Wednesday: The Sufferings of the Son of Man

Read Isaiah 53:1–6. What does this tell us about the sufferings of the Lord on the cross?

Isaiah 53:4 said that Jesus bore our griefs and sorrows. That must include Job’s griefs and sorrows, as well. And not just Job’s but the whole world’s. It was for the sin of all humans who ever lived that Jesus died on the cross.

Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com

So, only at the cross can the book of Job be put in proper perspective. Here we have the same God who revealed Himself to Job—the God who teaches the eagle to fly, the God who binds the quarks—suffering more than any human being, even Job, ever suffered or could suffer. The grief and sorrows that we know individually, He assumed corporately; no one, then, can lecture God on suffering, not when He in humanity bore in Himself the full brunt of all the suffering that sin has spread around the globe. We know only our own griefs, only our own sorrows; at the cross, Jesus experienced them all.

The God who asked Job, “ ‘Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?’ ” (Job 38:33, NKJV) becomes more incredible when we realize that though He created the “ ‘ordinances of heaven,’ ” He also took upon Himself earthly flesh and in that flesh died so that He “might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14, NKJV).

Viewed through the Cross, the book of Job makes more sense than it does without it, because the Cross answers many questions that the book leaves unanswered. And the biggest question of all deals with how fair it is for God to be up in heaven while Job on earth is forced to suffer as he does, all in order to help refute Satan’s charges. The Cross shows that no matter how badly Job or any human being suffers in this world, our Lord voluntarily suffered so much worse than any of us could, all in order to give us the hope and promise of salvation.

Job saw God as Creator; after the cross, we see Him as Creator and Redeemer, or particularly, the Creator who became our Redeemer (Phil. 2:6–8). And to do that, He had to suffer from sin in ways that no human being, Job included, would or could ever suffer. Thus, like Job, only more so, what can we do before such a sight but exclaim: “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6, NKJV)?