There is only one brow which this crown of thorns will fit. As the eunuch sat in his chariot and read this wonderful lyric of sorrow even unto death, he questioned of whom the writer spoke. Philip, in reply, commenced to preach from this same scripture, Jesus.
Efforts have been made to apply this prophecy to one or another of the great sufferers of history: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or some unknown martyr in the days of the captivity. And it is quite likely, since sorrow and pain are the heritage of all, that in some particulars this vision was realized by lesser men than the Son of Man. A child’s hand may strike notes on the Freyburg organ, but who but the Christ could take these words in their entirety and say, “This portrait is Mine; there is not a line here which has not its correspondence in Me.”
When the Man of Nazareth approaches, and claims to have fulfilled this dark and bitter record, when He opens his heart and shows its scars; when He asks if there were ever grief like His–who would dare to challenge His right to claim this empire as His own? In fact, deep down in the heart, there is a tacit confession that He drank more bitter draught than even these words record.
This elegy of sorrow is unfortunately divided by the arbitrary arrangement of the chapters in our Bibles. Really, it begins at 52:13, with the word which so often arrests attention in this book, “Behold.” It consists of five stanzas of three verses each, the closing paragraphs being somewhat longer. No English translation can give a conception of the cadence and sad minor tones which sob through its chords.
The theme is the sufferings of the Servant of God; the wrong conclusions which His fellows formed of them; and the triumphant vindication which He has received.
A Story of Sorrow and Pain
Three mysteries meet here, as clouds brood darkly when a thunderstorm is imminent:
The mystery of humiliation. The tender plant painfully pushing its way through the crust of the caked ground; the absence of natural attractiveness–such imagery receives its full interpretation from the New Testament, with its story of Christ’s peasant parentage, His manger-bed, and lowly circumstances; fisherfolk His choice disciples; poverty His constant lot; the common people His devoted admirers; thieves and malefactors on either side of His cross; the lowly and poor the constituents of His Church. This was humiliation indeed, though the irregularities of human lot are scarcely distinguishable from the heights from whence He came.
The profoundest stoop of His humility was that He became man at all. He was Infinite in His unstinted blessedness; rich with the wealth that has flowered out into the universe; radiant in the dazzling beauty of perfect moral excellence. What agony, therefore, must have been His–to breathe our tainted air, to live in daily contact with sinners, and to be perpetually surrounded by the most miserable and plague-stricken of the race! And that He should die–that the Life-giver should pass under the dark portal of the grave! That the Son of God should become obedient to a death of ignominy and shame at the hands of men is a mystery of humiliation indeed.
The mystery of sorrow. You can see its ineffaceable marks on that marred face. We need no further proof that He was a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. But what is sorrow? Each of us knows by experience what it is; but who can define it, or say in a sentence of what it consists? It is that emotion which results when love meets with dark shadows threatening its beloved. There is doubtless a selfish kind of sorrow which repines at losses that can be counted in gold, and bewails the curtailing of sensual gratification. But this may not be mentioned here, where we are within the precincts of the sorrow of the world’s Redeemer. We are treating sorrow as it might exist in His peerless heart, and in those who are being molded in His image.
When love beholds its objects eluding its embrace–their love turning cold, their souls poisoned by misunderstanding and misrepresentation, their lives engulfed by eddies from which it would save them if it could, but they refuse its aid–then there is sorrow; as rain meeting a blast of frosty air will turn to snow.
We need go no further for the reason why Jesus sorrowed as He did. It could not have been otherwise. Men could not be loved by Him without causing Him infinite pain. Have you not wounded Him, crucified Him, wrung His heart, just because you were not able to appreciate the sensitivity of the heart which was pouring out its stores for you? Throughout the agesHe has come to His own, and they have barred the door to His entrance; He has desired to gather them, as a hen her chicks, but they have refused Him; He has come into His garden to gather the precious fruit and spices that would refresh His soul, but He has found the wall in ruins, and the choice stores rifled; slights, where there should have been tenderness; rebuffs, where He looked for a welcome; put to open shame, instead of in the inner shrine of esteem and love. Surely this will account for this mystery of sorrow.
The mystery of pain. Wounded, bruised, chastised; the spittle of the soldiery on His face; the scourge plowing long red seams in His flesh; the bloody sweat beading His brow; the cry “Forsaken!”; the sigh of the broken heart wrung from His lips. There is suffering here! Well might Pilate cry, as though to move the pity of the crowd with such a spectacle of misery, “Behold the Man!”
O King of suffering and sorrow! Monarch of the marred face, none has ever approached Thee in the extremity of Thy grief; we bow the knee, and bid Thee “All Hail!” We are conquered by Thy tears and woes; our hearts are enthralled; our souls inspired; our lives surrendered to Thy disposal for the execution of purposes which cost Thee so dear.
Wrong Superficial Conclusions
Every age has connected misery with guilt, anguish with iniquity, suffering with sin. Special pain has been regarded as the indication of special wrong-doing. It was in vain that Job protested his innocence; his friends insisted that the reason of his awful sufferings must be sought in evils, which, though he had screened them from the gaze of men, were doubtless well known to himself and God. The awful absence of sight which the blind man had suffered from his birth made the disciples speculate on the likelihood of his having perpetrated some terrible crime in a previous state of existence, of which that privation was the evidence and the result. And when, on the storm-swept shore of Malta, the apostle’s hand was suddenly encircled by the viper, creeping out of the heat, the natives concluded that he was a murderer, who, though he had escaped the sea, could not escape the penalty which justice demanded. So the verdict which the thoughtless crowd might be disposed to pass on the sufferings of Christ would be that they were, without doubt, richly merited. This is the explanation put into the mouth of His own people by the prophet: “We did esteem Him smitten of God, and afflicted.”
Perhaps the members of the Pharisee party who consented to His death, swept on against their better judgment by the virulence of Caiaphas and Annas, may have comforted themselves, as the shadows of that memorable day fell on the empty crosses, that such sufferings could not have been permitted by God to overtake the Nazarene had He not been guilty of the blasphemy for which He was judged worthy of death.
But all this while Jesus opened not His mouth. Silent before Caiaphas, except when His refusal to speak might appear to compromise His claims to death; silent before Herod, as one to whom speech was vain; silent before Pilate, except when the Roman governor seemed really eager to know the truth– “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep, dumb before her shearers, so He opened not His mouth.”
Why this speechlessness? In part it was due to the Saviour’s clear apprehension of the futility of arguing with those who were bent on crucifying Him. It was also due to the quiet rest of His soul on God, as He committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously, and anticipated the hour when the Father would arise to give Him a complete vindication. But it was due also to His consciousness of carrying in His breast a golden secret, another explanation of His sufferings than men were aware of, a divine solution of the mystery of human guilt.
We give our highest eulogy to those who suffer for others without a murmur of complaint; carrying silently a load of pain and grief which these have caused them; misunderstood and maligned, but keeping their lips fast sealed, lest the true reason should escape until the best moment had come for its revelation. With what reverence then should we not regard the Lord’s reticence. He knew the secret that underlay the Levitical dispensation, and that gave all its meaning to His own approaching death–the great law of the transference of suffering. He realized that He was God’s Lamb, on whom the sin of the world was lying; the scapegoat carrying guilt into a land of forgetfulness; the antitype of bull, and calf, and dove.
His soul was quieted under the conviction of these sublime conceptions, and He could afford to be dumb until He had put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. What though men judged Him falsely, God the Father knew all that was in His heart. Time would vindicate Him presently: what He carried as a secret in His heart would be proclaimed from the housetops of the world.
We all need to learn this lesson. We are so quick to pour the story of our wrongs into the ears of men, complaining of every injury and slight. We are prone to rush into speech or print, justifying our conduct, rebutting false accusations, and demanding justice. All this is unworthy of those who know that God is waiting in the shadow, “keeping watch upon His own,” and sure to bring their righteousness to the light, their judgment to the noonday. For the sake of the wrong-doer we should endeavor to arrest the commission of wrong; as Jesus did when He remonstrated with the high priest for his flagrant violation of the principles of Jewish jurisprudence. But where high-handed evil rushes forward, then our wisest and most Christ-like attitude is not to revile again, nor threaten, but to lift up our eyes to the hills from whence our help comes.
The Sufferer’s Vindication
It may tarry, but it surely comes at length. It came, and is always coming, to Christ. Each age has only established more completely His absolute moral beauty; the dignity and majesty of His bearing under the sufferings of His last hour; and the infinite value of His cross.
Vindicated by the growing convictions of men. We, the prophet says, speaking of men generally–we esteemed Him not, because we thought that God was punishing Him for His sin, but now we have discovered that He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows; that He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, chastened for our peace. In other words, the great truth of substitution is looming ever clearer on the conscience and heart of man. As never before, light is breaking on the heights of the doctrine of vicarious suffering, bringing into distinctness that wondrous line of virgin peaks which no human foot but One has ever scaled. Not that we can fully measure or define what Jesus did for us on the cross; but that we are coming to understand that His sufferings there have secured redemption for mankind, and laid the foundation of a temple whose walls are salvation and its gates praise. The growing conviction of this fact is, in part, Christ’s vindication.
Vindicated by the trust of each individual soul. Each time one comes to Him, and finds peace and salvation in His wounds, cleansing in His precious blood, shelter beneath the outspread arms of His cross, He sees His seed, He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied; He is vindicated, and recompensed for all His pain.
Vindicated by His exaltation to the right hand of power. “Ye denied the holy and righteous One, and killed the Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead.” That is His vindication, that He is seated on His Father’s throne, entrusted with all authority, and able to save to the uttermost all who come. Every cry of angel or seraph that He is worthy; every crown cast at His feet, or palm waved in His train; every accession of honor and glory as the ages roll; His raising of the dead; His session on the great white throne; His eternal reign–all attest the vindication of the Sufferer and His Father. “…and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand” (Isa. 53:10).