The subject before us is so vast, it would take volumes to cover the many ways in which Christ suffered while He walked on this earth. From the manger to the cross the Lord Jesus suffered. He suffered as He witnessed the results of sin, such as sickness and death, all around Him. He suffered as He observed the heartache and sorrows of mankind as they experienced these afflictions. "In all their affliction He was afflicted" (Isaiah 63:9). He suffered when He saw the unbelief of man, which led to Him being "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). In countless other ways He suffered throughout His life, and thus we must confine ourselves, in this short article, to the sufferings Christ experienced in the last few hours of His life. We approach this solemn theme with holy reverence, realizing that we are on holy ground. We also do so, aware of the fact that we cannot fully understand what our blessed Lord Jesus suffered. As a hymn writer once put it: "The depth of all Thy suffering, no heart could e"er conceive."

Perhaps some who are reading this saw the movie The Passion of the Christ. This movie was an attempt to portray the sufferings of Christ in His last few hours. It was a graphic portrayal of Christ being seized in the garden of Gethsemane, followed by scourging, spitting, buffeting, insults and mocking, and reaching its climax in the most humiliating and torturous punishment ever devised by sinful man, the crucifixion. Was the movie an honest and accurate representation of the Biblical account of Christ's sufferings? Our intention is not to critique the movie, but rather to draw to the reader's attention the two types of suffering Christ endured in His last hours: (1) His sufferings from man; and (2) His sufferings from God. We shall see that these two differ like night and day; they differ as to their cause, and as to their results.

1. His sufferings from man. In a word we can say that Christ suffered from men because He faithfully bore witness to their sin and their need of a Saviour. He came into the world as the "Light of the world" to bear witness to the moral and spiritual darkness that men were in (Read John 1:4,5,9; 8:12; 12:35,36). In love He sought to show men that they were sinners in need of salvation, but men would not have the truth. Why? Let Scripture give the answer: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved [exposed]" (John 3:19,20). So, men loved their sin, and hated the truth that Christ brought to them, and their hatred of Christ led them to plot His death, in order to extinguish the light of truth. In the last hours of Christ's life we see men achieving their goal, for He was taken in the garden of Gethsemane and from that point on men had their way with Him. The scourging, the spitting, the buffeting, the insults and mocking, and finally, the crucifixion, were all the manifestations of man's hatred of Christ and the truth that He bore. We conclude then that the cause of these sufferings was Christ's holiness and man's hatred of the light that He bore, thus He suffered, as another has said, for righteousness" sake. What are the results of these sufferings? Please read Psalm 69, where we see the sufferings of Christ prophetically announced, especially his sufferings from the hand of man (see especially verses 4,7-9,12,18-21). In verses 22-28 we hear Christ calling for God's judgment and wrath to fall upon them because of their persecution of Him. Yes, because men took the holy Son of God and abused Him as they did, they will one day find the tables turned and God will avenge the murder of His Son.

2. His sufferings from God. We can say, in a word, that Christ suffered from the hand of God because of our sins. We read in Isaiah 53:5,6,10, "But He was wounded for our trangressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all…. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin." To these verses we add the testimony of the Apostle Peter, "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24). We just saw how Christ suffered from men for righteousness' sake, but on the cross Christ suffered from God for sin. God is a holy, sin-hating God, and He MUST judge sin. The Bible says, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) and "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). These verses bring out the two-fold penalty for sin: DEATH and JUDGMENT. On the cross God dealt with the sin question. In infinite love God sent His Son to the cross to receive the two-fold penalty for sin.

The verses from Isaiah and First Peter speak of the judgment that Christ bore in the sinner's place. What was involved in this holy judgment? No man can tell, nor could any movie screen portray the sufferings that took place as "Christ … once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). We know from Scripture that darkness covered the land for three hours while God forsook His Son and judged Him for our sins (See Matthew 27:45,46), thus no man was allowed to witness the horror of the awful wrath that fell upon God's beloved Son when God "made Him sin for us" (2 Corinthians 5:21). And after the judgment was past, "He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30), which was followed by a soldier piercing His side, "and forthwith came there out blood and water" (vs. 34). The two-fold penalty for sin had been paid! Though we can"t know fully what the Saviour passed through, we do know the blessed results of these sufferings. We saw from both Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24 those wonderful words, "By His stripes we are healed." Because Christ was willing to bear our sins and the judgment due to them, God offers divine healing from the malady of sin. His offer goes out to the whole world, but only those who believe will actually be healed. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). If the reader is yet unsaved, won"t you take God at His word and believe that He sent His Son to the cross to suffer for your sins? If you do, you will be able to include yourself in those words, "By His stripes we are healed."

In closing, a few words to my fellow-believers are in order. We do well to meditate often upon the sufferings of Christ. The night before our Saviour's passion, He instituted the Lord's Supper to commemorate His death. He said, "This do in remembrance of Me." His desire is for us to remember what it cost Him to heal us of our malady of sin. And even though His sufferings from men were not part of His atoning sufferings, we should muse on these as well, for it is most humbling to think on what He was willing to endure from the hands of men on His way to the cross. These sufferings also serve as an example for us, as we see in 1 Peter 2:21,23, "For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps. … Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not." Though we could NEVER have a part in His atoning sufferings (from the Hand of God) which put away sin, we are privileged to have a part in the sufferings He endured from men. If we are faithful (as He ever was) to bear witness to men of their sin and God's salvation, we too will incur the hatred and wrath of men (see John 15:18-21). May the language of our hearts echo the words of the Apostle Paul, "That I may know Him…and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10). The more we meditate on the sufferings of Christ, the more we will be willing to have a share in His sufferings.

—Dennis Oberg