IN ISAIAH’S striking prophecy of the “Man of sorrows” in ten successive verses the church of God speaks first of the suffering that would come upon the Messiah for her sake: “He was wounded for our transgressions,” and, “He has carried our sorrows” (53:5).
But after that follows in two verses, something quite different. Not what the church of her Redeemer, but what God Himself says of the Mediator: “By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many.”
And between these two parts, of what the church confesses and what God promises, this difference is at once apparent, that the church steadily inclines to view the suffering of the body, while God points His church to what Jesus suffered in the soul.
With the church it is said in her confession: “When we saw Him, there was no beauty that we should have desired Him, and as a lamb was He brought to the slaughter.”
But the Lord testifies: “Because of the travail of His soul He shall see it, and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my servant justify many.”
For the church of all ages, and also for us, this is a Divine admonition, in every study of the suffering of Jesus to be on guard against this onesidedness of our human inclination, in the outward suffering of Jesus to see all His suffering; and ever through what is before our eyes to penetrate to the suffering which He suffered in the soul.
This is not easy.
Painting and picture, plain song and touching description of what was seen on Golgotha, has for centuries interested the eye and ear of him who through love and faith clung to the Man of sorrows; to the Cross, that one saw as before one’s eyes; and to what upon the Cross, under the pouring out of the most holy blood, was suffered outwardly.
If ever, then here feeling must speak, and with by far the most, feeling presently becomes sentiment, to enthrall us in what imagination views.
This appeals to the multitudes. This arrests the attention of the child. The woman is silent before it. He who is still weaned of faith, here inclines to admiration. It even evokes pity from the heart that is grieved by so much cruelty.
Also in preaching there is much of a touching nature to be outlined and to be depicted, because what is before one’s eyes finds ready interpretation in the heart-gripping, soul and senses captivating word.
And so the Cross is menaced to be externalized; in the Man of sorrows to see the martyr in the foreground.
And yet this impulse should be tempered, this sensual trait must be resisted.
Listen to what the Lord declares.
In the end it depends not on what is before one’s eyes, but on what is deepest, on what no eye has spied.
The deepest suffering was: the travail of his soul.
It takes effort of soul to enter into that travail of the soul of Jesus.
Mystery here piles upon mystery!
What was, what is Jesus’ soul?
You face a riddle every time you think of your own soul. Where is it? Very surely in you; but dissect yourself and you do not find it. It is in hiding, and shows you but its workings. You also feel your soul in you. But itself remains a mystery. Once you shall go out from this earthly tabernacle, but how and where then your soul shall be and exist, you can not guess. And you understand still less, how afterward it shall be reunited with your body.
And though you may look away from these later uncertainties, even in the present your soul remains a riddle. What is your self in distinction from your soul? Your self is something different from your soul, for you speak of your soul as: my soul, and you are he who possesses soul and body. Thus the one is not identified with the other. Your ego is distinguished from your soul. But how, and in how far and by what? Altogether new riddles, new questions, ever coming up again from the impenetrable mystery of your own wonderful being.
And now with Jesus.
His also was a human soul. From this nothing may be detracted. But with Jesus that soul is still far more than with us distinguished from His inner ego. One would almost say, to Him the soul was a natural garment, wherewith the Divine ego clothed itself.
He was and remained God, and yet His ego speaks to us from the vestibule of a soul like our soul.
A still deeper sense and a still more impenetrable mystery!
And in the soul Jesus has suffered, toiled, labored. Also indeed in the body, for He suffered after His full humanity. But deeper, more anxiously still in His soul. In His soul was the real tension. In his soul the deadly conflict was battled through to the end. In the soul was the causal travail, of which the suffering after the body gave one but to behold the radiating after-affect.
I thirst, was hard, but you feel, with that other: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” this plaintive cry for a drop of moisture, to cool His tongue, was not to be compared.
Jesus suffered before the eye, so that every one saw it, for crucifixion was a dreadful death, and sensitiveness to pain in Jesus must have been unprecedentedly tender.
And yet, deadly pain has been suffered by other children of men, by more than one martyr, even under far more cruel torture.
But what no one suffered as Jesus, was the deep cutting, the deadly wounding sorrow of His soul.
By that travail of soul Golgotha is altogether unique. Never equalled by any other suffering. Susceptible to no comparison with our bitterest agony.
And because of that suffering of soul came the all-excelling glory.
Because of the travail of His soul shall He see it and be satisfied, shall He and He alone justify the many, and I shall give Him a portion among the great, that He may portion out the mighty as a spoil.
And all this, because His soul has battled through the awful travail.
With the martyr this is altogether different. His soul still jubilates and triumphs, even when the scorching flames beat up against his body, and the smoke chokes him. Physically his suffering is great, but his soul has joy. How many on the scaffold have sung a Psalm of praise.
And therefore back of their stake there was no Gethsemane. Gethsemane Jesus alone has known. And in Gethsemane He complained not of the menacing sufferings of the body; but of His soul, of the woe that brake His heart. “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38).
And in that agony of soul, He looked for sympathy to His disciples. “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” In agony of soul the blood pressed through the pores. And in that travail, that deadly travail of soul, God has supported Him with His holy angel.
Thus there lies back of it something far more terrible.
For, when the man who faces a martyr-death, purely by grace overcomes all fear of death, yea, when the hero on the field of battle, sometimes with exclamations of courage and heroism, runs into the jaws of death, how could Jesus, coward-like, have fallen short, in daring to die the shameful death, when He already saw the crown that was appointed Him, and knew that the arms of the Father were open to receive Him.
NO, the travail of His soul was something wholly different.
Not as God did He suffer. After His Divine nature He was not open to the approaches of suffering. But being God, He suffered in the human soul; even as you, though you may be free in your soul from the poison of sin, and guiltless, may yet become contaminated in your body with the poison of sickness which springs from carnal sin.
In His soul there was not just a surge of love; for love is no suffering. Nor yet alone an impulse of obedience to the Father, for obedience brings gladness. And not alone the heroism of faith, for hero-courage brings jubilation.
No, in His soul Jesus had to do with your sin. Not, that He merely thought of your sin, and had intention to die for it, but that in His soul He bare your sin.
A mystery, it is granted, but which for this reason you may neither cipher away nor externalize.
Jesus bore our sin, and to bear sin is the feeling, the undergoing, the suffering of the wrath of God that goes out against it. As the Catechism reads: “The wrath of God against the sin of our whole human race.”
Not as a sum in addition, the sin of a+b+c. But, because He was our second Adam, our second Covenant-head, the concentrated sin of our whole race was laid on Him. The sin as terrible germ of all sin. The poison at its strongest. Sin in its hellish nature. Of all sin the inner demoniac epitome. And going in against this the absolute wrath of God’s holy Majesty inworked upon His soul with death-breathing, eternal-death-breathing curse.
This was His terror of soul, this His deadly oppression of soul, this the toiling of His almost succumbing soul, in which at length He felt, not that as God He tore loose from God—that is eternally impossible—but that His soul broke loose from God, and that God let go His soul, and before all devils and angels He had to utter the bitter cry: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me! Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani!”
And this went on into death.
Not a death as the dying of God’s child, as through the portal to eternal life.
But a sinking away in the depth of the eternal death, in which every creature would have been swallowed up forever, and from which He alone could come up, because the Father held Him with His almightiness, and He, Himself God, was too strong for death, so that death could not hold Him.
And therefore His soul could not be refreshed before His task was finished; before in the eternal death He was released again from the sin of the world which He bore.
And then His soul was free.
And then He saw of the travail of His soul, what glory had been obtained, what spoil was won, what brightness without end radiated toward Him.
Suffering of the body was there, too. And that, too, was nameless. But yet in that suffering, through the pouring out of His blood, the travail of His soul alone could impart the saving merit.
What Jesus suffered in the soul went the deepest.
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