Him would never die, He was using spiritual language again. “Will never die” does not mean that there will not be a physical death of the body; we will all suffer physical death, unless Christ returns the Second time while we still live in the body. The soul will never die; it will go from the body at death immediately to Jesus Christ, to be kept with Him until He returns. At that time our dead and disintegrated bodies will be resurrected imperishable and rejoin our souls that have been kept by Christ; living believers at that time will have new bodies in the “twinkling of an eye” (See 1 Corinthians 15).

Jesus of Nazareth was fully human and fully God. Lazarus, Mary and Martha were believers in His divinity, but they were also human friends at whose home He had stayed while teaching in Jerusalem. This man Jesus, though He was also God and had a universal perspective on the world, was a human being who could weep at the sadness. of His friends. Jesus wept.

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)