THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
I desire by the help of the Holy Spirit to say a little as to the sufferings of Christ. There were many kinds of sufferings which the Lord went through, and it is intended that we should be able to distinguish them and feed our affections, as well as our spiritual intelligence, by the contemplation, as the Scriptures present them to us, of the various kinds of sufferings that have been gone through by the Lord Jesus Christ. We all understand that in His atoning sufferings no one else could be with Him, but they have a certain very important instructional bearing upon ourselves, because, as we see in the cross the way that sin has been unsparingly judged by God, that judgment having been sustained and exhausted by Christ, it becomes a means which the Spirit uses in our souls to bring us to judge evil. We shall never come into judgment ourselves, but we have to come into accord with God’s judgment of evil. Indeed, I believe that what God has in mind in taking us up in His grace is to bring men (for we are men, and it is men that God is engaged with in His gracious thoughts of blessing) morally into accord with Himself in every way. What is in keeping with His own nature and feelings has found perfect expression in Christ, and that is to become formative in us. God would attract us by what is shining out in a Man, as it says in the prophet Hosea, “I drew them with bands of a man, with cords of love”. He makes a Man attractive, and, under the influence and attractiveness of what is shining in Christ, we ourselves are to be formed in keeping with what is expressed in Him.
The verse in 2 Corinthians in a few words expresses what is really stupendous in a moral sense. I doubt whether any creature mind, even as helped by the Holy Spirit, will ever be able fully to compass what is involved in that verse. So the Spirit of God, who is God Himself, having divine feelings, is given to us in order that we might be able, in the full measure which is open to creatures, to compass the great things which God presents to us in Christ. We read here that Him who knew not sin God has made sin for us. “Who knew not sin” is a very strong expression. It is not only that He did no sin; we have that in Scripture in the first epistle of Peter. It is not only “in him sin is not”, which we have also in Scripture; but it is here, “Him who knew not sin”. There was no point of affinity at all between Christ and sin; He was essentially and always holy in His Person and thoughts and feelings; in all that marked Him He was holy. The word of the angel to Mary was, “the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”. The Lord as here had the consciousness of His own holiness and speaks of Himself as “thy holy one”, and Peter too, as drawn to Christ, confesses Him in this way: “we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”.
What can we say about this statement—“him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”? It is not simply that our sins were laid upon Him, but that He Himself was made sin—the thing itself, so that it might be judged before God in Another, in One who was capable of sustaining the judgment; One who, in divine sensibilities and holy feelings, understood fully all that sin was in its dreadful offensiveness to God and in its character as treason in the moral universe. It is a question of the will of the creature against the will of God, and if that were allowed to pass there would be an end of all security in the universe of God. So there must be the judgment of it; God’s nature, too, requires that it should be repudiated absolutely and dealt with unsparingly, and that has all been borne by Christ. In the Lord Jesus being made sin, He has been fully identified with all that sin is in the sight of God. In Himself He was able to assess perfectly the enormity of sin; all its moral offensiveness to God and all the horribleness of it in His sight, and as thus being fully with God in the measure of judgment called for, He then, by the eternal Spirit, offered Himself spotless to God, being prepared to receive and exhaust all the judgment that was due to sin.
Whatever words we may use, they will fall far short of conveying the greatness of these sufferings, but they are placed on record in order that we might seek by the Spirit’s help to ponder over them; what it means that Christ should have been made sin, He who knew no sin. It was absolutely revolting to Him, and yet He was made sin—what devotedness to God and to us lay behind that! The whole thing was brought to an end through One who was able fully to be with God in relation to what sin is in His sight, and then able to sustain and exhaust the judgment in Himself. That is the way God has taken, and no human mind can ever compass it. God has dealt with sin in this absolute way that we, who were involved in sin, might become God’s righteousness in Him. Sin was absolutely judged in the Person of Christ on the cross, and He was there on our account. He was made sin in order that it might be judged completely, and God’s nature of holy love was expressed in that at the point where sin was judged redemption was accomplished, and God was thus set free to come out in blessing to those who were in His mind.
All that involved for Christ the forsaking of God; it meant for Him the absolute abandonment of God, when He was made sin on the cross. It was in the three hours of darkness that all this was accomplished. It was three hours, which is intended to impress us with the intensity of the matter. It will only take the twinkling of an eye for the Lord to raise the sleeping saints and change those who are alive, but this was done in no twinkling of an eye. It was not one hour, nor two hours, but three, and the whole matter was taken up by Christ before God, and all the judgment due to sin which God’s holy nature required was poured out upon the head of our Lord Jesus Christ. All was sustained by Him; there was no breakdown, but the complete acceptance and bearing of it in His own soul as He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit without spot to God.
The answer to it all is that God can now in righteousness set us before His face in Christ; redemption has been accomplished, offences borne and sin condemned, and God has given us the Holy Spirit and set us up before Him. There is in Christ the wonderful display of God’s righteousness, as it says, “that we might become God’s righteousness in him”. We are essential to the display of God’s righteousness in glory; Christ was essential to God’s judgment of sin, but we are essential to the display in glory of God’s righteousness in setting us up before Him in Christ.
All that has been said alludes to a character of suffering in which we can have no part—it alludes to the abandonment of Christ when the unclouded favour of God, which the Lord Jesus had enjoyed without interruption in every moment of His life, was withdrawn, and in its place there was the pouring out of God’s judgment. That was something unique to Christ; no one else could share in those sufferings. He has done the entire work Himself and His own glory has shone out in doing it, as we read in the first chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, “having made by himself the purification of sins, set himself down on the right hand of the greatness on high”. But although none of us can ever have any part in the atoning sufferings of Christ, those sufferings are intended to affect us greatly, and as we contemplate them we are intended to have a sober sense of what sin is in the sight of God, so that we come to the same judgment of it as God has, the Spirit enabling us to do that. The love of Christ, which led Him to take that place and sustain the whole judgment of God, becomes a lever in our souls to enable us to come to a divine judgment of sin and to maintain it in the Spirit’s power.
But if there were the atoning sufferings of Christ in which no one could share in the slightest degree, there were also the sufferings of Christ in which others may have a part, and in which, in different relations, His own holy perfection as Man shone out. This twenty-second Psalm, which commences with an allusion to Christ as enduring the atoning sufferings, goes on to speak of other kinds of suffering. The Psalm commences, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou far from my salvation, from the words of my groaning?” This is the only time on record that the Lord Jesus addressed God as “My God”. He always addressed Him as Father, suggesting the unbroken communion and holy affection that marked His relations with God His Father, but on the cross those relations were broken and so He says, “My God, my God”. But then the Psalm proceeds to delineate His experience of suffering which came upon Him at the hands of men. These were before the three hours of darkness on the cross, which were from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, but from the third hour until the sixth hour there was another character of suffering; sufferings which were sustained in unbroken communion with God.
The entire unselfishness of the Lord Jesus was proved in every kind of suffering that man’s wickedness and Satan’s hatred could devise. In order that there might be peace and blessing for us, that blessed One, as coming into this scene, was devoted to carrying through to completion the will of His God. All through His pathway, from the time He entered upon it after His baptism and His being anointed by the Holy Spirit, Satan by one means and another had sought to divert Him. There was the temptation in the wilderness after which it is said, “And the devil, having completed every temptation, departed from him for a time”. The enemy had been vanquished as he sought to divert the Lord by what was seductive; he was completely overcome by One who remained steadfastly guided by every word which goes out through God’s mouth. Then throughout His pathway there were attacks, as we see especially in the hatred of those who were opposed and those who sought to catch Him in His words. But at the end Satan returns, not now attacking in a seductive way, but in violence intending to crush and break down, and that character of opposition is now brought to bear upon the Lord Jesus. So we have here that which suggests His holy sensitiveness, as it says, “All they that see me laugh me to scorn”. The psalm gives us His holy feelings, the feelings of holy manhood in the presence of that which was most revolting on the part of men. It is what His holy soul felt in the presence of unrestrained evil. It is not the judgment of God; that was to come later, but what One like Jesus suffered in the presence of that which was most testing. “All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head”. He had said that His trust was in God, and now they say, “Commit it to Jehovah—let him rescue him; let him deliver him, because he delighteth in him!” Satan knew well when to time this character of attack. The Lord had always stated that He trusted in God; God was always His God, but now a point had arrived when to all appearances God was not hearing Him. That is what He says here, “Our fathers confided in thee; they confided and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered; they confided in thee, and were not confounded”. But to all appearances God was not answering Christ, and that was the test Satan brought to bear upon Him through those who taunted Him. They say, “Commit it to Jehovah—let him rescue him; let him deliver him, because he delighteth in him!” It only called forth His perfect obedience, in the presence of that which must have been such a grief to His spirit, and that which called God in question too. The Lord had always avowed His confidence in God, and now they are calling in question God on the one hand and His avowed confidence in God on the other. But what does it bring out? It goes on to say, “But thou art he that took me out of the womb; thou art my God from my mother’s belly”. It only brought out a fresh expression of His unflinching confidence in God. It is perfection in manhood. There is no greater human glory than that of complete confidence in God. Man is not intended to be self-sufficient, but to be dependent on God; one of man’s greatest glories is trust in God. Here is a Man, God’s Man, God’s Christ, tempted, taunted and tried in every way, but it only brings out the perfection of His unwavering confidence in the blessed God.
So we read on: “Many bulls have encompassed me; Bashan’s strong ones have beset me round. They gape upon me with their mouth, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water”. Then again, “For dogs have encompassed me, an assembly of evil-doers have surrounded me; they pierced my hands and my feet”. It is the unfeeling-ness of man. “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture”. These are not atoning sufferings, but the sufferings of perfect manhood, the holy, right sensibilities that have been expressed in the midst of evil and every kind of opposition. We have to pass through a world where evil abounds and where we constantly are tested by its presence, but what must it have meant to the Lord Jesus when this mountain of evil was brought to bear upon Him in these closing hours! But it only brought out that He was without spot; it only showed the perfection of His obedience and confidence in God, and after those first three hours of suffering on the cross He could offer Himself spotless to God, the severity of the testing only bringing out His absolute and unblemished spotlessness.
In Hebrews we come to another aspect of suffering, although it is closely allied to what we have already considered. These sufferings alluded to in Hebrews are those in which obedience was learned by Christ, and which have qualified Him to be High Priest to His saints; so that they may be sustained in a contrary scene in view of the service of God, because the saints of God are passing through a world in which there is much to test. The ordinary circumstances of life are often testing; then the opposition that comes upon the saints because they are saints is testing, and Satan uses every form of pressure that comes upon God’s people to try to hinder them and perhaps disqualify them in relation to the service of God.
The thought of Christ being Priest is that He might support His people in the service of God, and to that end He has learned obedience by the things He has suffered. It has often been said that He did not need to learn to be obedient. We have to learn to be obedient, learn to surrender our own wills and come into subjection to the will of God. But this was not so with the Lord. But He learned obedience, for when He was in the form of God obedience did not apply to Him. God does not have to obey, and when the Lord was in the form of God obedience did not attach to Him, but as He became Man He entered in grace upon a new condition and new experiences to which obedience applied, and in those experiences He learned obedience.
Having become Man He would fill out in the perfection of obedience what was proper to manhood. Nor were the conditions into which the Lord entered such as made obedience easy, or which would be in any way attractive to the natural man. We might, perhaps, be inclined to say that if our circumstances were less testing we could be subject to God’s will.
But what was the character of the circumstances and the testing into which the Lord Jesus entered as Man? We have it recorded in Luke that there was no room in the inn; we read too of His being laid in a manger, and later on He says that the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. Those were the conditions into which the Lord Jesus entered. He was brought up too at Nazareth, which was not the most attractive part of the land of Israel; and so we go on to the end of His pathway, for I have no doubt that this passage in Hebrews alludes peculiarly to Gethsemane. It says, “Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was able to save him out of death, with strong crying and tears ... though he were Son, he learned obedience”. In Gethsemane the Lord was not forsaken, but in communion with God, facing all it would mean to be forsaken. If he were to carry through God’s will to completion and have us in the presence of God, it was essential that He should face this. It was right, of course, that He should feel the evil and that He should shrink from being made sin. It was right that He should say, “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, but not as I will but as thou wilt”. There was perfect devotion to the holy will of God, but a holy shrinking from that dreadful thing, sin; and then as identified with it and made sin, He bears the judgment of it on the cross. So He says, “not my will, but thine be done”. He prayed three times, which would suggest the intensity of the matter or the complete presentation of it. Two would be adequate testimony, but three is the complete presentation of the thing. There were three hours of darkness on the cross and He prayed three times.
According to the account in Matthew “He fell upon his face, praying and saying, My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; but not as I will but as thou wilt”; and then “again going away a second time he prayed saying, My Father, if this cannot pass from me unless I drink it, thy will be done”, and finally “And leaving them he went away again and prayed the third time, saying the same thing”. We are told in Luke that His sweat became as great drops of blood falling down upon the earth. All this, I repeat, was not the forsaking but the feeling in His spirit beforehand, and in communion with God, what it would mean to go through to the completion of God’s will. In Luke an angel appeared from heaven strengthening Him. So the matter is completed; He is triumphant, not overcome, but goes forward and, according to John’s gospel, receives the cup saying, “The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?” He goes forward and receives the cup from the Father’s hand, being absolutely victorious. He is never overcome, but going forward on the principle of obedience He is victorious. This is something, dear brethren, that can apply to us, for obedience is proper to the believer. Not that we should ever have to face the same depths of testing and anguish that the Lord Jesus faced in Gethsemane. What He faced was the cost to Him of going forward in obedience to the will of God and carrying through whatever that will required in order that the way of peace and salvation might be opened for us, but we may now go through to the end in confidence in God. The Lord having learned obedience learned the principle on which man should move; He learned that principle by the things which He suffered, and He is now able to sustain us as we move on that principle. It says, “though he were Son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered; and having been perfected, became to all them that obey him author of eternal salvation”. Being perfected refers to His being established in the presence of God to sustain His saints here, and the moral link between Him and us lies in obedience. He learned obedience, and now when we are tested He can draw near and say, ‘I have been tested and I went through perfectly on the principle of obedience, and I am prepared to sustain you on the same principle’. So He “became to all them that obey him author of eternal salvation; addressed by God as high priest”. This has in mind that we can be sustained in liberty of spirit to serve God and are not overcome. Whatever arises we are preserved in liberty of spirit to serve the blessed God. So long as I am rebellious, I get no gain from the priesthood of Christ, but the advocacy of Christ operates to bring me to judge myself and bring me back into the pathway of obedience. It is obedient persons who get the gain of the priesthood of Christ. His service as Priest does not mean necessarily that my circumstances will be changed, but I am sustained in them, and can go forward in relation to God’s will and service in unbroken confidence in Him.
May the Lord help us to think of these things and profit by them for His Name’s sake!
LONDONDERRY
September 1950
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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