“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.”
(Lamentations 1:12)

Christ the Messiah, using the prophet Jeremiah, calls upon men to look at Him as He suffers on the cross. He cries “see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” As we try to think about or especially to speak about the sorrow and sufferings of Christ on the cross, we are very handicapped. We are those who have never known anything but sin talking about One who “knew no sin.” We can only enter into the sufferings of Christ by faith in that which God reveals to us in His word. Thank God we do not have to fully explain them to be the beneficiaries of them! He suffered at the hand of God’s justice, suffered the Just for the unjust, and brought His people to God. When we seek to describe the suffering Savior, many try to use graphic language to describe His bodily sufferings and agony. They were real and not to be diminished but His greatest suffering was that suffering of soul which He endured to save us from our sins. “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” (Isaiah 53:10) Christ suffered as God in flesh. He suffered as the One “holy, harmless and undefiled.” In my mind I cannot even begin to enter into that. He suffered in His entire humanity! He suffered agony of heart, being forsaken of God and facing the afflicting hand of God’s fierce anger which was due those He suffered for! His sufferings were His alone, unimaginable, unbearable by such sinners as we are, but oh so successful, so victorious, that by them He brought all His elect to God! To God’s justice satisfied. To God’s holiness as sinless. To God the Just and Justifier as righteous. To God’s home personally. To glory in Him and with Him! “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26) Yes, and ought not all those He suffered for also? Yes! Though there is much about His sufferings I cannot imagine or explain, I’m sure of one thing: they were absolutely successful in glorifying God and saving His people from their sins and they “shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away!”

G. Shepard