In this passage Christ teaches us how we ought to see ourselves. The pity he has for the lost is pity which the lost ought to have for themselves. It is right that men and women should be deeply concerned about their eternal souls. We have been constructed by God to take care first and foremost of our own interests. Of course as fallen individuals we often misread our own best interests, but something is badly wrong with us when other see our needs more keenly than we do, and feel a compassion for us which we do not feel for ourselves. Yet that is often the case. Whenever others pray for the lost in their unbelief, it is because they see their spiritual danger, while the unbelieving are blind to it. Rather than pushing away the compassion of others, we should learn from it. It should wake us up to our true condition, and cause us to start looking at our state before God all over again. We should learn from everything that Christ does, including his weeping for our souls.
These tears do not proceed from any doubt. Christ knows the future with absolute certainty, and it is because he is certain, that his tears are so feelingful. When we deal with other human beings, their reactions, their thoughts about future possibilities never come with this certainty. A father might warn his child of the danger of proceeding down a certain path in life, but he cannot be absolutely certain what evil will result. But here Christ sees the future as our Prophet, and he knows that what he sees is true, and sure to come to pass. The warning could not therefore be more real.
Christ sees things as they really are. But Christ sees the misery of man, the sum total of what it will cost all those caught up in it. Man’s own view of himself is often dangerously optimistic. As he looked on the city, the Lord Jesus saw what was really going to happen to it. It was on the very edge of being judged by God, and many in the city had no awareness of this whatsoever. Like the people of Noah’s time, they imagined that life would go on with little change or disruption to its daily patterns, and they were safe. But their complacency failed to take account of the centuries of waywardness which had led up to this point. They ought to have been able to see that they were ripe for judgment and it could not be far off. So too, there is terrible complacency in the hearts of men and women today, when they imagine they can live in complete indifference to God and face no consequences. They imagine God is far off, and either ignorant of their conduct, or else indifferent to it. The truth is that judgement is at the door, and each day that goes by without responding to the call of the gospel is a gamble with their eternal souls.
Divine knowledge makes no mistakes, never has to guess about the nature of things, never has to make approximations. Certainty is the province of God alone. Human beings at best have accurate knowledge, but even then it is always incomplete, and often it is entirely wrong. Prophecy is the exception, because God gives his own perfect knowledge to his prophets for the duration of their prophecy. They speak on his behalf, for he intends that the words they give to mankind can be trusted fully as the unchanging word of God.
The feelings of God are not the same as, but are analogous to, the feelings of man. We are made in the image of God, and the Lord has put within us something equivalent to his own emotions. The God man Christ Jesus shows us by his tears how strong are the feelings of God. When Christ weeps we are being given a true insight into God’s heart, and we can respond to it, and appeal to it, with all the assurance we would have in coming to someone who felt deeply for us.