Behold How He Loved Him! by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 28, 1910

“Behold How He Loved Him!”

By C. M. S.

In the incidents connected with the resurrection of Lazarus we not only get an insight into the humanity of Jesus, but we see also an object-lesson of the love and sorrow of the Father in permitting the anointed One to die for the world.

The Jews said, and many have since said, Why did Jesus permit Lazarus to die when he was healing others and could have healed Lazarus? Surely it was as easy to arrest the progress of disease before death had claimed its victim as it would be to overturn the result of the disease when it had done all that disease can do. “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of him that was blind, have caused that this man also should not die?” Of course he could. Why did he not?

Scores, hundreds, thousands, were dying daily then, as they are now. But Lazarus is singled out, and that question is asked concerning him, because he was the very special friend of Jesus. And

because of the friendship of Jesus for the other members of the household also, it was thought that Jesus ought to have exercised his great power to prevent the death of Lazarus. He did not do so. Was he indifferent to the suffering of Lazarus and the sorrow that must ensue in the bereaved household of his friends? — Verily, no. “He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” When Jesus had asked where they had laid Lazarus, he was unable longer to restrain his feelings, and it is recorded that “Jesus wept.” When the Jews beheld this, they exclaimed, “Behold how he loved him!” On their way to the tomb it is again recorded that he groaned in himself. We know that he saw the long train of death and of weeping mourners winding through the centuries that should follow, and that he wept over those deaths and grieved over those sorrows. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ, the Friend of Lazarus and his household, wept in his own sorrow for the grief that had come to his own heart.

And yet he could have stepped in between Lazarus and death, but did not. The question still is, Why not? Let us place by the side of that question another. God the Father loved the only begotten Son, and at any moment could have stepped in between him and death, but did not. Why did he not?

The answers both rest in the eternal purpose of God and in the undying love of God, not only for Christ and heaven, but for man and earth as well. Heaven itself, with earth still lost, would not be heaven perfect; and heavenly beings safe in heaven’s fold, with the children of earth still harried by death, hounded by the devil, and left out in the night to perish, would be out of harmony with God’s perfect purpose of righteousness and love.

“Behold how he loved him!” exclaimed the Jews when they saw the grief of Jesus over the death of his friend. “Behold how God loved us!” we may say when we see what he permitted that we might be saved. Jesus, in spite of his love for Lazarus, permitted him to go down into the tomb, that, in bringing him forth again, he might demonstrate both to his followers and to a doubting world his right and his ability to bring his other friends, his followers, the faithful of all ages, out of the prison-house of death and into the sunlight of heaven’s smile and everlasting life.

God permitted the Son whom he loved, to give his life for a race in rebellion, that out of that race might come forth those tried and true ones who would glorify God through eternal ages. The Son permitted the friend whom he loved, to go down into death that he might demonstrate to that same race the actuality of the hope set before them, and the power of love and righteousness and life to triumph over hate and iniquity and death.

Lazarus died; but that did not end the chapter. The Friend of Lazarus, our Friend, the Son of God, “cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.” And he came forth, bound still in the habiliments of death. “Loose him, and let him go.” They loosed him, and he was again a man among men. In that incident we have an earnest and an illustration of that glorious day when “the earth shall cast out the dead.” Standing at the tomb of Lazarus dead, “He cried with a loud voice,” and Lazarus lived. Not long hence the open heavens will reveal “this same Jesus,” with the bright company of angels, and he will summon his sleeping friends “with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 1 Thess. 4:16. There is the fruition of heaven’s purpose. Christ’s grief was not confined to the few moments between his arrival at the home of his friends and his answered summons to Lazarus. He sorrowed for him from the moment that he passed away, and there can be no doubt that the time seemed long. The sorrow of our Father has been long; it has dragged out through many centuries. We get tired of the turmoil of life; we wonder that God so long permits these sorrows that afflict us and crush our spirits; and some have even charged him with being unfeeling. It is not so. The cup of our suffering is small, and our journey is short; but God has been suffering in the sufferings of his children through the ages. “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.” “We have not an high priest which can not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” The Spirit “maketh intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered.”

God’s purpose is to save souls, to demonstrate the power of righteousness over sin, of love over hatred. Sin and sorrow were never in his purpose. They are exotic plants, introduced by and recommended by another. God, in his love for souls, angels as well as men, permits sin and its author to demonstrate their noxious and deadly character in order that when he roots them up and casts them out into the burnings, there will be no creature in the universe to wish them back, or that will look upon their history with anything but abhorrence. When the universe is purged of sin, it will be forever. That is why God permits his sleeping children to wait so long for their reward, and his living children to taste the bitter cup of sorrow. That is why he permits himself to suffer so long in the sufferings of his creatures. That is why he permitted Christ to die in spite of his love for him.

And it was to serve as an object-lesson of all this that Christ permitted Lazarus to die in spite of his love for him.

It was a happy day to the household of Lazarus when they heard the voice of Jesus speaking life to his friend and their brother. He will speak again, and “they that hear, shall live.” “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

C. M. S.