What is the passion of Christ?

Here is the way in which the whole question may be divinely set. Sin entails suffering, the world is full of it because sin dominates the earth. Suffering beyond the grave is entailed for those who die unconverted. Why? Because sin entails suffering. Why did Christ suffer? He suffered for sin. It is true in a certain sense that He suffered for righteousness because He was in an unrighteous world, there was a perfect man in the midst of sinful men, and they hated Him and His Father and they put Him out by way of the malefactors gibbet, the cross. But when He was thus put out by the action of sinful men something else happened, He offered Himself as the great atoning sacrifice, what Scripture calls the propitiation, that is to say, He said, in effect, ‘Let me be the One who bears the judgment and the wrath.’ How could He do it? He could do it on this universal scale because of who He really was. Had He not been the mighty Son of God, had He not been God manifest in the flesh, He could not have done it. What a wonderful thing! The God who acts in righteousness and who has to bring in judgment upon sin came in the Person of His Son into manhood to bear the judgment!

I have often told the story of the little deaf and dumb boy who saw a picture of Christ on the cross with a crowd looking on. The boy’s mother showed him this picture and said, on her fingers, ‘Willie, this is Jesus and He is dying on the cross for all these people’, and he replied, ‘Lady, but how can one die for all these?’ It was a good theological question. The mother had a bunch of dying flowers on the table and when she touched the petals they fell, and she gathered them all up and tore them up into small strips and spread them on the table. The boy watched puzzled, but when she had finished she put her wedding ring on the table and asked her boy, ‘What thing will you have on the table? The one ring or the many, many, many petals?’ It did not take him long to decide to take the one ring. ‘Why did you choose that?’ she said. ‘Because one gold ring is better than many, many petals’. When the golden Saviour, God manifest in the flesh, died He died as the sacrifice for sin, He suffered the judgment that my many sins deserved, He suffered for me. That is what you too must say. We want all of you to say that, ‘I take my place, He suffered for me, He suffered for sins. I was among the unjust ones, the many, He the one unique just One’. Why did He thus suffer? That He might bring us to God. Sin separates but the suffering Saviour unites. Sin drives the wedge between fallen man and the mighty Creator, but the Creator came down in human life, in perfection, His humanity was unique but He came into it that He might become the suffering Saviour and we who have received Him are brought to God. You will be all right in heaven if you are brought to God, but you will not be if you are not.

It was death as the judgment of God that He endured, the penalty of sin. Two things met at the cross - our sins, and the judgment of God. Our sins - not as we see them and measure them, but as God knew them and saw them in their exceeding sinfulness, and those sins were laid on Jesus, nay, more, He, the Sinless One, was made sin for us, made sin that in His own sinless Person He might bear to the uttermost the judgment of God against sin, and herein lay His sufferings, unmeasured and immeasurable. It was this that made Him say in the garden, "If it be possible let this cup pass from Me", and upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?"

It was death as the judgment of God that He endured, the penalty of sin. Two things met at the cross — our sins, and the judgment of God. Our sins — not as we see them and measure them, but as God knew them and saw them in their exceeding sinfulness, and those sins were laid on Jesus, nay, more, He, the Sinless One, was made sin for us, made sin that in His own sinless Person He might bear to the uttermost the judgment of God against sin, and herein lay His sufferings, unmeasured and immeasurable. It was this that made Him say in the garden, "If it be possible let this cup pass from Me", and upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?"

It was death as the judgment of God that He endured, the penalty of sin. Two things met at the cross — our sins, and the judgment of God. Our sins — not as we see them and measure them, but as God knew them and saw them in their exceeding sinfulness, and those sins were laid on Jesus, nay, more, He, the Sinless One, was made sin for us, made sin that in His own sinless Person He might bear to the uttermost the judgment of God against sin, and herein lay His sufferings, unmeasured and immeasurable. It was this that made Him say in the garden, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me”, and upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?”

Thus his fifth objection we may for the most part pass over as already answered, and we shall leave Dr. Bishop to defend himself as to what is replied to him. Our author contends, however, that "while it is true that Jesus is our substitute, He is our substitute truly and strictly only in suffering, not in punishment. Sin cannot be punished and pardoned also. This would be a moral contradiction. … Sin was not punished on the cross. Calvary was the scene of wondrous mercy and love, not of wrath and penalty." (pp. 128, 129.) Yet Scripture says, none the less, "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him." Delitzsch says of the word emphasized, "We have rendered 'musar' 'punishment,' and there was no other word in the language for this idea. … David, when he prayed that God might not punish him in His anger and hot displeasure (Ps. 6:2), could not find a more suitable expression for punishment, regarded as the execution of judgment." (Isaiah, vol. 2, p. 318.) Think of any one saying of the dread cross of our Redeemer, "Calvary was not the scene of wrath and penalty"!

253 I am told it was to justify us, to make us righteous. All true; and His not sparing His own Son was the infinite love of God. But what was Christ doing and suffering then in order to that end? We must not slip away from it by confounding the effect in believers and the work or suffering which wrought that effect. God does look upon believers with complacency as righteous in Christ, and the result is far greater and more admirable than all that Dr. W. speaks of. He has obtained for us to be partakers of His own glory according to the counsels of God; but the wrath of God, His judicial wrath against the sin, was removed by Christ's being made sin for us and bearing our sins, not by our state in consequence of it, which is the effect of that. "He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." If the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, He was substituted in drinking that dreadful cup for us. He was our (believers') representative there. God dealt with Him so because of our sins which were laid upon Him, and for that reason peace comes to us; not because we became actually righteous: our peace is the effect of His chastisement. You may quarrel with the word 'appease,' and confound judicial stripes with 'hatred'; but do not let us lose what Dr. W. does not deny, though he argues it away in taking 'wrath' for 'hatred,' and making the ground of our peace our actual state of righteousness; whereas we are made the righteousness of God in Christ because He has been made sin for us; 2 Cor. 5:21.

Two things need a brief notice here. First, that (as should be obvious, but to some is not,) the hanging upon the tree is not itself the curse, but only marks the one upon whom the curse falls. The curse itself is no external thing, but a deep reality in the soul of him that bears it. This was the wrath upon sin which Christ bare for us, the forsaking of God, which, had it not been borne, assuredly no blessing could have been for any.

If it was in the last degree solemn — the lamb judged for sin, what wondrous grace also! Judgment falling on the lamb; not on the guilty, but on the substitute! The judgment of God because of our sins Christ was given to endure, the spotless Lamb of God. What made the Lord Jesus sweat anticipatively as it were great drops of blood? Was simple dying before Him? This would lower the Lord below yourself, if you are a believer. A Christian rejoices in the thought of departing to be with Christ, Who alone suffered and died for our sins. But what meant that cry, "My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me?" It was the judgment of sin which then fell on Christ. It was not what the Jews did, nor Pontius Pilate, nor Herod, nor what man in general laid on Him.

How significant the voice for today, particularly when we consider this one death, His death, in which all centres for God and man. It is not to be wondered at that the Christ of God is thus shadowed. How urgent and momentous it is, that each evangelist should by the Holy Spirit not only present Him in His person, life, and character, but give solemn and varied aspects of His sufferings and death with their effects. Blessed indeed when in any measure God's light, purpose, and truth appear. In eternity we shall know, as we are known. What unfathomable depths of a death, known only to God the righteous Judge of sin, and to the Lamb, the holy and righteous Sufferer Who sustained the judgment due to it! It is especially in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, that His victim character as the Sin-offering appears. Both the sufferings of Gethsemane, and the actual death due to sin are recorded. There was the cup which justice mixed and He in holy horror anticipated. If He desired that it might pass from Him, yet drink it He would, to do the will of God. Then at the cross itself, when under the judgment of God, and making peace by His death and precious blood, He cried "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" This consummated the answer to every typical death. The wages of sin was paid, the glory of God vindicated and established, to the everlasting glory of Him Who bore the cross. It was when Jesus died that God gave witness to it by rending the veil, proving that the distance was gone and the way opened; man and God were brought together.

But though the perfect Sufferer discerned the power of man and Satan, yet He tool; the cup directly from the hand of God, so that He said on the same night in which He was betrayed, when almost under the shadow of the cross, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" And when hanging on the tree in unutterable pain and anguish, He took all from God. He could say" Thou hast brought me into the dust of death." This surely was His perfection. Perfect in faith, and love, and devotedness to the will of Him that sent Him, yet was He most sensitive to the hatred and insult which men so cruelly heaped upon Him. We hear Him speaking of being "despised of the people," whose violence and malignity He could only liken to "strong bulls of Bashan," as "a ravening and a roaring lion" gaping upon Him, or to "dogs" encompassing Him. Nor was He insensible to their "scorn," the shaking of the head, and derision in saying, "He trusted on Jehovah that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him." Keenly did He feel their cruelty when He added, "The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet." All this wickedness of man was no doubt strengthened by "the prince of this world." But He told out to God what men said and did, and added, "Thou art He that took me out of the womb: Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon Thee from the womb: Thou art my God from my mother's belly. Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help." (vv. 9-11.) We learn from the gospels that the whole weight of the body of the holy Sufferer was suspended on the nails in His hands and His feet from the third to the ninth hour, that darkness covered the whole land for the last three hours, and it was not till then that the bitter cry came forth, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" before this He was always heard, so that He said, "I knew that Thou nearest Me always;" but now it was, "Why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou nearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent." Even in Gethsemane His prayer was to "Abba, Father," so that His perfect communion with the Father was manifest; an angel, too, was sent to strengthen Him. But on the cross His prayer is not heard; He receives no help, He is alone, crying to His God, and not heard, but "forsaken;" for there He was suffering for our sins, and there "God … condemned sin in the flesh."