Oma did not indicate on her typewritten paper for what class she wrote the treatise below while a student at St. Paul Bible Institute. What we do know is that she wrote it before she was married (1941) and that she received an “A” for her effort. She had two books listed in her Bibliography: G. L. Lawson’s “Thoughts About Jesus Christ,” published in 1919, and John Cable’s “Christ in the Four Gospels,” published in 1926. Oma added a handwritten note to this list, saying, “I used some more books, but they are not on the shelf now, so I can’t get the Bibliography for them.”
The Passion of Our Lord
Often when we consider the terrible sufferings which our Lord passed through in order to accomplish our salvation, we think only of the agonies of Calvary. But that was not nearly all that He did in His love for us. His sufferings were there merely brought to a final climax.
Note first, the inward, mental and physical sufferings which the Lord underwent before He came to the Garden of Gethsemane. The cross on which He should one day lay down His life stood before Him through all the years. His little body in the manger formed an image of the cross, during His boyhood days as He studied the Scriptures He was constantly confronted with the picture of the cursed tree, in His later years He often referred to the death which He should one day perform. Hatred and contempt were shown toward Him on every side and at all times. The Pharisees and scribes were a great pain to Him, for they not only were blind themselves, but were also blinding the eyes of the people whom they were to teach in the ways of God. The shame they were bringing upon the House of God was a continual pain to the Son of the God whom they professed to be worshipping in their religion.
Can you not realize a little of the pain which must have filled the Saviour’s heart when He cried out, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often I would have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” (Matt. 23:37) Times such as these were but outward expression of what was continually on the mind of the Lord.
Once before the heart of Christ had been sorely grieved when He saw how the people were defiling the Temple—making it a den of thieves whereas it was to be a House of Prayer. During this, His last week before the cross, He is found again purging the Temple. Grieved? Yes, His heart was more grieved at the hardness of the people’s hearts than you or I can ever realize.
Again, as He pronounced the woes upon the Pharisees and scribes His heart bled for them, for had He not left heaven’s glories that He might bring life to them and still they were rejecting Him, hating Him even to the point of murder. These times of inner soul-agony were equally as painful as any physical pain that was put upon Him.
Christ Himself gives testimony to the fact that He suffered inwardly. We read in John 12:27, “Now is My soul exceeding troubled,” when He was contemplating on His future sufferings. But all these quiet sufferings were to be climaxed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here He sweat drops of blood as He cried out for you and me, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” As Eadie has well said, “The awful anguish of Him Who said, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death’ was sufficient to produce bloody perspiration on a cold night and in the open air.” Leading men say that only when a man suffers severely from the threats of death does he produce drops of blood, in perspiration. How our Saviour suffered when He literally sweat drops of blood for us because He loved us so! Had His sufferings been ended right here we could not help but love Him for all He went through for us. But that was not to be. Rather, this was to be merely a foretaste of that which was to follow on the cross.
Imagine if you will, the scene in the garden. The Saviour is praying on bended knee while His disciples are fast asleep a few feet away. In the distance we see a group of people hurrying toward the garden, one of His own disciples leading them onward. As they draw nearer, the Saviour rises and goes to the disciples. Soon we find the leader of the mob coming to the Son of Man as though to greet Him with a friendly kiss. But, alas, this was not the usual token of peace, but the act of betrayal by one of His chosen men. And immediately the mob of evil-eyed, hypocritical churchmen and armed soldiers take Him prisoner.
Next followed the trial—a mock trial, rather, unjust and cruel. Immediately after the arrest He was taken to the person of Annas, a man of none too good reputation and character. Then on to Caiaphas, where He was arrested for claiming to be the Son of God, being charged with blasphemy against God. The cruel Roman soldiers spat upon Him and mocked Him, clothing Him in purple and placing a crown of thorns upon His forehead in order to show Him that He should not be a king of great honor, little realizing that one day they will bow their knee to Him. Added to all this, Peter thrice denied His Lord. The painful, agonizing look which penetrated to the very heart of the once trusted disciple spoke of deep agony of soul on the part of the Christ Who was already passing through such dire straits.
Christ was next brought to the hall of Pilate, who washed his hands of Christ’s blood to his own satisfaction and then turned Him over to the mob who cried out, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him!” Christ was bound by the cruel soldiers, given forty stripes on a bare back in perhaps fifteen minutes. With the blood trickling down His back He was given a heavy cross to carry up the hillside, but He fainted beneath the heavy load. Here on Calvary’s hillside He was to reach the end of all His sacrificial sufferings. The death of the cross, which it was to be for Him, was the most cruel as well as the most shameful of any death, but He bore it for you and me. Nothing daunted Him from fulfilling His Father’s will. As the cruel nails are driven into His hands and feet, His side is wounded and the cross is set into the ground with a thud and a jolt, not a word of hardness falls from His lips. Instead He prays for His murderers. He expresses a little of the physical pain which He is passing through when He cries out, “I thirst”—but still this does not nearly express the terribleness of that hour. The fact that His heavenly Father had turned His face from His only Son caused the dying Saviour much more agony, for previous to this time, the fellowship with the Father in heaven had been His source of strength and comfort. Now this was taken away from Him, not because of anything that He had done to merit it, but because He was taking our place on the tree. To be forsaken of God was the final penalty of sin. “In this hour when Jesus was made sin, and was therefore God-forsaken, He knew as none other had ever known, the profundities of pain.”
After commending His spirit into the hands of the Father, His awful sufferings on earth were completed. We know so to say nothing of the things He went through during the time till His resurrection, but this one thing we do know—through it all He has purchased our salvation and is become Victor even over death. In conclusion, the sufferings of Christ may be said to have been vicarious because He suffered in man’s place; they were expiatory because they did away with, or exhausted sin; and atoning because they dealt with all that separated God and man.