When Jesus Is Not “Christlike Enough”

Love, Delay, and the Refusal to Let Crisis Define Faithfulness

One of the ironies of the Gospels is how often Jesus is treated as though he is not acting “Christ-like” enough. I know that sounds anachronistic. But I mean it. There are moments when Jesus is questioned, criticized, or judged because he acts in ways that do not align with how the Messiah is expected to act. He eats with the wrong people instead of policing purity. He heals on the Sabbath instead of honoring the moment. He refuses to answer direct questions when clarity is demanded. He delays when urgency seems obvious. He stays silent when condemnation is expected. Again and again, Jesus is measured not by who he is, but by what people believe faithfulness should look like in that moment.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this because I hear versions of those messages from time to time. Sometimes they’re said plainly. “You can’t call yourself a man of God and let this happen.” “Jesus wouldn’t say, ‘we’ll deal with it later.’” Sometimes they’re implied. “If you really cared, you wouldn’t treat this like it could wait.” Either way, the pressure is the same. If love were real, it would show itself in action—and more specifically, it would show up now.

It’s actually a message being broadcast at full volume all the time, all around us. “If Jesus were here, he wouldn’t be quiet about this.” “If Christians loved the way Jesus loved, they would do something.” “If your pastor doesn’t speak about this this Sunday, it tells you everything you need to know.” These claims aren’t usually offered as arguments. They’re framed as moral tests. If you were truly compassionate, truly faithful, truly Christlike, your response would already be visible.

Imagine Martha meeting Jesus on the road to Bethany and saying, You call yourself the Christ? God would not have let my brother die. It sounds absurd stated that way. And yet what Martha—and later her sister Mary—actually say is not far from it. Both of them meet Jesus with the same sentence: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv 21, 32). The words are restrained. The implication is not. This did not have to happen. Jesus could have stopped it. Jesus is not being accused of lacking power, but of failing to show the compassion he has shown to so many others.

Martha and Mary have reason to say this. When word reaches Jesus that Lazarus is sick, the request is unmistakable: come. But Jesus didn’t go. He remained where he was for two more days. And not because he was interrupted. It is not like the scene in Mark 5, when Jesus is on his way to the bedside of Jairus’s dying daughter and is interrupted by another woman in need of healing—an interruption that also ends in death. Nothing like that happens here. There is no competing crisis, no obstacle, no explanation offered. Rather, John records, “When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days” (v.6). This was a choice.

Put the pieces together, and the story starts to raise questions not just about compassion, but about purpose. Jesus knows Lazarus is sick. He loves him. He has intervened quickly for others. And yet he stays put. By the time he arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. Yet from the outset, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Taken together, the delay can begin to look less like indifference and more like calculation. This makes Lazarus look less like a friend and more like a setup.

Yet when Jesus finally stands before the tomb, he does not act like someone pleased with how events have unfolded. He is deeply moved. He is troubled. He weeps (vv.33–35). And that grief does not serve the miracle. It does not heighten the drama or prepare the crowd. It does not explain the delay or justify it. In fact, it does the opposite. It fractures the clean logic that would turn Lazarus into a means to an end. If the delay were simply about staging a greater outcome, grief would be unnecessary. If Lazarus were only a setup, sorrow would be excess. Which means the story will not allow us to say that the delay was a cold calculation, or that Lazarus was expendable. Jesus knows what he will do. He chooses not to prevent what happens. And he still stands there, fully exposed to the cost of that choice.

Which means the delay is not a failure to act, but a refusal to act as everyone expected. What’s exposed is not a lack of love, but a disagreement over what love is supposed to look like. The sisters’ words, the crowd’s suspicion, even the question whispered at the tomb all assume the same logic: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v.37)

That expectation is understandable. Had Jesus arrived sooner, it would have been mercy—real mercy, compassionate mercy. It would have spared grief, and no one would have questioned his care. But mercy is not the fullest disclosure of who Jesus is. That is why the familiar question—What should Jesus have done?—ultimately fails. It explains the pressure Jesus faces, but it cannot explain him, or the words he speaks outside the tomb: “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe” (vv.14–15).

The delay is not a withdrawal of care, but a decision about what kind of care tells the truth. Love, here, is not aimed at preventing pain at all costs, but at making Jesus known in the midst of it. Refusal to act immediately is read as moral failure, but Jesus will not accept that verdict. The delay guards something rescue alone could never give: a deeper knowing of who he is. When he finally speaks, he names himself. “I am the resurrection and the life.” Prevention would have said, I am here to help you avoid death. Resurrection declares, I am Lord over it.

That distinction shapes how I understand the work at Open House Ministries. When we don’t respond to every situation as the crisis it is being declared to be, it communicates something. what we are refusing to communicate is the lie that love’s highest responsibility is immediate relief. Because doing so trains people to live forever at the level of crisis.

The same pressure extends far beyond the shelter. Jesus is routinely invoked to settle questions rather than to seek him. What would Jesus do? sounds like discernment, but functions as a demand. If you cared, you would say this. If you were faithful, you would do that. These are not invitations to obedience. They are attempts to control it. Once again, Jesus is measured against an imagined version of himself—one who always acts on cue, always validates the right cause, always conforms to the expectations of the moment.

If Jesus’ delay in Bethany tells the truth about love, then responding to every demand on crisis’s terms surrenders the authority to define what love is. Care must be shaped by truth before it is shaped by timing. Anything else may feel compassionate in the moment, but abandons people to the tyranny of crisis and allows urgency, need, and outcomes to take Christ’s place as the judge of love.