The Jews therefore said, Behold how he loved him!
The crowd standing at the grave watches Jesus in tears and reaches a verdict about His heart. Their words are warm, and in one sense they are right. Yet commentators differ over what those tears were for.
The people had evidence for what they said. Both the sisters and John knew of that love. The crowd was not guessing.
Some who saw the tears of Jesus said, "See how He loved him" (John 11:36). This was surely true, as the sisters knew (John 11:3) and as John knew (John 11:5). The tears expressed the love of Jesus for Lazarus. They also showed that He was not unfeeling toward the cruel wounds death had made in the hearts of the sisters of Bethany.
Lazarus was about to walk out of the tomb. So the weeping must have had another object.
The Jews, standing around the grave, misread the tears. They say, "See how He loved him!" The Lord did love Lazarus, but the tears were not the expression of His love for Lazarus. The sisters may weep for the loss of their brother. But there was no need for the Lord to weep for one He was about to raise. He did not weep for the dead but for the living — not for the loss of Lazarus, but for the sorrow of Mary and Martha. In a little while love will raise Lazarus, but first love will weep with Martha and Mary. He broke His heart to bind up our hearts, and shed His tears to dry our tears.
One writer goes further. He reads the tears as sympathy for everyone death has crushed, and denies they came from affection for Lazarus.
These tears of the Saviour were deep sympathy for the human race, crushed under the weight of death and unable to lift itself out. They were sympathy for these tested souls too. The Jews thought the tears of Jesus came from His affection for Lazarus: "See how He loved him!" they say. That was very natural, but what He was about to do forbids us to hold such a thought.
Who you believe the weeper to be changes what the tears mean. A bystander sees a grieving friend. Faith sees the mighty God about to raise the dead.
Even the Jews could not help saying, "See how He loved him!" What would they have thought if they had known He was just about to raise the dead man? ... Only faith in the glory of His Person reads the depth of His love rightly, and values it in its measure. "Jesus wept." These words mean one thing to someone who sees only a man. They mean far more to someone who knows Him as the mighty God, the only-begotten Son! Even a believer cannot fail to own His love here. But how much greater that love becomes when we see His divine dignity, and know that He was about to act in the power of divine life above death!
Their admiration did not stop there. Having praised the love, the crowd went on to ask why it had not acted sooner.
His tears told the Jews how Jesus loved Lazarus. Like the sisters, they could not understand why He had not kept him from dying. They reasoned in a human, worldly way. Love that showed such sympathy, they thought, might have used its power at the start to heal the sick man. But perfect wisdom and unfathomable love had arranged the circumstances. The Father was directing and the Son was obeying. Everything was working together for good — that is, for the glory of God.
The onlookers spoke of this love as something in the past. One writer points out that the New Testament refuses to leave it there.
John 11:36, "See how He loved him." While we can speak of His love in the past tense, how good to know it is a love that continues. John, in Revelation 1:5, spoke of the love of Christ as a reality that never stops. About our sins he used the past tense: "has freed us from our sins." But about the love that led Him to do that cleansing work once for all, he wrote, "To Him who loves us." Praise His Name, He loves and will go on loving His own.
- Seen — The crowd was right as far as it went. The tears showed love, and Jesus was not unfeeling toward hearts wounded by death.
- Misread — Commentators differ on the source of the tears. Some say they expressed love for Lazarus. Others say He had no reason to weep for a man He was about to raise. He wept for the living, and for a race crushed under death.
- Measured — Only faith in who He is can measure that love. The words "Jesus wept" mean one thing to someone who sees a man. They mean far more to someone who sees the only-begotten Son.
- Questioned — Admiration slid into complaint. Why had He not kept him from dying? That was human reasoning. All the while the Father was directing and the Son obeying, for the glory of God.
- Continuing — Their verb was past tense; Scripture keeps it present. He loves and goes on loving His own.
And some of them said, Could not this [man], who has opened the eyes of the blind [man], have caused that this [man] also should not have died?
Bethany's mourners watched Jesus weep. Then came a question that sounds fair but is really unbelief: if He could open a blind man's eyes, why let a friend die?
Their question is smaller than it looks. Notice what they never ask Him to do.
The people, talking from their point of view, say, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?" It is all a mystery to them. They do not say, "Could he not have raised this man?" but, "Could he not have kept this man from dying?"
If He had simply healed Lazarus, the proof would have been weaker.
But there Lazarus was dead, and the question was the power of the Son of God who raises the dead. Healing would have been no such proof of His divine sonship.
Their logic is not wrong about what Jesus can do. It is incomplete, because it weighs only one thing about Him.
We judge that God might have spared us many a trial, and we settle it as a clear, unquestioned conclusion, that He had the power. The friends of the family at Bethany said the same. But their reasoning fell short, because it took in only part of the truth: they thought only of the power of Christ.
Their question sets His power against His love.
The onlooker — himself blind — might say, "He has the power, where is His affection?" That is how someone who does not know Him reasons. But in this hour of trial are not His own also very low in their estimate of Him? His love, His power, where were they? All this is unbelief, and He rebukes it as such.
The crowd sets the blind man's healing against Lazarus's death, as if the two do not fit together. Each had its own purpose.
Here the poor human heart lets itself out in its ignorant reasonings. How little did these sceptics understand either the person or the path of the Son of God! How could they appreciate the motives that moved Him either in what He did, or in what He did not do? He opened the eyes of the blind, so that "the works of God might be displayed in him." And He did not prevent the death of Lazarus, so that God might be glorified by it.
This is the second time Jesus groans in this scene. Each groan had its own cause.
This second groan is deeply affecting. He groaned, at first, in sympathy with the mourners around Him. He groaned again over the hardness and dark unbelief of the human heart, and of the heart of Israel in particular. But note this: He does not try to explain why He did not stop His friend from dying, even though He had opened the eyes of the blind.
They knew what He could do. They did not know why He waited.
These Jews knew that the Lord had the power to do wonderful works. But they did not know the wisdom and the love that made Him wait until Lazarus was dead before He came to the grieving sisters. Not only the ravages of death, but the unbelief and ignorance of men, brings a groan from the blessed Son of God.
Sisters and mourners all say the same thing in different words. Each of them thinks of Jesus as someone who could have come earlier.
All were under the weight of death. Lazarus was in the grave, and death was already doing its corrupting work. Martha and Mary both say, "If you had been here, my brother would not have died." The Jews say, "Could not this man … have kept this man from dying?" None realised that the One who is the resurrection and the life was among them.
Suppose Jesus had kept Lazarus from dying. The sisters would have escaped the grief, and lost far more.
If that had happened, how much those sisters would have missed! What impressions of the glory of Christ they would have lost! They would not have known the preciousness of His tears of compassion. They would have missed the might and authority of that "loud voice," the knowledge of Himself as "the resurrection and the life," and the sight of the glory of God.
- Partial — The crowd reasoned only on Christ's power. They left out His love and His wisdom, so their conclusion was wrong.
- Prevention — They asked for a death avoided, not a dead man raised; healing would never have shown Him to be the Son of God.
- Purpose — He opened blind eyes to display the works of God. He let Lazarus die so that God would be glorified.
- Groan — Their question drew a second groan from Him, and He gave no explanation for the death He had not prevented.
- Person — Sisters and mourners alike thought He should have come sooner. None saw that the resurrection and the life stood among them.