Why did God allow Jesus to suffer?

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.

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.)

But when Jesus came, it was Jehovah the Saviour. He was going to bring in victory over death. None of the taint of the fall in Him. No liability to death there. Every step pleasing to His Father, all fragrant to Him. A Man after His own heart. When His heart throbbed in tenderness and His hands moved in compassion, it was God’s heart and God’s hands shown to us. See those words in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “accord to the scriptures,” “according to the scriptures,” Jesus was the One appointed, delegated to this wonderful work, the only One “able to save.” Moses cannot save us, Elias cannot; in order that victory should be gained for God this was necessary. Think of it! He who was from all eternity the “Ancient of Days” (Dan. 7:9) was here on earth as a child, a youth, a man. His years were numbered. “He was about twelve years” “thirty years.” Oh, the wonder of it all! If He were not a divine Person, salvation were impossible for us. If He were human merely, how could He have met death, the grave, Satan, and have got the victory? Yet how truly He was human! In that dreadful day when He looked on to the cross and all the terrible consequences of sin His sorrow was so deep, so real, that we read He was greatly depressed (Matt. 26:7). His feelings were so strong, so pure. How He dreaded the thought of contact with sin, and He was to be made sin—endure the hiding of God’s face. “If it be possible,” said He, “let this cup pass; nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). If these words meant as much to us as they meant to Him, what should we feel about the sufferings of Christ? It was not possible, for there was no other way whereby sin could be judged and the sinner set free. Never was there a day in which death was so present with its sting as on that day. All that the vindictive violence of Satan and the malice of man could devise was heaped upon the sinless One. God looked upon Him there as made sin for us. Every blow that sin deserved fell on that blessed One. There was no diminution of the sentence, no softening down of the dreadful penalty due to the sinner, because the Son of God was to bear it. It seems almost a marvel that the very works of His own hands, the wood His hands had made, and the nails, the metal of which He had created, did not refuse their part in such a scene. A word from Him, and they would have refused. Nothing could have held Him there; but He never gave that word. His love kept Him there devoted obedience to His Father’s will kept Him there.

What then was to be done? Could God leave sin unpunished, and so have His character tarnished, as One who can be complacent with evil? No! whatever happens, God must maintain His own glory unsullied. But the love that could love unworthy sinners found out a way for their salvation. What the creature could not do, God Himself has done. The Father gave the Son, and the Son in love and compassion undertook the task. He became incarnate, in order to offer in the nature of man, that which the offended Majesty of heaven could accept. And this was no make-believe. He underwent the wrath of God due to sin. Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Look at the garden of Gethsemane! He asks, implores, that if it were possible, the cup which even He so dreaded, might pass from him. He was not yet drinking the cup, the cup of the fearful wrath of God against sin, but the mere anticipation made Him sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground. It was not the human sufferings that made propitiation for sin; not the scourge, or the nails, or the mocking; these were sufferings from man for righteousness. Far, far beyond all these He suffered upon the cross from God for sin, "He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21). No creature could have borne the wrath of God against sin; but He being God as well as man, could do so; and the glory of His person gave to the sacrifice, a value that was not only profound but infinite.

Now, if ever it could have been possible for God to waive a scintilla of His righteousness, it would have been done then, at the petition of His own beloved Son. But that were an impossibility. You might sooner see the sun drop from the centre of our system, and leave us all in darkness and confusion. The law of gravitation could more easily be abandoned, than God swerve a hair's breadth from His righteousness. Listen to the agonising supplication in Gethsemane — "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39). And he went away again the second time, and prayed, saying: — "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (ver. 44). Then He went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same thing (ver. 44). Then He arises, and goes with calmness and matchless dignity through all the horrors of that hour; the lacerations of the Roman scourge, from which alone the criminal sometimes expired; the mocking crown of thorns, the ribaldry of the soldiers, the spitting on Him, the smiting on the face, the derisive bowing of the knee, the questionings before Pilate, to whom He calmly says: "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above" (John 19:11).

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

But everyone must see that such a thing could not have happened without God's mind. Christ could not have gone down to death had God not permitted it; as He said Himself, He could pray to His Father, and He would send Him twelve legions of angels; or He could have wrought a miracle and delivered Himself; or walked away in Gethsemane when all fell to the ground. But He did not come into this world for that; neither did He come into the world simply to go out of it as rejected. When we see Him dying, we cannot but see that there was some thought and intention which could only be made good through that death. Why should He go down into death and judgment if those to be saved were not there? Thus, seeing Him there, we get the condition of those about whom He came. Thus too we see One going down into that place, and rising out of it, so that the whole power of the evil which He is come to set aside is annulled; and in this too we see His divine perfection — His perfect love. He had come to attract men's hearts; but, as He says, for His love He got hatred. Man would not have Him, and He goes on to the cross; and God, in all He is against sin and in His divine wisdom, was glorified in the death of Jesus.

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.

What great purpose was it that set His face as a flint in that way of sorrow? It was the Father's will, and what was that will? It was that we might live; that He might gather His saints together as His assembly now, and have us as His "many sons" in glory hereafter, all conformed to the image of His dear Son, that He might be the Firstborn amongst many brethren. And nothing less than the cross could make this possible; His incarnation amid the lowly surrounding of Bethlehem's manger was not enough: His life of service and sorrow amid the need and misery of men was not enough: His prayers, His works, His tears were not enough. His agony and sweat of blood in the shades of Gethsemane were not enough; all these had their part in the unfolding of the heart of God, and in the making known of His own deep perfections; but if guilty men were to be pardoned, if dead sinners were to live, if He was to build His assembly, if heaven was to be filled with "a multitude of sons", Jesus must die. For "Verily, verily, I say to you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die, it brings forth much fruit".

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?"

To vindicate the honour of God, to make atonement to His insulted majesty, to make known God's love, to declare Him as the Saviour-God — this was the purpose for which He came, this the thicket in which He, as God's Lamb, voluntarily allowed Himself to be caught. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God."

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).