HUMAN EMOTIONS

John 11:28-37
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust.

The Raising of Lazarus

28 Then she returned to Mary. She called Mary aside from the mourners and told her, “The Teacher is here and wants to see you.” 29 So Mary immediately went to him.

30 Jesus had stayed outside the village, at the place where Martha met him. 31 When the people who were at the house consoling Mary saw her leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus’s grave to weep. So they followed her there. 32 When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

33 When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” he asked them.

They told him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Then Jesus wept. 36 The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” 37 But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”


Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the triune godhead, the Savior of the Cross was human. He experienced the same emotions you and I do. In this passage we see four of these human responses … anger … distress … sadness … and love.

Human emotion comes naturally. Have you ever been watching one of those movies they call a tear jerker? You know its not real but you find your eyes damp anyway. (You ladies may have had to do a mascara repair while we fellows just covered it up with the sinus drainage excuse – (-:)). This emotion and many others are a perfectly normal, natural response to the circumstances around us or within us.

We are told to control our emotions. Don’t let your highs get too high nor your lows too low. “Jesus wept.” Was that low, too low? “See how much he loved him!” Was that high too high for his own good? It is not for me to judge. We should not judge others as they experience these natural emotions. Our job is to rejoice with the joyful … weep with the down-hearted … with all the sincerity we can muster.