1. THE notion that the Son of God could be in this world as it is, and He not be a sufferer in it, is, I judge of Satan: for it tacitly supposes Him not to have essentially and inseparable from Himself, the character and ways of God.
And as Son of Man He could not be here without suffering, if, indeed, He was perfect as a man, God manifest in flesh; happy only with what made a perfect man happy, and unhappy when surrounded with that which would have made a perfect man unhappy.
2. Some have said that the blessed Lord inculpated Himself before and with God in His birth, by becoming the seed of the woman and king of Israel. But both of these express what is the sheer ignorance of foolish men. If true, it would make the incarnation itself and His becoming seed of Abraham, an act of disobedience to God, instead of an act in full unselfish subjection on His part; and He would thus be by nature and association necessarily guilty; and it would thus destroy the possibility of His voluntarily taking up, at the hand of God, man's guilt, that He might bear the penalty of it, after His having shown in a life of perfect goodness down here that no guilt attached to Him.
3. To limit His sufferings to the unrighteousness of man against Him, is sheer ignorance. There was His sympathy with man, and His sympathy with God besides.
4. Take, too, His view of marriage, of death and of resurrection of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,-was He a stone not to suffer where God was set aside, where men whom He loved were all utterly at fault.
5. And what the results of such knowledge to Him
whose heart and mind linked the Paradise of man lost, with the paradise of God to be gained.
And if every office, position, glory entrusted to man had failed-and yet are to be brought forth and made to stand in Him-had He not to maintain, and did He not maintain in the humiliation, that not one thing had failed in Him, ere He took up the suffering which would put (not Himself but) those also for whom He suffered, at His side and under Him in the blessings thereof. Surely it was so. Word of God, as He was, He showed that He knew its force and temper in every respect.
The temptation in the wilderness from Satan; Jerusalem as Sodom and Gomorrah; crucified through weakness,-the experiences of His soul-about Martha, Mary, Lazarus;-about Peter, etc., in John 13 all proclaim Him a sufferer, and that apart from the vicarious sufferings on the cross.