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The Suffering of Jesus

Mark 10:34

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And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill
him: and the third day he shall rise again.

According to the results of a software project that screened digital and written archives
to determine the most influential people in history based on their lasting impact, Jesus
Christ was deemed the most significant person to ever live.  But unlike many other
historical figures, one of the most important features about Jesus’ time on earth was his
death.  So today, we’re looking at arguably the most important event in the life of the
most important person in the history of the world… the very foundation of Christianity. 
But given the familiarity & centrality of the death of Jesus on the cross, it can be easy to
skip over the impact of the cross on our daily lives.  Today we want to ask God to give
us fresh eyes as we focus on this incredible event, that we would walk away changed,
like the hardened centurion, who seeing Jesus’ death up-close, was convinced that he
was in fact the Son of God (Mark 15:39).  

We’ll walk through the text this morning by asking three questions:

1. How did Jesus suffer? 

2. Why did Jesus suffer this way?

3. What does his suffering mean for us? 

1. How Did Jesus Suffer?

So first of all, let’s look at the text in Mark 15 and ask how did Jesus suffer?  I think
Mark shows us three primary categories in the text.  Jesus endured physical torment,
emotional trauma, and spiritual agony. First of all, let’s walk through some of the ways
that Jesus endured physical suffering during this most important day in history.      
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After his arrest, very early in the morning Jesus is brought to Pontius Pilate by the high
council of Jewish religious leaders to be tried for his claims to be the actual Son of God
and for making himself out to be a King.  During the trial, it becomes clear to Pilate that
Jesus is innocent (15:14), and that the chief priests are simply of him & revolutionary
(as they said).  However, Pilate bends to the will of the crowd, sentencing Jesus to
death by crucifixion - a punishment Jesus clearly did not deserve, but one fitting for
treason against Rome.  As was customary prior to a Roman execution, Pilate first has
Jesus scourged.  

He suffered physical pain 

Scourging was an incredibly painful torture inflicted by a whip with multiple leather cords
that would commonly have bits of sheep bone and sharp pieces of metal embedded
throughout.  This instrument was designed to inflict maximum pain and blood loss, as
each lash would have ripped out large pieces of flesh, essentially completely exposing
the skeletal muscles.  With his hands tied to a post, Jesus endured this horrific pain at
the hands of Roman soldiers as a crowd of onlookers watched.  And like many other
things on this day, Jesus had known this was coming - specifically predicting flogging to
the disciples in Mark 10:34.  

As a result of the flogging, Jesus lost a massive amount of blood.  His back has been
literally ripped to shreds, and he is incredibly weak.  At this point, Roman soldiers drag
him away to the governor’s palace, where they commence a new level of mockery and
humiliation.  Twisting together a crown of thorns, they ram the symbol of the curse given
to Adam down on to the head of the second Adam.  With fresh blood now running down
Jesus’ face, the soldiers begin to beat him over the head with a mock scepter, driving
the thorns even deeper into his temples and forehead.  When the horrific ordeal was
complete, they rip off the mock royal robe and lead him outside the city walls to
Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.   

And now, already weakened and bloodied to a state barely recognizable, Jesus is to be
crucified.  Again, and again, Jesus is fulfilling Scripture.  In Isaiah 52, written hundreds
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of years before this moment, the prophet had written: “many were astonished at you, his
appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the
children of mankind…”  Jesus has truly been marred beyond resemblance.  And now,
for the crucifixion. When you hear the word crucifixion, you probably instantly think of
Jesus.  But back then, this was a method of torture, humiliation, and execution that
ancient Rome had used liberally on non-citizens, criminals who would threaten Roman
rule.  It was a death reserved for the absolute worthless persons of society.

Writing in the first century, Mark would not have had to explain crucifixion to his
audience.  But we don’t live in a time where this is a commonplace event.  After being
forced to carry the horizontal cross-beam through the streets, Jesus collapses, requiring
a random stranger from the crowd named Simon to carry it the rest of the way.   At the
top of the hill, Jesus is thrown down on his back, exacerbating his already open
wounds.  They grab his hands, place iron stakes over his wrist joint, and drive these
giant nails into them.  He is lifted up and affixed to the vertical beam, now forming the
familiar “T” of the cross, where his feet are nailed as well.  

The cause of death in a crucifixion was typically suffocation.  With the entire weight of
your body hanging by your wrists, you cannot properly exhale.  Suffice it to say that for
the next six hours, every single breath Jesus takes is literally excruciating.  The
cumulative physical suffering and pain Jesus endures throughout this execution is some
of the worst imaginable in human existence.  I think it’s important for us to understand
the flesh and blood reality of what Jesus went through, because he went through it for
us. It is worth noting that there is a pattern of psychological and emotional suffering in
this text that is perhaps even worse.  

He suffered emotional trauma

And so, we move to our second vantage point within our initial heading of how Jesus
suffered: the emotional trauma.  We’re going to rewind the scene back to 6AM on
crucifixion day and watch this unfold from a new perspective.  
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First, Jesus is rejected by the religious leaders (v1-5).  He is brought before Pilate and
accused of many things - and many of them false. Have you ever been accused of
something you didn’t do?  You know that instinct of self-defense and justification that
wells up in you?  Jesus in his humanity may have felt that temptation, and promptly
crushes it, faithfully trusting the plan He and the Father have set out upon.   He knows
this is how it must be… but it hurts to hear your name, your reputation, dragged through
the mud, and to allow it to happen.  It hurts especially because these priests and
leaders are the ones charged by God to shepherd and protect his people, to guide them
towards truth and help them listen to Him.  And now the God-man is standing in their
midst, and they spit on him, literally and figuratively, completely rejecting his gracious
rule.  So, there’s emotional trauma number one.  

Next, Jesus is rejected by the government (v6-15).  He’s brought before Pilate, and as a
reader, there is a dramatic tension. For the moment you think he might actually get
justice.  But no, Pilate’s cowardice before the people results in a rejection for Jesus here
as well. Unfortunately, the true high King of the universe suffers injustice at the hand of
a system designed to protect justice.  Injustice, being treated unfairly, cuts to the core of
the human soul.  Jesus, God in the flesh, has been through that.  

Then, Jesus is rejected by the people (v13-15).  The same Jewish crowds who had
lined the streets with palm branches and seemingly accepted their Messiah shouting,
“Hosanna!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” as he rode into the city
on the donkey, now turn on him completely.  Given the choice between a convicted
murderer and the sinless giver of life, the people reject Jesus for Barabbas.  This
signals the kind of king they had wanted Jesus to be - one who would storm in and
throw off Roman rule.  Instead, the crowds of people that Jesus taught, healed, fed, and
ultimately came to save would send him to die.  And again, here we can understand
how painful the disapproval and disdain of others can be, even though we may not have
experienced the outright hatred of a mob.  On the cross, Jesus is even rejected by one
of the criminals sentenced on either side of him.  And his disciples are nowhere to be
found.  
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He suffered spiritual abandonment

As the rejection builds, we move into the third vantage point on how Jesus suffered…
the spiritual agony.  As awful as the physical torment, and as degrading and humiliating
the emotional rejection by each successive party… the reason Jesus’ death was
different from any others before or since comes in verse 33.  “And when the sixth hour
had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  Literally the sun
stopped shining for three hours in the middle of the day.  Darkness like this in Scripture
carries with it a meaning of divine judgement. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with
a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?”  Now I don’t think we will be able to fully understand the mystery of
what this means.  But we know on some level that Jesus is forsaken.  He is abandoned,
deserted, stranded by God Himself, and he feels this intense pain of loss and loneliness
in the core of his soul.  But he’s asking a question here.  And so this is a good time for
us to press in and ask it with him… why?  Why in the world is the perfect son suffering
like this - physically, emotionally, psychologically, and most of all, spiritually?  Why is he
forsaken?

2.Why did Jesus Suffer this way?

Let’s dig in to our second question in the outline - WHY is Jesus suffering like this? 
There are a few clues in Mark that illustrate this for us.  Let’s go back to the night
before, when Jesus is praying in darkness of Gethsemane. During his prayers, Jesus
includes this fairly odd phrase about a cup.  “Abba, Father, all things are possible for
you.  Remove this cup from me.”  Now, this cup is figurative.  It’s the same one he
referenced in chapter 10 when James and John asked to sit on his right and his left
when he comes in power.  He said, “can you drink this cup that I am to drink?”  What is
this cup about?  In the Old Testament, specifically in the book of Isaiah, there are
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references to a “cup of staggering” which is the “bowl of [God’s] wrath” (Isaiah 51:22).  
The cup is a symbol of God’s right anger, His judgment upon evil that he will pour out. 
Perhaps you can imagine this.  Picture a cup.  A big goblet.  And then imagine that
every time evil has been committed by the human race since the beginning of time, the
cup is filling up.  The cup of God’s holy wrath against evil, is filling up.  And justice must
be done.  Someone has to drink the cup.  Either you and I will drink the cup of God’s
judgement on our sin, our rebellion, or someone has to drink it in our place.  

To drink the cup of judgment

In these moments on the cross, Jesus is drinking that cup.  He’s draining it to the
bottom.  2 Corinthians 5:21 says that “For our sake [God] made him to be sin,” and in
Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for
us.”  So, Jesus is being treated by God as Sin itself, as a very Curse to be wiped out. 
And it is for our sake.  

But knowing that background, let’s think some more about why Jesus calls out the way
he does.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  We’ve seen that Jesus is
experiencing the judgment of God in our place.  And along with the physical, emotional,
and psychological agony, there is this profound sense of abandonment that comes
closer to breaking Jesus than anything else.  In the Bible, the judgement of God and the
felt absence of God go hand in hand.  In the garden, after the Fall into Sin, Adam and
Eve are sent away from the garden, away from God’s unique presence.  Cain, the first
murderer, is sent away from the presence of the Lord.  When God’s people Israel fall
into a state of desperate idolatry and rebellion, God allows them to be exiled, sent away
from God’s felt presence in the Temple.  And at the end of time, the final judgement is
described in 2 Thessalonians 1 as “the punishment of eternal destruction, away from
the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…”  Let’s put this together. 
Jesus on the cross, as darkness overtakes the land, signaling the judgment of God,
drinks the cup of God’s wrath on Sin, which is felt most acutely in the soul-tearing act of
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God His Father turning away from Him.  Jesus is abandoned, and with that he absorbs
the wrath of God on our behalf, as our substitute.

For the ransom of many

But there’s another important aspect to note from the gospel of Mark itself on why Jesus
suffers…  Jesus says earlier in Mark, “The Son of Man came… to give his life as a
ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  Jesus knew what this mission, ending on the cross,
was all about, and he says it’s fundamentally about laying down his life as a ransom
payment for many.  He is paying a costly price to redeem those who would believe in
Him for salvation, to buy us back.  And what is striking is that Jesus would give his life
for the people who turned their backs on him!  Over and over, Jesus is deserted by his
friends, slandered by the religious leaders, convicted unjustly by the government,
mocked, laughed at, humiliated by all different kinds of people.  Prior to his death, for
the entire chapter, there isn’t a single positive action on the part of someone towards
Jesus.  

And this reminds us of Romans 5, where the apostle Paul writes, “For while we were
still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God shows his love for us in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us… while we were enemies we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:6-10).  Do you hear that?  Jesus
died for the ungodly, the unholy, the profane, while we were still sinners, while we were
his enemies!  How much does the whole of Mark 15 showcase this?  In one sense, you
can see the whole of humanity in this chapter arrayed as enemies of Jesus, fully and
completely against him… even as He is wholly and absolutely FOR them, FOR us,
giving his life so that we could live.  And God did this, the Father and the Son agreeing
together, because he LOVES us!  He loves us in spite of us.  His love is not just
unconditional, it’s actually contra-conditional.  We were not lovable according to the
conditions of his covenant with us.  Love like this is beyond our understanding, but it is
our absolute joy to experience it.  
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3.What does Jesus’ Suffering Means for Us?

  And with that, now that we’ve seen 1) how Jesus suffered, and 2) why Jesus suffered,
we turn to our final point, 3) what his suffering means for us.  We’re going to zero in
here at the text itself.  So, starting in verse 37…  “And Jesus uttered a loud cry and
breathed his last.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 
And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw the way he breathed his last, he
said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”  

There are two main takeaways that we can leave with this morning on what the cross
means for us.  Access and confidence.  When Jesus dies, finishing his work, the curtain
of the temple is torn from top to bottom.  This is the curtain that would have separated
the most intimate and special place in the entire temple, the Most Holy Place.  In the
temple system, the High Priest was only allowed in once a year to this place, and when
he did go in, he had to bring a sin offering for the guilt of the people.  What Jesus
accomplished on the cross is depicted vividly in the tearing of the curtain. What he
accomplished ripped wide open the way to God, the way to experiencing the presence
of the real, living God. What does that mean for us?  In Hebrews 4:16, the author puts it
like this, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  Because of the finished suffering
of Jesus, because the curtain is now torn wide open, we can draw near to the God of
the universe with confidence!  Not sheepishly.  Not sulking.  Not unsure of his love for
us.  We draw near with confidence to receive grace, whenever we need it.  The curtain
is still open.  Are you anxious?  Come close.  Are you worn-out?  Come this way.  Are
you grieving?  Enter in.  Do you need help?  Head straight up to the throne, dear friend. 
Because of Jesus, by faith in Him, you are welcome in the presence of God most High,
no longer a stranger or an enemy, but as a son, as a daughter!  

The Lord’s Table

And this brings us to the Lord’s Table, where our access to the presence of God and
our confidence in His love for us are cemented month-after-month.  We’ve just walked
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the very passage that this meal is all about.  We’ve watched how Jesus body was
broken for us - remember Him as you crush the bread.  And we’ve seen how Jesus
drank the cup of judgment in our place, and poured out his blood for us-remember him
as our redeemer as we partake of the cup.

In view of what was said this morning let us approach the table with awe, gratitude and
joy. Truly the work of Christ is finished-the way to the Most holy is complete.

Let us pray.