Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) on Jesus’s Wish and Love for Reprobate Jerusalem

According to a delicate and beautiful observation of [Herman] Witsius, in his “doctrine of the covenants,” we can be quite confident that even Jesus, before he entered the way to Gethsemane, according to his human inclination, had cherished the very same wish in his soul. He loved his neighbor as himself without distinction. His weeping over the lost and reprobate Jerusalem shows it. According to what scripture reveals to us, God does not weep over the lost that perish for eternity, and thus we know that Jesus’ weeping was according to his human inclination.¹

Add to this that also the holy apostles and prophets, as men acting on human feelings, certainly wept those tears with their Jesus, as we have, over reprobate Jerusalem.
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1. [Kuyper’s assertion here is most unfortunate. The reference is undoubtedly to Luke 19:41. Was Jesus’ human nature at odds with his divine nature? Besides, did not Jesus in holy anger with the Jews declare God’s judgments upon the city of Jerusalem for their hindering of the progress of the gospel? (Matt. 23:37ff.). In addition, Jesus’ tears were for God’s honor and goodness, which had been so wickedly rejected and despised by Jerusalem. They were tears of righteous indignation. That is why he immediately expresses judgments upon the city and its inhabitants (Luke 19:42ff.).]

Abraham Kuyper, Particular Grace: A Defense of God’s Sovereignty in Salvation, ed. and trans. Marvin Kamps (Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2001), 236–37.

Note:  It is interesting to note that Kuyper, following Witsius (see below), could not help but see Jesus wishing the salvation of Jerusalem out of love for them. But the Protestant Reformed Church hyper-Calvinist editor, Kamps, in a footnote, understandably faults him for his strong dichotomy between Jesus’s human nature and divine nature. It is, however, bizarre that Kamps refers to Jesus’s tears as “tears of righteous indignation,” as if they were not also indicative of his benevolent sorrow over perishing sinners.

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Witsius wrote:

III. 2dly, That Christ, as man, subject to the law of love, did in a holy manner love all men without distinction, as his neighbours, heartily wished them well, seriously lamented the ruin of those that perished, whom yet, as God, he knew were reprobates, and for whom, as Mediator, he had not engaged. Yet he submitted this human affection, commanded by the law, common to us and to Christ, to the divine appointment, and restricted it to the purpose of the decreeing will of God; in this manner proving the holiness of his will, in the glorifying of the divine counsel, and in due subjection thereunto. This appears from the tears which Christ, as man, shed over the calamities that were coming upon that abandoned city, which had partly slain and partly loaded with contempt and ignominy the Prophets;—nay, had been the only butchery in the whole world for them; and was at length, by a most horrid parricide, to devote itself, with its unhappy posterity, to the lasting curse of God, Luke 19:41.

Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man: Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity, 2 vols., trans. William Crookshank (London: T. Tegg & Son, 1837), 1:226; De œconomia fœderum Dei cum hominibus libri quatuor, 2.9.3.

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