The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Tears"
"Jesus wept" (John 11:35).
Two words form the shortest verse in the Bible. Infinite truth, meaning, and significance, however, proceed from an occurrence that will never end in revealing the being, character, and way of our God.
Perhaps the first truth that shines forth from the tears of the Lord Jesus Christ involves His incarnation. Shedding tears requires a body. As a purely spiritual being, God cannot weep. He can feel the emotions that result in crying. Without physical tear ducts, however, this human expression of feeling cannot occur.
"Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh" (I Timothy 3:16).
No less than the Apostle Paul declares the incarnation of the Lord Jesus to be a profound mystery. Indeed, we will never fully comprehend all the glory, light, and wonder revealed in "the Word… made flesh" (John 1:14). Our Savior became as one of us, and remains as one of us - "the man Christ Jesus" (I Timothy 2:5). Why did He do so? Space does not permit an adequate consideration, nor will eternity offer a complete explanation regarding the God who became man, and the man who remains God. Great indeed is the mystery.
This, however, we do know:
"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him" (I John 4:9).
Our Heavenly Father made possible our passage from death to life by making it possible that His eternally beloved Son could shed sweat, tears, and blood for us. Only as a man could the second Person of the divine Trinity do so. Only as a man could He make possible the love of God to be "manifested" in redemption. Based on His righteousness, and holiness, God could not save us by fiat, but rather by the fury He expressed toward the Lord Jesus, who became the object of His wrath on the cross as He bore our sins, and was made to be sin for us (I Peter 2:24; II Corinthians 5:21). As the saying goes, "When God created, He spoke. When He redeemed, He bled."
Before He shed blood, He shed tears. Because He could, as a man. He could be "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" and weep as we weep (Hebrews 4:15). Thus, a most succinct expression of history - "Jesus wept" - bears witness to the most sublime of personal realities we can imagine, but never begin to fully understand. Let us make it sublimely personal. For you and for me, our Lord became like and me so that He could shed tears, tears that fell from His eyes because of pain, human pain, He knew in His heart. For you. For me. Great indeed is the mystery, the mystery that proceeds from the manifestation of "the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19).
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil."
(Hebrews 2:14)
Weekly Memory Verse
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."
(Matthew 10:29)
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