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servant-life of the Lord of Hosts, the life of the Sinless One in daily association with sinners, the
life of the Holy One in a sin-cursed world. The way of obedience was for Him at the same time a
way of suffering. He suffered from the repeated assaults of Satan, from the hatred and unbelief
of His own people, and from the persecution of His enemies. Since He trod the wine-press
alone, His loneliness must have been oppressive, and His sense of responsibility, crushing. His
suffering was consecrated suffering, increasing in severity as He approached the end. The
suffering that began in the incarnation finally reached its climax in the passio magna at the end
of His life. Then all the wrath of God against sin bore down upon Him.
b. He suffered in body and soul.
There has been a time when the attention was fixed too
exclusively on the bodily sufferings of the Saviour. It was not the blind physical pain as such that
constituted the essence of His suffering, but that pain accompanied with anguish of soul and
with a mediatorial consciousness of the sin of humanity with which He was burdened. Later on
it became customary to minimize the importance of the bodily sufferings, since it was felt that
sin, being of a spiritual nature, could only be atoned for by purely spiritual sufferings. These
one-sided views must be avoided. Both body and soul were affected by sin, and in both the
punishment had to be borne. Moreover, the Bible clearly teaches that Christ suffered in both.
He agonized in the garden, where His soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” and He
was buffeted and scourged and crucified.
c. His sufferings resulted from various causes.
In the last analysis all the sufferings of Christ
resulted from the fact that He took the place of sinners vicariously. But we may distinguish
several proximate causes, such as: (1) The fact that He who was the Lord of the universe had to
occupy a menial position, even the position of a bond-servant or slave, and that He who had an
inherent right to command was in duty bound to obey. (2) The fact that He who was pure and
holy had to live in a sinful, polluted atmosphere, in daily association with sinners, and was
constantly reminded of the greatness of the guilt with which He was burdened by the sins of His
contemporaries. (3) His perfect awareness and clear anticipation, from the very beginning of
His life, of the extreme sufferings that would, as it were, overwhelm Him in the end. He knew
exactly what was coming, and the outlook was far from cheerful. (4) Finally, also the privations
of life, the temptations of the devil, the hatred and rejection of the people, and the
maltreatment and persecutions to which He was subjected.
d. His sufferings were unique.
We sometimes speak of the “ordinary” sufferings of Christ, when
we think of those sufferings that resulted from the ordinary causes of misery in the world. But
we should remember that these causes were far more numerous for the Saviour than they are
for us. Moreover, even these common sufferings had an extraordinary character in His case,
and were therefore unique. His capacity for suffering was commensurate with the ideal