STUDY ONE
H Humiliation and Loneliness
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Jesus – The Wounded Saviour
Icebreaker
Describe a time when you have been embarrassed or lonely. What feelings did you experience? Opening Prayer
Dear Father, as we start our Lent study looking at the way Jesus was wounded so that we might be comforted and healed, please help us understand Your Word and Your heart. We thank You for Your Holy Spirit and ask that He may give us insights beyond our natural abilities. Help us, Lord, to be open to each other and to You as we share in this study of Your Word together. We pray that those of us who are naturally extrovert will be sensitive to those who are not, and that You would give those who are more reserved, unusual boldness to share their special insights, so that we may all benefit. We ask not that we would simply gain more knowledge, but that we might grow in faith, and experience more of Your presence and power in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Bible Readings Philippians 2:3–11
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name 12
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STUDY ONE
H u m i l i a t i o n a n d Loneliness
of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Mark 14:50, 15:25–34
… everyone deserted him and fled. … It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!’ In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.’ Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ – which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Setting the Scene
The picture of the true God presented to us in the Scriptures is that of the Creator of the universe who took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. Only the strong can dare to become weak, and so strong was our Creator that He subjected Himself to the most astonishing humiliation and became a human being – just like us. Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of a bygone age, put it like this: ‘For God to become a man was more humiliation than for an angel to become a worm.’
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Jesus – The Wounded Saviour
Why did He do it? There are many reasons, but listen to what the great writer Dorothy Sayers has to say about it: For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is – limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death – He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted of Himself. He Himself has gone through the whole of human experience; from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation.
Because God came and put Himself in our condition, He now fully understands our condition. How amazing! I don’t know about you, but a God who gave Himself to me in this way is a God who can have my heart any day. Opening our Eyes
I think Jesus knew a deep sense of loneliness as no one knew it before or since. As a child, He must have felt a little apart – not superior (though He was superior), but a sense of being different. At the age of twelve He knew that He must be about His Father’s business. When His ministry began, it caused concern among some of the members of His family. Other men have known what it is like to have all the world take up arms against them, but usually they had someone at home who would take up arms beside them against the world. Jesus lacked even that. The other children born to Mary and Joseph and who formed part of Christ’s earthly family came to believe that He did not know what He was doing and were astonished by His actions (Mark 3:20–21). In what remained of His earthly life, it was to His disciples He looked for understanding and companionship – but He looked in vain. On the eve of His crucifixion they 14
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STUDY ONE
H u m i l i a t i o n a n d Loneliness
argued about precedence, they slept while He agonised in the Garden, and they ran away at the moment He was arrested. Many of the world’s martyrs knew at the moment of their death that there were some in the world who sympathised with them and understood the cause for which they died. But Jesus had little sympathy and little understanding. His sacrifice mystified the people who were closest to Him. As Dr Sangster, the famous Methodist preacher, put it: ‘It mattered to all the world that He died for love, but no single soul in the world understood that He was doing it. He was lonely with the awful loneliness of God.’ How can it be doubted that He is able to sympathise with anyone who is engulfed by loneliness? Consider also the ‘cry of dereliction’. The phrase is used by theologians to describe the feelings of abandonment which our Lord appeared to experience when He cried out from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Throughout the history of the Church, great debates have taken place on this matter of our Lord’s ‘cry of dereliction’. Some believe He was not actually abandoned by God but felt abandoned, while others take the view that it was much more than a feeling and that on the cross He actually was forsaken by God. I find myself in agreement with the latter of these two beliefs. R.W. Dale, in his book The Atonement,1 convinced me of this when he wrote: ‘I decline to accept any explanation of these words which implies that they do not represent the actual truth of our Lord’s position. I cannot believe that Jesus was uttering a false cry.’ Just imagine it – our Lord, who had been forsaken by men, was now being forsaken by God. As He began to experience in His soul the suffering of sin (not His own sin, but ours) and proceeded through His sufferings to pay the terrifying debt that sin had built up in the universe, God, who could have nothing to do with sin, had to turn His back upon Him. Our Lord plunged into the darkness of sin and endured the awful suffering of the atonement entirely 15
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Jesus – The Wounded Saviour
on His own. Jesus experienced on the cross not just a felt, but a real abandonment – something those who are Christians will never experience. Let this solemn but glorious truth take hold of you today – because He was abandoned, you will never be abandoned (Heb. 13:5b). Discussion Starters
1. In what ways did Jesus experience humiliation?
2. Describe Christ’s attitude to His humiliation.
3. In what ways did Jesus experience loneliness?
4. How might feelings of humiliation and loneliness have a long-term effect upon us?
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