"Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory! " (Luke 24.26)

That was an enthralling talk which Cleopas and his companion had with the stranger they had encountered on the way to Emmaus upon the day of the Resurrection. Enthralling, because it had brought into one focus all those apparently contradictory Old Testament prophecies of the Christ that they knew so well and understood so little. They had so often pondered them with hearts uplifted, as they read of the glory of the coming Messiah. Their minds puzzled as they laboured through the eloquent descriptions of the One who must suffer and die before the purpose of the Lord in the restoration of His people could be fulfilled. Suffering and glory; both were there, on the sacred pages, but in their impatient longing for the realisation of the golden days of Messianic power they turned away from the suffering and thought only of the glory.

But why had there to be suffering? Why could not Christ have come in all the plenitude of His Divine power and entered straight away upon His ordained work of reconciling whosoever will to God, through the successive stages of evangelism, repentance, and conversion? So would be brought to pass the ultimate reality so vividly pictured in the Book of Revelation, where the dwelling-place of God is with men, and there is no more death, no more sorrow and crying, because the former things are passed away and all things are become new. Someone will answer that before all these things can transpire, mankind must be redeemed from the death sentence which rests upon the entire race, inherited from Adam, and this is true. So Christ must first die, giving His humanity a Ransom for all, before He can breathe new life into the dead and set their feet upon that Highway of Holiness which can at the last lead them to the happy condition described in Revelation. But even so, the question must be asked, by us today as it was by those earnest souls of so many centuries ago, why did Christ have to suffer? Could He not have died naturally and quietly immediately after His baptism in the Jordan? He could have even gone literally into death in the very baptising waters themselves, and so given His life for the world at that moment, relinquishing a humanity He would never take again? Could that not entitle Him, risen from that death by the power of the Father, as He in fact was later on after the agony of the Crucifixion, to bring back from the dead the human race He had thus bought by the laying down of His life. Then restoration of all things could begin straightaway. Had that been possible, surely that is the way the Divine plan in Jesus Christ would have gone. How can it be thought that God, who is Love, would deliver His beloved Son into the suffering and ignominy which did surround His earthly life and death if it was not necessary? The very fact that our Lord was called upon to tread this pathway of suffering is full evidence that this was the only way. "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things" He said to those two wondering disciples "and to enter his glory". There must be a definite relation and connection between the suffering and the glory. The one is an essential pre-requisite to the other. It was not that God would not confer the glory without the prior suffering; it was that He could not. For some fundamental reason clear to the Father, and clear, too, to the Son, even though not at all clear to us, it had to be that Christ must first suffer, and after that enter into His glory. That is why the Apostle Peter in 1 Pet.1.11 referred to the Holy Spirit in the prophets of olden time speaking of "the suffering of Christ, and the glory that should follow".

The supreme purpose for which our Lord came to earth and took upon himself our human nature was that He might achieve the salvation of men, their deliverance from the effects of sin and their restoration to the Divine likeness, that they might be fitted for the Divine purpose. But this great work is not to be accomplished by waving some kind of magic wand above men's heads, nor yet by reciting the laws of God to them and expecting them instantly to obey. Man at the first had the opportunity of attaining the Divine likeness by heeding the Divine commands, but he proved unable to attain the goal that way. And so sin entered, and with sin came suffering, and death, even upon those, says Paul "who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression". So it is through suffering that man comes ultimately to his destiny in glory, just because there is no other way. And whether we think of this as a destiny attained by the learning of lessons taught by hard and bitter experience, or whether there is some deeper and hard to be understood principle in God's creation which decrees that perfection can only be attained through suffering, it is clear that this is the way through which man must pass. It is also the way through which our Lord passed. He was of God and with God in all the eternal ages before man was. He came to earth, having emptied himself of that high heavenly estate and took upon himself the bondman's form of human nature, still retaining His oneness with the Father the omnipotent. Yet we are told that while in the flesh He "learned obedience through the things which he suffered" (Heb. 5.8). That word "learned" means literally to learn by practice or experience. "Obedience" means to render submissive acceptance, the obedience of one who conforms to God's commands. The writer to the Hebrews in the next verse goes on to say that being thus "made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." So something more than the act of dying on the cross was necessary; there was something imparted to our Lord in consequence of His suffering which was not there before, something which itself became the means by which men might eventually attain union with God. The captain of our salvation, says Heb. 2.10, is Himself made perfect through suffering. That word 'author' has the significance of that in which the cause of anything resides. The essence of the power by which Jesus will turn the hearts of men to God in the coming age of His kingdom on earth, or now, in the case of those who do come to him, was instilled into Jesus by virtue of His sufferings. Until that was accomplished He was not ready or able to commence His great work of reconciling man to God. So the test must be understood as His being made perfect or complete for this particular work by His sufferings.

Perhaps a glimpse of the hidden principle that demanded this situation is afforded by the words of Heb.2.18 "In that he himself hath suffered, being tested, he is able to succour them that are tested". It is as though He says to those who so sadly need his ministrations that they might eventually attain eternal life, "I have walked this pathway of suffering and I have come through triumphantly. Now I can show you the way with sympathetic understanding and positive knowledge, for I have gone this way myself". Is it that Jesus can only save the fallen by positive and actual identification with them, in all their troubles and all their suffering, experiencing all the injustice and violence and hardship which is their lot and bearing it with them? A word from the Old Testament expressive of the relation of God to His people, Israel, expresses just the same principle. "In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them" (Isa. 63.9). If the Father shared the sufferings of His wayward creatures, could the Son do less?

Now there must be related to the sufferings of Christ the grandest theme of the Scriptures, that there is life, eternal, everlasting, undying, life in Christ and only in Christ. "No other name is given, no other way is known" runs the old hymn, and that only echoes the words of Peter "there is none other name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved". Life for the world comes in and through Christ, highly exalted and given a name which is above every name. But the suffering had to come first. Is it then that the seed of life has to be rooted in the soil of suffering? Is there some law of creation not yet understood by us which rules that life can only be born out of suffering? Is there, embedded deep in this mystery, the final answer to the problem of the Divine permission of evil? When Jesus spoke of the seed of corn cast into the ground and there dying, that it may afterwards spring forth into new life and bear much fruit, was it this of which He was thinking? When He talked about men eating His flesh as bread, consuming it utterly until it was no more, that it may be for the life of the world, was it this that held the foremost place in His thoughts? The youthful prophet Isaiah, receiving His first Divinely-bestowed commission to take God's word to Israel, was told of a leafless oak which had suffered all the vicissitudes of summer and winter, and now stood, a bare hulk destitute of apparent life. But those same adverse processes had created the living sap which in a new year would rise again into the tree and bring forth leaves and flowers and fruit. So is the holy seed to apostate Israel, said the Lord to Isaiah. So is the new life inherent in the glorified Christ to the suffering and death which preceded His resurrection.

Before the creation of man there were untold ages during which the earth was being prepared for life. Through aeons of geological time the elements of which this planet is composed were passing through stupendous changes and mighty convulsions. Fire, frost and water were all playing their part, until all the strife and upheavals and turmoil culminated in the quiet serenity of Eden and man entered into the home prepared for him. So life came out of chaos. But until all that preliminary work, violent and savage as it was, had been accomplished there could be no life. Out of the suffering of the inanimate creation was born the life of animate man.

Joseph the son of Jacob, lord of all Egypt, could never have attained to his high office had he not first endured the school of physical suffering. Envied and hated by his brethren, sold as a slave into Egypt, unjustly condemned and left to languish in prison, he spent most of his early manhood in the abyss of suffering. But it was in that abyss and by means of that suffering that he developed those elements of character which enabled him to discharge with wisdom and judgment the duties of his later high position and all the responsibilities of all his regal glory. So he became the means of salvation to his father's family and their preserver and life-giver.

Moses was prepared for his historic mission in the school of mental suffering. Perhaps it is not easily realised what those long years in Midian meant to Moses. At forty years of age, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in words and deeds, burning with zeal to lead Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, he had all his high hopes dashed to the ground in an instant. "He supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them" said Stephen at his trial "but they understood not." And in the outcome Moses, for all his zeal and ability, found himself doomed to spend forty years in a camp of Midianites, keeping sheep. But it was that experience in Midian which prepared him for leadership in Egypt. The opportunities for calm, leisured reflection on the ways and the laws of God fitted him for the office of Law-giver to Israel. The knowledge of the ways and byways of the trackless wilderness in which he pastured his flocks, enabled him to lead the people unerringly to their desired haven. Out of Moses' travail in Midian was born that which ultimately became the salvation of Israel.

Had Job never endured the darkness of his sufferings, and afterwards emerged into the light, purified and enriched by his experiences, he would never have been able to say to God, "/ have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you".

None of these men would have accomplished the great work they did accomplish had they not, like our Lord, been "made perfect through suffering". As with our Lord, they all must first suffer these things, and afterward enter their glory.

But not only is the suffering of Christ related to his resurrection life; it is also related to his resurrection power. He possessed power before He came to earth yet the Scriptures declare that in some mysterious manner He possessed greater power afterwards. The second Psalm, the Hundred and Tenth Psalm, almost the whole of Hebrews, and many other allusions, all attest this. Just before His ascension Jesus told His disciples, as though it was a thing only recently conferred upon Him, "all power is given to me in heaven and in earth" (Matt.28.18).

At His ascension the Father set Him at His own right hand "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.... and hath put all things under his feet" (Eph. 1.21). What kind of exaltation is this, so far and away beyond His dignity and office before He came to earth? What was the cause of this exaltation? Whatever it was, it was and is intimately associated with experiences through which He passed whilst on earth and which Scripture specifically declares fitted Him for His mission of reconciling man to God. "He is made" says the writer of 6Hebrews "after the power of an endless life .... wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7.16, 25). Paul adds his testimony: "For to this end Christ both died and rose, and revived" ‑ entered upon new life ‑ "that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living" (Rom. 14.9). Why must He die to be mankind's Lord? Was He not, as the Word of God, the manifestation of God to men, the one by whom all that is made was made? Was He not man's Lord before, right back at the beginning? At the resurrection Christ must have become man's Lord in a new sense and He was empowered to deal with men in a new fashion which had not been possible before. "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly" said Peter on the Day of Pentecost "that God hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2.36). Must it therefore be concluded that out of the ruins of a broken body, and only out of the ruins of a broken body, must rise the all-powerful Lord of all mankind. Out of suffering, willingly and patiently endured conforming to the will of God, is born power which will eventually save all mankind.

Now if all these things be true of Christ the Head, what of the Church which is His Body? We are called to follow in His steps, to endure whatever of hardship and suffering may come our way as He endured, and afterwards to be associated with Him in the work of reconciling mankind to God. When toward the end of his life Peter penned his epistle to his converts he exhorted them to "rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy" (1 Pet. 4.13). If the Church is partaker of Christ's sufferings then surely in the new life beyond the veil the Church will receive an endowment of power made possible by and born out of suffering. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment" says Paul in 2 Cor.4.17 "works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." The one is the direct cause and source of the other. Like their Lord, every member of the Church will have learned obedience by the things which they have suffered, and, again like him, being made perfect, will have their part in conferring eternal salvation upon all who obey God.

AOH