Week Twelve: God's Heart Toward the Lost

Does Christ Grieve for the Lost?

"As He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it...."   Luke 19:41

At our morning Bible study this week, a question was asked about God's heart toward those that will be judged.  The question had to do with how God can show compassion toward those who will come under His righteous judgment.  After, all, the Bible gives graphic pictures of the Lord's judgment upon sin. And to judge sin is to judge people.

The picture of the Lord's judgment in the last days is given in this way in Matthew 25:41, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."  There is no more fearful word to be heard than this. The Lord Himself says that it is the judgment to be pronounced upon those who are without Christ. In other places, the Bible pictures hell as a place of everlasting darkness, a place weeping and gnashing of teeth, and as a place where the worm never dies. In at time of graphic portrayal of evil and of violence on T.V. and movies, there is no more searching, horrifying picture than what the Bible gives of the eternal punishment of those without Christ.

Yet when Christ approached  Jerusalem on the day that we call "Palm Sunday,"- knowing that He would be crucified, knowing that the city  had rejected the prophets sent to it and now rejected Him - he wept over the city, saying, "If you, even you had only known on this day what would bring you peace - but now it is hidden from your eyes."

Christ went on to speak of the terrible judgment that was to come to that city, a picture of the greater judgment to come to all who are outside of Christ.

He knew the judgment would come, He rode into the city knowing that the hour of his own crucifixion had arrived, and He wept over the city.

Who can know the mind and the heart of our Lord who weeps over those who will know His judgment, and who went into Jerusalem to die in the place of those given to Him by the Father from before the beginning of creation?

May God give us something of His own mind and heart!  May we not shirk from the reality of His amazing love or from His fearful judgment.

"Christ loves and pities all, even those who are His open enemies.
None are hated, though none but believers are finally saved."

J. C. Ryle