Charles Ellicott Commentary John 11:35

"Jesus wept." — John 11:35 (ASV)

Jesus wept. The word used here is different from that employed to express weeping in John 11:33; the latter, however, is used of our Lord in Luke 19:41. The present word does not mean the cry of lamentation or the wail of excessive grief, but the calm shedding of tears. They are on the way to the tomb, which they have now neared.

He is conscious of the power He is about to exercise and that its first result will be the glory of God (John 11:4). Yet, He is also conscious of the suffering hearts near Him, and sympathy with human sorrow is no less a part of His nature than union with divine strength.

People have wondered why these words, which still point to human weakness, are found in the Gospel that opens with the express declaration of our Lord's divinity. This is especially puzzling because they appear at a moment when His divinity was about to receive its fullest manifestation.

But the central thought of St. John’s Gospel is The Word was made flesh, and He is for us the Resurrection and the Life because He has been manifested to us not as an abstraction that only the intellect could receive, but as a person living a human life and knowing its sorrows—a person whom the heart can grasp and love.

A “God in tears” has provoked the smile of the stoic and the scorn of the unbeliever. However, Christianity is not a gospel of self-sufficiency, and its message is not directed solely to the human intellect.

It is salvation for the whole person and for every person. Indeed, the sorrowing heart of humanity has never seen the divinity of the Son of Man more clearly than when it has witnessed His glory shining through His human tears.