No veil hid from Jesus the suffering that awaited Him. He knew all that was to come! The mitigation of distress, which lies in ignorance of what the future holds, has not comforted the Savior in His passion.
In His case it was, step by step, with inexorable impelling force, a going down into the depths of distress and misery; and with this descent to the very bottom, He clearly saw before Him, all the distress and misery which He was to endure.
The pains of death have accompanied the Man of sorrows all the days of His life. And however much it seemed at times, that a friendly ray of sunlight fell across His path of life, and human joy surrounded Him, the somber pall of the doom and curse which He had taken upon Himself, ever hung before His all-penetrating eye across His whole existence.
Nothing would happen, save what God’s counsel had determined beforehand to be done (Acts 4, 28). And everything that had been determined in that counsel stood in clear outline before His consciousness.
When His disciples have no thought of suffering, and dare to speak of a throne in Jerusalem, and of twelve thrones for themselves in the city of David, it is Jesus Who must impart to them the knowledge of His suffering, and tell them, that He must be delivered into the hands of sinners, and must suffer many things, and must be crucified, always under the stress of that sacred must, because it had so been determined in God’s counsel.
And when Simon, Jonas’ son, thinks this is impossible, and exclaims: “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee;” to Jesus this is a word as though Satan had whispered it.
It has all been determined before! And thou, Simon, son of Jonas, dost thou say, that this must by no means be?
There was something unspeakably tragic in that fact that it had all been determined before.
There was no escape from it. Even though Jesus did battle all His life long, even though He failed in no single temptation, even though He carried out to the full the glorious program of Psalm 40: “Behold, I come to do Thy will.” All this availed nothing, and could avail nothing. For that very doing of the will of the Father implied first, and most of all the drinking of that cup of sorrow.
No drop would be added to it. No drop could be spared.
God Himself had mixed this cup. With infinite compassion He had determined in His counsel beforehand all the drops that must needs be poured into this cup of woe. As God had filled it, so that cup stood. And Immanuel had spoken: I shall drink it to the dregs. And then He had come to earth, and all His life long had had that cup in view, until at length He came to Gethsemane.
And then He trembled and His soul became “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38). That terrible cup of woe! O God, must I drink it? Can it pass from me! But no, the cup did not pass away. It remained standing before Him in the path along which He had to go. The cup full to the brim. And then Jesus prayed: Not my will, but Thy will be done. Thy counsel, according to all that Thou hast determined before!
And then Jesus drank that cup with great carefulness. No drop must be spilled on the ground. Hence His cry from the Cross: “It is finished.” Hence those continuous annotations that He must suffer this thing also, and also again that, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Yea, that at length it reads, “That the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus saith: I thirst” (John 19:28). And that finally when the whole program of suffering had been enacted, it reads: “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, said: It is finished.”
All that had been determined before, had been included by the prophets in the program of His passion. Hence, that the Scripture must be fulfilled, and that all must be accomplished which had been determined before, is one thought! Determined before!
But not arbitrarily. No, it had been determined in the counsel of the Lord, and all that counsel is wisdom seven times refined.
And therefore this “determined before” has a still deeper significance than that the Scripture must be fulfilled, for it also says that God’s righteousness must be fulfilled.
God’s right had been violated.
God’s right demanded satisfaction. And that violated right had been given a hearing in the counsel of the Lord. And what according unto right was determined in that counsel, to restore our righteousness to us, Immanuel has suffered in our stead.
So from what was deplete of comfort, comfort was born for Immanuel.
He knew that nothing could be deleted from it. No veil hid the awful future from Him. He was not merely a few days under sentence of death, but all His life was lived as it were in the prospect of death.
That was the disconsolateness of Him Who was not comforted.
But on the stem of God’s counsel, in which everything had been determined before, a flower blossomed of sweet consolation.
It was all determined, so that it had its bounds. Nothing could be deleted, but likewise nothing could be added to it. No Sanhedrin or Herod, no rough soldier or slanderous priest could heighten the measure of His suffering. To this sea of sorrows also, the Lord had put a bound, which its waters could not pass.
More yet, in that “determined before” and “determined according to righteousness” lay the sweet of compassion.
For a claim that is met, liberates, and grants free exit. And with every pain which Jesus suffered in the anguish of His soul, He overheard the breaking of a chain, which liberated again another of His elect. With every deeper plunge into the stream of sorrow, it was a louder jubilation in the song of the redeemed, to whom life came from the shedding of His blood.
In brief, just because it had been “determined before” it was not a falling into the power of the suffering, into the abyss of sorrow, into the bands of mortal misery, but it was always a falling into the hand of the Lord, even though that hand held the most awful cup before Him.
And thus in this pregnant word there discloses itself at the same time a fellowship between His suffering and yours, between the Cross which He has endured in your behalf, and the cross which, as you follow Him, you may gladly carry after Him.
For to this cross it also applies: No arbitrariness, but determined before. Not a falling into human power, but into the hand of the Lord. According to all that has been determined before.
If you did not know this; if everything floated as it were upon uncertainty; if a mysterious power from every side lay in wait for you to destroy you, where would your peace be, and where your hiding place?
But now that you know this, now that you confess that not a hair of the head of God’s child can be hurt, except as it has been determined before, now you lift up your head on high with enthusiasm, with hope in your God.
For now your suffering also has a limit.
A boundary that shall not be crossed.
It shall be well with you, if to that limit you may carry your cross, looking unto your Lord.
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