Suffering of Jesus

“ He stands bound to a pillar, under countless stripes, like an innocent victim upon an altar, offering his bitter torments for thee, He turns his pitiful looks now to the earth, now to heaven, to beg with their entreating expression mercy from his eternal Father for the grievous sins I have committed. Behold, my soul, how Jesus suffers, and what an example he gives thee of suffering profitably! See how much thou art bound to so loving a heart, which, in the midst of torments so excessive, only loves thee the more tenderly. ”

“ The Agony of the Heart of Jesus. The Heart of Jesus is filled with terror at the sight of the torments that await Him. He seems to forget what He is and why He came into this world. He prostrates Himself on the ground, and beseeches His Father to remove from Him, if possible, the chalice of suffering which He sees in store for Him. His agony is so intense that He is covered with a sweat of blood, which oozes out in great drops and trickles down to the ground. O my soul, hast thou ever beheld a sight like this? Only Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has loved man, has suffered like this. ”

“ Jesus—the Anointed of the Lord—the Son of Man struggled and writhed as he fell on his knees, with clasped hands, as it were annihilated beneath the weight of his suffering. So violent was the struggle which then took place between his human will and his repugnance to suffer so much for such an ungrateful race, that from every pore of his sacred body there burst forth large drops of blood, which fell trickling on to the ground. In his bitter agony, he looked around, as though seeking help, and appeared to take Heaven, earth, and the stars of the firmament to witness of his sufferings. ”

“ So measured it becomes the longest road ever trod, from purity's heights to sin's depths; from love's mountain top to hate's deepest gulf. It makes a new record for roughness. For no one has ever suffered what our Lord Jesus did; and no one's suffering ever had the value and meaning for another that His had and has for all men and for us. Not one of us to-day realizes how He suffered, nor the intensity of meaning that suffering actually has for all the race, and for those of us who accept it for ourselves. ”

“ Jesus wept." Those tears interpreted for all time God's silence and apparent indifference to human suffering; and wherever Christ is worshiped as the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, they bear witness that the God who upholds the laws that wound and divide human affections still feels with us the sorrow which he permits. "In all our afflictions he is afflicted." ”

“ Jesus' experiences brought Him suffering; keen, cutting pain; real suffering. Where there is possible danger or pain in an approaching experience there is shrinking. It is a normal human trait to shrink from pain and danger. Jesus' experiences in the suffering they brought to Him far outreach what any other human has known. He shrank in spirit over and over again as the expected experiences approached. He shrank back as none other ever has, for He was more keenly alive to the suffering involved. ”

“ Follow with thy heart and mind your suffering Jesus in his painful journey, and with sentiments of tender compassion bear his company. He, though fainting and weary by his agony by the loss of so much blood, by so many stripes and blows, all torn and wounded, does not refuse to follow, with his heavy load, his enemies who hurry him up the hill. Our beloved Saviour proceeds, and although every step causes him new torture, yet conquering by its charity the weakness of his flesh, he hastens on. ”

“ And though the suffering of Jesus was seen of men when his body hung upon the cross, yet meseemeth it was seen of God when he was prostrate upon the ground in Gethsemane, and his soul was crying unto the Lord and saying, "if it be possible." ”

“ Jesus' sacrifice stands preeminently amidst physical suffering and human woe. The glory of human life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death. Jesus suffered for all mortals to bring in this glory; and his purpose was to show them that the way out of the flesh, out of the delusion of all human error, must be through the baptism of suffering, leading up to health, harmony, and heaven. ”

“ But vicarious suffering, willingly accepted, is the great redeeming force by which the world is gradually being won to its true life in God, for vicarious suffering is the expression of the law that in a finite world the service of the whole involves pain, although it is also the deepest joy that the human heart can know. The sacrifice of Jesus is the central and ideal expression of this principle on the field of time, but it only possesses meaning and value as it is repeated in our lives; the Christ has to be offered perpetually on the altar of human hearts. ”

“ Jesus long before had learned what it was to exchange the glories of heaven for the shadows and sufferings of earth and the compassion which drew him from the skies was never withheld, even at times when he naturally might have been absorbed in thoughts concerning his coming suffering and redeeming work. He was instantly moved with tender pity as he heard the agonizing words of the father and saw the distress of the son. ”

“ Accordingly he now proceeds to exhibit Christ as the Light of the world in His bestowal of sight on the blind.
The disciples of Jesus had apparently been exercised by one of the outstanding problems of human life which perplex all thoughtful men: What regulates the distribution of suffering; why is it that while many of the most criminal and noxious men are prosperous and exempt from pain, many of the gentlest and best are broken and tortured by constant suffering? ”

“ There is yet a third effect of suffering—the ransom of souls. "Jesus has for us a love so incomprehensible that He does not wish to do anything without making us His cooperators. He wills that we should have a part with Him in the salvation of souls." ”

“ By this we see that Christ's was a spirit liable to trial,—impressible by suffering; and from this fact does the victory appear greater and more real. In this we see one striving with man's sorrow,—seeking, like man, to be delivered from pain and grief, yet rising to a calm obedience,—a lofty resignation. Had Jesus passed through life always serene, always unshrinking, we should not have seen a man, but something that man is not, something that man cannot be in this world; and that calm question, "The cup that my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" ”

“ The cruel treatment of Jesus by the ignorant servants and the calloused soldiers, the unfair conduct of his trials, and the unfeeling attitude of the professed religious leaders, must not be confused with the fact that Jesus, in patiently submitting to all this suffering and humiliation, was truly doing the will of the Father in Paradise. ”

“ He does not apply the caustic of bitter and biting words. Even when, as we may suppose, the suffering is the harvest of earlier sin, as in the case of the paralytic, Jesus speaks no harsh reproaches; He says simply and kindly, "Go in peace, and sin no more." And do we not find here a reason why these miracles of healing were so frequent in His ministry? ”

“ Thus, as man in his sinless human nature was made a little lower than the angels, and then by sin stepped still lower to suffering and death; even so Jesus, that he might bring man back to the glory of God, in his love followed him down even here, partakes of his nature as it is, suffers with him, and even dies with him as well as for him in his sinful human nature. ”

“ Moreover, the wounds of Jesus, being exposed to the open air, were- inflamed, and caused a burning pain. He cried aloud: “I thirst”, to show us that He was not spared even this suffering. Even as the sense of abandonment by God was the greatest pain to His Soul, so was this raging internal fire the climax of His corporal sufferings. ↑ His lips. That He might at least moisten His parched lips. ↑ Consummated, i. e. the work of Redemption. ↑ A loud voice. This loud cry was miraculous, as was everything which surrounded and accompanied the death of Jesus. We who are of the earth die speechless ”

“ He became "a Man of Sorrows" in order that from henceforth and for ever his followers might have not exemption from all sorrow, but a Saviour who would be able to sustain them fully in their afflictions, even lifting them so far above their sorrows that at midnight and in prison they might sing praises.
{64} Gazing along the line of centuries, the omniscient Jesus saw a mighty multitude of bowed and suffering ones—in sickness, in pains, in poverty and chains; inheritors of "cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment;" ”

“ The vivid knowledge of all the sins of men, a sight of their enormity, a most intense horror of their malignity, filled his heart, pressed upon it with such piercing intensity, as to produce a sorrow and a sadness that can not be imagined. Jesus knows, and comprehends the entire malice and atrocity of sin, the enormity of the insult thereby offered to his heavenly Father; and loving his Father with a supreme love, he experiences a grief so poignant, a horror so excessive of human wickedness — all portrayed before him in such deformity — that he is ready to expire of intense grief. ”

“ Notice in verse 5 it says, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." Then in verse 6, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." In verse 8, "For the transgression of My people was He stricken," or the stroke was upon Him. He stood between the stroke of Divine Justice and the sinner and received the blow Himself. In verse 10, "Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin;" verse 11, "He shall bear their iniquities;" verse 12, "He bare the sin of many." Jesus was the Suffering Substitute because He was the Sin-bearer. ”

“ There is a misapprehension into which we are apt to fall, in considering the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Whenever he appears before our eyes, the splendour of his Divinity overcomes the mind, and in the Lord of Glory, the man of sorrows is forgotten. But, my friends, you are to remember that as God is by his nature incapable of pain or sorrow, in all scenes of distress, the Divinity withdrew, that the Humanity might suffer. ”

“ We have been told that in this dreadful hour the sorrow of Jesus bore no relation to his physical death, but was caused by His mysterious self-identification with all the sins of mankind, past, present, and to come. To add to the horror God the Father turned His face away from Him, treating Him as though He were indeed the embodiment of all the guilt of mankind, the scapegoat driven into the wilderness. ”

“ Added to all these sufferings we must remember this, that the Body of our Blessed Lord, conceived by the Holy Ghost in a wonderful and perfect manner, was much more sensitive to pain than our bodies; and that the more innocent, holy and noble a person is, the more intolerable to him is ingratitude, injustice, and malice. The sufferings of Jesus were, therefore, inconceivably great. All this ought to serve to fill us with a horror of sin, on account of which our dear and Blessed Lord suffered so much, and impress us with the greatness of His love, which made Him endure all this for us! ”

“ During these three hours of darkness, we have reason to believe that Jesus was allowed to feel the full weight of God's wrath against sin. All the misery deserved by sinful man was in some wonderful and mysterious way laid upon Him, so that in some incomprehensible manner, He, holy as He was, tasted the bitterness of that death from which by His agonies He delivered man. What His sufferings really were, we know not. God grant we never may! ”

“ And all that pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death had "made the sacrifice complete," and He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows through many a weary hour before He "bare them in his own body on the tree." Therefore, "Bear ye one another's burden, and so fulfil the law" which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for all who would draw men to Him. ”

“ Who will refuse to stand at the foot of the cross, to contemplate and love his beloved crucified, to lament the sins that made him die, and die of grief for Jesus, and with Jesus? Jesus dies for our sins: who will be so cruel, so inhuman, as to renew his death by sinning again? This most loving shepherd dies, to give his life for his dear sheep, who will be so ungrateful as to take no share in his sorrows, in his death? Who at the sight of a God dead of love and sorrow, can give himself up a prey to the foolish pleasures of the world, to vanities, frivolities, and sin? ”

“ Stand thou, then, by Mary's side, and meditate with a sad heart upon the death of Jesus. Jesus, Who had done no wrong to any man, dies naked and as a slave; nowhere could anyone be found in worse case than His. No one was ever so dear to God, no one was ever more despised of men, than was Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified by Jews. See how the world repaid Him for all the mighty works and wonders He had wrought in it. He is put to death as if He were the vilest of robbers; He dies as if He were the poorest of men. ”