The Sufferings of Christ [Pamphlet]

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This pamphlet needs careful reading and study, but is well worth the effort. Delightful content.

Excerpt: Not only are the vicarious sufferings of Christ owned by every true Christian, but, that He suffered also as the righteous One on the earth. The reproaches of those that reproached Jehovah fell on Him. He suffered being tempted, having come in grace, the sinless One, into our position. His holy nature, sinless and untouched by Satan-still as a man, suffered being tempted; His soul entered in the fullest way into the condition of sorrow and distress in which sin had plunged man, and Israel too, especially. In all their affliction, in this sense also, He was afflicted. His heart, fully feeling, entered into the fullest depths of it, so that under the sense of it, He could groan deeply in spirit. Not only so: it is evident that He anticipated the trial and suffering of death to which He was to be subject. By the grace of God He tasted death, and we know that He felt it beforehand, not only from the Psalms and the solemn sufferings of Gethsemane, but from His own words, " I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And here note, Christ, because it was His soul entering into it, could go to the full depths of all this unspared, and unsparing Himself. It was sinless grace and perfectness of love, which, having brought Him into this condition, made Him enter into it in all its fullness, and shrink from none of it. It became the divine Majesty, seeing He had placed Himself there to lead Him through the sufferings suited to this position: that is, it was fitting He should suffer. Hence our souls, though unable to estimate it, can understand its perfectness, and in spirit pass adoringly with Jesus into the midst of His sorrow. Nay, it is our privilege to enter into that part of His sorrow-His holy sorrow -which flowed from sinlessness and love, from service in spirit and knowledge of the mind of God in the midst of sin-to have the fellowship of His sufferings. His death itself can and is to be viewed in this light also, looked at as coming from man, and even Satan, however far this may be from being all that is found there, as, indeed, it is.