28. The Word of Agony
“Jesus Saith, I Thirst.”
5. The Word of Agony
“JESUS KNOWING THAT ALL THINGS WERE NOW ACCOMPLISHED, …
SAITH, I THIRST”(John 19:28).THE PREVIOUS WORD from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” was a cry of spiritual anguish; this word, the shortest, was the sob of physical agony. He who began His ministry with gnawing hunger is closing it with raging thirst. The climax of spiritual anguish synchronizes with the zenith of physical pain. Only one word of two syllables in the original yet into it is compressed the most intense agony of which the human body is capable.
The incongruity of the situation has been described by A. W. Pink: “I thirst! What a text for a sermon! A short one it is true, yet how comprehensive, how expressive, how tragic! The Maker of heaven and earth with parched lips! The Lord of glory in need of a drink! The Beloved of the Father crying, ‘I thirst!’ What a word is this! Plainly no uninspired pen drew such a picture.”
An Exclamation of Physical Agony
James Stalker tells of a German student who was wounded in a battle and lay on the field unable to stir. He did not know the exact nature of his wound, and thought he may be dying. The pain was intense; the wounded and dying were groaning round about him; the battle was still raging, and shots were falling and tearing up the ground in all directions. But after a time, one agony began to swallow up all the rest and soon made him forget his wounds, his danger, and his neighbors. It was the agony of thirst. He would have given the world for a drink of water. This, then, was the supreme physical pain of the crucifixion.
A review of the events crammed into the preceding hours will suffice to explain the acuteness of His physical suffering. After the tension of the mock trials came the merciless lashes of the whip, an instrument of torture in which were usually imbedded pieces of iron and bone. The blows were sometimes so severe that they issued in the death of the victim. Then followed the crucifixion itself with its varied and excruciating pains—hands and feet pierced with spikes, brow encircled with fierce thorns, limbs distended, bones dislocated, and all the time the relentless sun blazing overhead. But surpassing them all was the raging burning fever that consumed Him, until from swollen and cracked lips there fell one word of pent-up agony, “I thirst!”
An Evidence of Real Humanity
If the mediator was to fully enter into the experiences common to humanity, the experience of pain must of necessity be an ingredient of His own life-experience. Remarkably enough, up to the time He uttered this cry, Jesus had given no indication of physical pain. Was He immune to pain, and thus above the level of the human? This cry dispels such a thought. He now plumbs its deepest depths.
God does not thirst. The Man, Jesus Christ, did thirst, for He was God “manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16). While not ceasing to be all that He was before the incarnation, so really did He partake of our humanity that all the sinless infirmities inherent in being man became His. “In all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). Let us draw all the comfort we can from His identity with us in all the experiences of our humanity from the cradle to the tomb.
Sufferers in all ages have been able to draw comfort from the fact that their God did not insulate Himself from the sufferings of His people. “In all their affliction he was afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9), was said of His relation to His people Israel. There is nothing in the realm of pain that was not experienced to the full by the Son of Man. It was this that qualified Him to be “a merciful and faithful high priest” (Hebrews 2:17).
This word from the cross refutes the error of a denial of the real humanity of Christ. In the days of the early church, the Docetists taught that Jesus was not a veritable man, but God dwelling in a semblance of mortal flesh; that His body was a phantom, that the reality was God. But a phantom or an apparition does not thirst. It is the Man Christ Jesus who thirsts.
An Example of Fulfilled Prophecy
“Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.” So runs the record (John 19:28).
Our Lord met the qualifications of the blessed man described in the first psalm, of whom it was said that his delight was in the law of the Lord, on which he meditated day and night. In common with other Jewish boys, Jesus had committed to memory large portions of the Old Testament, if not the whole. On every possible occasion He resorted to the synagogue, so that He might immerse Himself in the sacred Scriptures. The prophets had become His own familiar friends, while in the psalms He found the expression of every mood and aspiration of His soul.
Now, even in the hour of extreme agony, His mind was free to traverse the well-trodden paths of sacred Scripture. He had prayed for the pardon of His enemies. He had made provision for His mother’s future. And now, as He reviewed the crowded events of the past few hours and the thirty years that had preceded them, there was borne in upon His spirit the assurance that the task He had come to do was accomplished. Every prediction of Scripture concerning the Messiah had been fulfilled in Him—except one.
Hitherto He had borne His sufferings with noble silence. But in the prophetic word of the psalmist, He saw an indication of His Father’s will. Had he not written, “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 69:21)? Then it would not be contrary to His Father’s will if He gave vocal expression to His physical agony. Perhaps, even among the callous soldiers at the foot of His cross, there might be one who would alleviate this burning thirst.
When hungry in the wilderness, He had resisted the seduction of the devil and had refused to perform a miracle for His own benefit, for He had no indication of the divine will. But now He was free to open His parched lips and cry, “I thirst!” Thus naturally an opening was given for the prophecy to be fulfilled.
F. W. Robertson pointed out that vinegar was the wine of the Roman army, their common drink, and was likely to be at hand among a company of soldiers. Already one draught had been offered to Him—the medicated potion to which myrrh had been added to deaden the pain, but this He had rejected. The Son of Man refused to meet death in a state of stupefaction. But He accepted the sour wine as a refreshing draught. “He would not allow one drop of the cup of agony His Father had placed in His hand to trickle down the side untasted. Neither would He make to Himself one drop more of suffering than His Father had given. He was no Stoic or Spartan. He allowed the cry of pain to pass His lips, and He drank the proffered draught. He refused the anodyne, yet did not refuse the natural solace which His Father’s hand had placed before Him.” He did not want to lapse slowly into unconsciousness, but to be able to utter a shout of triumph.
Fill high the bowl, and spice it well and pour
The dews oblivious; for the cross is sharp,
The cross is sharp, and He
Is tenderer than a Lamb.
O awful in Thy woe!
The parching thirst of death
Is on Thee, and Thou triest
The slumbrous potion bland, and wilt not drink,
Thou wilt feel all, that Thou may’st pity all:
And rather wouldst Thou wrestle with strong pain.
Than overcloud Thy soul, so clear in agony.AUTHOR UNKNOWN
An Exhibition of Self-Control
Only once did a cry of pain escape Him during the long, excruciating ordeal, and then it required the recognition of His Father’s expressed will to open His mouth. No plea for sympathy, no word of complaint crossed His lips. He lost Himself in care for others or in communion with His Father.
“How easily we are made to cry out,” comments James Stalker. “How peevish and ill-tempered we become under slight annoyances! A headache, a toothache, a cold or some other slight affair is supposed to be a sufficient justification for losing all self-control and making a whole household uncomfortable.
“Suffering does not always sanctify. It sours some tempers and makes them selfish and exacting. This the besetting sin of invalids—to become absorbed in their own miseries, and to make all about them the slaves of their caprices. But many triumph nobly over their temptation; and in this they are following the example of the suffering Saviour. There are sick-rooms which it is a privilege to visit.”
It was the author’s privilege to make one such visit. The invalid was Miss H. R. Higgens of Melbourne, Australia. Without arms or legs, for those had been amputated to arrest a progressive disease, and a perpetual sufferer, she had not left her room for over forty years. Instead of bemoaning the hardness of her lot, she gave herself to prayer and to spiritual ministry. The little cottage in which she lived, she called “Gladwish.” Through an ingenious contrivance, a fountain pen was attached to the stump of her arm, and throughout the years she maintained a correspondence, written in a copperplate hand, that was worldwide in its sweep. She knew of hundreds who had been led to Christ by means of her written ministry.
An Expression of Spiritual Thirst
Are we wrong in thinking that He was consumed by a thirst even more intense than that of which we have been thinking?
Did He not thirst to be thirsted after? He is still athirst for the fellowship and devotion of those for whom He thirsted on the cross. His was a thirst that could assuage the thirst of the whole world.
“I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink,” He said to His surprised listeners. “Lord, when saw we Thee athirst and gave Thee drink?” they replied in amazement. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).
We can still hold the cup to His lips by going to those who are needy and ministering in His name.
King Jesus longed—
And from His dying lips broke forth the cry—
“I thirst,” and someone ran and filled a sponge
With vinegar, and put it on a reed and gave it to Him.
This happened long ago.
But still that yearning, still the deep desire,
That thirst for souls for whom He gave His life,
Remains unsatisfied. Hark! Still He cries
And some who love Him unto death go forth
To tell those who’ve never heard His name.
Of His great love—for Him they love to die.
These earnest lives, laid as an offering
At His dear feet, are wasted, do you say?MAUD PITTOCK
Wonder of wonders! On the cross He dies!
Man of the ages, David’s mighty Son,
The Eternal Word who spake and it was done,
What time, of old, He formed the earth and skies.
Abashed be all the wisdom of the wise!
Let the wide earth through all her kingdoms know
The promise of the Lamb of God, whose blood should flow—
For human guilt the grand, sole sacrifice.
No more need altar smoke, nor victim bleed:
‘Tis finished! the great mystery of love.
Ye sin condemned, by this blood, ‘tis decreed.
Ye stand absolved; behold the curse removed!
O Christ! Thy deadly wounds, Thy mortal strife
Crush death and hell and give immortal life.
‘Tis finished all: the veil is rent,
The welcome sure, the access free:
Now then we leave our banishment,
O Father, to return to Thee!HORATIUS BONAR