A Man of Sorrows

I was watching a movie with my wife the other day. It was funny, but then it got sad in the end. I was kind of choking up and holding it back because I didn’t want to cry watching a movie. That is the nature of men in general. We hold it back.

Sometimes it is even thought that it isn’t manly to cry. But I have a two-word answer to that: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). There was never a more manly man than Jesus of Nazareth. He truly was the man’s man.

Even Pontius Pilate, after Christ had been scourged, said of Him, "Behold the Man!" (John 19:5). Look at what Jesus went through—the whipping, the scourging, the beating. Still, He carried that four-hundred-pound cross through the streets of Jerusalem after that loss of blood, after that trauma. He fell beneath the weight of it, and He got up again. That was a man like no other.

Yes, Jesus is God, but Jesus wept. He felt Mary and Martha’s pain when Lazarus died, and He feels our pain, too. If it touches us, it touches Him. The Bible says, "[God] hears the cry of the afflicted" (Job 34:28). David wrote, "He does not forget the cry of the humble" (Psalm 9:12), and "the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry" (Psalm 34:15).

When God sees us cry, He cares. Jesus has walked in our shoes. Isaiah 53:3 says that He is "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." It was our weaknesses He carried. It was our sorrows that weighed Him down. He felt our sorrow. He cares about our sorrow. And if it concerns you, it concerns Him.

Jesus weeps with us in our time of pain.