John 11 and 12 show how the Lord’s thoughts flowed in different channels than those of man. His ideas, so to speak, of misery and of happiness were very different from man’s natural thoughts.
Chapter 11 opens with a scene of human misery. The dear family at Bethany is visited with sickness, and the voice of health and thanksgiving in their dwelling has to yield to mourning, lamentation and woe. But He who had the largest and tenderest sympathies is the calmest among them, for He carried with Him that knowledge of resurrection which made Him see beyond the chamber of sickness and the grave of death.
When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He abode two days longer in the place where He was. But when that sickness ends in death, He begins His journey in the full and bright prospect of resurrection. And this makes His journey steady and undisturbed. As He approaches the scene of sorrow, His action is still the same. He replies again and again to the passion of Martha’s soul from that place where the knowledge of a power that was beyond that of death had, in all serenity, seated Him. And though He still has to move on, there is no haste, for on Mary’s arrival, He is still in the same place where Martha had met Him. In due time He vindicates this stillness of His heart and this apparent tardiness of His journey.
When man was bowed down in sorrow at the thought of death, He was lifted up in the sunshine of resurrection. But the sense of resurrection, though it gave this peculiar current to the thoughts of Jesus, left His heart still tender to the sorrows of others, for His thoughts were not of indifference but elevation. And such is the way of faith always. Jesus weeps with the weeping of Mary and her company. His whole soul was in the sunshine of those deathless regions which lay far away from the tomb of Bethany, but it could visit the valley of tears and weep there with those that wept.
When man was lifted up in the expectation of something good and brilliant in the earth, His soul was full of the holy certainty that death awaits all here, however promising or pleasurable, and that honor and prosperity must be hoped for only in other and higher regions. Chapter 12 shows us this.
When they heard of Lazarus being raised, many people flocked together from Bethany to Jerusalem and at once hailed Him as the King of Israel. They wanted to go up with Him to the feast of tabernacles and anticipate the age of glory, seating Him in the honors and joys of the kingdom. The Greeks also took their place with Israel in such an hour. Through Philip, as taking hold of the skirt of a Jew (see Zechariah 8), they would see Jesus and worship. But in the midst of all this, Jesus Himself sits solitary. He knows that earth is not the place for all this festivity and keeping of holy day. His spirit muses on death, while their thoughts were full of a kingdom with its attendant honors and pleasures. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”
Such was the peculiar path of the spirit of Jesus. Resurrection was everything to Him. It was His relief amid the sorrows of life and His object amid the promises and prospects of the world. It gave His soul a calm sunshine when dark and heavy clouds had gathered over Bethany. It moderated and separated His affections when the brilliant glare of a festive day was lighting up the way from thence to Jerusalem. The thought of it sanctified His mind equally amid grief and enjoyment around Him. Resurrection was everything to Him! It made Him a perfect pattern of that fine principle of the Spirit of God: “They that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not” (1 Cor. 7:30).
Oh for a little more of the same mind in us, beloved! Oh for a little more of this elevation above the passing conditions and circumstances of life.
J. G. Bellett, adapted