Why did God let Jesus suffer?

Nor did the innocent suffer for the guilty when Jesus died. We cannot attach that word to Him, for it means without knowledge of good and evil, and He had full knowledge of all things. He was holy and not innocent; He knew what the sin of man was in its exceeding sinfulness and hated it, and was Himself sinless though a Man; and He knew what the righteousness of God was and loved it, and was God's righteous Servant to manifest and establish it.

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).

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.

Justice has often miscarried in this world's sad history, and men have suffered for crimes of which they were not guilty; but here was not a miscarriage of justice; though He had done no violence neither was there any deceit in His mouth, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him," and there is no unrighteousness with the Lord. He is the just God. He is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works (Ps. 145:17). Oh, why did the just God bruise Him, who is "that just One" (Acts 22:24)? Why did God who is holy forsake Him "that is holy, Him that is true" (Rev. 3:7)? Why was the sinless One put to grief? There is only one answer, and it is that God chose to deal with Him as our Surety and Substitute. It gave God no pleasure in the way in which we understand pleasure, to do this. but it was the only way if He was to be a Saviour God, for just He must ever be. And this bruising was not the physical wounds that He endured, but the indescribable sufferings of His soul when He was made an offering for sin. Injustice there was from man's side, inveterate and unrestrained wickedness was in the judge's seat and absolute goodness at the bar; sin upon the throne, crowned with almost universal acclaim, and holiness on the cross, despised and execrated by Gentile and Jew. But God was over all and permitted men to go thus far that they might fully declare themselves in their hatred of Him and that He might show in absolute justice the exceeding riches of His grace to them.

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.

Yet there it stands, a stupendous fact before the eye of faith. Our blessed Lord Himself assures us that it was absolutely necessary. "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer." But why was it necessary? Why should the only perfect, sinless, spotless Man have to suffer? Why should He be forsaken of God? The glory of God, the eternal counsels of redeeming love, man's guilty, ruined, helpless condition — all these things rendered it indispensable that Christ should suffer. There was no other way in which the divine glory could be maintained; no other way in which the claims of the throne of God could be answered; no other way in which Heaven's majesty could be vindicated; no other way in which the eternal purposes of love could be made good; no other way in which sin could be fully atoned for, and finally taken away out of God's creation; no other way in which sins could be forgiven; no other way in which Satan and all the powers of darkness could be thoroughly vanquished; no other way in which God could be just, and yet the Justifier of any poor ungodly sinner; no other way in which death could be deprived of its sting, or the grave of its victory; no other way in which any or all of these grand results could be reached save by the sufferings and death of our adorable Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.

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.)

His statements as to those he calls Darbyites are mere clap-trap to catch people. I never heard any such language nor thoughts as "the excellency attached to His own personal condition being cancelled." For my own part, as far as any difference can be predicated of His personal excellency (which strictly it cannot), there was no time it shone so brightly as at the cross, for there His obedience was consummated in the highest way, "Now is the Son of man glorified"; "Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life." As to the word obedience including all His obedience, I have no objection, looked at as a moral whole. It is not the act or acts as such, but the obedience in contrast with disobedience which is looked at. When it is said, that to say any of His sufferings were not necessary to the completion of His work in making atonement is to say that He did not suffer as a Redeemer, which would be a heresy - it is again mere clap-trap. His sufferings of course were all necessary to redemption, so was His birth, so was His sinlessness. It is another question what atonement and redemption were wrought by. "We have redemption through his blood," and "without shedding of blood there is no remission." That the character and results of redemption were the same for Christians or saints before Christ or in the millennium, is perfectly true, nor did I ever hear of any one who doubted it. But if scripture be true, redemption was not the sole end of His sufferings. In the first place, the great end was not our redemption at all, but the divine glory. In the next place, as to application, He was receiving the tongue of the learned that He might know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He suffered, that we might not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. "For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." Another object was to annul the power of him that had the power of death. In every respect, therefore, the statement is false. First the ultimate end is the divine glory, and in application other objects are positively stated as scripture objects, dear to the heart of every saint.

The key to this strange drama and unparalleled injustice has two sides to it; theirs and His. On their side, "This is your hour and the power of darkness" and "They hated Me without a cause, " — on His side. "The cup which My Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?" Their blind and uncontrollable hatred and His lowly and perfect submission ran together in that solemn hour; and behind it all that mystery of love. "Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."

He so obviously and often suffered for righteousness sake at the hands of His enemies; and apart from their repenting, this will bring deserved judgment upon them. But He also suffered for sin, sacrificially and judicially, at the hands of God and this only "on the tree." And this secures blessing for men as it has secured glory for God.

He suffered because of Who He is.