KJV Isaiah 53:3 “A Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

NASB Isaiah 53:3 “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

Suffered for Men

He not only suffered moving amongst men, but He suffered as a man. He not only suffered from men, but He suffered for men. Amazing grace! In His incarnation, He suffered amongst men; in His Holy, impeccable, and sinless nature, He suffered as a Man. In His faithfulness to God, He suffered from men. Now, in His love to God and to us, He suffered for men — for us.

We are most accustomed to thinking of this aspect of His sufferings. This is where we are most invested. Here is where we have cast our anchor. “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

Immeasurable

To measure something with precision, you need “units” or a scale. We use miles, inches, degrees, and a host of others to give measurements. There are no “suffering units” to measure the suffering of Christ at Calvary. Scripture anticipated this in some of the foreviews of the transaction that occurred at the cross.

When Boaz purchased Ruth, no mention is made of the purchase price. When the scapegoat was released into the wilderness, no distance was specified. It went into a land “not inhabited.” Perhaps this suggests a place to which no one had ever been before. When Scripture gives us the picture of the Shepherd seeking the lost sheep, it does not specify how far he went. We can never measure the depths of suffering for those six hours on the cross.

There is almost something ironic in the words of 2 Corinthians 8:9: “Ye know the grace … being rich …. He became poor.” Do we really know the grace? Can we measure the height from which He came or the depth to which He stooped? “Knowing the unknowable” must be written across that Scripture.

Yet it was for us to make us “rich.”

Unimaginable

Allow me to set the scene for you. The Son of the Father, in inexpressible love and devotion, lays down His life to glorify and honour His Father. He is paying the ultimate price. Here is His love against the background of the sin and hatred of the human family, a sin so dire that it would seem that the tide of human guilt crested at the cross. Never was there a display of such obedience and faithfulness as He displayed at Calvary. Never was there a moment when the heavens should have been opened in appreciation as it did by Jordan’s bank and on the mountain top.

Now, in light of that, would you have imagined that this “Son of His love” would be forsaken by His God? Apart from Psalm 22 and the identical cry that Mathew and Mark relate, human intelligence and reasoning would never have imagined that sin was so awesome in its guilt, so absolutely desperate in its condition, that nothing less than the Son of God, bearing sin on a cross, forsaken for six hours by God, could possibly atone for sin.

The cry, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me,” was not an inquiry, nor an indictment against His God. It was an insight into the ultimate suffering He endured.

One Old Testament picture may help to appreciate this. Gentile mariners, to still the storm, had to throw Jonah overboard. He sank to the depths, was swallowed by the great fish prepared by God, and eventually jettisoned to dry land. None of those men on the ship could have imagined, nor did they know the depth to which Jonah sank or the suffering that he knew. They enjoyed salvation; he endured suffering.

“Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” 1 Pet 3:18

Inexpressible

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul speaks of being caught up into Paradise and hearing words “unlawful to utter.” He speaks in 2 Corinthians 9 of God’s “unspeakable gift.”

Anyone who has travelled to a foreign country can identify with the frustration of attempting to understand a foreign language. You may have some rudimentary knowledge of the language, or you may resort to Google Translate. But when a citizen of that country begins to speak his native tongue, you struggle to understand. I have wondered if we do not have adequate words, not only in English, but in any language, to describe what occurred at the cross.

Referring back once again to foreign languages, if you happen to know two languages, you know that there are some things better expressed in one language than in the other. Likewise, could there be a “language of heaven” that would express more precisely, describe more adequately, and reveal more deeply the sufferings of the Lord Jesus? Will it have to await a future day when we are made fluent in heaven’s language to fully worship in appreciation for the cross? That is a wonderful prospect!