Christ’s Sufferings
CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS
One desires to say a little, dear brethren, as to the sufferings of Christ referred to in these passages, conscious that much grace is needed to touch such a subject suitably. I begin with Hebrews 10, for it gives us a remarkable view of the Lord as coming in, as we often say now, on God’s side. As coming into the world He says, “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body. Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin. Then I said, Lo, I come ... to do, O God, thy will”. We cannot fail to be reminded of this every Lord’s day morning because of the allusion to His body, “thou hast prepared me a body”, and He comes in in that body in reference to the will of God. “I come ... to do, O God, thy will”. There is something very majestic when you take account of this language: “Lo, I come … to do, O God, thy will”. There was not another in heaven or earth who could possibly take up such language. It is not just a question of filling out the will of God in the detail of human life here day by day, although the Lord did fill that out perfectly. And we have to do so now, according to Romans 12, presenting our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is our intelligent service; and not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, proving what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. That is, we prove what the will of God is in the detail of our life, and we prove that it is good and acceptable and perfect.
But when the Lord, as coming into the world, said, “Lo, I come … to do, O God, thy will”, there was much more in His mind than that. It was the whole extent of God’s will which the Lord had in His heart. You have only to read the epistle to the Ephesians carefully to get some impression of the wide extent of what was involved in the will of God. You read that epistle and you find glorious things which God has purposed for those of the assembly, and all is according to the good pleasure of His will. But then, not only so but in that epistle you read of “the Father ... of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named”. God has a will in regard of every family.
John 14 shows us that there are many families. “In my Father’s house there are many abodes”, the Lord says. Heavenly and earthly families are of very wide extent, and God has a will in regard of them all. So as we begin to think of these things and what is yet going to be brought into display in the world to come, and what is yet going to be established in the new heavens and the new earth for eternity, we begin to get an impression of the wide extent of God’s will, as the Lord coming into the world says, “Lo, I come ... to do, O God, thy will”. Nothing could be established for God apart from redemption being accomplished, and nothing could be established for God apart from Christ taking up manhood condition. Of course, that was necessary in order to accomplish redemption; but I mean, there is not only the accomplishment of redemption, wonderful though that is, but there has been in the incarnation of Christ the bringing in of man of a wholly different order from the man that we are used to—the second Man out of heaven—and the saints of the assembly are of Him and, indeed, all those who have part in the different families that will have place in the universe of bliss will all derive in some degree or other from Christ in His glorious manhood. Hence, if you begin to think of these things you begin to see how wide is the thought of God’s will and how much was involved in the Lord coming in and saying, “Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”.
Now I think we will easily understand if we think of these matters soberly that no one but One of the Godhead Himself was equal to this. All this causes to shine before our hearts the greatness of the personal glory of Christ. “Thou hast prepared me a body ... Lo, I come”. There is all the wonder of the incarnation involved in these words because God’s thoughts were bound up with man; wisdom’s delights, we are told, were with the sons of men. So it was necessary that He should come in and inaugurate in Himself an order of manhood, holy, incorruptible, heavenly in character, vastly superior to the order of manhood represented in Adam, even before he sinned. Adam was never more than “of the earth, earthy”, 1 Cor 15: 47 KJV, but “the second man, out of heaven”. So, dear brethren, as we begin to think of these things, and of the Lord Jesus coming in on God’s behalf, you cannot help coming to it that the glory of His Person shines in it all. No one but One of the Godhead could possibly take in hand to compass, and to give effect to, all the will of God. So He says, “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body”—a body! What a wonderful moment it was when Jesus became incarnate! It really is what everything hinges on. Redemption is, indeed, the basis of everything; but everything for God and everything for us really hinges on the incarnation. “Thou hast prepared me a body ... Lo, I come”. And it was in order to do God’s will. We can thank God that He has laid help on One that is mighty; we can thank God that He has committed His will to One who has proved Himself equal to carrying it through from the very beginning to the very end in perfection—not a flaw anywhere, not a breakdown anywhere—and yet involving infinite testing, infinite sacrifice; as we shall see as we proceed. But this is the great thought that is before us now: “coming into the world he says … Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”.
So He says, “Above, saying Sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou willedst not, neither tookest pleasure in (which are offered according to the law); then he said, Lo, I come to do thy will. He takes away the first that he may establish the second”. He has taken away an order of things in which perfection could never be reached, in which finality could never be reached, because it was an order of things which connected itself with the first man; He has taken all that away that He might establish the second; the second is the will of God. “He takes away the first that he may establish the second”. Then He goes on to say, “by which will we have been sanctified”—set apart for God by that will—“through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”. How much there is thus, dear brethren, connected with the thought of the body! As we come to the Supper on the first day of the week, the first thing we think of is His body. The loaf is there before our eyes, as to which the Lord says, “This is my body, which is for you”—not simply “given for you”, but it is for us, it is for us to appropriate, to feed upon, and dwell upon: “This is my body; which is for you”. All these great thoughts that are brought in in this chapter are there, so to speak, available for us to dwell upon and feed upon, and the glory of Christ as the only One capable of effectuating God’s will in the vastness and glory of it must necessarily come before us. Therefore, as the Lord comes in, presenting Himself in His glory, the affections of the saints prepared for it as they begin to feed on these things, you can understand that a spirit of worship comes into expression at once; it is there. He could not come in in the glory of His Person, and we have something of these thoughts in our minds, without something of the spirit of worship being called forth. Therefore, that is one thing which the Lord looks for and which, I am sure, God takes pleasure in, that there should be this spirit of worship showing itself from the saints toward Christ, apprehended in the glory of His Person, before any question of our union with Him and our enjoyment of the love of Christ for the assembly and our part with Him comes in. All that will come in in due course, indeed, it is part of the will of God. God has said, “It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like”. It is all included in the will of God. The more you think about it the more you see how extensive the thought of God’s will is, and how gloriously Christ comes before our eyes as the only One capable of giving effect to it, coming in for that express purpose whatever it might entail for Him in the way of suffering and sacrifice.
So we are to be prepared for our view of Christ to be enlarged. We tend, when we are younger especially, to think of the Lord with reference to ourselves and the way He has met our need and presents Himself to our hearts’ affections. All that is right. But then, we are to be enlarged; the Father’s Spirit is available to us and the Father’s Spirit will not fail to open up before our hearts something of what the Father thinks of Christ. You may rest assured that the Father has not small thoughts of Christ, He has not poor thoughts of Christ; the Father has the whole thought of the good pleasure of His will before His mind, and you can understand how He would say to Peter, James and John on the holy mount, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. That is not simply the delight He found in Him as a Man here, but He has found and finds His delight in Him; the way He has committed Himself in incarnation and in death and resurrection to bringing into effect the whole extent of God’s will. He is capable of doing it! “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”. There was a great deal entrusted to Joseph in his day, but that was nothing compared with what has been committed to Christ to bring in. The administration committed into the hands of Christ! And the Father’s Spirit has a perfect appraisal of that, according to the Father’s own thoughts and feelings; and therefore it is a wonderful thing that the Father’s Spirit is prepared to operate in our hearts so as to bring us into line with the Father’s own thoughts and feelings in relation to Christ and the whole world of glory in all its extent and variety which He has set Himself to bring in.
Now before I refer to chapter 2, I would allude to the passages we have read in Matthew, feeling indeed that we need much grace to speak on such a subject, but the will of God necessitated the accomplishment of redemption; it necessitated that sin should be judged according to the standard of God’s own holiness; it necessitated that propitiation should be made for sins; it necessitated that the power of death should be broken. All these things were necessary if the will of God was to be brought in. Hence, when it comes to Gethsemane, and the Lord is nearing the end of His course, He knows full well that the will of God cannot be established apart from redemption being accomplished, apart from sin in the flesh being condemned, the wrath of God against sin being borne and exhausted, the penalty of death, too, being borne. It says in Hebrews that He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, by way of sacrifice; and as we draw near to the end of His pathway, as we have it in Matthew 26, the Lord is reaching the point of time when all this has to be accomplished. We are not to be light or casual as we read and think of these things. The three synoptic gospels all give us a different view of Gethsemane. John does not enlarge on Gethsemane although in chapter 12 he gives us what is the nearest approach to it in his gospel where he records the Lord as saying at one time, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour”. But He says, “But on account of this have I come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name”. What perfection there was, dear brethren, under the eye of God, when we take account of Jesus taking full cognisance of all that was involved for Him, and saying, ‘Shall I say, Father, save Me from this hour?’. No, He would not say that; He would say, “Father, glorify thy name”!
But when we come to Matthew’s account of it, and Mark’s account of it, and Luke’s account of it, in each in his own way it is gone into in greater detail. Perhaps Matthew’s account is the most detailed of all, and it says that “he began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed. Then he says to them, My soul is very sorrowful even unto death”. Think of these expressions, dear brethren!—sorrowful, deeply depressed—“My soul is very sorrowful even unto death ... And going forward a little he fell upon his face, praying and saying, My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”. He was not yet enduring the wrath of God, He was contemplating it as something that was just immediately before Him though not yet entered into, contemplating it as in communion with His Father, but contemplating it as also in the presence of Satan who was bringing to bear upon His spirit what was going to be involved for Him if He would unflinchingly go forward to the establishment of all God’s will. So He is in perfect liberty; He has liberty to say, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me”. It was morally right that He should feel it, morally right that His sensibilities should shrink from such a position as faced Him when He was to be made sin and bear the wrath of God against sin. I say, it was morally right that He should feel the dreadfulness of such a position; and, therefore, He is free to ask that “if it be possible” the cup might pass from Him; but, He says, “not as I will, but as thou wilt”. And in this, dear brethren, He was alone; not, in one sense, that He need to have been. When making atonement, of course, He had to be alone—no one could be with Him in that; here, He had invited His disciples to be with Him; there was no reason why they should not have been with Him in greater support than they were marked by.
So it only intensifies the sufferings of Christ that He finds them sleeping. “He comes to the disciples and finds them sleeping, and says to Peter, Thus ye have not been able to watch one hour with me?”. Peter! the very man who had said, “If I should needs die with thee, I will in no wise deny thee”. Yet, but an hour or two later, he is sleeping! That shows what we are capable of in extreme weakness and dreadful vacillation; so the Lord found no comfort in His disciples at this time. He sought for comforters, the psalm says, and found none. Then it says, “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”. You can see how the thought of God’s will is going right through; it is there filling out every exercise which He faces. “Not as I will, but as thou wilt”, He says. And now He says, “If this cannot pass from me unless I drink it, thy will be done”. Here we get perfection under trial, perfection in communion with God—not that any of us ever have such depth of trial as this, but at the same time it is the kind of experience that we might have, that is to say, this is not the experience of making atonement; this is an experience of facing the dreadfulness of what may be involved in the will of God for us. He faces it in communion with His Father, feeling things rightly—it would have been out of place if He had not—and yet, at the same time, everything is governed by, “not as I will, but as thou wilt”. So there is perfection, dear brethren!
It is referred to in Hebrews 5 where the apostle writing there 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 from the things which he suffered”. He was heard on account of His piety, even though He were Son, an allusion to the glory of the Person who was there, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. He was characterised by obedience; “not as I will”, He says, “but as thou wilt”. He learned obedience; not that He had to learn to be obedient, as we have to, but He learned obedience in the sense that as in Godhead glory He was in a condition to which obedience did not apply. You cannot apply the thought of obedience to God. But when He came into manhood condition, He entered into a condition to which obedience applied. So that He had come into new circumstances never known by Him before, and in those circumstances obedience applied; and He “learned obedience from the things which he suffered; and having been perfected, became to all them that obey him, author of eternal salvation”. You see the link there; He has learned obedience and gone through everything on that principle, and now He is able to become the Author of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him. If the will of God involves for any of us anything that is testing, the Lord can draw near and say, ‘I have been supremely tested in continuing on the path of obedience to God’s will, and therefore I can sustain you with My own sympathy because I know all about it; I have been tested in a supreme way that you never will experience’. Therefore I can encourage you that the only path for a believer is to be governed by the will of God, and in such a path you will find support.
So He was heard by Him who was able to save Him out of death—not save Him from death, but save Him out of it. He had to go the whole way under the wrath of God and into death itself; and then He was answered in resurrection, saved out of death. Thus He has qualified Himself to become the Author of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him.
Now in chapter 27 we come, of course, to that which is even more solemn than Gethsemane. It says, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour; but about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice”—no weakening—“cried out with a loud voice”. It is true that 2 Corinthians says that He was crucified in weakness, but that, I apprehend, refers only to the outward appearance of things. There was the outward appearance of weakness in a Man hanging on a cross; at the same time there was no weakness there. He cried out with a loud voice. Then again in verse 50, “Jesus, having again cried with a loud voice ... ”. He did not expire because He had no more strength left in Him, as we do when we die; it is a question of the Lord crying with a loud voice. He was moving in the energy and power of His own Person; first enduring the wrath of God, then going into death that the man that was sinful might for ever be put out of God’s sight in death and burial. But all was done in power. He cried with a loud voice. Now these are things for us to contemplate, dear brethren. It is not that one can enlarge upon them; if one attempted to do so one would be in danger of getting out of the range of what was holy and spiritual. At the same time we are to contemplate them; it is intended that we should; that we should not feel that just because we are safe for eternity through the precious death of Christ that, therefore, these things have been easily obtained, because they have not.
You remember in that affecting scripture in Genesis 22, where God said to Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac, and ... offer him up for a burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of”. So the father and the son went both together, and Abraham clave the wood and laid it on his son; the wood was laid upon the son, the wood which was to be used to kindle the fire by means of which the offering of Isaac was to ascend to God. Then it says that Abraham carried the fire and the knife and they went both of them together. Are these details given us for nothing, dear brethren? You do not get these details worked out, so to speak, in the teaching, in the doctrine of Christianity; we are allowed to see these things in typical form in order to fill them in, not in any sentimental way, in a real way by the Spirit, to get some sense of what the feelings of the father were as they journeyed. On the third day they saw the place afar off. So the matter was not completed in a moment by any means. And as they went along that journey the father was carrying the fire, and the knife. Think of the father’s feelings in regard of his son, his only son whom he loved, to think that every step brought him nearer to the point where he was to thrust that knife into his only beloved son! Think of his feelings! And think of the feelings of Isaac! There was no resentment, no hesitation; they went both of them together. That wonderful incident is given, as I have no doubt, in order to enable us to get some kind of impression by the Spirit of what was involved for the Father, on the one hand, and for the Son on the other, in this wonderful accomplishment of redemption.
So we get certain scriptures which throw light upon the matter. We get, for instance, in Romans 8, “What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son, in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh” (v 3); there was the positive condemnation of it. All that God is in His holy nature against sin was poured out upon One who had been made sin. So we read in 2 Corinthians 5, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, v 21. Have you ever thought what it meant to Christ to be made sin? It is a mystery, I quite admit. I do not pretend to explain it; but have you ever thought what it meant to Christ to be made sin? To be absolutely identified personally with that terrible thing, sin, which was so absolutely abhorrent to Himself, that He should be identified with it in the most absolute way; and then, as thus identified with it, to bear without any mitigation the wrath of God against it. So all that God is against sin was poured out without any mitigation upon the head of Christ.
Now that is what we have here. It says, “there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour; but about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying ... My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. In Psalm 22, as you no doubt remember—it is most affecting—the Lord refers to others; He said, they “confided in thee … and thou didst deliver them”. But He says, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”. He was not delivered at that moment, He was not delivered until the whole matter was completed, until God had been vindicated in His holiness by the relentless (if one might use that expression) condemnation and judgment of sin; and then, until the man that was sinful had been for ever put out of God’s sight in the death and burial of Jesus. Three hours of darkness, three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; the Son of man must be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth—a perfect expression of what was needed if the man that was sinful should be removed for ever from God’s sight.
So we are to think of these things, dear brethren, because all this was involved in Christ coming to do God’s will, coming in on God’s side. Wonderful thing! Think of God committing Himself to One that is mighty! Think of the wide extent of God’s will, the gravity of the issues that were involved, and One coming in great enough to meet them all and establish God’s glory for ever! Eternity will be needed to display the wonderful results of the atoning and redemptive work of Christ; it will take all eternity to display it. But we can see the wonderful foundation, we can see how the glory of Christ stands out that we might be brought, through wondrous grace, into the position of His brethren, as He says, “I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. So the Lord stands out in personal pre-eminence which eclipses everybody else for the time being, and yet we are brought in alongside of Him!
So, when we come to Hebrews 2, it says, “we see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels”, referring to His taking up manhood condition, because outwardly men are much inferior to angels as a creation, though in new creation, of course, men in Christ are much more exalted than angels. But it says, “we see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death”—the suffering of it, the Spirit of God is speaking of suffering—“crowned with glory and honour; so that by the grace of God he should taste death for every thing”. Now we have this remarkable verse, “For it became him”, that is, God; it was becoming, it was suitable, it was morally right—that is the idea. “It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory”—He is bringing many sons to glory, we are among them, we are being brought to glory. We anticipate that in assembly, we get some impression as with Christ of the shining out of divine glory, and we are at home there, too, perfectly at home there. But God is bringing many sons to glory; glory is the outshining of all that God is, in so far as He may be known by the creature, all that He is in His nature. So, as one was saying this afternoon, in regard of the epistle to the Ephesians, an epistle worth going over and over again, you get wondrous features of divine glory touched on in Ephesians. You get, for instance, His great love, the riches of His mercy, the exceeding riches of His grace, and the glory of it, the surpassing greatness of His power, the all-varied character of His wisdom. All these features of divine glory come before us in Ephesians, and the idea is that we should become familiar with them so that we are able to bring these things in in a suitable way in our response to God in assembly. It is not just a question of what God is to us, and the favour in which He has placed us; but it is a question of God Himself being known, so that we can celebrate Him.
So it says here, “it became him”, that is, God, “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings”. The idea of being made perfect is that He has reached His present position in which He is seen as the Leader of our salvation, the One who has gone before and sets out in Himself what we are going to be brought to, He has reached that position through sufferings. That is to say, it is befitting that there should be this remarkable expression of how far God has gone in Christ in suffering, so that there should be depth of appreciation in our hearts of what God is in His blessedness. “It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings”.
Now it says, “For both he that sanctifies and those sanctified are all of one”—not all one, but all of one, all of the same stock; we are born of God, for one thing, and we partake by the Spirit in the life of Christ as the glorious Man. Moreover, we are all the subjects of the work of God, and what God works in the saints is of Christ and nothing else. So that we are “all of one”, really all of God, you might say, or all of Christ, which ever you like to say; but we are “all of one”, and therefore it says, “He is not ashamed to call them brethren”. How good that is, beloved brethren, to be with Christ in the consciousness that He is not ashamed of us, has no occasion to be ashamed of us, because we are there as entirely the result of the work of God. Nothing there that is not of Christ! One has often thought of the woman; God had said, “I will make him”, that is, the man, “a helpmate, his like”, and He took a rib from the side of the man, having caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and closed up flesh instead thereof, and built a woman. Built—it was a matter which took time, it is going on now through the work of the ministry; the edifying, it says, that is, the building, of the body of Christ. So He built a woman and brought her to the Man. One has often pictured it in one’s own mind, the woman brought by God to the man, and how the man would look at the woman and he would say, ‘Well, there she is; she has her own beauty, she has her own affections, she has her own intelligence; and yet there is nothing in her at all that has not come out of me’. You can understand how his heart would exult in the thought that now he had a companion provided by God, entirely worthy of him. And that is exactly what it is now with us, dear brethren, that the Lord is not ashamed to call us brethren, because we are all of one. So it says, “for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”.
Well, that is all one had in mind, beloved brethren, that we might touch something of the glory of these things to which we have been called, and that we might get a deeper sense of the depths of suffering, involving suffering for God and suffering for Christ, by means of which we have been brought in. God intends that we should be marked by depth. You remember in Proverbs 8 it says, “when there were no depths”; there was a time when there were no depths, but that cannot be said now. Depths have come in, Christ has been down into the depths, so there is depth now—breadth and length, it says, and depth and height—and we are to be made familiar with it. May the Lord bless the word to us, for His Name’s sake!
CROYDON
23rd June 1962
From Ministry of the Word, 1968
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