Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2573
“Christ also has once suffered.” 1 Peter 3:18.
IT is very unpleasant to our poor flesh and blood to suffer. Physical pain is a grievous infliction—mental agony or spiritual sorrow is still worse. Irons around the wrists can be worn till they fit easily, but when the iron enters into the soul, how it rusts the heart and eats into the spirit! Perhaps, to some minds, the most difficult of all suffering is that which is not deserved at all, but which comes because we do notdeserve it. I mean that suffering which innocent persons are called to endure because of their innocence when they are slandered and oppressed and persecuted, not for evil-doing, but for well-doing. I admit that there is much about this form of trial which should tend to make it a light affliction, for we ought to take it joyfully when we suffer wrongfully. Yet, as a rule, we are not able to do so. Certainly not by nature, for there is a sort of sense of justice within man which makes him feel that it is very hard that he should have to suffer, not for unrighteousness, but for righteousness—not for any wrong-doing, but for having espoused the cause of God and His
Truth.
The Apostle Peter would have Christians prepare themselves for this suffering. They had to bear very much of it in his day—they will have to bear some of it as long as the Church of Christ remains in this wicked world. He says, in the verse preceding our text, “It is better, if the will of God is so, that you suffer for well-doing, than for evil-doing.” Further on, at the beginning of the next chapter, he says, “Forasmuch, then, as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves, likewise, with the same mind.” He warns us that we shall need to be clad in heavenly armor, for we shall have to pass through conflict and suffering for Christ’s sake and for righteousness’ sake. We must put on a coat of mail and be enveloped in the whole panoply of God. We must have, as our great controlling princip1e, the mind of Christ, that, as He endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, we, also, may endure it and not be weary or faint in our minds. We shall best bear our own sufferings when we find fellowship with Christ in them. Therefore, it is for your strengthening, that your spiritual sinews may be braced, that you may be armed from head to foot and preserved from the darts of the enemy that I would set forth before you, as best I may, the matchless sufferings of the Son of God, who, “once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”
It has sometimes struck me that the first Epistle of Peter is greatly concerning Christ’s First Advent and that his second Epistle tells us about our Lord’s Second Advent. In this first letter there are many references to the sufferings of Christ. It may interest you to notice some of them. In the first Chapter, at the 11th Verse, we read, “Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ.” When the Apostle gets to the second Chapter, at the 21st Verse, we find him writing thus, “For even hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” Next comes our text in the third Chapter. Then, in the Fourth chapter, at the first Verse, is the passage I have already read to you. [See Exposition at end of sermon.] And in the 13th Verse, the Apostle says, “Rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings.” And in the 5th Chapter, at the first Verse, he calls himself, “a witness of the sufferings of Christ.” Thus his frequent expression—his peculiar idiom—is, “the sufferings of Christ” and, in the language of our text he thus describes the great work of our redemption—“Christ also has once suffered,” It may seem a very small thing to you to call your attention to such words as these, but it does not appear small to me. It seems to me that there is a great depth of meaning within these few words and it shall be my objective, at this time, to bring out that meaning, as far as I can, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
I. Notice then, first of all, A SUMMARY WITHOUT ANY DETAILS—“Christ also has once suffered.” There is compassed within that expression a summary of the whole life and death of Christ! The Apostle does not give us details of Christ’s sufferings, but he lets us, for a moment, look into this condensation of them—“Christ also has once suffered.”
It is the epitome of His whole earthly existence up to the time of His rising from the dead. Christ begins His life here with suffering. He is born into the world, but there is “no room for Him in the inn.” He must lie in a manger where the horned oxen feed. He is born of a poor mother. He must know the ills of poverty and, worse still, Herod seeks the young Child’s life. He must be hurried away by night into Egypt. He must be a stranger in a strange land, with His life in peril from a blood-thirsty tyrant! When He comes back from Egypt, He grows in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men—but you may rest assured that the years He spent in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, though we are not told about them, were years of sore travail—perhaps of bodily pain, certainly of mental toil and preparation for His future service. Such a public life as His could not have been lived without due training. I will not attempt to lift the veil where God has let it fall, but I see, in the whole public ministry of Christ, traces of a wonderful mental discipline through which He must have gone and which, I should think, must have involved Him in suffering. Certainly it was one main point in His preparation that He was not without spiritual conflicts and struggles which must have involved suffering to such a nature as His was.