John 11:35 — The Shortest Verse, The Deepest Grief

John 11:35 — The Shortest Verse, The Deepest Grief

It is the shortest verse in the English Bible, yet it holds an ocean of meaning: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Standing before the tomb of His friend Lazarus, the incarnate Son of God shed tears. But have you ever stopped to ask the profound question of why He was weeping? When we look closer, the simplest answers don't seem to fully capture the weight of the moment. He could not have been weeping simply over the loss of His friend, because He knew that in a few moments, He would command Lazarus to walk out of that very tomb. It is also unlikely that He was weeping in compassion for Mary and Martha, since He knew He was about to turn their sorrow into joy.

This was not a cry of helpless grief, but of holy sorrow. The original Greek word used here, dakryo, implies a quiet shedding of tears, suggesting a deep, internal anguish. Standing at the grave, Jesus was confronted by the full, ugly consequence of sin in the world—death itself. Death in Scripture does not point to annihilation but to separation from God, from the Source of all life, from experiencing the fullness of what we were meant to be, from our loved ones. As the prophet Isaiah wrote of Him, He was "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). His weeping was an outward expression of the sorrow His heart felt over the brokenness, pain, and separation that sin had unleashed upon God's perfect creation.

This divine grief is a pattern we see elsewhere in His life. Jesus wept over the spiritual blindness and coming judgment of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and He agonized with "vehement cries and tears" in Gethsemane as He faced the wrath that sin deserved (Hebrews 5:7). Ultimately, the tears of Jesus are a proof of His compassion for fallen mankind. They show us that our God is not distant or stoic, but a Savior who enters into our suffering, grieves over the sin that causes it, and was moved so deeply that He went to the cross to defeat death forever.

What do you mourn? What do you grieve?
Your comfort? Your desires? Your wants?
Or the sin that has ravaged creation since the Fall and necessitated the incarnation of our Savior and His brutal, bloody death on the cross?