Glorification

By Nathaniel Dandridge Pendleton
1941

Part IV
THE LAST JOURNEY

V. "JESUS WEPT"

"And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." (Luke 19: 41 - 44)

It is twice recorded that Jesus wept. The first occasion was when He went with Mary to the grave of Lazarus. He saw her weeping, and the Jews also which came with her; then "He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see: Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him. And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" Then the Lord called Lazarus from the grave.

Here, as in all events touching the Lord's life in the world, the representation has reference to the state of the church and also to the Lord's glorification. In the first, the raising of Lazarus represented the resuscitation of the church, or the emergence of the Christian Church out of the shell of Judaism and its passing to the Gentiles. The second, which was more intimate, referred to the Lord's resurrection. The restoral of Lazarus to natural life in the world livingly marked the distinction between the Lord's resurrection and that of any other man, in that the Lord rose with His whole body which He had in the world, while man, at death, is raised only as to his spirit.  The resurrection of the Lord, however, points directly to that other, the spiritual revival of the church, since it was the cause and power which converted men to Christianity. The fact of His resurrection was the great appeal. It touched the immemorial hope of men and gave renewed strength to a faith. The human heart longs for a life beyond the grave, and any testimony which encouraged that longing found a ready hearing; and so it came to pass that men opened their minds and hearts to the new faith. They said, "Never before has such light been shed upon the dark mystery of the future."

The story of the resurrection of Lazarus is usually taken simply as a demonstration of the Lord's power to do that which no other man could do, but throughout it is significant of spiritual and Divine things in a series not outwardly obvious in the letter. The story stands, indeed, as typical of every form of resurrection, including man's regeneration, the church's reformation, and the Lord's glorification.

The Lord's weeping with Mary and the Jews at the grave of Lazarus was, in its most literal implication, an appropriate ceremonial in the presence of death. So to do was an ancient ritual, become by custom of binding force.  It was the accepted, and became ever more the formal sign of grief at parting with the dead. It was regarded an appropriate evidence of love for the departed. Hence the remark of the Jews concerning Jesus when they saw Him also weeping.  They said, "Behold how He loved him." The Lord's weeping was indeed an evidence of His grief arising from love.  As an outward sign it betokened the extremity of grief, its uncontrolled expression. It was a breaking forth of deepest emotion, with such power as to discard all normal limits. It therefore signified a love utterly bereaved and at the point of despair. In this it represents the most profound temptation of which the human mind is capable. It is the sign that love has encountered the despair of death, the death from which there then seems no recall, no revival; yet it is Lord's mercy manifests itself as the temptation of death.

At the Divine call, Lazarus come forth from the tomb. This is the answer, in some form, to every death and every phase of it. This is the answer to every temptation, which is but an interior phase of death. In this Lazarus stands as the type of every unfailing resurrection, and the power of the Lord's mercy therein. Death is shown to be but an apparent failure, a seeming that passes in the presence of life's renewal; yet the former life cannot be recalled where death is an actual dissolution. The victory in this case lies in a spiritual restoration. We call it another life, but it is the real life that was present all the while, present though veiled by increments subject to death, which alone are laid aside. These last were represented by the grave clothes with which Lazarus was bound, and of which Jesus said, Loose him, and let him go.

When the Christian Church began, there was, at first, only man's memory of the Lord to sustain it. Then the inspired Gospels were given to confirm these memories - given also as an enduring Scripture, sacred and Divine.  At first the church was uncertain as to the placing of these Scriptures, but in time they were accepted as the Holy Word, and were taken to the heart of Christendom.  Yet the church did not depart from the fundamental law of the older Scriptures, the books of which were at first regarded as the only Word of God and as such as more sacred than the Gospels. Yet the Gospels superseded. They were the living record of the Lord's Divinity. This was the foundation - strength of Christianity, and the source of its vivification, the spiritual which imparted to the church the power of salvation. The church, however, did leave behind the vast accumulation of Jewish traditions as a useless impediment to its growth. They were as grave clothes, to be cast then and therein that the powerful to overcome even aside. They signified the bonds of death, from which it was imperative that the church should be released.

The Christian Church could not have fulfilled its destiny, could not have served the needs of a new and more internal faith, unless these traditions had been left behind. They were the Jews' interpretations of their Scriptures, the doctrines of their devising, which held the mind bound in sensual ideas and opinions and which as a body were adverse to the spiritual fulfillment of the Scriptures given by the Lord, who referred to them as making the Word of God of none-effect. The rejection of these traditions was the first great temptation of the Christian Church, and it was epochal. Thereafter, the church passed to the Gentiles, whose ignorance in this respect made them fitter subjects for a new spiritual development. Thus the way was opened for Christianity to become a world religion, adapted to the needs of many races.

Jesus came weeping to the grave of Lazarus. The grave was a cave, "and a stone lay upon it." He said, "take ye away the stone."  "They took away the stone where the dead was laid." Then having prayed to the Father, "He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go." (John 11: 38 - 44)  The inhibitions being removed, the ensuing temptation partook of that unceasing contest of life with death, which is the very essence of every interior human conflict. The weeping of Jesus on the occasion marks the depth of temptation, in that it was crucial. It betokened His own approaching death and, derivatively, the death of the past civilization and a moribund ecclesiasticism. His resurrection, in its consequences, broke the spirit of the Jewish traditions, and yet it revived the Word of God. Such a revival ever means a new church, new in spirit and new in form. Yet there is that which is retained and that which is cast aside. It was so with the Christian Church; it was so with the body of the Lord. There was that which was raised and that which was dissipated, and this even to the last, when His body lay in the tomb.

The second occasion upon which it is recorded that Jesus wept was when He beheld the city. He then also saw a representation of a death and a resurrection, a foreshadowing of the cross for Himself and His resurrection, and the passing of a dead remnant of the ancient churches, and the revival of a new and internal church. Therefore it is recorded that "When He was come near, He beheld the city and wept over it."

He pronounced the judgment that was to fall upon it. He lamented the ignorance of the city. It did not know the things which belonged to its peace. He spoke of the coming of its enemies and its destruction. He predicated that destruction as a result of its not knowing the time of its visitation. This He saw in vision as He beheld the city, and because of the doom foreshadowed, He wept over it. His grief was an expression of His love for mankind, of whom the city was typical.

More than any congregation of men on earth, Jerusalem typified the fallen state of the race. Spiritual life was at its lowest ebb. Men were withdrawn quite beyond the reach of heaven. Spiritual ignorance was profound. This city, the symbol of highest spiritual meaning, was now lowest in the scale of human folly. Its inhabitants knew not the things that belonged to their peace. They were given over to the passions of the day. Their dreams were confined to the world and its rewards. There was no vision, and nothing of heavenly peace; only a striving of envious desires and natural passions soon to be excited to the point of madness. The sphere of this sensuous life was like a dark overshadowing cloud.

He came as a King to enter into His kingdom, but the shadow of doom fell upon His mind like a beckoning of death, and so He wept over the city because it knew not the time of its visitation. Its ignorance made His coming more like that of a thief in the night, so hidden was it and yet so open, if the city had only known.  Spiritual blindness devised His death but in so doing made way for His resurrection. Jerusalem fell, yet its spirit was immortal.  The outworn remnant of the ancient series of churches passed with the temple at Jerusalem, but its inspired ritual held the secrets of heaven. And so, even while the Lord beheld the city and perceived its doom; and as He wept over it for grief, yet His love held the inner vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, the mysteries of which would receive an endless unfolding throughout the ages to come. But not as yet in an unbroken succession - not until the Lord should open the way for His final coming - by a revealing of His Divinity through a Divine unfolding of the wisdom of God stored in the rituals and history of the ancient churches and drawn thence by the Divinely appointed hand of one who was, at the time and for that purpose, instructed in the secrets of heaven.

These secrets, as revealed, were identical with the enclosed mysteries contained in the ancient Scriptures. Hence, their coming down from heaven and their exposition from the Word was one and the same, though apparently derived by a different process and from a different source. Both as one are given in the final revelation, and together they made possible a continuous unfolding of the wisdom of God.