They were friends – Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were also adult siblings who lived together in the town of Bethany. Lazarus became sick, and died. Jesus was notified of Lazarus’ sickness, but Jesus delayed going to Bethany, and by the time He arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days, and his body entombed within a sealed excavation. The story continues and life is restored to a dead corpse that the glory of God Himself might be seen in His Son. Returning though to the middle of the narrative, as Jesus approaches Bethany, He is met by Martha, and then by Mary. When Jesus sees Mary’s tears, we are told that “He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.”
Reading the account in the New Living Translation, a personally favored rendering of God’s Word because of its simplicity and straightforwardness that often gives me fresh insights, I was surprised to see Jesus’ response when confronted with Mary’s weeping and the wailing too of those who had come to comfort her and her sister. “When Jesus saw her weeping ... a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled.” A few verses later, I was again surprised. “Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb.” Contemplating the direction of Jesus’ anger, I realized that its only direction could be towards death itself. The implications of my realization gave a dramatic starkness to Jesus’ very purpose! Death was not God’s original plan. In its essence, death is separation from God. In its physical imposition on mankind because of sin, it is representative of all that pulls us away from God. God’s original intent was for man to vibrantly, purposefully, eternally live in intimate communion with Himself! Death removes all of that! Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth as the God-man was to not only offer Himself as the only acceptable sacrifice for sin, but in so doing, to also conquer death and give to us the potential to live once again in aliveness before and with God!
Referring to The Pulpit Commentary, my understanding was enlarged still more. “He [Jesus] entered with vivid and intense human sympathy into all the primary and secondary sorrows of death. He saw the long procession of mourners from the first to the last, all the reckless agony, all the hopelessness of it, in thousands of millions of instances. There flashed upon his spirit all the terrible moral consequences of which death was the ghastly symbol.”
Jesus was angry with death – righteously indignant with its representation, its distortion, and its finality. He was angry enough to conquer it.
(Related Bible reading: John 11:1- 44)
