Transcript
Stephen:
The two people going to Emmaus would have seen the suffering of Jesus at the hands of the Pharisees and the priests, the mockery, the blasphemy, certainly the suffering at the hands of Pontius Pilate and his soldiers, and ultimately the crucifixion, this excruciating form of suffering.
But Luke also records that there's three hours of darkness on the cross.
Christ wasn't just suffering in a physical way. There was this spiritual dimension. There was something deeper going on in his suffering.
So what are we even able to understand about the sufferings of Christ?
Joel:
Yeah. Because the physical and even emotional, mental suffering that the Lord Jesus endured on the cross was terrible. It was horrendous. The cross not only reveals the heart of God but reveals the heart of man. This is how they treat a perfect human being.
Beyond the physical and even the emotional side of things – the forsaking by the disciples, the pain that must have caused him – there is this spiritual suffering where he's suffering not at the hands of men but at the hands of God.
Again, this is in the Old Testament prophets. Take Isaiah 53: "it pleased the Lord to bruise him ... The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."
Paul explains this in 2 Corinthians. He says, “He has made him to be sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
So what has happened is God is making his Son judicially liable for our sins. He is punishing him. He is exacting from him the debt that we owe.
Now this is very much at the heart of the Christian faith.
If I do something that causes you to lose out – my car into the sidewall of your house – there are a number of things you can do. You can say, “You did this. Your recklessness and carelessness caused this destruction. You have to pay the price to fix the problem that you have caused.”
Or you could say, “I have tremendous resources and I am a very gracious and merciful person. You don't have to pay. I will fix the problem myself.”
This is what is happening at Calvary.
Sin is a tremendous problem, an infinite problem. God could righteously and fairly say to us, “This is your problem. Your actions, your choices – you did this. I will banish you and abandon you forever. That's exactly what you deserve.”
But what is happening at Calvary is that God in Christ, rather than exacting the debt from us, is taking that to himself. He is paying in full the cost that we owe because of our sin.
Stephen:
So his suffering had to happen before his glory. His suffering has to come before we get any glory too — before we come into any blessing, before we come into the kingdom of God.
And as you say, the cross establishes this righteous basis where the curse is dealt with and the price is paid. Then all the blessings and benefits can flow to us, and God remains a righteous God.
Joel:
Yeah, absolutely. And what is essentially happening is that Christ is standing in our place and taking everything that goes with that – the shame and the suffering – so that one day we can stand in his place and enjoy the things that are his by right.
He took what is ours by right. We get what is his by right: the glory, the joy, the peace, and the relationship with the Father.
He suffers so we don't have to. He's abandoned by God so that we can be received forever.
He is cast out on the cross. He cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that for all of eternity we can enjoy the bliss of perfect fellowship and perfect relationship with God in heaven.
