4. — “Take Up The Cross And Follow Me.”
Of the cup of sorrow filled for all men, there was one who drank so much more deeply than the rest, that he has been emphatically called “the man of sorrows,” as if there were no other. “His face was so marred more than any man.” “He path no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men: a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Excepting his fast in the wilderness, we are not told to what corporeal sufferings Jesus was exposed previous to his condemnation to a painful death.
Bodily sufferings, which form so large a portion of the primeval curse upon our race, can have no connection, in themselves, with our conformity to the image of Christ. As expiatory they are useless: his only could atone for sin. As voluntary, they are not required at our hands. As laid on us by Providence in judgment or in mercy, it is neither sinful to feel nor meritorious to endure them. Any conformity to our Lord’s example required of us in respect of these, must be sought for in the spirit with which they are received and borne; with reference to which we may observe, that these were not the sorrows Jesus felt the most. He makes but little complaint of them, and that little was between himself and God: in the gospel narrative there is none.
Twice in the narrative of Jesus’ life, we are told by those who saw him, that he wept. Observe the occasion of his tears: at neither time did he shed them for himself. The one occasion (John 11:3535Jesus wept. (John 11:35)) exhibits the exquisite sympathy, the extreme sensitiveness with which Jesus regards the sorrows of his people. He knew the mourning of that beloved family would soon be turned into joy. He knew what he was about to do. But they did not know; and his sensibility yielded to the impression of their transient sorrow. A beautiful representation of what he is in heaven; touched with the feeling of our infirmities, while he delays to remove them—mourning with us, while he waits to be gracious-sharing every present sorrow, while preparing to change it into everlasting Joy.
On another occasion (Luke 19:4141And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, (Luke 19:41)) Jesus looked upon Jerusalem and wept-not for her calamities then, but for her sins. There was sickness, and want, and misery, in her streets, and he had shown no slowness to relieve them; but it was not for these he wept, it was for the iniquity of his people. As in another place it is written, “Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.” These were not selfish mournings. His own sorrows were kept for his own bosom, or poured in secret into his Father’s ear; we find no expression of them to those about him till the time of his latest agony. In the secret outpourings of his holy soul, we read at once the depth and the character of his sufferings; externally, they may seem no more than other men’s: the secret of their intenseness was within; in the purity and exaltation of the soul that was to bear them—in the spiritual nature of his afflictions, and their undeservedness, so abhorrent to his high and holy nature—in the mental anguish of imputed sin and divine abandonment—in that power of unlimited suffering derived from its own infinity: these were the hidden depths of the Redeemer’s sorrow. Men think lightly of it, because they think lightly of him. They think of him only as a man; other men have been scorned and buffeted—other men have been tortured and put to death unjustly—martyrs have been seen to bear as much as this;—or they think of him only as God, deriving from his deity such support as left him little more than a fictitious rehearsal of sorrow he was too great to feel. How false an estimate! His pure manhood made him susceptible of the faintest touch of evil, to which the noblest natures must ever be the most averse: his Godhead made him capable of suffering it to an infinite extent. In finite being, suffering has a limit—a limit that has been reached, but never passed. Men have touched the point at either end, where sorrow ceased to be painful, and joy ceased to be enjoyed, because it exceeded their capacity to feel: as objects, approaching the eye too nearly, by their very magnitude become invisible. The man Jesus Christ only had an unlimited power to feel and capability to endure, that his sufferings might be sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world. No one can enter into the nature of his passion but those who know what spiritual sorrows are—the greatness of it none can estimate. Every kind of sorrow had been accumulated upon his head—his enemies were triumphing around him-his own people were bringing the curse of his blood upon themselves and their children; of those who had been his familiar friends, witnesses of all his works that he had done, one had betrayed him, and one denied him, and the rest had forsaken him and fled. All this had drawn no audible complaining from his lips. One anguish only was too much to be suppressed— ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ When it came to that, there was nothing to be added-sorrow had reached its utmost-the expiation was perfected. He said, “It is finished,” and died.
Has conscience spoken while we read? Has memory flown back through all our days of sorrow, and numbered our bygone tears to find how many of them fell for causes such as these? -how many for man’s destruction? —how many for God’s outraged laws and his averted countenance? —how many for our sins? Christ requires those who would come after him, to take up their cross and follow him. The apostle Paul speaks of believers as “planted together in the likeness of his death;” and of himself he says, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death;” and the apostle Peter, “Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.” And again, “Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example.”
And God has promised that if we suffer we shall also reign with him.
Respecting this sorrow, which characterizes the people of God, begetting in them a feature of likeness to their blessed Lord, there have been many and great mistakes; but this cannot abrogate the word of God, that there should be no such thing, or that it should not be required of his people. It is not for man’s perversions to deprive the word of God of meaning, and leave it an empty letter. It makes one shrink to hear thoughtless people say, “This thing or that thing is my cross,” “We have all our cross.” No, we have not all a cross, and yet without one we cannot walk in the steps of our blessed Master.