When I was a youth I heard the story of the cross of Jesus, with all the harrowing details. I had also heard stories of martyrs who had died in the Dark Ages for their faith. My young mind found it hard to distinguish between the suffering Jesus endured on his cross and that endured by the faithful martyrs.
In fact, it seemed that some of the tortures the martyrs endured might have been even more painful than Jesus' flogging and crucifixion, and longer in duration as well.
As I became older, I began to appreciate a little more the more-than-physical pain of his sufferings. I could sense the shame and loneliness he had to endure. His disciples and friends all forsook him and fled. Whereas most of the martyrs had at least someone to cheer them in their last hours. But still I found it difficult to see how Christ's sufferings were more severe than those of some people I could imagine suffered both excruciating physical torture and the loneliness of rejection.
It also seemed to me that anyone could better endure unpleasantness and pain if he could look forward to a bright future of reward. I had learned that when a person died, if he were good he went to heaven for such a reward; and if he were bad, to an opposite place of torture and punishment. Jesus was undeniably good. Therefore, I reasoned to myself, as soon as he died he must have gone straight to heaven for an enjoyable weekend in reunion with his Father and the angels. The assurance that he was going there seemed expressed in the promise to the dying thief, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)
Jesus died about three o'clock Friday afternoon and was resurrected early Sunday morning. I assumed therefore he must have spent the intervening time in heaven or at least Paradise, whatever that was. Such anticipation could well have buoyed up his spirits during his severe trials. It is almost incredible what people can endure when they are certain of an almost immediate reward. Where was the unique "glory" in Christ's cross?
Further, the length of time during which He suffered his physical pain did not seem to be long. All the floggings and the final agony hardly lasted more than twelve or fifteen hours. Long enough, indeed; I shouldn't want to endure such pain for a fraction of that time. But many people have been forced to endure torture for longer periods, and without the hope of an imminent happy weekend such as I supposed Christ looked forward to.
Try as I could, I found it difficult to see anything very wonderful in Jesus' cross
Perhaps, I thought, what makes it so special is the fact that the Sufferer was the Son of God enduring all these agonies we poor humans must sometimes know. I could sense a certain feeling of awe, much as I would feel if a king were to condescend to sleep under our family roof, toil in our garden with us, and eat at our humble table. I could look and wonder, but I could hardly understand.
It troubled me that I could not induce within myself those feelings of deep heart appreciation for the cross that others have seemed to feel. According to what I had heard, I should "glory" in the cross of Christ, feel some unusual emotion or profound moving of heart. I saw some people actually moved to tears about it. I felt worried because I couldn't.
It seemed I couldn't touch with my fingertips what Paul sensed when he said, "God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Galatians 6:14)
I tried very hard to be impressed as I thought I should be impressed
But I couldn't help reasoning that if the Sufferer were the Son of God, knowledge of that fact should certainly have made it easier for him to endure trials that to us in our finiteness and partial ignorance seem so distressing and painful. He knew all things, He knew that He had "come from God and went to God". Surely he could stand for a short time the physical discomforts and pain we know for long periods of time! What is so wonderful?
I remembered reading an experience of a man who was once one of the world's richest men-Henry Ford, the builder of both the once-famous "Model T" and the luxurious Lincoln automobiles. Traveling incognito with a party of friends on some back roads. Mr. Ford had whimsically chosen to drive one of his little Model T's. It broke down-an event many of his less wealthy customers also experienced-and he was obliged to seek repairs at a village garage. Although he was inconvenienced a short time, the story indicated that he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I felt sure that one reason was his inner knowledge that he didn't have to depend on that balky Model T to get him home. Any moment he wished he could have telegraphed for a fleet of his Lincoln limousines to come and rescue him. With confidence others could not know. Mr. Ford might have enjoyed what the ordinary motorist of that day would have endured only with much anxiety.
Wasn't Christ in much the same situation? I reasoned. At any moment in his trials he told Peter he could pray to his Father and he would send him more than twelve legions of angels (Matthew 26:53). A soldier in bulletproof armor should be expected to show more courage than one without it.
And "saved by faith" perplexed me
I had heard it said that we are saved by faith. But I apparently I wouldn't get it. Was there something wrong with me, or had God given me the brush-off, leaving me to be lost for want of a proper appreciation of what his Son had done for me? Or should I force myself to say I felt something that I didn't feel? Would that do the trick? It was terribly difficult for me to confess a feeling I didn't have. I desperately wanted to be saved, but I also wanted to be honest.
Certain writers and speakers say that we human beings cannot comprehend the real meaning of the cross or appreciate what it meant to Jesus. They say we shall have to wait until eternity to learn. But these remarks, instead of bringing me comfort made me feel more disturbed. I had understood from the New Testament that the apostles, including Paul, had been profoundly moved in their human lifetime by something about the cross. Something phenomenal got hold of them. They were willing to suffer "the loss of all things", and instead of crying about it, were actually "content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties for Christ's sake" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
I knew no such willingness to suffer for Christ's sake, certainly not to the extent of taking pleasure in suffering for Him! The apostles had something I didn't have; and apparently I couldn't get it until I got to heaven. But the distressing point was that I probably wouldn't be able to get to heaven unless first of all I had the requisite experience! I was trapped in a hopeless circle.
Someone may want to interrupt me here and say: Too bad I couldn't have been there to help you out. You didn't need to feel any particular sense of appreciation for the cross of Christ. Just accept him as your Saviour as you would sign up for an insurance policy. You don't sense any gratitude or emotion when you sign on the dotted line. And yet you are covered' the moment you sign up. That's all there is to being saved.
I had thought of that. I knew that many people look at it that way. But their complacency seemed to me a far cry from the apostles' burning devotion to Christ. Paul actually "gloried" in bearing a cross of sacrifice like Jesus bore:
"Three times I was whipped by the Romans; and once I was stoned [with rocks, not drugs!]. I have been in three shipwrecks, and once I spent twenty-four hours in the water. In my many travels I have been in danger from floods and from robbers, in danger from fellow Jews and from Gentiles; there have been dangers in the cities, dangers in the wilds, dangers on the high seas, and dangers from false friends. There has been work and toil; often I have gone without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty; I have often been without enough food, shelter, or clothing. If I must boast, I will boast about things that show how weak I am." (2 Corinthians 11:25-30)
The "insurance policy" kind of faith had barely enough power to drag its adherents out to sit on cushioned pews in church once a week. Jesus said: "None of you can be my disciple unless he gives up everything he has." "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33, 27) That deeply impressed me. Either one finds the power to serve Christ as those apostles did, or he isn't a real Christian.
Those misgivings I had were right, and the fact that I had them was probably evidence the Holy Spirit had not forsaken me. Being a sinner, I was no better than anybody else; but neither was I worse than others. I had the potential for a true heart appreciation of Christ's cross. What I lucked was an understanding of what was involved in the cross, what it meant to him.
My parents and pastors had ignorantly taught me an error that obscured the love of Christ and hid from me the full extent of its beauty and power. This error obscured the cross as heavy smog obscures one's view of snow-capped mountains. The apostles in the New Testament had been seeing something I had never seen, and what they saw moved them to their astounding heart devotion to Christ. I was spiritually paralyzed because I couldn't see what they saw.
What hides the cross from view
This error was the common idea of the natural immortality of the soul, the teaching that one cannot really die, that what we call death is merely an immediate release to another level of life. As a host of physical ills can result from a simple vitamin deficiency, so this basic error borrowed from ancient paganism but handed down through Christendom triggered a chain reaction of confusion in my understanding.
In the Garden of Eden the Creator had plainly told Adam and Eve that if they should sin, "in the day" of their transgression "you shall surely die". (Genesis 2:17) He said exactly what he meant. It was the devil who flatly contradicted him, telling them: "You will not surely die." (Genesis 3:5)
In effect, the tempter was voicing the tenets of paganism and of much so-called Christianity when he said that there is no such thing as death itself. No man can utterly perish. The soul possesses a natural immortality.
This idea became not only the cornerstone of pagan religion, but from thence it infiltrated the doctrine of many Christian churches. The error may seem innocent enough at first thought; but consider what it does to our understanding of the cross of Christ:
-- It effectively contradicts the Scriptural statements: "Christ died for the ungodly", and "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6, 8)
-- In other words, the way Satan wants us to understand it, Christ didn't really die for us at all. He merely endured physical pain in which he was sustained throughout by the assurance that he had nothing to risk, nothing to lose, since he could not really die. If he had nothing to lose, he therefore had nothing to give of any value beyond the endurance of physical pain.
-- As soon as he cried out: "It is finished", he went to heaven. (Some say He went to "hell" in order to preach to the "spirits in prison"; but I reasoned that if he did, he went as a visiting missionary and not as one suffering the expected torments of the lost. Either way one looks at it, he didn't really die at all. He merely entered into a larger existence.)
Where is the sacrifice? Gone! And that helpless vanity is precisely what Satan wanted me to feel regarding the cross of Christ.
In comparison with the sufferings of martyrs or soldiers who die for their country, or heroes who die for their friends, there was nothing very special about what Jesus did. In fact, his sacrifice lacked one quality of nobility inherent in the self-sacrifice of soldiers and heroes: through it all he held fast to his own security, whereas they sacrifice their security, Jesus didn't really give up anything, least of all himself. And when John 3:16 says that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son", it really means that the Father only lent him.
This error of the natural immortality of the soul is intended by its author to cast a suspicion of make-believe into the story of Calvary-just enough to paralyze the devotion of those who profess to follow Christ. If their appreciation of Jesus' cross is beclouded, their love will be stifled, and their devotion hobbled.
The real measure of Jesus' sacrifice
The sufferings of Jesus were incomparably greater than the endurance of physical pain, or the torture of any of the martyrs. There was no sham or make-believe about the burden he bore. Scripture says: "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6)
What is "iniquity"? "Your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you." (Isaiah 59:2) Iniquity leaves the soul desperately bereft and alone, destroys all sense of security. The Lord did indeed lay upon Christ "the iniquity of us all". This means that he laid upon him the same feelings of guilt, loneliness, insecurity, and despair that we know so well. It was this burden laid upon him that separated Christ from his Father.
Before I learned the truth, it had seemed that Christ could not possibly have really felt forsaken. The Bible says he cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Was this a dramatic actor following a teleprompter, wailing his lines on the stage, or was this an honest cry from a heart wrung with bitter anguish?
Christ did not bear this burden as a man might carry a heavy load on his shoulders. He bore the burden deep within his own soul. Peter says, "Himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). It was therefore within his own nervous system, in his mind and soul, in his most inner consciousness that Jesus bore the killing load. Paul is even more explicit: "He [the Father] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Christ was not a sinner, for he was sinless
But he was made "a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Galatians 3:13). The "sin" and the "curse" are here identical. Paul's statements indicate that Christ's identity with sin as he bore his cross was something terrifyingly real. "The wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23) If Christ was "made to be sin", "made a curse for us", it is clear that he was likewise made to suffer the wages of sin.
Christ is very close to us, "for both he [the sinless Christ] who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified [sinners] are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Hebrews 2:11). But how did He bear our death?
What is death, those "wages of sin" which Christ suffered?
There are two kinds of death in Scripture: (a) one called sleep (see John 11:11, 13), which is the "death" we commonly speak of; and (b) the other is the real thing, the second death (see Revelation 2:11; 20:6; 21:8). The latter is eternal separation from God-good-bye to light, joy, and life, forever.
It was this "second death" that Jesus experienced. "He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone." (Hebrews 2:9) Since he tasted it for everyone, this sleep that we call death cannot be what he "tasted", because everyone tastes that kind of death for himself. Whatever it was that Jesus tasted, it was that we might not have to taste it ourselves.
Christ in fact died the death that the Creator promised Adam and Eve that they should die if they sinned, the death that sin will bring to the lost at last. Jesus felt it as much as any human being can feel it, because "in all things he had to be made like his brethren.... He himself has suffered, being tempted." (Verses 17, 18) Therefore the death that Jesus died on the cross was the full bitter cup of despair and ruin that will be the eventual "wages of sin".
This had to involve the hiding of his Father's face. There is no hope, no light in the second death, neither is there expectation of a resurrection to brighten its despair. No candle light even at the end of the tunnel. If Jesus "died for our sins" or "died for us" (1 Corinthians 15:3; Romans 5:8), then he experienced in his final suffering a darkness that veiled from his sight the expectation of a resurrection. If he had been buoyed up by the hope of resurrection, to that extent he would have come short of "tasting death for everyone" or truly giving himself "for our sins". At best he could only have lent himself, which would not be giving himself.
No wonder Christ's human nature recoiled against that terrifying experience! He flung himself on the ground in Gethsemane: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death", he groaned. "He went a little farther and fell on his face, and prayed, saying: O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:38, 39)
The cup which he drank was something no other human being before or since has ever fully tasted. In fact, since time began, he is the one and only person ever to have truly died. The full terror of hopelessness in the second death is what he "tasted" in the full consciousness of its for-eternity killing reality. Neither the nails driven through his hands and feet nor the floggings killed him. He scarcely felt the physical pain on the cross, so terrible was the intense soul suffering that evoked a perspiration of blood in Gethsemane and at last literally broke His heart. "Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness." (Psalm 69:20)
Throughout his life and even through some hours of his final passion, Jesus knew a bright confidence in his resurrection. He lived as in the very sight of his Father's smiling face. In that divine sunshine no shadows could terrify him. Even when the repentant thief pleaded, "Remember me", Jesus still retained his joyful confidence, for he promised: Assuredly I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43). (There is no comma in the original)
But not yet had Christ drained the cup to its bitter dregs. There was to come a change.
The threat of eternal failure in his mission
To press that bitter cup deeply to the Savior's lips, the wicked tempter used as his agency the people Christ had come to save.
While on the cross, Jesus could not help hearing the people say to each other, "If he is the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him: for he said: I am the Son of God." Some challenged him directly. "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." (Matthew 27:42, 43, 40)
We have no right to think that Jesus was unaffected by these taunts. That tempting if was terrible to bear in his hour of extreme humiliation. "Let God deliver him now, if he will have Him!" His hands nailed to the bars, Jesus had no way to shut his ears to their taunts and insinuations. All he could do was pray. But it seemed that no one in heaven would listen to Him. "You do not hear", he complained. (Psalm 22:2)
For hours he wrestled with the awful burden. Some time after those malicious ifs "from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land" (three o'clock in the afternoon), when Jesus "cried out with a loud voice" those words of forsaken loneliness that indicated he now felt the terror of entire separation from his Father. (Matthew 27:45, 46) Like a barbed arrow tipped with poison, that last temptation of despair caused him his most bitter anguish.
Darkness mercifully veiled his agony when he was unable to use his crucified hands to hide his tear-stained face from the gaze of the mocking crowds. Only his broken, sobbing voice could be heard in the pitch blackness that enveloped Calvary. How cruel humans can be! And how merciful was the Father to wrap his tortured Son in folds of darkness while he suffered so! No angel even was allowed to see the sight of his anguished human face as he uttered those despairing words, nor was Christ permitted to feel the kiss of love and loyalty the Father longed to press upon him in the gloom. The Father was there with him, suffering with him, for "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." (2 Corinthians 5:19) But Christ must be left to feel forsaken, to "tread the winepress alone", fearfully so.
Something in him held on; something he will share with us
But although hope died, love endured. There is a strange psalm that describes the horrible experience that Christ went through. It opens a window for us that we might peer into Christ's heart as he hangs on the cross in the long hours of darkness.
He hears the taunts of the people and ponders the mysterious silence of his Father. Psalm 22 tells how he recalls that his ancestors got answers when they prayed. Why couldn't he? "They trusted, and you delivered them. They cried to you, and were delivered: they trusted in you, and were not ashamed. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people." "I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear." (Verses 4-6, 2)
That's a terrible way for anyone to feel! When you feel that no one cares, not even God, despair is distilled into its final death-dealing poison. The truth is that no other human soul has ever had to drink that same cup of pure despair mingled with the guilt of the whole world's sin laid upon his consciousness. Christ is "the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world" (John 1:9) and sustains everyone in his/her darkest hours with a clear-shining ray of hope. The Holy Spirit presses upon our souls the assurance, "Somebody cares!" Even if you've spent your life in wrong-doing. You can see some hope in those last moments.
But Jesus must see no such hope, feel no such assurance. "I have trodden the winepress alone", he says. (Isaiah 63:3) He drinks the cup to its bitterest dregs.
Nevertheless, He must find some way to bridge the dark gulf between his forsaken soul and the Father. He must overcome this conviction of separation. He must achieve an atonement, a reconciliation with him. If the Father forsakes him, He will not forsake his Father! If he can see no bridge over the dark chasm of ultimate human and divine despair, as the Son of God, the Crown Prince of glory, He will build one!
The inspired psalm tells what happened. Christ's mind goes back to his human infancy in Bethlehem. Though now "You do not hear", yet "You are he who took me out of the womb: You made me trust when I was on my mother's breasts. I was cast upon you from birth, from my mother's womb." Tortured in spirit, he relies on the events in His life that prove the Father's care for Him. If God heard the prayers of "our fathers" and if he protected me, the infant Jesus in those born-in-a-stable days in Bethlehem, surely he will not turn away now!
Christ understands his mercy and great love; surely he will not fail me now! "By faith" the anguished Son of God will bridge the chasm-as a human being he will believe his Fathers love in the darkness and in the torment of hell.
As the final moment of endurance comes, he feels like one being tossed on the horns of savage beasts: "Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen [wild African buffalo]!" (Psalm 22:21) In that last desperate moment his faith breaks through the impenetrable darkness, and he triumphs. Like Jacob wrestling with the Angel in the darkness, Christ grasps the Father who is not permitted to embrace him, and he clings to Him by faith: "You have heard me!" The Father may forsake him, but he will not forsake the Father! The new Jacob cries out, "I will not let you go unless you bless me!" Christ's faith endures, even through the horrors of the "second death".
"Herein is love"
When once the error had been cleared away, I began to see the cross as it is. I began "to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ's love.... although it can never be fully known" (Ephesians 3:18, 19). The picture that had been so foggy, now was in sharper focus. At last I was in the kindergarten.
Here at last I began to see the love that moved the apostles so wonderfully. No longer did their self-sacrificing devotion appear so phenomenal or impossible. The love they knew appears more and more to be the normal. Proper response of any honest human heart to the sacrifice Christ made. Yes, "in the cross of Christ I glory".
But still a gulf in understanding remains that tends to separate us from that full fellowship with Christ that the apostles knew. Let us now search for the truth that by faith spans that chasm.