We began our study of Christ's state of humiliation in Lord's Day 14, when we considered together the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary. And we saw in the light of Hebrews 2:17, that He was made like unto His brethren. That was necessary in order that He might serve as the great and only High Priest, merciful and faithful, offering the sacrifice of His own body for the sins of His people. With this Lord's Day, Lord's Day 15, the instructor begins to explain from Scripture the fourth Article of the Apostle's Creed. There we confess concerning Jesus Christ, that He "suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell."
Now, it is rather striking that all the emphasis in the Apostle's Creed falls upon Christ's humiliation. That He was born refers to His humility. And when we consider His birth in more depth, we see the humility too. The King of kings was laid in a manger. That He suffered, that He died—that is what we confess of Him. I say, that is striking because that is not the Jesus that many want today. Modern religious thinkers want a Jesus Who was a good and noble person, an example, one in whose footsteps men can walk and to whom we can be like. The fact that Jesus died is of little concern to many. All that matters was His life during those 33 years he walked on this earth. And for such, our confession has no place. When it comes to our Lord's earthly life, the Apostles' Creed and our Heidelberg Catechism put all the emphasis on His suffering and death. Why? Because that is where Scripture places all the emphasis. Jesus Christ came to suffer and to die, to save those who were lost. But His suffering was also unique. And it is that unique suffering to which I call your attention this morning. Let us consider:
CHRIST'S UNIQUE SUFFERING
I. UNIQUE IN ITS CHARACTER
II. UNIQUE IN ITS PURPOSE
III. UNIQUE IN ITS FRUIT
I. THE SUFFERING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS SEEN IN SCRIPTURE AS UNIQUE IN ITS CHARACTER.
THAT IS APPARENT EVEN IN THE PSALM WHICH WE READ THIS MORNING.
Psalm 22 has been titled "To the chief musician concerning Aijeleth Shahar," which means the hart or deer of the morning. And the words that David sings are very fitting for that title. The subject is very much pictured as a deer, kindly, meek, but stalked by the morning hunter. He was considered fair game for every hunter and wild beast of the field. And when we consider the life of the one who sings this psalm, we see that he was the object of the hunter's deadly desire from day to day, and from month to month, and from year to year. In the daytime he cried, and in the night season. But he found no deliverance from His suffering. His life was under constant attack. He was surrounded by the bulls, that gaped upon him with their mouths, as ravening and roaring lions. Dogs compassed him. Lions opened their mouths against him. He was the prey of every beast.
The singer is David, it is true. And although we are not told the historical context of this song, he certainly was in terrible straits at this time. Likely it was during the time when Saul hunted him to kill him. David was in constant flight. When he found rest for a brief time in the cave of some mountain, an enemy would betray him and would come to Saul, saying, "Doth not David hide himself in our hills?" And again the army of Saul would gather for the hunt. And Saul and his men were joined in the hunt by Philistia and other heathen. The assembly of the wicked enclosed him.
But the greatest measure of David's agony was due to the fact that he suffered from a lack of God's close fellowship. God seemed so far away. Even the enemy who saw him noticed that he lived outside of the light of God's countenance. "All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death" (vss. 14,15). The enemies rejoiced in David's agony. And he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?"
But what David was in a measure, Christ was fully as the suffering Servant of Jehovah. That this Psalm is quoted in the New Testament with reference to Christ shows Him as the suffering Servant of Jehovah, and the One Who fulfilled that which David suffered as the type of the Messiah. On numerous occasions, especially during the final days of Jesus' suffering, this Psalm is quoted showing Him as the fulfillment. You recognize many of these verses of Psalm 22 as verses quoted in the gospel accounts and even in the letter to the Hebrews.
And when you see that, you realize as well that Christ's suffering was unique. He suffered His entire life on this earth. At His birth there was no room for Him in the inn. Furthermore, the great dragon stood ready to devour the child Jesus as soon as He was born, we read in Revelation 12:4. Herod was so bent on destroying the child that he caused hundreds of children to be slaughtered, in the hope of including Jesus in the number of those killed. Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt with the babe. He suffered in the wilderness, even to the point of great temptation as the tempter himself came devising ways to trap Jesus and to bring about His downfall. He suffered as the Holy Jesus in the midst of an ungodly generation. Some of you men in your work have had a forced association with men who blaspheme, who swear, who live ungodly. Do not the words of wickedness that you hear pierce your soul? When a man blasphemes God in your presence, don't you cringe? What it must have been for the holy child Jesus to grow up in this world! He suffered the contradiction of sinners everywhere he turned. And the ears and eyes of the sinless One were far more sensitive to sin than your ears and eyes and mine. He suffered as never a man suffered. Truly He could say as the fulfillment of the suffering David, "Dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me." Of his own 12 disciples, one betrayed Him, one denied Him, and the other ten ran away from Him. And then there were those officebearers, the priests and high priests within the Old Testament church, and Pontius Pilate as the chief officebearer of the Roman government in Palestine and, therefore, the representative of the world power. They were all His servants. That was their calling within their respective spheres and functions. They were the husbandmen of whom Jesus spoke in a parable. And instead of honoring Him and bowing before Him and bringing to Him the fruits of His vineyard, they gave Him nothing but scorn and disdain. They cast Him out of His own vineyard. They killed Him.
BUT THAT WHICH TRULY SETS APART CHRIST'S SUFFERING FROM ANY OTHER SUFFERING IS THIS: "THAT HE, ALL THE TIME THAT HE LIVED ON EARTH, BUT ESPECIALLY AT THE END OF HIS LIFE, SUSTAINED IN BODY AND SOUL, THE WRATH OF GOD AGAINST THE SINS OF ALL MANKIND."
What is the wrath of God? In the older Catechism class we spend time discussing the attributes of God. One of the things we have seen from Scripture is that the various attributes of God are inseparable. You can never separate, e.g., the love of God from His holiness, or His mercy from His justice. The wrath of God is the same as His love. Remember now, God's love is first of all and essentially love for Himself. The wrath of God, therefore, is the action of God's love for Himself, as that love reacts toward sin. The wrath of God is His hot displeasure and flaming fury toward all iniquity.
The suffering of Jesus Christ was the bearing of the wrath of God against sin. That was the essence of His suffering. What He endured outwardly was the form of it. The beloved and only begotten Son of the Father suffered under the wrath of God. And the Catechism makes a point of it: He sustained the wrath of God. We stand here on holy ground, people of God. Jesus did not simply bear the wrath of God. The sinner in hell will bear it too. Christ sustained it. He carried that wrath as an act of love and obedience.
When did Christ sustain that wrath of God? He suffered by sustaining that wrath of God throughout His whole life. He did that by entering the state of the sinner. Jesus Christ Himself became guilty. He was guilty, you know. God does not pour out His wrath upon nor execute innocent people. He did not execute an innocent man either on the cross of Calvary. God is holy and just. Christ sustained that wrath as the guilty one from the time He entered this world. He entered the state of the sinner.
In this connection we must not forget to distinguish between those two concepts—state and condition. Our state is our legal relation to the law, whether guilty or innocent as determined by the judge. Our condition is what we are and what we experience. Jesus entered into the state of the sinner, not into his condition. When Paul says to the church at Corinth, that Christ was made sin for us, that does not mean that He became a sinner. Because Paul immediately adds, "who himself knew no sin." It means that He was made sin legally. He became the guilty One. And in that state of guilt, Jesus Christ sustained the infinite burden of God's wrath against the sin of all mankind. That was His whole life on this earth.
All of Christ's life on this earth was a preparation for and an anticipation of the cross of Calvary. He was born in the shadow of the cross. Every step he took was in the darkness of that shadow. From the moment of His birth He was subject to death under that wrath of God. He experienced that wrath of God in all His association with the world of sinful men, as we have mentioned. Remember, that we are born dead in trespasses and sins is because of the wrath of God against our guilt in Adam. So Jesus experienced that wrath even standing next to sinful men. Every man and woman he saw, every sinful act he saw and every sinful deed he perceived cut through Him like a knife and cast over Him the shadow of the cross. When He heard a little boy tell a lie, He saw the wrath of God. When He saw a girl disobeying her mother, He saw God's hot wrath burning against Him! He suffered every moment that He lived on this earth. It is no wonder that at the very beginning of His ministry, as marked by His baptism, we read that He stood in the Jordan and prayed! At His baptism He knew He was taking the burden of Calvary upon Himself.
And that suffering increased every day of His life until it became a burden that pressed the bloody sweat out of Him in the garden of Gethsemane. So again we see that Psalm 22 pictures to us the sufferings of the Lamb of God. "O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent." That was the life of Jesus. How many times do we read of Him that He went out where He could be alone to cry unto His heavenly Father. Sometimes He would spend the entire night in prayer to God. Have you ever prayed the whole night through? and in the morning found no answer? That is what Christ suffered, as we sang just a little while ago. "Afar from me thou dost not heed, though day and night for help I plead." How inexpressibly terrible must have been those days and nights of the Lamb of God. And so we see Him in Gethsemane, with the great drops of blood falling as sweat from his face.
And when they pierced the hands and the feet of this Holy One of God, He cried, "Be not far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me." And when the pitch darkness of God's wrath engulfed that hill, wrath which silenced even the roaring and mockery of the multitude, Jesus cried that terrible cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" His suffering was a suffering seen by no man. For He suffered an eternity of hell in a moment. The concentration of God's wrath focused upon the Christ for the three hours of darkness. He suffered an agony which otherwise millions would have shared. He suffered it alone. And if God were to send you and me to hell, we would have to say, "I belong here. The punishment fits my guilt and sin. This is the place of God's righteous judgment. My abomination fits the desolation of hell. But Jesus? Yes Jesus, Who was personally entitled to God's fellowship, was forsaken of Him and bore the punishment of that hell.
II. AND WHY? WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THIS UNIQUE SUFFERING?
HE SUFFERED AND DIED AS A PROPITIATORY SACRIFICE.
A propitiatory sacrifice is a sacrifice that is a covering for sin. You see, the purpose for Jesus' suffering and death was not as some teach, merely to give us an example. Certainly His suffering was an example for us, as Peter teaches in his first epistle; but not in the sense that the Arminians teach. It was not the suffering of a pious martyr, as some misled sentimental people speak of it. Christ was far more than a martyr. He did not die as a mere spectacle of what God may righteously do with a guilty sinner. Then nothing was accomplished by His suffering and death. An example accomplishes nothing. But He sustained in body and soul the wrath of God, that He might accomplish for us the favor of God by His only propitiatory sacrifice.
A propitiation is a covering—not in the sense that it hides our sins, but in the sense that it blots them out, destroys them, soaks them up like a paper towel absorbs water. In the German original of our Catechism the instructor speaks here of an "atoning sacrifice." Atonement is the full and complete satisfaction of all the justice of God concerning sin. That is the purpose for the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus. Atonement must be accomplished in willful love and obedience to God. Sin is rebellion and disobedience. Atonement is accomplished only by perfect self-denial and perfect obedience to the law—"Love me." That accomplishment of our Lord means that He stood in the bottomless abyss of hell as an act of love and obedience, while the eternal and infinite wrath of God came pouring down upon Him. He offered Himself as the only sacrifice. That only sacrifice declared all other sacrifices to be insufficient. These words reject forever the worth of all those sacrifices that we so piously try to offer God sometimes. Sometimes we so foolishly try to appease God by our good works. Beloved, there is only one sacrifice with which the Lord is pleased. It is the sacrifice mentioned in Psalm 51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." And the reason is, the one with a broken and contrite heart is the one who falls upon the only sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the one who does indeed offer a sacrifice to God. It is a sacrifice of thankfulness for the one only sacrifice offered for sinners. "For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" (Heb 10:14). Again, I say, we stand on holy ground when we consider this wonder.
He suffered this hell for "all mankind," we read. That does not mean that Christ died for and in the place of all people. So many well-meaning people have been filled with false teaching in this regard. So many have fallen into the error of universalism and Arminianism. But as Scripture clearly teaches and as Jesus says Himself in John 10:15, "I lay down my life for the sheep." He suffered only for His people, those who were given Him by the Father. His suffering and death and the atonement are particular. And because the atonement is particular, it also is applied powerfully and without fail to all for whom the sacrifice is offered.
"All mankind" refers to the elect race as an organism, the great body with members in every nation under heaven. All the elect were exposed to the severe judgment of God. But Christ, being innocent even by declaration of an ungodly judge named Pontius Pilate, yet condemned, bore that wrath of God for all the sins of the whole elect race from the beginning to the end of the world. Can you imagine what a burden of guilt and wrath that was?! He suffered, even being crucified, in order to make us all perfect, fitting for the new heaven and the new earth.
THAT PURPOSE IS ALSO REVEALED IN THE CROSS.
That cross is a fitting symbol of His being forsaken of God in fulfillment of God's justice. That is what the Catechism tells us also, as it explains the truth set forth in Galatians 3:13. "Is there anything more in his being crucified, than if he had died some other death? Yes [there is]; for thereby I am assured, that he took on him the curse which lay upon me; for the death of the cross was accursed of God." That is the truth of Galatians 3:13. As we read, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." And that last part is a quote from the law, Deuteronomy 21:23. For Christ to hang between heaven and earth meant that He was forsaken by earth and forsaken by heaven. That is the curse of the cross, the curse due us that He sustained.
And why that cross? Oh yes, we read the purpose for that cross every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper. He was forsaken of God that we should never be forsaken of Him. That is it. He died that we might live. And what shall we do? Let us humbly bow before Him in the realization of this great wonder and say, "Thanks, Lord, for Thy unspeakable gift." What else can we say?
III. ALSO THE FRUIT OF THIS WONDER WORK OF GRACE IS UNIQUE.
NO OTHER MAN'S SUFFERING EVER HAS OR EVER WILL SHOW AS ITS FRUIT REDEMPTION FROM EVERLASTING DAMNATION.
God's wrath works desolation. We all have experienced that in measure. Those who refuse this Christ of God will experience this into all eternity. The reaction of the holy Self-love of God turns against the sinner, damning him and pushing him away into outer darkness. So Paul calls attention to the law when he says in Galatians 3:10: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." By nature we lay bound in body and soul. Dying we die, a cursed prey of hell.
But Christ redeemed us. He bore the curse, standing in the line of that fire of God's wrath. He was placed there by the Father, to carry out His eternal counsel. But He walked that way willingly. In body and soul He bore the punishment for us and in our place. All the heat of the wrath of God concentrated upon Him. And He stood there until the fire burned out for all whom He covered. He satisfied God's righteousness and bought us with His own precious blood.
MOREOVER, HE OBTAINED FOR US THE FAVOR OF GOD.
God's favor works life. That favor of God is the operation of His good pleasure. It is His longing to bless, to draw into His fellowship, and to make like unto Himself. To put it in other words, the cross is the power of God unto salvation. That is what we have been given also to preach. We do not preach a God Who only tries to save, Who is subject to the will of the sinner. Preach salvation that is centered in the will of the sinner, and you put salvation forever out of his reach. We don't want that. But in the cross of Christ we glory! That is everything! It is the power of God unto salvation, unto life which is the favor of God's fellowship.
That favor of God is purchased for us only in the way of Christ's righteousness. We must all appear before the judgment seat of God. Even the ungodly, who would bury the truth beneath their consciousness realize that reality. But the question is, Are you found righteous in Christ Jesus? God must acquit you of your guilt. He must declare you innocent. And because He is the righteous Judge, He will acquit you only on the ground of Christ's righteousness in our place.
And that acquittal and that righteousness and that favor of God work for us eternal life. The rich fruits of Christ's suffering are bestowed upon us who are in Him, who embrace Him by a true and living faith. For His righteousness God says, "You are innocent." Your sins are forgiven, that you might serve Him now without fear, and forevermore without sin. That sentence of not guilty is spoken once forever. And because He knows we need to hear that more than once, He gives us the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. In those means of grace He comes to us again and again to call us to the cross and to tell us our sins are forgiven.
The unique suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ bears
fruit in unspeakable comfort. After all, when I see myself to the very depth of my being
according to the truth of God's law, then I see that there is no hope for such a damnable
creature, then I see that God is too holy and I am too sinful. There is for me one only
comfort in life and in death. In the cross, i.e., in what the cross represents, is my
salvation. Do you say that, beloved? Glory in it. Proclaim it. Believe in it and cling to
it now and forevermore. Amen.
Preached:Randolph PRC 12/15/96 (am)
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