Jesus wept.
Those two words in John 11:35, aside from being the famous shortest verse in the Bible, are one of the primary reasons I am not a Calvinist. The fact the Jesus wept at the tomb of a friend is to me one of the most powerful images in all of scripture and speaks volumes about the way Jesus viewed death and human suffering. And the more I think about this event, the more I see that I can’t fit it into a deterministic-Calvinist framework. Let me explain.
(My understanding of Calvinism, by the way, comes from several seminary level courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Most notably, it was stressed that it is not logically consistent to be a Cal-minian, to believe in absolute sovereignty and free will without redefining free will to mean "willingly doing only what God decreed we would do before the foundation of the world". It was stressed in that context, that a free-will defense of the existence of evil cannot be squared with Calvinism, meaning that the existence of evil in the world cannot be attributed to the free-choice of man without threatening the absolute sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign, all events are part of his plan from before the foundation of the world, without exception.)
The passage in question deals with the raising of Lazarus. Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus and weeps. What does his weeping imply? To get at that question we have to take a step back into the context of the chapter.
We are told in vs. 1 of John 11 that Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus regarding Lazarus’ illness. So Jesus was aware of the illness. Jesus tells his disciples that the illness will not end in death. So Jesus has in mind a plan. Jesus wants to Glorify God through this illness.
Here the story takes an odd turn. When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Two more days? Why? Again, Jesus has a plan, to somehow glorify God through Lazarus’ illness. At last he decides to go to Judea.
At this point he tells the disciples that Lazarus has died. I have to stress again that He is fully aware of the situation. He will not be shocked or surprised to find Lazarus in the tomb. He says to them, “for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe”. Again, Lazarus’ death is somehow going to glorify God and lead the disciples to a deeper faith.
When he arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. Martha tells Jesus that Lazarus would not have died had he been there, but expresses faith that Jesus can do great things, not really seeing an immediate resurrection of Lazarus in spite of Jesus hint of his plan. Again, no surprises are here for Jesus.
Now we might think that all this is part of God’s sovereign plan at this point. It is all under control. No surprises. But what happens next shatters all that.
When he sees Mary weeping, he is troubled. He sees the Jews who were with her weeping as well. He is deeply troubled. I understand the original language can mean he was angry, even furious. Why? Everything up to this point had gone according to his plan. He should hardly have been surprised that Mary and the Jewish acquaintances of Lazarus would be in mourning.
But they take him to the tomb. Jesus is standing before the tomb, apparently about to perform a glorious and powerful and redemptive miracle he had planned for several days, knowing full well what to expect and full well what was would be the wondrous outcome.
In this context we read: “Jesus wept”.
We are told that he, once more, at the tomb, was deeply moved. At what? Has anything taken him by surprise? Is he not aware of what the outcome will be? Was this not part of the whole plan?
A very significant point is raised. He prays "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." And then he raises Lazarus from the dead. The most amazing miracle in all the New Testament happens just as he apparently planned.
Now here is the problem I have. If God’s sovereignty is absolute, if every detail of every event from the foundation of the world was planned by God with no exception, then none of this should have been a surprise to Jesus and everything that transpired, including Lazarus’ death, was part of God’s eternal and just plan. Death and evil would not be accidents. God, according to the Augustinian-Calvinist-determinist framework of thinking, controls every event without exception. Whether one accepts the view that God actively predestines some to destruction or the more subtle view that God only grants grace to some and deprives grace to others who then are victims of their own willing sin makes no difference. It is all part of God’s plan. Those who are chosen are chosen and those who are not are not.
In such a context, there is no reason for Jesus to weep. This is a great day in God's plan. God is about to be glorified. The death of Lazarus is about to be undone. The weeping of Mary and the Jews is about to become rejoicing. Jesus should be approaching the tomb with confidence, strength and optimism. Why then does he weep?
And the only answer I can reasonably come up with is this one. Jesus wept because he sees that death is an real enemy. Jesus weeps because this was not part of God’s original plan for creation. Yes, Jesus was aware of these particular unfortunate events and planned to fix this moment of sorrow, but Lazarus’ death still was horrific event to him. Death was a consequence of sin, not a part of God’s ideal. Death was ugly. Death was shocking. It took the life of his friend, it ravaged the emotions of the women. It was an enemy that needed to be conquered.
And in this context, Jesus longs for his action in raising Lazarus to affect the people standing here, that they may believe. Again, if the extreme determinist-Calvinist view is to be preferred, there was no reason for Jesus to think that raising Lazarus would affect anyone. Those who were predestined to believe would believe. No miracle would sway their views one way or another.
You see, this entire episode makes no sense unless death is an enemy and individuals have a choice to believe or not believe based on what they see in the life of Jesus, to change their mind after seeing a stunning miraculous event that pointed to Jesus as the victor over the great enemy - death. To apply Calvinism to this event, one has to read the words “that they may believe” and import another meaning onto them. One has to assume that Jesus tears at the foot of Lazarus’ tomb have some other meaning than the obvious one that he was horrified by death, the great enemy, the enemy that would in the end cause him to suffer and die as well.
For Jesus to weep, if it was the decree of God before the foundation of the world that pre-ordained both the death of Lazarus and the faith or lack thereof of those who mourned for him, would mean that Jesus was upset about the very plan of God and his weeping would be reduced to a piece of theater. It would be a lie. His words “that they may believe” would be a lie, a false hope.
Rather, it appears to me that his plan from the time he heard of Lazarus’ illness was to conquer death, to right a wrong, to set straight a horrible injustice. And even though he knew that raising Lazarus was his plan, the face-to-face reality of the death of a friend still shocked and angered him because it was not the way it should have been. Death was an unfortunate consequence of real human choice, and Jesus was offering a new choice – to believe and reverse the effects of the old choice, to turn death on its head.
Can this passage be interpreted some other way? I suppose. But why should it? Why not take the weeping of Jesus at the tomb of a friend at face value? Why impose a whole theological system on top of these events in a way that violates the normal and obvious reading of both Jesus emotions and his hopes for those who witnessed this miracle? This is a small microcosm of why I cannot accept the full Augustinian-Calvinist-Determinist viewpoint. More will be said in coming posts. But at the heart of it, I believe in a degree of true free will and the real consequences of real human choices simply because scripture over and over speaks of free choices and real consequences. And those consequences, far from being decreed by God from the foundation of the world, cause God even more sorrow than they cause us. Our sin causes Jesus to weep precisely because it was not part of God's ideal from the beginning.
Which is not to say that God was surprised by human sin. He was not. He had a plan from the beginning to restore creation, a plan carried out at the cross. But the fact that he was prepared with an atedote in no way makes him untroubled by the disease.
More to come.
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