Chapter V (ii) — Christ’s Sufferings and Crucifixion
1. Jesus was not only six hours, but was His whole life on the Cross. If a clean-living man cannot bear filth and dirt, and a good man cannot endure evil association for even a few minutes, though he has been born amid dirt and filth, then how great must have been the distress of a sinless and holy being to have to spend thirty-three years among sinners. It is impossible for a sinful man to estimate and understand the bitterness of that suffering. If we could comprehend the mystery of that Cross, then it would be easy to understand His wonderful and immeasurable love, and how He is the incarnation of love, and how for our Salvation He left the Glory of the world above, and came down to this world of sin.
2. Christ's suffering was in a special way God's suffering for man's salvation. There is only one source of all life, and from Him all living creatures have received life, and we live in Him by means of that relationship and connection. But through that living connection which He has with His creation, does God not feel pain when His living creatures suffer? Has He not also a feeling for pain Who has created a feeling for pain? And if this is so, then why is it not possible that He should suffer in Christ?
Christ came especially to reveal the true and limitless fatherly love which had been hidden from eternity, and that, by giving His own life, He might save the souls, not of the good but of sinners. He came, too, that by dying and rising again He might prove that that death, which the world counts death, is not death but it is a fountain of life, and that mere separation from God because of disobedience and sin is itself suffering and death.
3. Both worlds were represented at the time of the crucifixion of Christ. As people of all provinces and districts had gathered together at the Passover season, so, as if the whole creation together gave witness to the atonement for sin, beings of the Spiritual world, with the Angels, were also present (Matthew xxvii. 51-54). Because Christ gave His life as a ransom, therefore full authority and power were given Him on earth to forgive sins, and to save sinners; and He was once again given that full power, in heaven and in earth, which He had left when He became man (Matthew ix. 2, xxviii. 18).