Pages

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Pastoral Pings ~ When Loving Tears Lead to Loving Life

          In John 11 we read about Jesus weeping at the grave of his friend, Lazarus.[1] When people saw this they said, “See how he loved him!”[2] Now, imagine if the reality of love in Christ ended there. What we would have is the comforting thought that, when we die, the God who created us will weep at our graveside. Of course, we would be too dead to care that Jesus was weeping over us, but everyone else would know that he loved us by the way he felt so sad that we were dead.

          Thankfully, that was not the end of the story. Yes, Jesus loved Lazarus. At the very beginning of this account, right after Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, the Scripture says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.[3] The only way to understand everything that happened next is as the divine expression of a love that was greater than anyone could have imagined.

          It was this love that compelled Jesus to wait a few days until Lazarus had died. Not loving, you say? Actually, it was the most loving thing that Jesus could do. Why, you ask? Because Jesus’ love had already revealed himself to Martha, Mary, and Lazarus as the Son of God who heals people’s physical sickness and disease. They knew this enough to send word to him to come and do what they knew he could do.

          Jesus alone knew he was more than a healer. He was more than the Great Physician who makes the leper clean, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the mute to speak the praises of God. His love for these dear ones of God compelled him to put them into deeper grief in order to reveal himself in a higher glory. They knew he could heal? Good. Now watch what he could do even better than that!

          What no one knew about Jesus was that he was the resurrection and the life.[4] All he needed was the death of someone he loved and he could reveal himself in something more magnificent than healing. When he heard that his beloved Lazarus was deathly ill, he waited for death to do its work so that the resurrection and the life could do his work.

          When Jesus stood at Lazarus’s tomb and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out’”,[5] he was revealing a higher expression of love than people knew existed in this Jesus of Nazareth. All could testify that Jesus’ weeping at Lazarus’s tomb showed how much he loved his friend. Now everyone through the ages can testify that Jesus shows his love by raising his beloved from the dead so that we can live together with him forever.

          The hope of the believer is not that Jesus will weep at our funerals. The hope of the believer is that the bridegroom of the church so loves us, that he demonstrated this to the church while we were still dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive in himself, and has gone to the heavenly throne-room to prepare a place in his Father’s house to bring us home to him forever.

          No wonder the apostle John, who was inspired by God to record the account of Jesus’ love to Lazarus, would also declare these wondering words in one of his letters to the churches: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are”.[6]

          There you have it: not a lonely Son of God who weeps at the gravesides of all the people he had wished could be his brothers; but the triumphant Savior who rejoices that he will soon come to gather all his redeemed brothers to be with him, and live in the joy of his love forever. Through the gospel, he calls us to come to him now, and one day he will call us all to come into his presence forever.

          From my heart,

          Monte

 

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

 



[1] John 11:35
[2] John 11:36
[3] John 11:5
[4] John 11:25
[5] John 11:43
[6] I John 3:1

No comments:

Post a Comment