What is the meaning of "despising the shame" in Hebrews 12:2?

As He thought of that great joy, there looms up the cross between Him and the goal. That awful cross! — not merely bodily suffering, nor the reproach of man, but as its dark shadow loomed up before Him, He saw the blackness of divine wrath; God Himself dealing in judgment with Him about sin. Will He swerve from His appointed course because of that cross? Is the joy of doing His Father's will and of having us with Him sufficient to lead Him up to that cross? Yes! for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross. His disciples are amazed as they follow Him up to Jerusalem, for they see one who had set His face like a flint and will not be turned aside from His appointed course. Thus He endured the cross.

And then the shame. Think of the Lord of glory, the Possessor of all things, being treated with contempt by His poor wretched creatures. Think of the spitting, of the buffeting, all of that! What does it say about the shame? Did He shrink from it? How is it with us if some point the finger at us? If men sneer, if they but smile at what they call our peculiarities, how do we feel as to this little bit of shame? Does it say that the Lord Jesus endured the shame? No, He despised the shame. It does not say that He despised the cross. We know that was an awful reality — He could not despise that. But for the shame, the reproach, the ignominy, He did not think of it for a moment, in comparison with the joy of having us with Him there.

"Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame." Just think of Him as the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, yet joy was set before Him. It does not say He despised the cross, but He despised the shame, that is, he despised what men did to Him. The cross was different for it involved His being made sin, which established the glory of God. He despised the shame of what puny man heaped upon Him.

That which He suffered at the hands of men is not to be thought of lightly. Hebrews 12:2, says, "Who … endured the cross, despising the shame," but we must note the difference between shame and suffering. Many a man of great physical courage would feel the shame more than suffering. He felt the suffering but He despised the shame, inasmuch as He was infinitely above it, and He knew that He was, "glorious in the eyes of the Lord" (Isaiah 49:5). We believe that we may say that never was He more glorious in the eyes of the Lord than when He was suffering under the judgment of God as the Sin-bearer. Such was the paradox of Divine holiness and love!

For it is thus that, in the epistle where the Cross, in the atoning aspect of the work wrought therein, has such a central place,* now, as it draws to a close in practical exhortation, the crucifixion is presented. In every way He has been the Leader in the path His saints have to tread: "When he put forth his own he goeth before them." The main characteristics are marked in the epistle: dependence (Heb. 1:13), obedience (Heb. 5:8-9), faith as here — Himself the perfect example in all. It is the path in which He lives to maintain us in infinite grace by the exercise of His Priesthood. The cross, or perhaps more strictly "crucifixion," which He endured (ver. 2), is not here what He suffered from God for sin, in which we had no part, "despising the shame" could not be said in such case — but what He had to encounter at the close of His life from man's hand, the sinners of verse 3, the contradiction and opposition of every principle of man and his world against Him, in which His perfection only shone out the brighter: who for the joy set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

He had to explore vast fields of suffering which came upon Him as the result of the activities of fallen men and of that malignant spirit of evil by whom men fell. Verses 6 to 8 present most graphically the reproach of men which came upon Him. This was we judge the least part of His sufferings, for Hebrews 12 tells us that He "endured the cross, despising the shame." Nothing cuts us more to the quick than reproach and shame amongst our fellows. But that is just because they are our fellows. He was infinitely above those who shamed Him. Both in His Deity, and in His spotless and incomparable Humanity He towered above them so that the taunts they flung were as nothing to Him. Yet on the other hand He keenly felt it all, for He had a keenness of sensibility of which we know nothing. He despised the shame, yet He felt it according to God.

Now in the Epistle to the Hebrews there are two things of which it is written that the Lord Jesus was not ashamed, and the contemplation of them fills the heart with wonder and praise. First, “He endured the cross, and despised the shame” (Heb. 12:2).

The cross was the very antithesis to all the pride and glory of the world. In accepting this He had to incur the reproach of man. He despised the shame. If it signified the reversal of all that man esteemed, as regards earthly glory, fame, honour, wealth, position, and that in every sphere, whether religious, political, or commercial, then He accepted that reversal.

For the cross is the total moral denial of all this; and he, therefore, who would bear the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ must necessarily run in the very teeth of the world. It is death to the world as well as to sin. Hence “persecution for the cross of Christ.” But just as our blessed Lord despised the shame, so He endured the persecution. Nor let us think that He did not feel intensely all He passed through. No pen can depict the agonies of the cross—those agonies of which we may read in Psalm 22. He felt them all. Yet “He despised the shame!” Nay, its shame was His honour!

Anticipating the joy of the Father’s right hand, He was sustained in all His sorrows and sufferings. The cross, with all its sin-bearing and judgment, was His alone, none could share in it; and this He endured until God’s wrath against sin was exhausted. What He received from man, the shame of the cross, He despised. It was not that He was indifferent and insensible to all the ignominy and contempt of the cross, or to the jibes, reproaches and insults; but what were these compared with the infinitely deeper sufferings of divine judgment. God’s answer to the judgment, and to the shame, is the place He has given to Jesus at His right hand. The throne is the answer to the cross, the crown of glory to the crown of thorns.

Every step of the path of Jesus was taken in dependence upon His God and Father, and we too are to pursue our way towards heaven with the eye on Him who knew every step of the way we have to tread, having taken the same way before us. In that path, although so great in His Person, He “endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself,” and surely if He endured the opposition of men, we, by the supply of His grace can also endure. There was that for Him which was His alone, for He “endured the cross, despising the shame.” We can know nothing of what He sustained on the cross as He endured God’s judgment for sin, but we can share, in some very small degree, the shame that was so great for Him, and yet could be despised because it was so small in comparison with the awful weight borne in judgment on the cross.

And what of Jesus?—He “despised the shame” they heaped upon Him; but He did not despise the cross—He “endured” that! Yea, and He must endure it, in all its awful depths of sorrow and suffering, if God’s will were to be accomplished. Into those unsounded deeps His love for His God and Father carried Him. To the natural eye His path appeared to be all wrong but in devotedness to God’s will He went onward. He looked into the dark cup which He must drink, and though sweat as blood fell from Him, He took the cup and drank it—“Thy will be done,” He said. He finished the work He came to do. He glorified God on the earth. He was the mighty One. Any other would have been crushed under the heavy load of sin and judgment, which He bore when He endured the cross, when He settled for God’s glory the question of good and evil.

But it is not without importance to understand that our Lord is here presented, not as the objective channel of the grace we ever need, but as the unrivalled leader and completer of faith in the whole extent of its course. "Our" faith misleads, especially with "author and finisher," as if the Holy Spirit were here setting Him forth as beginning faith in our souls and carrying it on to the end, its source and sustainer. Not so: He is viewed as leader and perfecter in the race of faith in its entirety. In that race let us run. It cannot be without endurance any more than faith right through. But "through" or "by means of" endurance is here inadequate. The apostle uses the preposition also to express condition, as in Rom. 2:27. "With" in this case is right. In a world departed from God the believer's course lies through persecution, detraction, and hatred; and thus he must make his way with endurance or patience.

Herein our Lord was proved to the uttermost: "Who for the joy lying before him endured crucifixion, despising shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Compare Matt. 11 at the end, and John 13:31-32; 14, 17, as testimony of the joy in His view; but love, yea the Father's glory, was His motive, however the future joy cheered Him along the way. Even for us it is the same thing in principle; and the new nature, in the knowledge of God and His Son, renders us capable of it. Reward, however glorious, is never the motive; yet is it most animating in the face of danger and trial.