In the first place, we have to distinguish His sufferings from man and His sufferings from God. Their cause, and the result of them, are equally contrasted. Christ did, we know, suffer from men. He was despised and rejected of men, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The world hated Him before it hated His disciples; it hated Him because He bore witness of it that its works were evil. He was "light," and he that doeth evil hateth the light, nor comes to the light, because his works are evil. In a word, Christ suffered for righteousness' sake; even as it was from the beginning, in that which was a type of Jesus' history in this respect, Cain slew Abel, because his works were evil and his brother's righteous. We may add that the love which caused the Lord to minister to men in the world, and testify of their evil, brought only more sorrow upon Him. For His love He had hatred. This hatred of man against Him never slackened till His death, when, in the folly of human exultation, they could shout, " Aha aha! so would we have it." Righteousness and love, and what was indeed the manifestation of the divine nature and ways on the earth, brought out the relentless hatred of the human mind and will. Christ suffered from man for righteousness' sake.
But He suffered also from the hand of God upon the cross. "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief; when He shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed." He was made sin for us who knew no sin, and then "He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him." There He suffered the just for the unjust; that is, He suffered, not because He was righteous, but because we were sinners, and He was bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. As regards God's forsaking Him, He could say, " Why hast Thou forsaken Me? " for in Him there was no cause. We can give the solemn answer. In grace He suffered the just for the unjust; He had been made sin for us. Thus He suffered for righteousness, as a living man, from men; as a dying Savior, He suffered from the hand of God for sin. It is most interesting to notice the result of these two characters of suffering as expressed in the Psalms.
In Psa. 20;21, we see the Messiah prophetically viewed as suffering on the earth from men. It was the day of trouble. They imagined a device against Him, which they were not able to perform. But He asks life, and has length of days forever. Glory and great majesty are put upon Him. What is the effect of His being thus glorified by Jehovah, in answer to the scorn and violence of ungodly men? Judgment: His hand finds out all His enemies. He makes them as a fiery oven in the day of His anger; as He said, "Those mine enemies that would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me." The same thing may be seen in Psa. 69:1-241<<To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, A Psalm of David.>> Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. 2I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. 3I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. 4They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away. 5O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. 6Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. 7Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. 8I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. 9For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. 10When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. 11I made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to them. 12They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song of the drunkards. 13But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. 14Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. 15Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. 16Hear me, O Lord; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. 17And hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear me speedily. 18Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it: deliver me because of mine enemies. 19Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor: mine adversaries are all before thee. 20Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. 21They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. 22Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. 23Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. 24Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. (Psalm 69:1‑24).
The effect of His suffering from the hand of wicked men is judgment on themselves.
In Psa. 22 we have, besides all these sufferings from the hand of men, and when they had reached their height (see the whole Psalm up to verse 21), His 'suffering from the hand of God. When under the pressure of the others, God, His only resource, forsakes Him. This is the great theme of the Psalm. But what is the result of this? This was the bearing of sin-at least the consequence of His bearing it. It was the judgment, so to speak, which our sins brought on Him who had taken us up in love. But He came to put sin away by the sacrifice of Himself; and to bear our own sins in His own body on the tree. Hence the result is unmingled and full of grace -nothing else. Who was to be punished for His having drunk the cup at His Father's hand? He is heard. God takes the new character of one who has raised Him up and given Him glory, because He had perfectly glorified Him about sin. He is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. The name of His God and Father He immediately declares to His brethren, " I will declare thy name unto my brethren." So in fact He did, when He said to Mary Magdalene, " Touch me not [He was not now coming to be corporally present in the kingdom], for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say unto them, I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God." The testimony was now grace, and Jesus leads the praises of His redeemed. Next, all Israel, the great congregation, is found in the praise also; then all the ends of the world. The fat eat and worship; all that go down into the dust; and the generation that shall be born, when that time of peace is come, shall also hear the wondrous story of that which the angels now desire to look into-that He hath done this. It is an unmingled stream of grace and blessing, widening to the ends of the earth, and flowing down the course of time to the generation which shall be born.
Such is the effect of the cross. No word of judgment follows the tale it has to tell. The suffering there was the judgment on sin, but was the work done to put it away. The judgment was borne but passed away with its execution on the victim who had in grace substituted Himself; and if, indeed, we shall be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, He before whom we shall appear has Himself borne our sins; yea, we arrive there because He has Himself come to fetch us, that where He is, there we may be also. In a word, it was suffering from God; and suffering from God is suffering for sin, not for righteousness, and the effect, unmingled grace, now freely flowing forth. Christ had been baptized with the baptism He had to be baptized with. He was no longer straitened in the exercise and proclamation of love. When he suffered from man through the whole of His witness among them up to death itself, He was suffering for righteousness. Sin He had not, in His person, to suffer for. He was no substituted victim in the eyes of men. The result of these sufferings from the power of men is judgment, accomplished on His return-in a providential way already in the destruction of Jerusalem, but fully when He shall return.
But there is another point of contrast, consequently, very important for us. Christ suffered for sins that we never might. We are healed by, not partakers of, His stripes. What Christ has suffered from the forsaking of God as the consequence of sin, He has suffered alone and exactly, as to us, with the object that we never should taste one drop of that dreadful, bitter, to us insupportable, cup. Did we drink it, it were as condemned sinners. But in the sufferings of Christ for righteousness, and in those which were caused to Him through His work of love, we are, poor and feeble as our faith is, to have a part. To us it is given not only to believe on, but also to suffer for, His name.
If we suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are we, and yet more blessed if we suffer for His name. The Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us. We can rejoice that we are partakers of His sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, we may be glad with exceeding joy. The suffering for righteousness and for Christ, I may remark in passing, are distinguished by the Lord Himself (Matt. 5:10,1110Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (Matthew 5:10‑11)); and by Peter (1 Peter 2: 20; 3: 17; 4: 14).
The principle of these two kinds of suffering, however, as contrasted with suffering for sins, is the same. The difference of suffering for good and for evil is touchingly contrasted in Peter's Epistle, while both are attributed to Christ; and we warned against the latter. Christ is presented as suffering as an example, chapter 2: 19-23, where we see in verse 23 he refers to the revilings and violence of men; in verse 24 he adds His bearing our sins, showing that it is in order that we may be dead to sin, not suffer for that. But this is brought out, as I said, touchingly, chapter 3: 17, 18, the force of which I take to be this: The apostle had been speaking of suffering for righteousness, and adds, It is better, if it be God's will, that you suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing; for, he adds, Christ has suffered once for sins. That is, this is not your part in suffering; He has done this once for all. Suffering for righteousness may be your happy portion; suffering for sin is, as regards the Christian, Christ's part alone.
I would notice two other characters of suffering in our blessed Lord. In the first place, His heart of love must have suffered greatly from the unbelief of unhappy man, and from His rejection by the people. We read of His sighing in opening the deaf ears and loosing the tied tongue (Mark 7:3434And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. (Mark 7:34)); and on the Pharisees asking a sign (chap. 8: 12),.of His sighing deeply in spirit. So, indeed, in John 11 at the tomb of Lazarus, He wept and groaned within Himself at seeing the power of death over the spirits of mess, and their incapacity to deliver themselves; and as He wept also over Jerusalem, when He saw the beloved city just going to reject Him in the day of its visitation. All this was the suffering of perfect love, moving through a scene. of ruin, in which selfwill and heartlessness shut every avenue against this love which was so earnestly working in its midst. It must have been-with bright and blessed moments where its exercise proved sweetness to itself, and led His heart out by times to fields white for harvest-a constant source of sorrow. This sorrow, blessed be God, and the joy that brightens it, we are allowed, in our little measure, to partake of. It is the sorrow of love itself.
A weight of another character pressed upon the Lord, I doubt not, often through His life; and must and ought to have done so, though only showing perfectness, that is, in blessed submission to the divine will. I mean the anticipation, when the time was there for Him to look at it (how often are we distracted by our little anticipated sorrows!), of His sufferings on the cross and their true and pressing character. On His path of life death lay. He could not, as we see, take His part with the excellent of the earth, and bring them into the purposed, or need any real and permanent blessing, without going through death, and death is the wages of sin, for they were sinners. If the corn of wheat did not fall into the ground and die, it abode alone. There none could follow-not indeed the disciples, as He tells them, more than the Jews. And for Him death was death. Man's utter weakness, Satan's extreme power, and God's just vengeance, and alone, without one sympathy, forsaken of those whom He had cherished, the rest His enemies, Messiah delivered to Gentiles and cast down, the judge washing his hands of condemning innocence, the priests interceding against the guiltless instead of for the guilty-all dark, without one ray of light even from God. Here perfect obedience was needed, and, blessed be God, was found. But we can understand, and just in the measure of Christ's divine, while human, sensibilities, what such sorrow must have been in prospect for a soul who looked at it with the feelings of a man made perfect in thought and apprehension by the divine light which was in Him.
We have examples of these sorrows of the Lord's heart in two remarkable cases, which, of course, though none were like the last, do, not at all exclude the thought that others may have been, nor give full light on what He may have felt when in perfect calmness He spoke of His future sufferings to His disciples. The cases I refer to are those of John 12 and Gethsemane. In the former we read, " Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour." The coming up of the Gentiles had opened out before Him the scene of the rejected Christ passing into the wider glory of the Son of man; but then the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die. This brings before His soul the true and necessary path of His glory-death, and all it meant, to His soul, and He looks for deliverance. He could not wish for, nor fail to fear, the forsaking of God and the cup of death He had to drink. He was heard in that He feared. That was truth, and true piety, in presence of such a passage for His soul.
So in Gethsemane, when it was yet nearer, and the prince of this world came, and His soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death; when the cup was just, as it were, being brought to Him, though He had not yet taken it (for He would take it from none but from His Father's hand, when His will was that He should drink it, because it was not possible it could be otherwise, if the purpose and word of God was to be accomplished), there this character of sorrow and trial, or temptation, reached its fullness. The tempter (who on His entrance on His public service, and to hinder His doing so, had tempted Him with what was agreeable to the flesh in the wilderness and on the pinnacle of the temple, and had been baffled and bound, and during the Lord's life had his goods spoiled) now returns to try Him with all that was dreadful for the soul of man, and above all for the Lord, if He persevered in His obedience and work unto the end. Power had been displayed capable of delivering living man from all the dominion of the enemy. Another awful, dreadful truth had now come out: man would not have the Deliverer. If the Lord was to persevere in interesting Himself in the wretched race, He must be, not a mighty living Deliverer by power, but a dying Redeemer. It was the path of obedience and the path of lOve. " The prince of this world cometh and bath nothing in me; but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me commandment, so I do."
But in both the cases we are now considering we find Him still with His Father, though occupied with Him about the cup He had to drink, and His obedience only shining out in its perfection. There was no forsaking of God yet, though there was dealing with His Father about that cup which was characterized by His being forsaken of God. " Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name." Here He gets the answer to obedience to death in judgment, of real and complete victory, and the widespread opening out of the revelation of love, though the world was judged therein. But in Gethsemane all was closing in. It was the power of darkness, and, the deeper agony of the Lord told itself out in few (yet how mighty) words, and sweat as it were drops of blood. But the obedience was perfect. The tempter utterly foiled, the name of Jesus suffices to make all his agents go backward and fall to the ground. He, as far as they were concerned and Satan's power went, was free. But the Father had given Him the cup to drink. He freely offers Himself to drink it, showing the same unweakened power as ever, that of those given to Him He might lose none. Wondrous scene of obedience and love! But whatever the suffering may be (and who can tell it?) it was the free moving of a man in grace, but of a man perfect in obedience to God. The cup His Father has given Him to drink, shall He not drink it? How utterly, though indeed there, do the unhappy instruments of this power of evil disappear before the offering up of Christ by Himself in obedience and love! The power of death, as that of the enemy, gone through with His Father, and gone, and He in blessed, willing obedience now taking the awful cup itself from His Father's hand! Never can we meditate too much upon the path of Christ here. We may linger around the spot and learn what no other place nor scene can tell-a perfectness which is learned from Him and from Him alone. But I must turn now to. other parts of Christ's sorrow, for I can only touch on its causes and character.
Sin itself must have been a continual source of sorrow to the Lord's mind. If Lot vexed his righteous soul with seeing and hearing when so practically far from God, what must the Lord have suffered in passing through the world! I doubt not that, being perfectly in the place God would have Him, He was, not only in degree, but in the very nature of His feelings, calmer than the righteous man in Sodom. Still He was distressed by sin. He looked about upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. His perfect love was relief here, but did not hinder the sorrow it relieved. " 0 faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" was met by " Bring thy son hither." But the unbelief was not the less felt. This was at the close, doubtless, and had special respect to their unbelief; which His own love instantly. rises over. Still He was in a dry and thirsty land, where no water was, and felt it, even if His soul was also filled as with marrow and fatness. The holier and more loving He was, the more dreadful was the sin to Him; where His people wandered, too, as sheep without a shepherd.
The sorrows, too, of men were His in heart. He bore their sicknesses, and carried their infirmities. Not a sorrow nor an affliction He met that He did not bear on His heart as His own. " In all their afflictions He was afflicted." It was no light-hearted remedy that, even as a living man, the Lord applied. He bore in His spirit what He took away in His power, for all was the fruit of sin in man: only it was in gracious love. Our sins He bore too, and was made sin for us, but that, as we have seen, was on the cross-obedience, not sympathy. God " made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin." All the rest was the sympathy of love; though it was sorrow. This is a blessed character of the Lord's sorrow. Love brought Him to the cross we well know; but His sorrow there had not the present joy of a ministration of love. He was not dealing with man, but suffering in his place, in obedience, from God, and for man. Hence it was unmingled, unmitigated suffering-the scene, not of active goodness, but of God forsaking: but all His sorrow in His ways with men was the direct fruit of love, sensibly acting on Him-He. felt for others, about others. That feeling was (oh! how constantly) sorrow in a world 9f sin; but that feeling was. love. This is sweet to our thought. For His love He might have hatred, but the present exercise of love has a sweetness and character of its own which no form of sorrow it may impart ever takes away; and in Him it was perfect. I do not indeed deny that righteous anger filled His soul when occasion called it forth-we know it did-yea, brought out such denouncement of woes as I believe nothing but perfect love could produce; for what must He have felt of those who took away the key of knowledge, and entered not in themselves, and hindered those that were entering! Righteous indignation is not sorrow, but the love that gives birth to it, where it is righteous, stamps its own peculiar character upon it.
Another source of sorrow (for what has Christ not drunk at?) was, perhaps, more human, but not less true-I mean the violation of every delicacy which a perfectly attuned mind could feel. " They stand staring and looking upon me." Insult, scorn, deceit, efforts to catch Him in His words, brutality and cruel mocking, fell upon no insensible, though a divinely patient spirit: I say nothing of desertion, betrayal, and denial-He looked for some to have pity on Him, and there was no one, and for comforters, but found none-but of what broke in upon every delicate feeling of His nature as a man. Reproach broke His heart. He was the song of the drunkards. Doubtless Jehovah knew His shame, His reproach, and His dishonor; all His adversaries were before Him, but He passed through it all. No divine perfection saved Him from sorrow. He passed through it with divine perfection, and by it. But I do not believe there was a single human feeling (and every most delicate feeling of a perfect soul was there) that was not violated and trodden on in Christ. Doubtless it was nothing to the cup He had to drink. Men and their ways were forgotten there.; but the suffering was not the less real when it was there, and even when, at least, anticipating that cup of wrath, He would have His too confident disciples watch by Him, He only found them asleep at His return. All was sorrow but the exercise of love, and that must, at last, make its way to obedience in death, where the judgment of God against sin closed over and obliterated the hatred and wickedness of man. Such was Christ. All sorrow concentrated in His death, where the coriafort of active love and the communion with His Father, could put no alleviating sweetness, or be for a moment mingled with that dreadful cup and the curse He had to endure. There, promises, royal glory in title, all was given up, to have them infallibly anew, received in glory, from the Father's hand, with a better and higher glory, which He had ever had indeed, but now would enter into as man. =============================