Why did God allow His Son to suffer?

He came to die an atoning death, satisfying God’s righteous judgment against sin, enabling God righteously to offer salvation to men. So He went to the cross with all that this entailed.

The truth is that Christ suffered to manifest God’s love in bearing our judgment. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

His sufferings were first of all for the glory of God; that in the creation where God was so dishonoured through sin, sin might receive its judgment, and that when and where sin would receive its judgment God would be glorified, not only in every one of His attributes but in His very nature. In the second place, He suffered the suffering of death in order that the devil, who had the power of death, might be annulled, and that deliverance might be effected for those who, on account of the fear of death, had been all their lives subject to bondage. In the third place, He suffered to make propitiation for the sins of those who were to be His companions in the day of His glory. And in the fourth place, He suffered, being tempted, in order to be able to sympathize with our weaknesses, and to be able to succour us when we are tempted (see Hebrews 2.)

This cry is surely intended to awaken every human heart to question what is the reason that not only did men abandon Him, but that God did so. The answer is clear for us today. This was the only way by which God could totally judge sin and at the same time save sinners from the awful consequences of their sins. The contemplation of His suffering may well bow our hearts in adoring wonder

To weep in tender sympathy for human sufferings and woe does not testify a union of sentiment with God; but the recognition of the wherefore "it pleased Jehovah to bruise him," leading us to sorrow for those sins, and to rejoice at the Lord's approbation of their removal. This is a godly affection; this brings to the soul a perception of Christ's woes, when He says, "Thou hast brought me into the dust of death." When the cup of suffering was presented to Him, mixed up with the bitterness of our sins - holy, yet agonised - sinless, yet bruised: does not this present us with the view God must take of sin? When we see, not the perpetrator, but the bearer of sin only, exposed to such unexampled sufferings; and yet where, in what position, can we perceive so clearly and completely the riches of divine grace, and love, and mercy, as here? - " He spared not his own Son."

When I see God's love and purpose in dealing with sin in death and judgment — when I see this blessed One there — then I get this truth, that God has been occupied about sin in grace. When I see this blessed One putting Himself in such a place as this, I see that the whole question is brought before God and dealt with by Him in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then it is not as when God deals with us here, full of mercy and tender compassion for our infirmities; there was no mercy for Christ — no screen to hide and spare Him. He was the one divine Person capable of bearing all the weight of that burden, and willing to do so; and He did it.

25 Thus law, psalms, and prophets agree; Old and New Testaments alike proclaim Christ's suffering from God, and before God, because of our sins. The Lord announced it; the apostles - Paul especially - are full of it; and not least the beloved disciple, who most presses God's love which is really enhanced by it, of which the depth and strength are only there known where Christ's drinking this cup from the Father is owned. Divine love is not all the truth, nor man's hatred, nor Satan's power; but deeper than all is Christ's offering Himself to God as a sacrifice for sins. Love indeed is enfeebled incalculably by not seeing the truth that Christ bore the judgment of our sins at God's hand. Rather is love degraded into indifference to man's sins, and disregard of God's holiness and majesty, and of such warnings as are in Deut. 27:26; Rom. 2:9; Heb. 10:31. The scriptures cited prove, on the contrary, that expiation was essential for God's honour if He would save guilty man, even though he believed. Judgment was born by Christ that grace might flow out to the sinner. It is therefore now God's righteousness as well as His grace.

The will of God, which He came to do, carried Him into the sufferings of Calvary. He suffered at the hands of men, but the sufferings that this passage speaks of were not from men. "He suffered for man's sin." Men could not inflict these sufferings; it was the Lord Jehovah that bruised Him when He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. A darkness that no eye of man could pierce enshrouded the cross, for the woe of the Sin-bearer no heart of man could fathom, when from that impenetrable pall came the cry, "ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!" From the depths out of which the forsaken One cried, we learn the righteously opened way for us to pass out of death into life. There, upon the cross, where His soul was made an offering for sin, God's love to man was proclaimed in the gift of His Son, that justice and truth might be upheld and that the purpose of God in this to us might come into full effect, in absolute consistency with His holiness. Having suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, His death opened the way out of the circle of death into the circle of life — a way by which men may pass out of the bondage of lust into the liberty of grace to do the will of God. Again I use the circles as setting before our eyes the way out of the one into the other.

The will of God, which He came to do, carried Him into the sufferings of Calvary . He suffered at the hands of men, but the sufferings that this passage speaks of were not from men. “ He suffered for man's sin .” Men could not inflict these sufferings; it was the Lord Jehovah that bruised Him when He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. A darkness that no eye of man could pierce enshrouded the cross, for the woe of the Sin-bearer no heart of man could fathom, when from that impenetrable pall came the cry, “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!” From the depths out of which the forsaken One cried, we learn the righteously opened way for us to pass out of death into life. There, upon the cross, where His soul was made an offering for sin, God's love to man was proclaimed in the gift of His Son, that justice and truth might be upheld and that the purpose of God in this to us might come into full effect, in absolute consistency with His holiness. Having suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, His death opened the way out of the circle of death into the circle of life—a way by which men may pass out of the bondage of lust into the liberty of grace to do the will of God. Again I use the circles as setting before our eyes the way out of the one into the other.

It was indeed the best portion a nation could have here below till Messiah reigns over them, and the new covenant be made with the houses of Israel and of Judah. But before that day Messiah came for a deeper, holier, and more wondrous purpose — to suffer for sin, and for the sins of all who believe, to the glory of God. The cross of Christ, where He suffered from God as well as from man, presents a work divine beyond all that ever was wrought or can be again. For in this way, so strange to human eyes, not only was the Son of man glorified, but God was glorified in Him Whom man despised and the nation abhorred. Therefore God glorified Him in Himself and glorified Him straightway, instead of in His kingdom of manifested power and might, which He awaits in due time. But in and by His sufferings on the cross atonement was made; and risen from the dead He could and did reveal in all its fulness the name of His Father and our Father, His God and our God; that we might ourselves call upon Him as such, in a blessed nearness never till then appropriated by the faithful, never even possible before save to our Lord Himself.