The Extent of Christ’s Sufferings
Special Evening Devotional for April 3, 2023
Listen to the audio devotional above, and/or read the written devotional below.
My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes. Psalm 6:7
COMPLETE
I was recently asked a question about the extent of Christ’s sufferings:
“How could the physical sufferings of Jesus be far greater than what any other has suffered?”
This was a legitimate question, one which many a mind has pondered. While Jesus was beaten, spat open, brutalized by having His beard plucked completely from His face, and scourged until our Lord was disfigured beyond human recognition (Isa 50:6; 52:14; 53:5), it was not His physical sufferings inflicted upon the Messiah which paid our sin debt. Christ’s physical afflictions as sinless Man provides us these two insights: first, it shows us how sinfully depraved mankind is— that when the precious Son of God came to earth as a flesh and bone human being, those who should have recognized Him from Scripture savagely ravished Him until He was reduced to human rubble. Second, Jesus, who was perfect Man, suffered God’s wrath for sins He did not commit when He was at His weakest possible state. It is to this second truth by which we can say, without any doubt, that Jesus Christ’s sufferings not only exceeded the sufferings of any man who ever lived, but His sufferings exceeded those by all men combined who ever lived, including all those who have rejected Christ and opposed YHVH God, whose eternal destiny is the hell of their own making and choosing. The great difference between Jesus’ afflictions and those of other men is that Jesus suffered the eternal, infinite, and unbridled wrath of God for sins He did not commit. Jesus refused the ancient anesthetic of His day, wine mixed with myrrh (Mark 15:23), so that He could be clear and unclouded of mind during this entire ordeal. The intimacy of fellowship Jesus enjoyed with the heavenly Father was closer than any man could ever know. Therefore, when He was forsaken of the Father when He suffered God’s holy anger (Psa 22:1; Mark 15:33-34), it far exceeded the torments any other human could ever know or realize. In this way, in that Day when Christ returns and all is revealed, no one could ever say that the offering of Christ’s soul (Isa 53:10), and its anguish (Isa 53:11), was incomplete or insufficient. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
In Christ alone we are complete,
His sufferings purchased our
Salvation by His wounds so deep,
By love and grace and power.
