IN the land chosen of God for His holy Revelation, there did not live the kind of people to which we Westerners belong.
In the East man is of another existence of soul. This depends upon climate, environment, descent and national past. All these data combined brought to pass, that in the East cold phlegmatism was far less common, and readily excited feeling far more strongly dominant, by reason of which their emotional life was far more vehement.
Jews, that live among us, are naturally for no small part Western tempered. And yet, though they have long not been what once they were in the East, there is still enough opportunity to observe, how much more rapid they often are of speech, how much more mercurial their gesticulations, how much stronger the distortions of their face, and how much more violently their feelings can surge.
In reading Holy Scripture this must needs be noted. Otherwise our eye no longer sees the just proportions. And if we take these “passionate expressions,” uninterpreted upon our lips, our speech does not harmonize with our inner life, and in the bypaths of our piety truth stumbles. Think of the expression: I am poured out like water, and ask yourself what labored fancies have been drawn from it.
This in general applies also to weeping. Soul-utterances, such as: “I water my couch with my tears” (Ps. 6, 6), “All the night I make my bed to swim,” are not applicable to people like ourselves. “Oh, that my head were waters, that I might weep for the slain of my people” (Jer. 9, 1), is stronger in its expression than this of itself would be with us. That there is “sowing done with tears” is in that literal sense scarcely thinkable among us. “To cover the altar of the Lord with tears,” betrays a passion in holy things most foreign to us.
In the East, on the other hand, and with Israel all this literally took place, and the truth of Scripture expresses itself in this, that it employs no bombastic imagery, but by the description of more violent stirrings of emotion than we are accustomed to, lays bare the inner organization of our human nature.
To laugh, not with the foolish, neither the ceaseless laugh of the insane, but the laugh of sinless and holy joy, belongs to our nature. This is evident from the fact, that of God Himself it is written: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.” But weeping is an utterance of our nature, which is only explicable in a world of sin. Of Jesus it is written, that amidst our misery He wept. Of God this is never told.
IN the tear you can see as well an utterance of the curse, as a fruit of common grace. It is an utterance of the curse, for so far as it is a cry of anguish. It is fruit of Common Grace, for so far as in this the overburdened heart relieves itself.
But whatever way you take it, “weeping” is always evidence, that misery went through the soul, or that misery surrounds you. For though there is also a “weeping because of joy,” yet this is merely the result of too violent a stirring of emotion, over which we have no control. So there is also laughter of anguish, and laughter of the insane.
Taken normally on the other hand, laughter goes with joy, tears with misery. Misery, which can be purely external, as when a child cries bitterly, because some toy is taken from him by a playmate. Also a misery which penetrates to bone and marrow, at which the whole heart is aghast, and which in anguish of soul makes us pine away before God. But always utterance of an anxious perception which troubles and oppresses us, and from which we seek to escape; which from the depths of our heart works up to the eye, and breaks in the moistened eye, till the tear-pearl has formed itself, and trickles down our cheek.
When we are grown, we ourselves wipe that tear away. Sometimes we are ashamed, that another should see the tear in our eye.
But a child lets its tears flow. And then comes mother and wipes the tears away from the child’s face. She does this with care, till the last tear is removed, and the child’s trouble is forgotten, and no more tear forms itself.
And so it is written of God the Lord, that He also will dry the moist eye of His children, and shall wipe away all tears from their eyes (Rev. 21, 4).
Thus a representation, as though His redeemed children shall arive at the gate of the Father-house with tears in the eyes, and as though the Father in heaven stands ready, before they enter into glory, to make those signs of their past sorrows disappear.
In God’s Father-house God’s saints laugh, but they weep there no more.
To be in God’s blessed heaven, and still weep on account of grief, would clash.
THAT this is imagery, needs scarcely be said.
He who was called to eternal life, has shaken off the earthly tabernacle, the mortality of the body has with him been swallowed up of life, and he who parted from the body, and drew his soul away from before his eyes, can through these abandoned eyes no longer weep.
But he who understands that not the ear hears, but the soul through the ear, will also understand, that not the eye weeps, but the soul through the eye.
Not the body suffers pain, but the soul through the body. Therefore even stupefaction renders us insensible at an operation. When, be it only temporarily, the soul is isolated from the body (and that is stupefaction) there is no pain and no suffering.
Though he who died, in dying, took off the garment of the body, the soul, therefore, can yet suffer pain, and without the eye the soul can inwardly weep.
You hardly dare think it, and yet it is true, that the soul that dies outside of Jesus, only after dying begins really to feel pain. Did not, with respect to the lost, Jesus say that with them there would be weeping, yea, gnashing of teeth?
It is by no means true, therefore, that dying as such and by itself makes an end to suffering, to pain, and to weeping.
On the contrary, by very dying pain, suffering becomes far more dreadful, and then only begins by itself the weeping of soul.
And that with those who die in Jesus this is not so, does not come of itself, but is fruit of an act of Grace on the part of God. Result of this, that after their dying, from the soul’s-eye of all His dear children, God wipes away the tear.
HOW is this to be understood?
A three-fold act of God is here to be distinguished: He translates from misery into joy. He spreads forgetfulness upon remembrance. He cuts sin, the source of our sole misery, off from the soul.
Consider each of these separately.
There is a part of our misery, that comes from our dwelling in this sinful and imperfect world. In that world was our part. In that world we cherished all sorts of expectation. And therefore that world brought us every time again trouble and disappointment.
Well, with the separation from the body the Lord liberates the elect soul from that part of misery. There is no more sickness and no more bodily pain. There is no more cold and bleakness, which cuts and creates anxiety. There is no more care for our daily bread. There are no more people to harass us. There is no more slander that follows us after. There is no more disappointment in daily tasks and business. There are no more unrighteousnesses that try us all the day.
All this falls away, and the tear, that was wept on account of all this, of itself dries up.
Though this is not enough.
Our soul not merely wants no more sorrow negatively, but also positive joy. After joy and glory she is inwardly homesick. And so long as that homesickness remains unsatisfied, she weeps in herself.
But now comes the Lord, and leads the soul, which He called, into the joy of the Father-house. And now, enjoying what no ear had heard, no eye had seen, and what had entered into no human heart, she laughs from joy, and of itself every tear congeals.
THIS is the first, but by no means all.
If after dying the memories which we carry with us, were retained, suffering, at least in part, would accompany us into eternity.
A mother, herself blessed, who carried sorrow of soul regarding her child still unconverted with her into eternity, would never be able to enjoy blessedness in its fullness.
Also the loss of what the soul left behind upon earth, the uncertainty of what will become of her own, thinking back of the sometimes so painful circumstances of those who are still on earth, would for no small part gall the eternal joy.
Something especially evident when one considers, how much finer and tenderer the feeling of the liberated soul in eternal life must be.
That this vexation pursues the lost in eternity, you see in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Does he not ask, that some one might be sent to warn his brethren, lest they too might come into the place of torment? True, this is figurative language, but to those who are lost there is something terrible in it.
Wiping away of tears, therefore, from the eyes of the elect is connected with a special act of God’s grace, even in this, that He puts forgetfulness of the past over the soul, just as stupefaction by means of anæsthesia puts forgetfulness over the soul regarding the actions of the surgeon during the operation upon the body.
The discharged soul becomes isolated from the life, which she left behind.
How this forgetfulness is put upon the soul, is a question that demands a special answer.
Suffice it now to indicate, that, if she retained her memories and was still cognizant of all the suffering on earth, the soul would continue to weep. Something from which follows, that the wiping away of all tears by God, also includes this act of grace of forgetfulness.
THE third or last point touches the soul herself.
He who lives deeply knows very well, that sorrow regarding ourselves is the most cutting sorrow. That endless unsatisfiedness. That sin of the past that calls after us. Those unholinesses, which still continually well up from this our sinful heart, and estrange us from our God.
This is a sorrow, which we do not always feel on earth, but most sharply and most comprehensibly in our holiest moments. Thus it is evident of itself, that, after dying, the soul would be overpowered by this sorrow the most, and by reason of it would weep most bitterly, since in the presence of the holy the feeling speaks so much stronger.
Yet those tears also the Lord wipes away from the face of His dear children; and that expresses itself in two ways.
First by perfecting the faith in the peace through the blood of the cross—a faith which here on earth so often languishes—so that the soul has nothing more to do with former sin, and sees, that God has cast it into the depth of the sea.
And on the other hand by cutting off the soul itself from sin and by the act of grace of the dying itself, to bring her to complete sanctification.
And that provides holiest joy.
Only when God wipes away that tear also, the soul laughs with a joy that enraptures her altogether.
← 14. From the Body of This Death · Contents · 16. That as He Is So Also Are We →