What is the significance of the fact that Jesus wept?

from the old testament

• Jesus weeping is not found in the Old Testament.

from the new testament

• John 11:32–36 reads: “… Mary came to where Jesus was … saying to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’” (John 11:32–36).
  
• Jesus’ weeping demonstrates that He was truly human. The Jews recognized that He really loved Lazarus by His sadness—His emotions were genuine. Through accounts like these, we learn that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus can sympathize with us because He is fully human like us and has thus experienced true human emotion, such as deep sadness.
• However, though most rightly recognized Jesus as sorrowful, some sarcastically asked why Jesus hadn’t come earlier if He really loved Lazarus (John 11:37). Contextually, we learn that He had more than Lazarus’ well-being in mind. When He first learned that Lazarus was sick, we read, “when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:6). Jesus’ reaction seems peculiar from the outset. One would expect Him to hurry to heal Lazarus.
• Instead, after learning he was sick (John 11:3), we read that He decided to go only after He was certain Lazarus was dead (John 11:7–13). Jesus notes that “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him” (John 11:14–15). He went after Lazarus died to display God's glory and to be glorified through the resurrection (John 11:4; cf. 40).
• Jesus did not delay because He was uncaring, but because He wanted to display God’s glory and who He was, so that all who were watching might believe that He is the Son of God (see John 11:17–27). Thus, though it brought Him great emotional pain, He waited so God and He might be glorified through the greater miracle of resurrection than that of healing His sick friend.

implications for today

Out of concern to defend Jesus’s divinity, even Christians can minimize Jesus’ human nature. They treat His humanity as either less important or as if His divinity meant He wasn’t really like us. However, Scripture presents Jesus as having two complete natures. He is both truly divine and truly human. Passages such as John 11:35 remind us of that true humanity. He cried because He is human, and He was cut to the heart both by the sorrow of others and His own love for His friend Lazarus.

Because He added a human nature, Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted with sin (without sinning). He knows what it’s like to lose family and friends to death. He knows what it’s like to be hungry and thirsty. Because He is truly human, He knows what it’s like to be you and can sympathize with your weakness (Hebrews 4:15). He knows what it is to feel deeply, to experience sorrow, and to walk through the pain of living in a broken world. We never have to wonder if Jesus understands our struggles or if our grief is too small for Him to care about. The tears Jesus shed at Lazarus’ tomb remind us that He is compassionate toward our suffering and invites us to bring our pain to Him. Do we? Do we bring our emotions and all that seems unfair or wrong in the world to the only One who can hold our hearts and the only One who is sovereign over it?

Jesus’ tears also remind us that grief is not the end of the story. Though Jesus wept at the reality of death, He stood before the tomb as the One who had authority over death itself. Jesus did not merely sympathize with human suffering; He came to defeat the greatest source of suffering by conquering sin and death through His own resurrection. Therefore, believers can mourn with hope, knowing that the Savior who weeps with us is also the Savior who promises to make all things new.