What led our Lord to weep over the dead, Who could at one word restore him; nay, had it in purpose so to do?
I. First of all, as the context informs us, He wept from very sympathy with the grief of others. We cannot see God's sympathy, and the Son of God, though feeling for us as great compassion as His Father, did not show it to us while He remained in His Father's bosom. But when He took flesh and appeared on earth, He showed us the Godhead in a new manifestation. He invested Himself with a new set of attributes, those of our flesh, taking unto Him a human soul and body, in order that thoughts, feelings, affections, might be His, which could respond to ours, and certify to us His tender mercy. The tears of men touched Him at once, as their miseries had brought Him down from heaven. His ear was open to them, and the sound of weeping went at once to His heart.
II. But next, we may suppose that His pity, thus spontaneously displayed, was led forward to dwell on the various circumstances in man's condition which excite pity. It was awakened, and began to look around upon the miseries of the world. What was it He saw? He saw visibly displayed the victory of death;a mourning multitude everything present which might waken sorrow except him, who was the chief object of it. He was not a stone marked the place where he lay. Here was the Creator surrounded by the works of His hands, who adored Him indeed, yet seemed to ask why He suffered what He had Himself made to be so marred. Here, then, were abundant sources for His grief, in the contrast between Adam, in the day in which he was created, and man as the devil had made him.
III. Christ was come to do a deed of mercy, and it was a secret in His own breast. All the love which He felt for Lazarus was a secret from others. He had no earthly friend who could be His confidant in this matter; and as His thoughts turned on Lazarus, and His heart yearned towards him, was He not in Joseph's case, who, not in grief, but from the very fulness of his soul, and his desolateness in a heathen land, when his brethren stood before him, "sought where to weep," as if his own tears were his best companions, and had in them a sympathy to soothe that pain which none could share? Is there any time more affecting than when you are about to break good news to a friend who had been stricken down by tidings of ill?
IV. This marvellous benefit to the forlorn sisters how was it to be attained? At His own cost. Christ was bringing life to the dead by His own death. This, doubtless, among a multitude of thoughts unspeakable passed over His mind. He felt that Lazarus was wakening to life at His own sacrifice; that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus left. Contemplating there the fulness of His purpose, while now going about a single act of mercy, he said to Martha, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," etc.
J. H. Newman, Sermons,vol. iii., p, 128.