Focusing On Jesus'True Suffering

I recently heard a story about a man who, in an attempt to impress upon the audience the sufferings of Jesus, brought out a scourge and proceeded to beat on the Lord's table as he discussed the scourging received by the Savior. Not only is this kind of effort overly theatrical, but it is misguided as well, for it fails completely to take into account the true suffering of Jesus. While no one here has attempted such drama, sometimes we fail to focus on what really hurt Jesus.

First, it is true that Jesus suffered great physical pain during the crucifixion and the hours before it, but this pales in comparison to what He suffered from a mental standpoint. After all, when Jesus was suffering physically, He still had enough compassion to care for His mother (John 19:25-27). Obviously, He could endure this pain.

It is in His tortured cry from the 22nd Psalm of David that we see His true suffering. When Jesus cries, ""My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"" (Matt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34), we see the agony of His taking on the sins of the world. Jesus, who had lived in purity and holiness, feels and looks for a moment like the vilest, ugliest sinner in the history of the world. It is so disgusting that His Father must turn away. How truly awful it must have been for Him to wear my sins, to become ""sin on our (my) behalf"" (2 Cor. 5:21). Here is great suffering, because He had to become that which He abhorred.

In addition, in the cry of Jesus we see that His Father had to leave Him to suffer this pain alone. No one has ever been closer to one another than Jesus and His Father. Jesus said, ""I and the Father are one"" (John 10:30), and His every move on earth had been to carry out the will of His Father. He was now dying to fulfill His Father's will, and had stood firmly for those principles when they had come to lead Him away in the garden. In fact, in the garden He had just spent many of His last hours talking to His Father, drawing closer one last time to the One He truly loved. And now, at His lowest point, our sins add to His great suffering by causing the Father to turn His head away. No physical pain could compare to this extreme emotional suffering.

What should be our response to the true suffering of Jesus? We must not trivialize it with cheap theatrics. We must not trivialize it with a partaking of the Lord's Supper in which we do little to consider our own role in causing this horrific moment in the history of God's creation. Instead, we must react with godly sorrow at what we have done. No matter what others have done, the fact is I have sinned, and even if no one else in the world had ever sinned, Jesus would have had to die to save me. This should cause our hearts to be touched by His suffering.

The suffering of Jesus should also bring us to a great recognition of the need to be truly thankful for His willingness to die on our behalf. We were powerless to save ourselves, but Jesus willingly endured the suffering so that we might live. We owe Him a tremendous debt, and we should be immeasurably grateful for His forgiveness.

Jesus suffered great physical pain on the cross, but He suffered even greater emotionally because of our sins. When we remember Him each Sunday, we need to focus on the great pain we caused, and to realize with humbled hearts what a great debt we owe.