To Suffer Like Him

I know of no one who has ever suffered a trial that is comparable with what Jesus suffered the day He died. Being rejected by all He loved (that included the whole world), being whipped and beat up and killed, and experiencing for the first time separation from God. My sufferings are infinitesimal.

Nonetheless, I have been known to freak out when just a little a trial comes into my life. I was expecting to live my normal, self-serving day, and then (suprise!) one of my favorite blessings gets taken away. Because I often live for pleasure, even a little trial can throw me completely out of whack.

It wasn't that way with Jesus! He wasn't just minding His own business on earth, when suddenly it dawned on Him that these men really were going to kill Him. No, as early as John 3—at the setting for Christ's first recorded miracle—He makes a reference to His death. “Woman,” he says to His mother, “what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” “My hour.” The hour of Christ's suffering. The hour of the greatest trial ever endured by a human being.

Twice after this in the book of John, we hear that the forces of the world could not touch Him because “His hour had not come.” A normal human being, when escaping imminent arrest, would breathe a sigh of relief and hope everything could just be okay now. For Jesus, it was different. He knew that these men, who wanted to take Him away and kill Him, would get Him someday. He even knew exactly when that day was coming. If He was spared from an untimely death a few times, it was just to preserve Him for the one time, the climactic day of His life when He would die. And Jesus knew this.

Finally, after years of divinely preserved earthly life, Jesus' hour came. John 13:1 says,

“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

Jesus loved His disciples with the purest and best kind of love. He knew He would die for them, and that their sin was going to be His burden as He did. Yet He loved them to the very end. In the face of the ultimate tragedy, the end of His life that He had always known was coming, Jesus stooped down and showed love one more time.

Washing feet in trials. What a concept! Even in my little, paltry trials, there is usually only one person I'm thinking about. I'll try to reassure and comfort myself, “You're gonna be okay, Car.” Maybe I'll even spend some time one-on-one with the Lord, to find His comfort for my troubled heart. But serving others? Comforting others? Reaching out with compassion and sympathy to all the other human beings who are suffering too? That just seems unnecessary.

I will never suffer like Jesus suffered. Compared to the trials He endured, anything I endure for Him will be minor and easily forgotten once I am safe in heaven. But on a different level, maybe I can suffer, at least a little bit, in the way He suffered for me. And what was that way? It was the way of expecting trials, trusting God to bring them at the right time, and loving others deeply in the midst of them. I want to be like Him, the Man of sorrows who suffered with unshakable faith, hope, and love.