The Sufferings Of Christ
THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
These scriptures speak of the sufferings of Christ. Much grace is needed in speaking of such a theme because it is a holy matter and also an affecting matter. So I began where we can all begin, that is, in relation to our sins. Peter says, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”. How much that statement means to all of us who are forgiven, that our sins were borne in Christ’s body on the tree! That body was not a body like ours in which we have committed sins. Christ’s body was holy, spotless, inherently pure, nothing corrupt in it, never used for any other purpose than the will of God; it was unique. The members of His body were all used for the divine will and pleasure, whether it be the feet treading the path of the will of God in a suffering way, accustomed to the hardships of human life into which He came; whether it be the hands that ministered, hands lifted up to serve His God as no other hands had been lifted up. No hands like that had been lifted up in the temple in service to God before, holy hands, intrinsically holy, hands which ministered to humanity, which freely touched persons in their diseases and served them. No hands had ever ministered to men like that before. Hands had been employed by priests, by Moses, Aaron, David; but never were hands employed in relieving and blessing men like the hands of Jesus. What a touch He gave—not ruthless touches! The only time we see Him ruthless was when His holy jealousy rose in relation to the house of God, because men had turned it into a den of thieves. His hands made a scourge of cords and drove out the sheep and the oxen. But those hands were employed in ministering to men. Lips that spoke too; never an unguarded word came out of those lips. Never did His eye rest on an unholy object; He came in contact with unholiness but it never defiled Him, His eye never looked towards an unholy object. Alas, ours have! His voice was never used in any unholy purpose, every word sanctified, every word holy, pure. What delight God had in that Person and in that body used sacrificially, devotedly, wholly for His pleasure, for His will, for His service, for His ministry to men!
Yet in that body our sins were borne. The sufferings of Christ are not a myth; they are not an artificial subject, they are a real subject. Our sins were a real thing to Christ on the tree, in that ignominious position, and our sins were borne in His body. What means were required, dear brethren, for removal of our sins! He bore them on the tree, every one of them! Think of all our sins borne in the body of Jesus on the tree! How lightly we think of forgiveness, how lightly we think of sins, how lightly we commit them! Yet every sin committed by believers was borne by Jesus. Unbelievers’ sins are not borne in Christ’s body on the tree. Propitiation has been made for the sins of all, and on the basis of that God can offer forgiveness to all, but the sins of believers were borne by Christ on the tree—this is substitution. How astounding! How amazing! What a dreadful thing they were—our sins, our guilt—that such means should have to be resorted to in such a glorious and holy Person as Jesus, that they should be borne in His body on the tree in order that they might be removed and the judgment due to them exhausted. Every one of our sins Jesus felt, every one was borne in His body on the tree. How it would make us loathe sins! How careful it would make us in the exercise of our own will! How our affections would be drawn out to Christ! What cause there is to love Him—love Him much, as the woman in Luke 7. She was forgiven much and she loved much. Her sins were borne in the body of Jesus on the tree; she understood the basis of what it cost that forgiveness should come to her from God in relation to her guilt and sins, the means that had to be resorted to in divine arrangement that her sins should be borne in Christ’s body on the tree for their removal. What grace led Him to the cross!
We cannot enter into the holy shrinkings of Jesus. Would that we understood Gethsemane a little more and all He faced there as He approached that moment of Calvary’s woe and sufferings in which that transaction was about to take place! How He could say, “Father, save me from this hour”. He was to take on Himself the loathsome thing, sins, and yet He took them on and bore our sins in His body on the tree. We shall never have to bear them. We shall never have to come eternally under the weight and the judgment and the awfulness of our sins. What it meant to Christ, that holy Person, in His body, in His feelings! Every sensibility He had was pure and holy. He shrank from sins, and yet He took my sins on, bore them in His body on the tree in order that they might be removed and that we might be forgiven.
Now I refer to Isaiah, which links with this passage. I suppose the Spirit of God used Isaiah 53 in the epistle of Peter. We have another thing brought forward in Isaiah: “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way”. What a multitude of ways are represented here. We had all taken our own way. He never took His own way; He was the only One who had a right to take His own way because of who He was in His Person, but in the dependence and subjection of manhood He went God’s way. He never went astray, never once in that life, whether early or advanced, whether in private life or home life or ministry. What a life that was for God, treasured up for God! It was a life spotless, pure and blameless, a life that never went astray, whatever the circumstances were—and they were never rosy, but were always hard and difficult and led through the way of suffering—yet He never went His own way. Alas, every one of us has gone our own way. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”. That is responsibility; you cannot evade it, I cannot evade it. We have turned every one to his own way; the element of responsibility is in that verse and no one can exclude themselves from it. Yet He never went His own way. He said, “Not my will but thine be done”, Luke 22: 42. Every morning He received the divine word as to the way He should go, the way mapped out for Him in the divine mind and will for every day, yet in His Person, God. What an adorable mystery that He was God here in the form of a Man, as Man in the way of dependence, waiting on God for guidance in the way He should go! Yet we have turned every one to our own way.
What has happened? “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. What a load! Can any of us tell how many times we went astray? It is a characteristic thing for us to go astray, to love our will, to do what we like and love to do what we like and refuse to do what God wills. Yet we have Jesus who always did what God willed and brought His way in absolute submission to the will of God and guidance of God. What a load He bore, dear brethren! What strength of endurance, what might there was in Jesus to bear the iniquity of us all! What grace, what submission, what love to God’s will that He should be there to do that, to bear the iniquity of us all! What we owe to Christ! What we owe to God for giving Christ, but what we owe to Christ for what He has done! Let us never belittle what He has done. It is never out of place, wherever it is spoken of, to speak of what Christ has done. We should have liberty to speak about it anywhere and everywhere, and, if so employed by the Spirit, to speak about it in the service of God. I am speaking about doing our own will, and the iniquity of us all laid on Christ, Jehovah laying it upon Him. What submission there was with Him as He accepted it from God! What He has done for us, dear brethren! Do we not love Him? Do not our hearts surge up in love to Christ at this very moment as the Spirit of God bears in on our consciences and hearts what Christ has done for us? He bore our sins in His own body, a body in which no ill or sin or iniquity was ever taken on save on the cross, and yet He took our sins on His body. “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. What power, what might in the Saviour to sustain it! Could anyone else in the universe sustain it? No one; not angelic beings with their might and strength, which is communicated. But the power was there in Christ to bear our iniquity that Jehovah laid upon Him. All the enormity of the iniquity was laid upon Jesus. He was there vicariously. Perhaps someone says, What does this mean? It means simply that He was there for you and me; otherwise He would not have been there at all. There was nothing to take Him there in Himself, but He was there for you and for me. “Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of us all”—all of us in this room, and all the ransomed host—think of the magnitude of it! Think of the immensity and immeasurableness of it! His work is as inscrutable as His Person, blessed be His Name! Our hearts rise in thanksgiving at this very time for what He has done for us.
Now I refer to something worse in Ezekiel, and it links with the passage in Corinthians. Ezekiel is the nearest type we have to Christ in His vicarious sufferings—a remarkable type, a remarkable man, remarkably endued with grace and power to become a type of Christ in His vicarious work. There are other types of Christ personally, such as David, and in the inauguration of things we have Moses in relation to authority; but Ezekiel is a type of Christ in His vicarious work. He lies on his side three hundred and ninety days and then turns over and lies on his other side forty days—beyond human endurance! To lie three hundred and ninety days on one side and not move, bands on him, and to eat his bread by measure, drink his water by measure, and bake his bread in the dung that comes from man (which was mitigated). It means that Christ appropriated my sinful condition when He was made sin by God on the cross. Can we think what that means, as we think of that holy One, Jesus, intrinsically holy? Never did an unholy thought enter His mind, no unholy motive; He shrank from sin, He loved what was good and hated what was evil—the only One who did. If we do it, it is because we are of His order and because of the Spirit’s work in us, but He inherently loved what was good and hated what was evil; He shrank from evil, hated sin, it was abhorrent to Him. Yet on the cross He appropriated our sinful condition. We cannot understand it. It is as inscrutable as His Person! May the sufferings of Christ in their immensity penetrate into our souls in their awfulness, for they were awful. They were awful because He was under the judgment of God—infinitely awful! They could never have been more awful than they were to Him because of what He was in His Person and what He was as Man in His intrinsic holiness and purity. Yet on the cross sin was dealt with to the divine satisfaction and glory. He appropriated what I was, my sinfulness—my every aspiration sinful, every movement of my body and mind and motive and soul inherently sinful as of the flesh—yet He appropriated it! What it meant to Him! Well might He say, “thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, Ps 22: 3. Why? Because at that time He was appropriating what I was, making it His own, shrinking from it as absolutely abhorrent to Him, yet appropriating it, or I would never be blessed. Calvary’s cross was a reality, a tremendous thing to Christ, the greatest thing in the universe that a Person who is divine, and who in manhood was intrinsically holy, should appropriate what I was in my sinfulness—what Scripture calls “sinful flesh”. God hated it; Christ took on what God hated. O, what a Saviour He is! Does it not touch our hearts? Does this not have its repercussion in the service of God, in our testimony and in our lives practically as we meditate on it, the enormity of Christ’s appropriating, making His own, what I was?
It is said in Corinthians that God made Him that, He was made sin, but according to Ezekiel He appropriated it, what I was in my sinfulness, with no spark of goodness anywhere in me. Christ appropriated that and made it His own, and God dealt with what I was in Christ, as if He were dealing with me. What amazing grace of God and amazing grace of Christ that He should take that place vicariously, that He should remove what I was, the awful thing—sin—that this should be dealt with before God, His holy requirements met, His throne of majesty met! Instead of God’s judgment resting for ever on me in the lake of fire, God’s eternal favour rests on me. For Ezekiel there was mitigation, but no mitigation for Jesus. He did not ask for it, for if there was mitigation the thing would not have been done in its totality. He went through the thing in all its awfulness, in all its unutterable woe. What it meant to His holy soul, what strength there was, what might there was in Him! But He did not succumb. The whole matter was settled in three hours. What those hours were of awful anguish, the awfulness of abandonment of One who had always known nearness and favour! O, the mystery of redemption, that the One whom God loved, the anointed One, the supreme One, should be abandoned! Why? The great question of sin that had intruded in God’s universe—He was made that. Jesus was made the thing, “that we might become God’s righteousness in him”. What means were resorted to, to deal with these tremendous matters, that you and I were involved in!
Now I refer to John’s gospel. No one is more delightful than Jesus. Whatever He is He is delightful. He is delightful now in heaven, delightful in the assembly, He will be delightful in Israel, He will be delightful among the nations, and He is delightful in our hearts. But in John how delightful He is! How much hatred He experienced in John’s gospel, then most bitter of all, I suppose; there was no one more bitter than the Jew, no one more contemptuous, no one more zealous for what is ceremonial. They were always at Jesus in John’s gospel, always venting their hatred upon Him. Why? Because the Father loved Him; we love Him because the Father loves Him, and we should never love Him if the Father had not taught us to love Him. The Father will teach us how to love Him too, if we ask Him and if we desire to. The Father will teach us how to love Christ and help us to love Him more and help us that He should be the Object of our life, of our affections, of our interests, of our all! The Father will never be satisfied until He accomplishes that in you and me; and He will never be satisfied till He is supreme in the universe, as He is now to faith.
So we come to John 19. How richly we are provided in the four gospels with substance in relation to the death of Christ! John is unique in his presentation of Christ in His death. He does not treat of the abandonment; he treats us of the glory of the Person and His advancement to death. No one ever advanced to death before. Death had taken everyone, but in John’s gospel we have One who advances to death. Death was abhorrent to God, because it is His judgment upon sin and because it separates from Him. But here is a glorious Person advancing to meet death, like the ark entering the Jordan, that dreadful foe! All the arrangements were in His hands; not in the hands of death, nor in the hands of the one who had the power of death, but in His own hands—moving forward to meet death, but first thinking of His disciples, sheltering them from the storm which He was about to face, carefully allotting them to safety, then, standing before Pilate in His personal dignity—what a sight! Will Pilate ever forget it? He never will; through all eternity it will haunt his soul that he had that blessed Man before him in all His loveliness and glory, the expression of the truth, and he never took advantage of it! Here Christ is, conducting His own arrangements, carrying His cross. O, the might and glory of the Son of God, moving forward into death! O, the calm tranquillity of His holy mind and soul, giving His mother to John, arranging for her safety in the house of John, the disciple whom He loved, then giving up His spirit, no one taking His life from Him but laying it down of Himself. The Prince of life and glory died on the cross. The soldier pierced His side and forthwith came there out blood and water. What blood that was! Well might Peter say it is precious! Well might we say it is precious—blood to cleanse us who are vile, blood to cleanse the universe—what blood that was! Hebrews tells us that He went in “with his own blood” (chap 9: 12)—that Person with His own blood gone in to God. The whole moral universe rests on this basis, the precious blood of Christ. The water in its cleansing efficacy, too. Have we applied the water today? We need it, its cleansing power, we need it every day. Where has the water come from? It has come from the side of a dead Christ, One who sacrificially laid down His life and went into death, and out of that dead Christ flowed the blood and the water. What a Person He is!
The foundation of our blessing was laid in the work of Christ; the foundation of God’s moral universe was laid in the work and blood shedding of Christ. Everything has not come yet into the full value of that blood, but as believers we have; we have come into the value of that shed blood. We can approach God, cleansed worshippers, to serve the living God. The basis of our entering the holiest is by the blood of Christ. Every time we approach God we are reminded of the efficacy and preciousness of the blood of Christ; and the whole moral universe will yet come into the application of the blood of Christ—a cleansed universe, nothing unclean, no sin anywhere—all because of the wondrous work of this glorious Person! It is intended to affect our hearts, attach us to Him, intended that we should shrink from sin and be kept pure and available to God in His will and service, and to serve Him in liberty and power, and to love our Saviour more day by day. May it be so, for His Name’s sake!
Croydon
18th May 1959
From ‘Words of Grace & Comfort’ 1960
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