There are two distinct parts in the sufferings of Christ. 1st. That which He suffered from the efforts of Satan-as man in conflict with the power of the enemy who had dominion over death-this, in communion with His Father, presenting His requests to Him; and 2nd, that which He suffered to accomplish expiation for sin, bearing the wrath of God, drinking the cup which His Father had given Him to drink.
At the commencement of His public life, the tempter endeavored to turn Jesus aside by setting before Him the attractiveness of all that which as privilege, belonged to Him, all that might be agreeable to Christ as man.
Satan departed from Him for a season. In Gethsemane he returns, using the fact of death to throw anguish into the heart of the Lord. And He must needs go through death if man was to be delivered from it, for it was man's portion; and He alone by going down into it could break its chains. He had become man, that man might be delivered and even glorified. The distress of His soul was complete. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Thus His soul was that which the soul of a man ought to be in the presence of death, when satin puts forth all his power in it; only He was perfect in it; it was a part of His perfection put to the test in all that was possible to man. But with tears and supplications He makes His request to Him who had power to save Him from death. For the 'moment His agony increases. Presenting it to God makes it more acute, This is the case in our own little conflicts. But thus the thing is settled accordant' to perfection before God. His soul enters into it with God. He prays more fervently, It is now evident that this cup-which He puts before His Father's eyes when Satan presents it to Him as the power of death in the soul—must be drunk. As obedient to His Father, He takes it in peace. To drink it is but per-feet obedience instead of being the power of Satan.
But it must be drunk in reality; and, upon the cross, Jesus, the Savior of our souls, enters into the second phase of His sufferings. He goes under death as the judgment of God, the separation of the soul from the light of His countenance; all that a soul, which enjoyed nothing except communion with God, could suffer in being deprived of it, the Lord suffered, according to the perfect measure of the communion which was interrupted. Yet He gave glory to God,-" But thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." The cup of wrath-for I pass over the outrages and insults of men, we may spare them-the cup of wrath was drunk. Who can tell the horrors of that suffering! The true pains of death, understood as God understands it, felt-according to the value of His presence-divinely, as by a man who depended on that presence as man. But all is accomplished; and that which God required in respect to sin, exhausted, and He is glorified as to it: so that He has only to bless whosoever comes to Him through a Christ who is alive and was dead, and who lives forever a man, forever before God.
The sufferings of Christ in His body, real as they were, the insults and upbraidings of men, were but the preface of His affliction, which, by depriving Him, as man, of all consolation, left Him wholly to His sufferings in connection with the judgment of sin, when the God who would have been His full comfort, Was, as forsaking Him, the source of sorrow, which left all the rest as unfelt and forgotten. J. N. D.