Jesus Wept

September 10, 2014

I’ve thought a lot about this story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and in particular the famous statement that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  Why did He weep?  He surely was not mourning the death of Lazarus, for He knew exactly what He was going to do.  He had already told the apostles, “I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11).  Another possibility is that He was weeping because of His love for those, especially Mary and Martha who had been mourning.  That may certainly have been the case, but it seems odd to me because He knew that just a few minutes later all of Mary and Martha’s pain would be gone.  The text tells us “he groaned in spirit, and was troubled” right before we learn that He wept.  A few verses later again we read that Jesus was “groaning in himself” (John 11:38).  When the Savior was visiting the Nephites, He similarly “groaned within himself” (3 Nephi 17:14).  In that account we are told why He groaned: “Because of the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel.”  So it may very well be that the Savior wept on the way to Lazarus’s tomb because of the wickedness and unbelief of the people.  Perhaps He was troubled by the lack of faith of Mary and Martha after all they had already seen and been taught.  Or He may have been mourning the wickedness of some of the Jews present at the scene: shortly after He healed Lazarus some of this group who saw the miracle “went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done,” clear evidence of their rejection of the Savior (John 11:46).  A final possibility may be the relationship of this event to the Savior’s own death.  The Savior’s raising of Lazarus marked the beginning of the end for Him: it put in motion all that was going to take place by the wicked rulers of the Jews.  John made this clear in the end of this chapter: after the members of the Sanhedrin found out about the raising of Lazarus, “Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death” (John 11:53).  Surely the Savior understood how the events were going to play out better than anyone else; could it be that He was weeping because of the tremendous task of the atonement that lay ahead?  He was going to save Lazarus, but He would not be saved from His own death and the bitter cup of the atonement.  Perhaps we can’t really know all the reasons He wept on the occasion of the raising of Lazarus, but I think we can be certain the motivation was much deeper and profound than what the observing Jews thought: “Behold how he loved him!”  He was not weeping the temporary death of Lazarus.