From Anstey’s Doctrinal Definitions:
The Apostle Peter tells us that the Old Testament Scriptures have two great themes concerning Christ—“the sufferings of Christ and the glory [glories] that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11). Looking more closely at the sufferings of Christ, Scripture indicates that there are at least five different classes:
1) His Constitutional Sufferings
The Lord Jesus suffered because He was a holy Man. Being “God manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), the whole make-up or constitution of the Person of our Lord Jesus was that of infinite holiness. The angel which spoke to Mary just prior to His incarnation said, “That holy thing which shall be born unto thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). After His death and resurrection, the apostles prayed to God saying, “Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed ... ” (Acts 4:27).
When the Lord condescended to enter this world, He came into a scene that was filled with sin and defilement. The whole world was polluted by sin—morally, spiritually, and physically. It was a scene that was totally foreign to His holy nature. Hence, being the holy Man that He was, He suffered from being in such an environment of corruption. Even though He came in contact with sin and sinners, He was never personally defiled by them—He remained “undefiled” (Heb. 7:26). If Lot “vexed” his righteous soul by what he saw and heard in Sodom when he was so far from God morally (2 Peter 2:7-8), what must the Lord have suffered when He passed through such a world as this!
2) His Sympathetic Sufferings
Besides suffering from being in the presence of sin generally, the Lord Jesus also suffered on account of His deep love for people. Whatever people were suffering under as the fruit of sin in the world, He bore it with them sympathetically. This is evident in several ways:
A) The Lord suffered in regard to what sin had done to His creatures physically (in their bodies). When He saw people afflicted with some disease or sickness, His heart went out to them in their affliction. In perfect sympathy, He felt in His soul their maladies and suffered with them (Isa. 53:4; Matt. 8:17). An example of this was in the healing of the deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:31-37). It says that the Lord “sighed”—indicating that He felt the grief the man was passing through in his affliction—and then He opened the man’s ears and loosed his tongue. J. N. Darby remarked that the Lord never healed a sick person without feeling the burden of that malady as the fruit of evil. Hence, it was not an easy thing for Him to stretch out His hand and say to a leper, “Be thou clean” (Mark 1:41), because each time He healed a person, He bore the burden of that sorrow in His own soul. Thus, it has been rightly said that “He bore in His spirit that which He took away by His power.”
B) The Lord also suffered on account of what sin had done in people’s lives emotionally. While some may not have been stricken with sickness personally, yet the effects of those things in those whom they knew and loved, produced sorrow and suffering in them. The Lord sympathized with all such as well. An example of this is the case of Mary and Martha, when their brother had died (John 11). Sickness and death hadn’t touched them, but they were in great sorrow on account of it (vss. 31-33a). In sympathy with them in their trial, the Lord “groaned in spirit, and was troubled” (vs. 33b). He felt their situation deeply and “wept” at the grave of Lazarus (vs. 35).
C) The Lord also suffered in connection with the sorrows of the Jewish remnant in a future day. Not only did He feel the sorrows of those who were around Him, but He also felt the sorrows of those who would suffer for their faithfulness in the coming Great Tribulation. At the time of the last supper, when Satan entered into Judas, “the son of perdition,” the thoughts of the Lord were projected into the future when the Jewish remnant would suffer for righteousness sake under the persecution of a future “son of perdition”—the Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3-4; Matt. 5:10-12; Psa. 69:6-11). In that dark day, the Antichrist will lead the nation into apostasy and persecute the remnant of Jews for their faith and obedience (Matt. 24:21-22; Psa. 10). In divine sympathy, the Lord entered into their lot and felt in His heart the sorrows of rejection that they will pass through in that day (John 13:18-21).
D) The Lord also suffered sympathetically in regard to the chastening of the Jewish remnant in a coming day. As being a part and parcel with the nation that is guilty of the death of Christ—the Messiah of Israel—the remnant will experience the fruit of their national sin under the governmental dealings of God. Being part of the guilty nation, of necessity they must be chastened, yet in the chastening He lays upon them, He feels it with them in sympathy! (Isa. 63:9) Having substituted Himself in Israel’s place before God (Isa. 49:1-5), He felt the sin of Israel in the light of the holiness of God, though He Himself was never under the government of God.
3) His Anticipative Sufferings
The cross and its suffering were ever before our Lord. All through His pathway He had it before Him. He could say, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50) Several times the Lord took His disciples apart and told them that “He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (Matt. 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19). He spoke of Himself as “the corn [grain] of wheat” that would fall into the ground and die (John 12:24). This led Him to say, “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:27). He anticipated the cross and its sufferings, and it deeply troubled Him.
When He reached Gethsemane, the tempter came with all his power in an effort to terrify Him. Satan pressed upon His soul what it would mean to be rejected of men and forsaken of God. He could say, “The floods of Belial made Me afraid” (Psa. 18:4). “Belial” is a reference to Satan (2 Cor. 6:15). In Psalm 102 (“the Gethsemane Psalm”) we see the Lord anticipating suffering at the hand of God for sin. Being the omniscient Person that He was, He anticipated those sufferings of the cross completely, as no creature could. The result was that He fell on His face “in an agony [conflict]” and cried out to God, “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Luke 22:42; Matt. 26:39). The Lord could have exercised His divine power and driven the devil away, but He remained in the place of an obedient and dependent Man, and “prayed more earnestly” (Luke 22:44).
4) His Martyrdom Sufferings
The Lord suffered as a righteous Martyr at the hands of men in two ways—in His spirit and in His body (physically):
A) As a result of the Lord’s holy witness in this world, He suffered reproach in His soul and spirit. The love that caused Him to minister to men out of the storehouse of the grace of God brought forth more sorrow and suffering, for it drew out hatred and evil in men. The more He loved, the more He was hated (Psa. 109:5).
He felt the rejection of men and suffered in His spirit and was grieved at what sin had done in their hearts, hardening them with unbelief (Mark 3:2-5; 8:12). He also deeply felt the betrayal of Judas (John 13:21; Psa. 41:9; 55:12-14) and the desertion of His only followers (John 16:32)—particularly the denial of Peter (Luke 22:61). He also felt in His soul the deceit, the insults, and the scorn that were hurled at Him at His trial and crucifixion (Matt. 26:57-68; 27:27-44; Psa. 22:6-8). He also felt the violation of human decency when the soldiers stripped him and put Him on the cross (Psa. 22:17-18). To add to all this, He bore in His spirit the shame of misrepresentation. The people regarded Him as “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” They saw Him as justly dying under the governmental judgment of God for daring to say that He was the Messiah. They saw Him as an impostor, but didn’t realize that He was indeed the Messiah who was dying for their sins! (Isa. 53:4-5)
B) As a result of the Lord’s holy witness in this world, He also suffered physically at the hands of wicked men. In faithfulness and love, He testified of man’s evil, and it brought Him into open suffering (Psa. 40:9-10). He suffered contusions from the blows of a rod and from the palms of men’s hands (Mic. 5:1-2; Matt. 26:67; 27:30); lacerations from the scourging (Isa. 50:6; Matt. 27:26); penetrations from the crown of thorns (Matt. 27:29-30); and perforations from the nails in His hands and feet (Psa. 22:16; Matt. 27:35). Finally, He was “by wicked hands” “crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23; 3:13-15; 5:30; 7:52-53; 13:27-29).
5) His Atoning Sufferings
Lastly, and the greatest of all, the Lord suffered as the divine Sin-bearer. All of the other kinds of suffering which the Lord felt could not take away sins; this could only be done through His atoning sufferings which He endured in the last three hours on the cross (Matt. 27:45-46; Mark 15:33-34; Luke 23:44-45). His martyrdom sufferings were what He suffered at the hands of wicked men (Psa. 69), but His atoning sufferings are what He suffered from the hand of God (Psa. 22).
To make atonement for sin and sins, the Lord endured and exhausted the righteous judgment of God. The Bible indicates that His great sacrifice settled the whole question of sin before God (Heb. 1:3; 9:26; 10:12). When the Lord made atonement for our souls, He was “forsaken” of God (Psa. 22:1). Being “made sin” on the cross (2 Cor. 5:21), God, who is holy and “of purer eyes to behold evil” (Hab. 1:13), could have no communion with Him. At that time, communion was broken between those two divine Persons. But, even while the Lord Jesus was forsaken of God, He was still the object of His Father’s complacency (satisfaction), for He was doing the will of God, and this was pleasing to Him (Isa. 53:10).
There are two parts to Christ’s work in atonement on the cross: the first is the Godward side, which is called “propitiation” (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). It has rendered to God a full settlement for the outbreak of sin in the creation and for the sins of believers. Hence, Christ’s finished work on the cross has met the demand of God’s holy nature, and thus, by it, the claims of divine justice have been satisfied (Psa. 85:10). The second part to Christ’s atoning work is manward—meeting the need of the believer’s guilt. This has been called substitution. To take away the sins and guilt of the believer, the believer needs to understand that the Lord took his place on the cross before God and bore his “sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The great result of resting in faith on the substitutionary work of Christ is that our conscience is “purged” (Heb. 9:14; 10:2, 17, 22).
The Bible says, “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11). The fruit of the atoning sufferings of Christ are too many to enumerate here. Every blessing that Israel, the Church, and the saints in the millennial kingdom day will enjoy are a result of that finished work. (See Atonement.)