Does God cry?

Joy in heaven! Joy in the presence of the angels of God! Do then the angels of God rejoice? They do surely, but this is not their joy, it is the joy of God — the joy of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is the joy of God that fills heaven when one sinner on earth repents! and all who are there see it, and participate in it. It is a most wonderful thing, and as we consider it we learn what is most to be valued on earth: not gold, or fame and worldly honours, but men, the souls of men, sinners though they be. But could there be anything else but joy in heaven? Well, sorrow and crying and pain and death belong to this world where sin reigns, and these sad things are the progeny of sin, and sin cannot enter heaven where God dwells, and yet — we read some strange and wonderful words in Genesis 6 "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." Think of that — God grieved at His heart! grieved because men were prodigal men, selling their precious souls to sin and the devil. Was there no sadness in heaven when God was grieved at His heart? Was Jesus sad when He wept over prodigal Jerusalem? Yes, the tears on His cheeks and the lament on His lips were proof of that, and He was God manifest in the flesh, and when He wept the sorrow of God poured itself out in human tears, and heaven was sad. So I conclude that in those ancient times when God grieved over the wickedness of men, there was sadness in heaven. Does anyone suppose that it gave God pleasure to sweep that generation away with a flood? Judgment is His strange work, and a necessity when He executes it, but mercy is His joy. The memory of that judgment soon passed away, and again "the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God," and the result of that search was sadly recorded, "They are all gone aside, they are altogether filthy: there is none that does good, no, not one." Psalm 14. And must there not have been sorrow in heaven because of that, sorrow because men sought not God, nor desired to?

If you look at Christ on earth, you see the “Son of man, which is in heaven,” displaying God on earth before our eyes. “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily.” See Him weeping over Jerusalem: the Messiah’s heart wrenched in mourning over His people’s sin. It was the tender heart of man, but sprang from that deep and wondrous fountain — “The tears they fell from human eyes, but they came from the heart of God.” Thus was God displayed. The heart adores when one thinks we have to do with a God who has stooped down to human tears, in a world of tears.

"Jesus wept"! Wondrous, significant fact! He wept not for Himself, but for others. He wept with them. Mary wept. The Jews wept. All this is easily grasped and understood. But that Jesus should weep reveals a mystery which we cannot fathom. It was divine compassion weeping through human eyes over the desolation which sin had caused in this poor world, weeping in sympathy with those whose hearts had been crushed by the inexorable hand of death.

It is inexpressible comfort to see that God knows every ingredient in the cup of trial He mixes for us. It is His own heart He is telling out while He is thus searching out Abraham's? Did it not cost Him to give up His own beloved Son? Was the sacrifice all on the Son's part, and none on the Father's? Shall we call Him "Father," and not credit Him with a Father's heart? Is our God revealed as an impassive God who does not feel? We must not ascribe to Him human defect or frailty, surely, but must we not credit Him with love? He would rather come under imputation of defect than that we should think this of Him. "God is not a man that He should repent," yet He will talk about repenting. Nay, not only did it repent the Lord that He had made man, but "it grieved Him at His heart." Blessed to know such a heart; and that what the Son of His bosom suffered, the bosom that held the Son suffered also.

"And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man [was] great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually (all the day). And Jehovah repented that be had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah said, I will wipe out man whom I have created, from the face of the ground — from man to cattle, to reptiles, and to bird of the heavens; for I repent that I have made them. But Noah found favour in the eyes of Jehovah" (vers. 5-8).

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Could He be indifferent to the general state of man morally? It is not God simply in His nature, but He who concerns Himself with the ways of His creatures. Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Nor would it be easy to find a more solemn appraisal: "every imagination" of them was before Him; and He who loves to accredit the least thought or feeling that is good saw nothing but evil all the day. He is assuredly the God of judgment, and after due testimony will not be slow to execute it.

Yet the language employed is affectingly suggestive of the grief it cost Him Whom the unbelieving mind of man is pleased to treat as impassive. "Be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners. Wake up righteously and sin not; for some have ignorance of God," as the apostle speaks to our shame. Converse with the world lowers to its own level those who thus indulge; and as the world by its wisdom, when it boasted most, knew not God, it never without Christ finds Him out; for Christ is the image of the invisible God; and Christ never showed Himself insensible to human evil, whatever His patience and endurance. No doubt, as is so characteristic of these early revelations, the expression is by grace adapted in childlike fashion to the heart and conscience of man. Jehovah felt deeply what man ought to have felt but did not. "Jehovah repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."

153 This is the language of scripture: "And his soul was grieved," we read in Judges 10, "for the misery of Israel." "In all their afflictions he was afflicted," I read in Isaiah 63. That same Jehovah came as man. Did His humanity dry up His concern for Israel and His lost sheep? The same Jehovah then could weep over the beloved and chosen city, and say, "Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." He was not merely Jehovah, but as Messiah He took Messiah's place in Israel (not in its apostasy surely, but with the godly remnant who, as to earthly promises, could then as well as Messiah Himself take nothing). The Shepherd was smitten and the sheep scattered. He was the Head and bringer in of the promises. His cutting off was the setting aside, as then presented, all the hopes and promises of Israel; and as Messiah He was to be cut off, and, as the consequence of that, judgment, indignation, and wrath, were to come upon Israel.

In verse 6 we are told how all this affected the Lord, and here for the first time we have human feelings attributed to God. Only thus could we have any understanding of such a matter, and there is nothing incongruous in it, inasmuch as man has been made in the image and likeness of God. Only there must be an intensity and elevation in the Divine thoughts and feelings altogether unknown by man. How great must have been His grief! All good at the outset, and now all so abominable, that nothing could meet the case but the total destruction of mankind, with but few exceptions, and also of the animate creation that had been committed to man's hand.

The Jews, seeing that Mary had got up and gone out, followed her, thinking that she was going to the grave to weep there; they but thus add their voice to the testimony rendered to the power of death over the body and the soul, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" (v. 37). Jesus feels it; He groans and is deeply moved in His spirit, but the love which animates Him and the testimony which He had come to render to the truth, press Him on towards the grave where the body of Lazarus lies. He asks, "Where have ye laid him?" They conduct Him to the sepulchre. There Jesus relieves Himself by tears, which are the witness to His estate as man, and to His sympathy for men and as a man, but also the expression of a heart moved by divine love. It was not however the loss of Lazarus, nor His love for the dead man's sisters that was the cause of those tears, for Jesus was going at that very moment to raise Lazarus. In thinking of the latter, that which He was going to do would have made joy spring up in His heart. No, these tears of the Saviour were profound sympathy for the human race crushed under the weight of death, from which it could not raise itself, as also for these tried souls. The Jews thought that the tears of Jesus had their source in His affection for Lazarus: "See how he loved him!" they say. This was very natural, but that which He was about to do forbids us to entertain the like thought. The remark, already quoted, of some amongst them (v. 37) only renews the groans of Jesus, in recalling the thought of the subjection of men, not only to death, but to the dominion of death over their spirits.

Then something consists in rightly apprehending the meaning of the word "repent." In general, in scripture, it does not mean remorse or contrition, as so many think, but simply a change or revolution in the attitude of the mind. "Godly sorrow leads to repentance," but that shows it is not the same thing. There is, indeed, a secondary use of the word repent, as where we are told Judas repented (a different Greek word is. however, used). That is the vain remorse of baffled sin. In any such senses as regret or remorse in reference to His personal actions, we are assured that God "is not a man that He should repent." There is no inconsistency in these statements for people of ordinary intelligence. (The Learned Critic is not included here, of course. His intelligence is extraordinary — whether upwards or downwards who shall say? — At any rate a language has not yet been invented sufficiently explicit for him.)

At the grave of Lazarus, when He saw the distress of Mary, and the Jews that had come with her, He was deeply moved in spirit, and shed tears. Perhaps it will be said that this was the expression of His human sympathies, and I do not say that it was not; but how could it be this apart from the divine? The one could not be without the other, unless they proceeded from different sources, and there was but one source from which they could come, and that source was the heart of Jesus.

Has the living God no compassions or sympathies? Can He not be moved by the sight of human woes? The presence of Him who was sent here by the Father is a sufficient answer to that. And is not the cross of the Son the great manifestation of that love and pity with which He looked down upon a world dominated by sin and Satan? Even as to the sorrow of His earthly and rebellious people He could say: “In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: In His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old” (Isa. 63:9).