SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
(Substance of a Reading with J. Richmond)1
Luke 1: 30–38; 3: 21, 22; 4: 1, 2 (to ‘devil’); 10: 33–35; Mark 15: 25, 33–39; Luke 23: 44–47; Act 2: 30–36
We are on holy ground as we speak of the Person of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.
Deuteronomy 29: 29 would encourage us—“The hidden things belong to Jehovah our God; but the revealed ones are ours and our children’s for ever”, and also Proverbs 25: 2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the glory of kings is to search out a thing”. There are secret things, and we should not attempt to pry into those, but others are revealed, and by the Holy Spirit we can enquire into them, and God would have us do so. It has been said that we should be bold in the sphere of revelation, but never seek to encroach upon what is not revealed.
We may ask, Who went to the cross? It was Jesus, and in the beginning of Luke we read who He was, and the holy matter of the conception—“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee”. Then, “power of the Highest overshadow thee” would indicate the care and protection of the Holy Spirit while the Child was yet unborn.
How can a holy God forgive? The One who was born was sinless, and He, the sinless One, bore our sins. He derived nothing from Mary as to nature. What marvellous grace that He went to the cross for us!
Then, “the child grew” and “advanced ... in favour with God and men”, Luke 2: 40, 52. But He was rejected, and if the rights of God were to be maintained and there was to be blessing for us. He must go to Calvary’s cross. Mark divides the time on the cross. Jesus was crucified at the third hour (9 a.m.); at the sixth hour “there came darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” when “Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Those atoning sufferings of Christ were unique to Him; they were from the hand of a holy God. From the third hour to the sixth hour the Lord bore the martyr, or testimonial, sufferings. Peter writes that “Christ also has suffered for you, leaving you a model that ye should follow in his steps”, 1 Peter 2: 21. We can have part in the testimonial sufferings which for Christ had their culmination on the cross.
In the parable in Luke 10 the Samaritan is a figure of Christ, and the man who fell into the hands of robbers is a picture of the sinner, and Christ has saved us similarly. One thing the Samaritan did was to set the man on his own beast. The Lord Jesus, as anointed of God, bore those testimonial sufferings. He has given us the same power, in the Holy Spirit, to bear the sufferings of the testimony, as can be seen so beautifully in the case of the martyr Stephen.
He was “full of the Holy Spirit” and, when the Jews rejected him, in the spirit of his Master he said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. To think that the Lord Jesus has made the Holy Spirit available to us that we might share in His testimonial sufferings! It is wonderful!
By the eternal Spirit Christ offered Himself spotless to God (Hebrews 9: 14), which is typified in the offerings brought to the entrance of the tabernacle; but He was alone when He bore our sins in the darkness from the sixth hour to the ninth hour. From
the third hour to the sixth hour He suffered from the hands of men, but from the sixth hour to the ninth hour He suffered at the hand of God, and then He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He was forsaken of God as He undertook the work of atonement; those sufferings were unique to Himself and no one else could share them. In view of who He is in His Person there is what is inscrutable in His cry, “My God, my God”, and although God forsook Him on account of what He bore for us, it has been said that there was never a time, when He was so dear to the Father as on the cross2. Indeed, the infinite value of the Offering lay in what He was in His own Person.
Luke records that, having cried with a loud voice, Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”. He was a perfect Man, but unique in His manhood. He speaks of “my soul” and “my body”. Indeed, because of who He was, He was His own spirit, He was acting in those sufferings as Man in the power of His own love. In distinction from the loud cry, Luke records that He said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”. It was not a cry of suffering but, as Mr. Stoney said, He was ‘in conscious and restored favour’3. The three hours of darkness were finished; then He expired. Scripture does not support the use of the term ‘forsaken’ beyond the ninth hour, and yet there is something to be learned as to what followed. Think of the Lord in death and the grave, but having already said, according to John’s record, “It is finished” (when, as Mr. Raven said4, His work was complete for God); it was Jesus who was buried. Although there are at least three references to His body at the end of John 19, it says, ‘There therefore ... they laid Jesus’. We are buried with Him in baptism (Colossians 2: 12). Again, He went there in the power of His own love, but in resurrection He charged by the Holy Spirit the apostles whom He had chosen, as recorded in Acts 1. Jesus acted as Man by the Holy Spirit in resurrection.
Then as to His soul He could say prophetically, “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol”, Psalm 16: 10. Yet He said to the repentant malefactor, ‘Today shalt thou be with me in paradise’. As was said at the outset, this is a holy subject, and nothing of what has been remarked must be allowed to weaken the stupendous fact that to Him, as Mr. Darby said, ‘death was death’. Peter said that God, ‘loosed the pains of death, inasmuch as it was not possible that he should be held by its power’, Acts 2: 24.
It causes worship to think that He gives us the same power in the Holy Spirit to serve us in sharing in the martyr sufferings of the testimony. But He wrought atonement by Himself in the power of His own love—“having made by himself the purification of sins”, Hebrews 1: 3.
Then, as we have seen, before He went into death, communion was restored, and in resurrection Jesus acted as Man by the Holy Spirit—He charged by the Holy Spirit the apostles whom He had chosen. What a wonderful subject the sufferings of Christ are for our contemplation!
Cape Town
7 January 1988