The Wrath of the Lamb
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” John 11:32-36
Mary’s grief made her think and voice the same frustration and even anger as her sister, Martha, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
‘When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled … Jesus wept.’ Jesus’ reaction was profound and in some ways unexpected. It can be understood in two very different but overlapping ways.
When we look at Jesus weeping, we are seeing not just a flesh-and-blood human being but the Word made flesh (1:1-14). The Word, through whom the worlds were made, weeps like a baby at the grave of His friend. Only when we put away our picture of a far off God who is untouched by the pain of a fallen humanity and replace it with the picture of the Word who is God crying because He feels our pain, are we beginning to understand what the true God is like. Jesus bursts into tears the moment He sees Mary and those with her crying. ‘Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows’ (Isaiah 53:4). Here is a man of sorrows, acquainted with our grief and pain, sharing and bearing it to the point of tears.
But our text reveals another emotion as well. ‘When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.’ The original word here (and in verse 38) translated ‘deeply moved’ is rare in the New Testament. It was used of the snorting of a horse and was usually used of extreme anger. When Jesus approached Lazarus’ tomb it seems He was not just overcome with uncontrollable grief but with inexpressible anger. What was He angry against? Lazarus’ death brought home to His own heart the evil of death. In Mary’s grief He saw and felt the misery of the whole human race and burned with an overflowing anger at death and ‘him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil’ (Hebrews 2:14). Tears of sympathy filled His eyes but righteous rage overflowed from His soul. Like the farmer in the parable of the wheat and tares, Jesus could rightly say. “An enemy did this” (Matthew 13:28), the enemy Jesus had come into the world to destroy (Hebrews 2:14; 1 John 3:8).
We feel comfortable with a gentle Jesus who feels our pain, but He is equally the Word made flesh who rages against the final enemy, death (1 Corinthians 15:26). The wrath of the Lamb is just as clear in scripture as the love of the Lamb. Know both and you will know your precious and lovely Saviour in a far deeper way.
To listen to this message, download in MP3 here.