We are learning that the secret to constant joy is in the Lord. All things the Lord has done for us, is doing for us, and will do for us, all we have in the Lord, is what we will become in the Lord. It is in that realm that there is an infinite ocean of things we can rejoice in, even if nothing is right in the world. If we are to rejoice in the Lord like this, we clearly have to know deeply what the Lord has done for us and is doing for us. If our knowledge of the Lord is superficial and very little, we will be able to draw on living waters for life’s difficult situations.
So, we are aptly doing a communion series, “Looking Unto Jesus.” We have looked at Jesus’ pre-creation, his ravishing beauty and glory. We have looked at Jesus in the Old Testament: in Adam, he would be the only seed to come to deliver mankind; in Abraham, he would come through a nation; in Moses, he would fulfill the condemning law; in David, he would establish an eternal kingdom; and in the prophets, he would bring a New Covenant. We have looked at Jesus at birth, and last time, we looked at the 33-year whirlwind tour of his life: the preaching of John, the baptism of Jesus, the temptation of Jesus, the nature of Christ, and the ministry of Jesus. A big weakness of our church, as we saw at the picnic, is that we hear and forget. We do not dig deeply into those thoughts through meditation and store them in the deep well of our memory, so we can draw on them for help when needed. If we just do this, we will always have so much stuff to rejoice about.
Today, we come to the most critical aspect of our Lord’s life: his suffering and death for us. In fact, the passage from which I took the phrase “looking unto Jesus,” Hebrews 12, tells us to look to Jesus to run the Christian race victoriously, and it immediately tells us to mainly look at Christ’s suffering and death. Hebrews 12:2 says to “look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, and despised the shame.” The Holy Spirit most powerfully uses Christ’s suffering for saving sinners and sanctifying believers, because he knows of all other parts, acts, or passages of Christ. It is a deep, deep well from which we can find enough comfort and strength.
This is the high point which our man Paul was always studying. In fact, Paul summarizes the whole good news as “Jesus crucified.” Out of all the wisdom of the world—east, west, south, north, the wisdom of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greeks, Romans, even the great wisdom of Solomon—Christ crucified was such great wisdom for Paul that he not only calls it surpassing knowledge, but says, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Paul knew from experience that this is the only wisdom that keeps a man always rejoicing and blessed.
The question you and I have to ask ourselves is, “O my soul, how deep is your well of knowledge?” How many hours, days, months, and years have you spent to attain this wisdom? People spend 21 years to get a doctor’s degree, people have to spend 15 years just to get a degree, some 30 or 40 years to master a field. How little we spend to know Jesus Christ! No wonder some of us know nothing at all of Jesus Christ!
Come then, and let us spend some time looking at this one necessary thing, this greatest wisdom. Let us not make it just historical and theoretical, but personally practical and appropriating. As we intently look at Jesus’ death, virtue flows from that looking. For this experience, in our imaginations, each one of us should imagine we are actually standing there and looking at Jesus, even speaking to him, asking him why he is doing this, and he is answering us. See if you have attained a surpassing knowledge of Christ. As we look at his suffering and humiliation, always remember who he is: Pre-creation, his exalted glory and infinite worth; equal to God in every way; the one who made the world and who upholds and governs all things he has made. Every time I explain his humble suffering, when I say “remember who he is,” let your mind go up to see his glory and down to see his humiliation. That will take your breath away.
For our study, we will divide Christ’s suffering into three places: Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. We will see his suffering in these three places as we look unto the Lord.
Gethsemane
Follow him into Gethsemane. After his marvelous ministry, his suffering starts as he enters Gethsemane. That night, imagine you are following Jesus and his disciples. After the Passover, Judas has gone to bring the army, and Jesus with his disciples crosses over the brook Kidron. As he crosses at Passover time, rivers of blood are flowing down from the temple. He sees the blood in the moonlight and knows he has to pour out his own blood to satisfy the wrath of God. He comes to the garden of Gethsemane. Imagine that dark night with the Passover full moon, in a garden where Adam sinned, and in this garden, Christ must intensely suffer.
We see three things: his face expression, his words, and the consequence of his prayer. As he entered this garden, he began to be agonized; all his powers within him were in conflict. Consider, O my soul, Mark says he was “greatly amazed,” greatly awe-struck, stunned, astounded, astonished. Suddenly, he is struck into a strange fear.
We stand there and ask him, “Oh, Son of God, why are you so shocked? What are you afraid of?” We ask him, “Why, Lord? All our lives we have never seen you afraid of anything. Why are you cowering in fear now?”
He answers, “The cup.” We say, “What cup, Lord?” He says, “Oh, sinner, what have you done! You are so blind about your state. This shock is a result of seeing the depth of your depravity, and in that depravity, what oceans of sins you have committed in God’s sight and how much wrath you have accumulated. In your blindness, you never see or realize even less than one percent, but before the law of God, your depravity and sins are so vast and terrible. I see how depraved you are now. If my holy Father has to forgive you all these sins, he wants to impute all these sins on me as if I committed them, and I have to bear the wrath for all your sins. It is so vast and so terrible. Just seeing them makes my holy soul abhor them. Though I am the eternal Son of God, in my humanity, it makes me shocked and tremble. This cup reveals the full scope of your wickedness. The horror of the thought that the guilt of all those sins of all time will be imputed on me and an unmixed wrath against sins will be unleashed on me, without one drop of mercy, knowing the holiness and justice of my Father, makes me afraid.”
This cup not only reveals how horrible the suffering he has to undergo will be, but also what wretches you and I are, going astray from the womb and what horrid wickedness you and I have committed. How hateful we must be to accumulate such wrath for God that it made the Son of God stagger in Gethsemane. It is as if Christ says, “Don’t you really know why I had to suffer and sweat blood? Don’t you really understand my agony in Gethsemane? If you honestly see your heart before God’s law, you will understand a little bit of the horrible, putrid, deep, bottomless, infinite pit of the dark ocean of sins in your wicked heart. You will be able to appreciate a little bit why I sweat blood, why I agonized.”
Think of the fear of hell for one man’s punishment; it is so scary and terrible. Christ feared the hell punishment for innumerable elect all concentrated on one soul. At least for all eternity, men’s wrath is in a way diluted, but all the wrath for all eternity was concentrated on him for a few hours. Never was a man so afraid of the torments of hell as Christ, standing in our place, nor was he only afraid, but also filled with great sorrow.
Christ, who never spoke about his sorrow and never sought any sympathy, was now filled with this unspeakable sorrow. This terrible storm of agitation and bewilderment over his soul broke his long-suffering and calm nature, and bursting forth from his patient lips came the unspeakably pathetic cry, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” These words let us look dimly into the deep abyss of woe within his soul. Why does he share this now? Maybe it will kill him now if he doesn’t vent out his sorrow in some way. Sometimes, it relieves us when we share.
His sorrow was deadly; it melted his soul as wax is melted with heat. It continued with him till his last gasp. His heart was like burning wax all the time of his passion. Oh, what an agony this was!
In that sorrow, anyone would have given up, but his love for us was so intense that he stood there. Think of the complex conflicts in his holy soul: on one side, his whole being abhorred taking on sin so much that he would become sin for us. On another side, he saw how much it was beyond the strength of his human nature alone to do this, and on yet another side, how dreadful the consequence would be if he died before fully drinking. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that he prayed with loud cries and tears, for what? He prayed that he might not die. This means he prayed that he would not die before he fully finished the cup. God should sustain his humanity until the last minute. The earnestness of that prayer was so intense, his heart beat so fast, and his arteries were pumping blood so intensely that the subcutaneous capillaries burst open and mixed with sweat, which fell as what? Not drops, but great drops of blood. The original word signifies “lumps” or “clots.”
Oh, what man or angel can conceive the agony, the fear, the sorrow, the amazement of heart, that has such an unusual, rare outward expression? He did not just weep tears of blood from his eyes, but his whole body shed tears of blood, not small drops, but solid, great drops of blood! Oh, my soul, look unto Christ, and if you will bring this consideration home, say, “My sins were the cause of this bloody sweat.” Imagine how tired the Lord must be after that Gethsemane experience.
Gabbatha
Follow him from Gethsemane to Gabbatha. Gabbatha is Pilate’s court, where he was scourged and finally sentenced to be crucified. Then you see Judas come with a troop following him, with a most traitorous kiss, “What, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” Has money and the world blinded you so much that you sold the Lord of life to murderers for such a cheap price? An army of soldiers comes and arrests him. You see a picture of many ravenous wolves surrounding and assaulting the most innocent lamb. What a pathetic sight! They put chains on his holy body and drag him furiously this way and that. They take him to Annas’s house, then hurry him from Annas to Caiaphas. A fraudulent court was set up in the middle of the night with so many false witnesses, but nothing worked. Caiaphas, the high priest, adjures our Lord to tell him if he was Christ, the Son of God. As soon as he affirms it, he is doomed as guilty of blasphemy.
Now again, as if all demons entered those Sanhedrin members, without any common dignity, they pour out all their venomous anger and revenge. Each one gives him a slap and a punch. They spit upon that divine face. They play a game: they hoodwink his eyes and strike him on the cheek, scoffing and jesting and saying, “Who is it that smote you?” Oh, remember who he is that is being treated like this. He is the Glory of Heaven, the one whom angels adore and praise, Christ adored by the highest heaven, Christ the everlasting Lord, whom all holy creatures exalt. The Father, Jehovah, his only great delight and entertainment, is his Son, the one who alone is glorified and adored for his eternal perfection, and now he is so much shamed, cursed, mocked, and spit upon, blasted by the profanity of blind, stupid sinners.
Then after all that treatment, when the whole world slept, the Lord could not sleep all night. He was in the court until cock-crow; he did not sleep for the next few hours; he had not a drop of rest that night. Now, early in the morning, behold him dragged again from Caiaphas to Pilate. Not just Jews, but even gentiles’ hands should be covered with the blood of the Son of God. The place where Pilate tried him is called Gabbatha, so he comes there.
Pilate tried everything to release Jesus, and all failed. In a final attempt to release Jesus as a last resort, he orders him to be scourged. Imagine the place of Gabbatha inside the Praetorium, a large common hall surrounded by big stones and curved entrances. Medically, this punishment would bring a man close to 80 to 90% death; many actually die during scourging. Even if a man does not die, he cannot live a normal life after a scourging; it is a terrible, terrible punishment. People dreaded Roman scourging. A man was taken by his wrist; he was tied in chains and hung from a post. His feet were dangling so that his body was taut and stretched. His hands and legs were stretched separately, so no hands or feet could come to rescue or hide the stretched body. Two soldiers would stand, one on each side, with a short, thick, heavy wooden handle. At the end of the handle were a series of leather thongs or ropes, and at the end of the leather thongs were bits of lead, brass pieces, cow or lion animal teeth or bones, and stones, all with sharp ends. Two men, one on each side, would whip him across the body to the point where not just skin but flesh, arteries, and veins were gashed and exposed—very often it brought death. The blows were laid on with full force, so that it was done in a rhythm. They would cry out as our men do when lifting weight at the same time to apply force. The effect was horrible.
Just to get beaten with one stick is painful; iron rods are more terrible, but to be scourged with that kind of whip is to be half dead. Who can number the stripes with which they tore his body, one wound eating into another! They pulled away not only his skin but even his flesh, making his internal organs a little visible, laying bare even the organs of his kidney, liver, intestines, and bones. He was all covered with blood. It is a torture beyond description.
See his state there in Gabbatha, writhing in pain and swallowing his own blood! Oh, joy of angels and glory of saints, who have thus defiled you with so many bloody blows? Certainly, they were not your sins, but mine. My conscience tells me each of those scourges should be my scourging, for all the horrible sins of my life. What a picture of love to take it all upon you.
Those soldiers did not stop with scourging. As if bodily pain were not enough, they tortured his soul by a mock coronation. They play the game of a mock coronation and do seven things to our Lord. First, any king on the day of his coronation should be dressed with royal clothes. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. What is the next thing? What is a king without a crown? The great symbol of his kingship is the crown. After clothing him with the robe, they twisted a crown of thorns and put it on him. A Palestinian thornbush has sharp, piercing thorns two or three inches long, and they twist them into a crown. When he presses it on, every point of every thorn begins to cut a straight furrow from which blood spurts, trickling down his face like different little waterfalls, flowing down his face to mingle with the rest of the blood on his body. Now the king has a royal garment; he has a crown. Now for the third item for him to be a real king, he must have a scepter. They take a stick and give it to him in his hand. Fourth, verbally, they mock him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Fifth, subjects will either kiss the king’s feet or hand. These people fall on their knees as they rise from their knees, they come close to him as if they are going to come and kiss his face. As their face gets closer, instead of a kiss, they spat on him and walked away and laughed. Then finally, they take the stick and hit him in the head. Imagine, one after another, who knows how many hundreds of soldiers kept doing this.
Oh, my proud heart, look unto that Jesus. How can I think of this without tears when I remember who he is? The King of Kings, the King of Grace, the bringer of the eternal kingdom, the heir of all things, equal to God, a person mesmerized angels yearn to kiss the feet of, surrounded and guarded by seraphim. See what my sin has done to him in Gabbatha.
Do not forget the glory to which he had been accustomed. He was the Father’s darling, eternally in the bosom of the Father, adored by the highest creatures, cherubim and seraphim. His face shone with the light of a billion suns. Angels yearned to get a glimpse of his face. Angels could not see and closed their faces in his presence. That person’s face is here spat upon, and the one whom the entire universe worships, every principality and power in the heavenly places, is given mock worship! Behold the most mysterious and wondrous scene. He sits there, mocked with a crown of thorns, the center of a comedy. Can there be a more wondrous scene like this, filled with so much irony and wonder?
What we see in the human world is God working out in the heavenly theater of spiritual reality. Christ is being treated as a criminal in the court of heaven as he takes on our sin. See everything Christ went through; even the smallest pain was absolutely necessary if he had to save us.
Take one by one, he was stripped naked. The shame of nakedness came in with original sin. To atone for original sin, he submitted to that shame. He was stripped naked in shame to clothe us with his perfect righteousness. He was put in a scarlet robe. Sins are so terrible, so deeply and permanently staining our souls, it is impossible to be washed out at all. God placed those terrible sins on Christ, and here is a visible symbol of Christ being clad in a scarlet robe, which signified his bearing our deep scarlet sins. Why a crown of thorns? As a result of that original sin, God cursed him and made him to be a king of a thorny, cursed life. Thorns were a symbol of the curses of original sin. Oh, he took that curse to redeem us.
Pilate sees Christ after this, and his inmost heart melted with pity. Oh, pity. He gets an idea: he will use this form of Christ to draw pity from the crowd and stop them from sinning and killing Christ. So he says those famous words, “Behold the man.”
Imagine you are standing there. What a shocking and sad spectacle of Jesus, when he came forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. O my soul, fix your eyes on the sad object! Suppose you were in the place of Jesus. Think of it: what if in so sensible and tender a part as your head, men should fasten a number of thorns! Alas! You can hardly abide the prick of a pin, much less the piercing of so many thorns. His whole body was not just blood, but blood mixed with skin, mucus, and flesh all flowing. He comes shivering there and stands with a red robe, a crown, and a scepter stick in his hand.
Behold not just the man! Behold the God-man. The sight should make you break out and say, “O the brightness of your Father’s glory, who has thus cruelly dealt with you? O unspotted glass of the majesty of God, who has thus wholly disfigured you? O river that flows out of the paradise of delights, who has thus troubled you?” He is the eternal Son of God by whom all things were made and by whom all things consist. He is the heir of all things, who will be lifted above every name in the universe. When we realize how high he is and then see the descent to which he came, it will make any sensible man tremble.
“It is my sins, O Lord, that have so troubled you. My sins were the thorns that pricked you, the lashes that whipped you, the purple that clothed you. It is I, Lord, that am your tormentor, and the very cause of these your pains. My transgression, yours the deadly pain.”
Even stones would have melted at that sight, but the depraved heart of men is so hardened than stone, so full of pride. Forget about bringing one drop of a tear, it hardened them more in sin. They cried out even louder, “Crucify him.” Then Pilate agrees to their blasphemous request to kill God.
Golgotha
Follow him from Gabbatha to Golgotha. See how they lay the heavy cross upon his tender shoulders, that body that went through such pressure to shed great drops of blood, and a body that was so torn and rent with whips. He could carry the cross, but he struggles to carry it.
They give him sour wine mixed with gall, to make their work easy, for an anesthesia effect. He will not kick and fight. But he refused it. Firstly, so there would be no lack in his work of our atonement. Under an anesthesia effect, he shouldn’t leave even one or two sins of mine. He must fully feel the infinite, complete, terrible horror of horrors for all our sins. His whole being—body and soul, every nerve and sense—must fully feel the consciousness of the wrath of God. The deepest hell, which becomes unbearable, has no anesthesia. Secondly, he refused the wine to show the absolute and completely voluntary nature of his suffering. Without that, as a man anesthetized with love for you and me, he happily stretches his hands and feet to be nailed. There was no compulsion; it was freely laid down for us.
Look at him on Golgotha mount, lifted up on that engine of torture, the bloody cross. He hangs on nails, and as he hangs, his own weight becomes his affliction. Oh, see how his arms and legs were racked with violent pulls, his hands and feet bored with nails, his whole body torn with stripes and gored with blood. And now, O my soul, run with all your might into his arms, held out at their full length to receive you. Oh, weigh the matter!
Keep looking at him on the cross. All around, he sees mocking, insults, and blasphemy. No comfort. Think of all the mocking of crowds and the testing of the religious leaders; even the worst criminals crucified with him mock and insult him. Oh, then came the dreadful three hours of darkness that spread over all the earth. Now the sun was ashamed to show his brightness, seeing its creator in such disgrace. The sun hides all its glory at midday; the heavens discolor their beauty and are in mourning robes.
Imagine you stand before the cross in darkness and imagine what horror he must have gone through. Christ feared hell punishment for innumerable elect all concentrated on one soul. At least for all eternity, men’s wrath is diluted in a way, but all the wrath for all eternity was concentrated for a few hours, just as when a billion suns concentrate all their heat and pass it on one object, all the wrath of God passed on that lamb on the cross.
At the end of three hours of darkness and silence, there was a loud cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Christ, in the garden, tasted the bitter cup of God’s fierce wrath, but now he drank the dregs of it. Oh, but what’s the meaning of this? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The most mysterious words—God forsaking God—who can understand this?
I am so depraved and sinful that God had to eternally forsake me in disgust. But instead, God so loved you and me, he imputed those sins on Christ and forsook him for our sins. Jesus was forsaken so that God could never forsake us in eternal hell. Why did you forsake me? God says, “Because I am making you a sin-bearer and a curse so that sinners may be saved.” That is the gospel. Words like “substitution,” “atonement,” “imputation,” and “justification” are not just theological jargon or jolly blessings. The cry of abandonment shows that it cost the greatest pain, greatest sacrifice, greatest suffering, and highest expense for the infinite Godhead. It was a real purchase, a real transaction, and real pain to God.
Application:
This sight should make Christ desirable, believable, and lovable.
Desirable
If the Holy Spirit opens a sinner’s eyes, Christ’s blood, suffering, and death are the most desirable aspects of him to that sinner. Nothing brings so much joy, rest, and peace to refresh a parched and thirsty guilty soul as the blood of Jesus. The story of Dr. Faustus, who sold his soul to Satan, recalls him crying out, “Oh, for one drop of Christ’s blood! I will give everything in the world for one drop. The Devil is dragging my soul to hell. Just half a drop is enough to pull me from hell and put me in the bosom of God.” A beautiful, rich woman convicted of sin cried out so earnestly, “I have great beauty, a good husband, children, and many other comforts, but I would give them all for one drop of Christ’s blood. Oh, my soul is parched and thirsting.”
But what is there in Christ’s blood, suffering, or death that is so desirable? It is desirable for its merit.
- It is not the suffering of a man or the death of a martyr that we sadly remember. It is the suffering of the very God-man, the intrinsic excellence of his person, “the brightness of his Father’s glory,” a person of the Godhead with all the attributes of God equally. Every drop of his blood was not only the blood of an innocent man but of very God. If the all-wise, all-good, all-blessing, infinite God shed his blood for a great purpose, what infinite worth it must be. Surely everything of God is desirable.
- There is a worth of infinite value in it. All the wealth in heaven or earth cannot redeem one soul. When even ten thousand worlds’ worth of wealth cannot redeem one soul, can you imagine the worth of Christ’s blood, which alone can redeem all souls? Therefore, the apostle sets this against all corruptible things, such as silver and gold, the things so much valued among men of this world: “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). “You are bought with a price.” And what price was that? Why, his own blood. This was the ransom which Christ gave: “The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many,” which signifies an adequate price, or a counter-price.
- There is in it a merit of atoning satisfaction. In all the universe, it is this blood alone and this suffering alone that makes you and me, as defiled sinners from birth, accepted, beloved, and reconciled children of God. No wealth in the universe, no self-righteousness, and no devotion are acceptable; only this blood. It not only covers all our actual sins but also covers our original defilement and makes us stand pure in the sight of God. Is it not desirable?
- There is in it not only a true, but a full and copious satisfaction. Christ’s death and blood are superabundant for our sins. “The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant” (1 Timothy 1:14). It was overflowing, redundant, more than enough. Oh, if we would exercise faith and know the infinite value of Christ’s suffering, how much unbelief in our hearts would go away! How much dishonoring of Christ’s work would go away!
Some of our pathetic instability, our not rejoicing in the Lord always, is because of this unbelief in the infinite value of Christ’s blood. We think we are right with God only on the basis of our righteousness and devotion. We have never learned to regularly stand in faith.
Some complain in unbelief, “Oh, if I had not been so great a sinner, there might have been hope.” This is to undervalue Christ’s redemption. This is to think there is more in sin to condemn than in Christ’s sufferings to save. Not only your sins but all the sins of all the men in the world are, to Christ’s merits, but as a drop to the ocean.
Let me tell you the blessings that flow only from his blood and suffering. Firstly, there is in it the remission of sins. That is why at the first communion, Christ took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” No one’s sins are forgiven if they wash in the Ganges, receive thousands of baptisms, shed tears their whole life with regrets and heartbreaks, or try to cleanse their past sins with future charity works. Oh, how many keep doing it. The world is full of people praying and doing a hundred and one things for the cleansing of sins. God’s word clearly says, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.”
We as sinners, sinning every second, need Christ’s blood more than we need food. We don’t eat every second, but we sin every second. How much more desirable Christ’s blood is for us. Sin defiles us, makes us guilty, and makes God strange and far away. Our pride, impatience, dullness, slothfulness, and our thousand imperfections; how our sins afflict us. We become loathsome in our own eyes. Our conscience tortures us, saying, “You are a horrible sinner; how can you go to God?”
You might have come to church today feeling like that. Just one believing look on Christ’s suffering and blood, pointing your defiled conscience to Christ’s suffering, says, “Yes, I am a sinner deserving the worst punishment, but see the punishment for my sins.” With believing faith with God, what an argument is put into our mouth from these sufferings of Christ: “O Lord, I am unworthy to be forgiven, but it is just and right that Christ obtain what he died for. O pardon my sins for his death’s sake and for his precious blood’s sake.” Oh, what assurance of all sins forgiven comes into our hearts.
Secondly, in the blood and suffering of Christ, there is reconciliation and peace with God. The Bible says we are afar off, infinitely far off. Do you not sometimes feel a strange distance? God is somewhere; I am somewhere else; there is no connection. “In Christ Jesus, you who were afar off are made near by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace.” Sometimes we also sense an enmity, as if God hates us, is angry with us, or upset with us. It happens regularly, right? “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”
If you are like that spiritually today, this should encourage you to come very near to God through Christ’s blood. These things are not just nice verses, but spiritual realities we should experience through faith. Whenever our sins haunt us, whenever we feel a distance from God, what are we to do? Oh, learn the great secret: immediately look unto Jesus’ death and suffering for you. See his blood. We come to God through Christ’s suffering and blood and find God’s nearness and presence, an ocean of love.
Come and look on Christ’s death as the means and meritorious cause of reconciliation. Experience this, and you will realize in faith, “Oh, this death is so desirable! This is where the secret of Christian life is. This is where my peace is. This is where heaven’s doors open for me.”
If I have to look at God without the bloody glass, God is far, angry, and strange. When I look at God through this bloody glass, an ocean of love opens. When God the Father looks at a sinner in the bloody glass of Christ, he says, “I don’t have a drop. I don’t feel one drop of anger or hatred for you. All your sins are hidden from my sight by this blood. All my justice is satisfied. In fact, you are perfectly righteous. I, seeing you in my Son, love you as intensely as I love my Son.”
Do you see why Christ’s death and blood are so desirable to the soul? Through Christ’s blood, every sinner shall be thus appeased and reconciled with God! There is in it a blessed virtue to open heaven and to make a passage there for our souls, liberty “to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” It is the blood of Christ that tears the veil and makes a way into the Holy of Holies, that is, into the kingdom of heaven. Without this blood, there is no access to God. It is only by the blood of Christ that heaven is open to our prayers and that heaven is open to our persons. This blood is the key that unlocks heaven, unlocks the Father’s love, and lets in the souls of his redeemed ones.
Christ’s suffering was a fully sufficient ransom not only to forgive all our sins but also to reconcile us, justify us, adopt us, and even purchase eternal heaven for us.
Come now, whatever state you are in, look unto these sufferings and blood. It is not an ordinary man; it is the blood of very God-man. It was a ransom more than enough for all your sins. It gives all merit and satisfaction. It brings all remission of sins, reconciliation with God, and peace with God. It even earns heaven for you. All other privileges, benefits, and dignities of the soul you need to reach heaven are in the blood of Jesus. And is not all this worth looking after? How much we should regularly desire to meditate and think. How healthy for guilty souls to regularly think of Christ’s suffering. That is why the gracious Lord said, “Remember me.” It is not that he gets any selfish benefit. Some say, “Don’t forget me; don’t forget all I did.” No. “Remember me” so that is the only way you can always be happy. Even in that command, he wants us to be happy.
How much we should desire to experience the benefits of his blood and suffering in our lives through faith! All that his blood has brought. How precious is this blood. Oh, I am undone, except I have a share in this blood!
Not only desire the blood, but also believe in Christ for justification and sanctification. Look on Jesus as lifted up. Why did he hang there on the cross? For two purposes. These are the two great needs for a sinner: he should be justified and sanctified in this world so he can be glorified. Christ, by his death, had a design not only to deliver us from the guilt of sin but also from the power of sin. This design the apostle sets out in these words, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). Justification and sanctification.
The confession states that the primary object of saving faith deals directly with the Lord Jesus and his work. It accepts, receives, and depends on the benefits that come from Christ’s suffering to a sinner in the gospel. It is as if a person is sinking and someone gives him a piece of wood. You accept it, make it your own, and then put your full weight on it. That is the simple meaning of faith. You accept you are a sinner, Christ’s suffering alone can save you, you make it your own—he died for me—and you put your full weight on it.
You exercise your faith. Accept and receive that Christ’s death is for you, “in him I have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” As on this account he suffered, “to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity”; so if his death is mine, I may assuredly say, “My sins are pardoned, and my iniquities are done away.”
Come then, looking unto the cross, don’t you want the assurance that all your sins are forgiven? Let me tell you, there is no greater joy in the world than that. When you exercise faith, you will in a way hear in your soul the whisper of God’s spirit, “Son, or daughter, be of good comfort, all your sins are forgiven. You have a part in my sufferings. These sufferings and blood are for you.” Oh, heavenly bliss! You don’t know what you are missing.
Not only for justification, but also exercise your faith for sanctification. Christ not only forgives sins by his death, but he destroys their power and crucifies them. His cross does not have it “reign in our mortal bodies, that we should obey it in the lusts thereof.” Those of us who groan, “Oh, I want to be more holy! I sin often,” and ask how we can be holy, can find the answer here.
The only divine way to be holy is by looking at Jesus at his death and exercising your faith. Sanctifying virtue flows from that alone. The former is available for our justification, the latter for our sanctification. If blood can forgive our sins, Hebrews says, “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge our consciences from dead works to serve the living God?”
True mortification springs from a root of faith in Christ’s suffering and death. It is a blessed effect arising from a looking unto Jesus’ suffering and death. How does Paul describe sanctification? “I should be conformed to his death.” As I see his death, a spiritual death works in me. I die to sin not only positionally but experientially. The same that was done to Christ in a natural way is done in the believer in a spiritual way. Christ by way of expiation, we by the way of mortification and crucifying our sins.
This is where you go for strength to overcome your sins. “Pastor, sin is so pleasant. I know it is wrong, but I love it. I am so addicted to it. How can I feel virtue and strength from Christ’s death in my soul, for mortifying, crucifying, and killing my sin?”
- Through meditation, nothing makes sin more ugly than meditating on the suffering of Jesus. Just to remember what sin did to him in Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. You must look upon those grievous, painful, and shameful sufferings of Christ. The more you see, the more you feel the odiousness and execrableness of sin. The cross stands out as the most holy way to live.
- Pray with self-examination. If you will but exercise your faith, you can draw mighty strength and virtue from his death into your soul.
- You must weigh and consider what it was that caused all this, namely, sin, yes, your sin, yes, this and that sin particularly. If therefore there is in you any spark of love toward Christ, it will by all means make you loathe sin and cast it away from you; to root it up, to quit your hands, to rid your heart of it. This looking creates all violence, all holy severity, against sin for his sake. Slowly you will notice that sin, in this way, loses the affection of the soul. The influence that should nourish sin is cut off, and it withers by degrees until it is finally destroyed.
- Now when the heart is thus exercised, God, by his Spirit, will not fail to meet us. Our desire and endeavor to weaken and kill sin in the soul will be met with his strength.
- Then you start experiencing sanctification in degrees of mortification: first, the practice of gross sins in word and deed stops. The second is that it strengthens the will to deny consent to all appeals of temptation. If when these motions first arise, we presently quench, reject, detest, and cast them away from us, therein is true mortification. The third is to slowly become free from any liking of any evil motion, not only to deny consent but also to deny the very thought or imagination.
Love Christ
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” How should we but love him who thus loved us? The only way is when we see Christ’s love for us, and when we look unto him, we exercise our love to him again. What less than a ravishment of spirit can I feel when I behold the Lord Jesus, who from everlasting was clothed with glory and majesty, now exposed to hunger, thirst, weariness, danger, contempt, poverty, revilings, scourgings, and persecution! Oh, what ecstasies this love brings us to!
- Think of it to see the Judge of all the world arrested, accused, judged, and condemned!
- To see the Lord of life dying upon the tree of shame and curse!
- To see the eternal Son of God struggling with his Father’s wrath!
- To see him who had said, “I and my Father are one,” sweating drops of blood in his agony and crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Oh, where has his love for mankind carried him?
Think of the distance between the self-existent, sovereign Christ and us. We are irrelevant to him. Had he only sent prophets to show us the way to heaven, that would be a great mercy. If he had sent his angels from heaven, that would be a greater mercy. Or, if it must be so, had Christ come down from heaven himself only to visit us, pity us, and show us the way to heaven, this would have been such a mercy that all the universe would be shocked. Old Testament people fell on their faces when he came like that.
But Christ should come not to just visit, but be born like us. What great mercy! Then to live for us, how great. Then to die for us as a man. The greatest difficulty and humiliation for him. All this is the greatest mercy to us.
But to think he not only died but was forsaken by the Father, to part with the sense and sweetness of God’s love, which is a thousand times better than life. A billion deaths in one for him. He should become a curse so that we might be blessed. He should become sin so that we might become righteousness. He was forsaken so that we might not be forsaken. He was condemned so that we might be acquitted.
Oh, what raptures of spirit can be sufficient for the admiration of this infinite love! Be you swallowed up, O my soul, in this depth of divine love, and rejoice in Christ’s love for you. Look upon him! He hangs on the cross all naked, torn, and bloody, between heaven and earth. See how much he loves you. I will think the rest. Alas! Had I the tongues of men and angels, I could not express it. Oh, love more deep than hell! Oh, love more high than heaven! The brightest seraphim that burn in love are but as sparkles to that mighty flame of love in the heart of Jesus.
If this is Christ’s love for us, what is the love we owe to Christ! Oh, for a heart that might be in some ways answerable to these mercies! O God, raise up our souls to you; and if our spirits are too weak to know you, make our affections ardent and sincere to love you. The whole gospel is no other thing than a motive to draw man to God by the force of God’s love to man. In this sense, the holy scriptures may be called the Book of True Love, seeing therein God both unfolds his love to us and also binds our love to him. But of all the motives we may draw from Christ and of all the arguments we may find in the gospel of Christ, there is none like this: the death of Christ, the blood of Jesus.
Is this not such a love-letter as never was the like? Read the words, “For his great love wherewith he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4). Oh, consider it, is not this a great love? Are not all mercies wrapped up in the blood of Christ?
You may have good things in life, but is this not the greatest good in your life? Christ is above all, and will you not love him? Oh, that all our words were words of love, and all our labor, labor of love, and all our thoughts, thoughts of love, so that we might speak of love and muse of love, and love this Christ, who hath first loved us, with all our heart, and soul, and might!
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 