IS THE SHORTEST VERSE THE GREATEST?

Most of us are aware that” Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35) is the shortest verse in the Bible. I am suggesting that it might also be the greatest, in some respects at least.

I have memories about Jn. 11:35 that go way back. In my youth when I conducted services in the country, sometimes under a tent and sometimes under a brush arbor, I had special services for the kids before the main program got under way. I would tell them stories and each of them would stand and quote a verse from the Bible, which was probably more than most of their parents could do. “Jesus wept” must have been the only verse some of their parents knew, for that was by far the most-quoted. It is easy enough to memorize.

It did not bother the kids that they often had the same verse as the one who went before, and so I was inundated with “Jesus wept,” one after another. But one fellow was embarrassed, as the story goes, when he was a guest at dinner where everyone was expected to quote a Bible verse. The one sitting next to him quoted the only verse he knew, “Jesus wept.” When it came his turn he blurted out, perhaps irreverently, “He shore did!”

We may not be irreverent toward this well-known verse, but we may take it too much for granted and thus allow its great significance to pass us by. It is a crucial passage, first of all, because it dramatically points to the humanity of our Lord, and that in a book that emphasizes his deity. Even the apostle John, bent upon showing that Jesus is the eternal logos that was God, includes an incident in his account of the gospel that underscores the utter humanness of Jesus. While the apostle assures his readers that “He was in the beginning with God,” he likewise describes Jesus in terms strictly human. Jesus was a man, one who wept in the face of sorrow. The scene in which Jesus is described as weeping pulsates with emotion. There has been a death in the family. Jesus comes from a distance four days later so as to be with his bereaved friends, Mary and Martha, who are stunned by the passing of their brother Lazarus. For some reason Mary supposed that her brother would not have died if Jesus had been present. This she said to Jesus through her tears, and when Jesus saw her tears he too wept. Even though he knew something that Mary did not know, that her brother would be restored to her within the hour alive, still he wept. He wept because someone he loved was hurting.

At this point in the story the apostle tells the reader something that is a bit baffling: “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her, also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled” (v. 33). The original language for these words could mean that Jesus “was indignant in spirit and shook himself,” as Lenski renders them, or they might mean that “his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved,” as the Good News version renders them.

If it means that Jesus became indignant or angry to the point that his body shook with emotion it must be because he saw the awful toll that sin and death take. In the face of a weeping world Jesus knew the cause to be the lethal weapons from Satan’s arsenal, sin and death. That he was indignant in the presence of death’s apparent victory is suggested by the fact that he immediately asked the whereabouts of the body of Lazarus, as if he were ready to undo Satan’s victory.

If the apostle means to tell us that Jesus’ heart was so profoundly touched that his body trembled with emotion, which is more likely, then we have one of the most precious descriptions of our Lord. It reveals how deeply he feels the pain of others. If he was in anguish when on the Cross because of his own pain, he is here in anguish over the pain of others. When he saw how deeply grieved Mary and her Jewish friends were, he was so smitten within that his body visibly trembled. When he turned toward Lazarus’ tomb at Mary’s direction, the record tells us that Jesus wept. It is noteworthy that the Greek word for Jesus weeping is different than the word that describes the weeping of the others. Theirs was a loud, audible sobbing, while his was silent weeping, with tears rolling down his cheeks as he made his way to the tomb. While his body was wracked with anguish in the presence of human suffering, still he was composed. He wept gentle tears.

The story of Jesus weeping with those that weep (cf. Rom. 12:15) reveals far more than the humanity of our Lord, for it assures us that there is heartbreak in the heart of God. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, 2 Cor. 5:19 tells us, and Philip. 1:15 describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God.” Jesus himself told one of his disciples that “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father also” (Jn. 14:9), and added those startling words, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

When Jesus weeps the God of heaven weeps, and when Jesus agonizes over the sins and sufferings of fallen humanity the God of heaven also agonizes. We can hardly understand how this is, for the creator of heaven and earth is a God who hides himself, as the prophets tell us, and his ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts. And, of course, God has no tear duct glands and he has no body that shudders in the face of the human predicament as Jesus had. But that is the point. We see God in Jesus Christ, and we know what he is like by looking at Jesus. If Jesus weeps — and what glorious news it is that Jesus weeps when we weep — then we know that the heart of God is also broken for us. When we see Jesus weeping we know that God cares.

There was at least one prophet who saw this mother-love of God. Hosea 11 is a kind of “God wept” parallel to the weeping Christ of the New Testament. It starts with “When Israel was a youth I loved him” and goes on to tell how God taught him how to walk and took him into his arms. God even healed his people when they did not know it, the prophet says, and he led them with bonds of love. The mother-love comes across dramatically when the prophet adds, “I bent down and fed them,” which are among the most consoling lines in all the Bible. The God of heaven, whom the same prophet says is indeed God and not man, bends down to care for his troubled people.

The prophet pictures God in agonizing tears when he realizes that he must send his people into captivity and yet he cannot bear to give them up. If you have ever had to give up a child in death, you can appreciate what the prophet is saying about God. We sometimes have to do what we cannot bear to do. God feels that way about his people. God speaks through the prophet: “How can I give you up, a Ephraim? How can I surrender you, a Israel.” Then he adds — and, mind you, the prophet speaks of him “who is God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” — “My heart is turned over within Me, all My compassions are kindled.”

This means that the God of the Old Testament is more than creator and judge. He has mother-love toward his people. He is full of pity and eager to show mercy. It wounds him when he has to punish his people. That line in Hosea says it all, God bends down and nourishes his people. He is a God who weeps.

This is the picture we have of Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem, a city that was “blind to the things which make for peace,” on his way to the Cross: “He saw the city and wept over it” (Lk. 19:41). As God bent down to help so Jesus bent down to help. When judgment had to be exacted for the ultimate good of mankind, deity did not harden and say “That is what you deserve!” When Israel was taken into captivity and Jerusalem destroyed, deity wept.

We can walk by faith in a world that is blind to the things that make for peace when we believe there is heartbreak in the heart of God. That great British theologian James Denny, who was also a powerful preacher, had a way of holding his arm high above his head, allowing it to represent the Cross as he described the suffering of Christ. Pointing to the Cross with his other hand, he would cry out to his audience as only Denny could, That is how God loves!

When we see Jesus weeping we can say That is how God loves! He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus still weeps. He not only knows when we are hurting but he hurts too. His tears led to victory, for he overcame the world. As we follow the Man of Sorrows we too have the victory, tear-stained though it be. —the Editor