Preached at Brampton Ash, 13th Sunday after Trinity, September 14, 1862.
“For even Christ pleased not Himself, but as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on Me.”—Romans xv. 3.
Our Lord Christ is called The Man of Sorrows, and yet His life, even here on earth, was a life of joy. How could that be? St. Paul tells us how it was in the verse I have just read to you.
1. Christ pleased not Himself. My friends, the secret of most of our misery is that we are trying to please ourselves. We are continually craving for something that we have not; we are discontented with what we have. If you find me a person, be he ever so poor, be he in ever so much pain of body, who is not restless, who is not impatient, I say that person has more joy in him than one who has millions to spend, who has health and ease and all comforts about him, and is always contriving new ways of pleasing himself. The poor suffering man is thinking about his wife or child, how kind they are, how they watch him; how pretty the flowers which they place by his bedside, how nice the food is which they cook for him. The rich easy man is thinking what more things he can procure for himself, what a number of inconveniences there are in his house, how one and another is interfering with his plans. One is satisfied, the other never is.
Well but our Lord Jesus was the one person who was never pleasing Himself. He was never thinking of Himself. He delighted to do His Father’s will, and to finish His work. He delighted to think of His Father and of all His infinite love, and of all His purposes of good which He had devised for men, and which He would accomplish for men. Every tree which grew by the watercourse, every flower in the hedgerows told Him something of His Father’s deep wonderful careful love; how He had made everything, and lo, it was good; how He was watching over everything, to keep it good and beautiful, and bring out the good and beauty of it fully at last. He delighted to think that there was not a publican or sinner despised by man, whom His Father did not look after and care for, and seek to bring home to His family. He delighted to think that His Father loved that His children should be healthy, and free, and true. He delighted that His father had sent Him into the world to give health to the sick, and freedom to those who were in bondage, and to make them good who had been under the power of the evil one. It was meat and drink to Him to work for this end, meat and drink to be sending lepers away well, to be restoring to palsied people the use of their limbs again, to be giving back the dead child alive to its father and mother, the dead man alive to his sisters. He was pleasing His Father in all that He did. He was not seeking His own pleasure in anything. That was joy. If that had been all, Christ’s life on earth would have been only one of joy; we should have no right to call Him the Man of Sorrows. But we must call Him by that name, and the second part of the verse tells us why we must.
2. “The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on me.” He delighted, I said, to do His Father’s will. He delighted in His Father’s love. But all around men were reproaching His Father, were finding fault with Him. It seemed to them as if there was good reason for their reproaches. ‘For how is it,’ said they, ‘that things are going on so badly on this earth of ours? How is it that there is so much sickness and pain? How is it that there is so much oppression and cruelty? How is it that poor men cry and there is no comforter? How is it that good men often have a bad time of it, and suffer much trouble, and go to prison, and are burnt with fire, while the evil men are prosperous and seem to have everything their own way? How can this be if there is really a good God over all?’ Now all these reproaches fell on Christ. They were anguish to Him. The more intensely He loved His Father, the more intensely He believed in His Father’s goodness and grace and truth, the more anguish they caused Him. And it was not only that. He did not only feel as we might feel if any one said hard words of some one that we reverenced very much, and whom we knew deserved our reverence. These sicknesses and troubles of men actually burnt into Christ’s very soul. They grieved Him as they had never grieved any one else. He bore them as if they were His own. It could not be otherwise; for He knew about His Father’s beautiful order, and here was disorder and confusion. He loved men one and all as His Father loved men, and here were men hating each other. He was the Lord of life, and here was death working its way among all human beings and separating them from each other, and mocking all their plans and proclaiming himself to be the great king. This was enough to make Christ a Man of Sorrows, yea, the Man of Sorrows. These reproaches against His Father did really break His heart. He knew that they had come to men because they had contradicted His Father’s will, because they had set up their wills against His. He knew that His Father’s will was to banish sickness and restore life and put down injustice and wrong. But here they were, and it seemed as if they had gotten the day.
But there was another way, and perhaps a more terrible way still, in which all the reproaches that men cast upon God fell upon Christ. He was the express image of His Father. All the brightness and goodness and loving-kindness of His Father came forth in Him. Every act of His showed forth something of this brightness and goodness and loving-kindness. He went about, as it is written, doing good. But it is written also—He Himself spake the terrible words—‘They hated both Me and my Father.’ His goodness brought out the evil and bitterness and cruelty of their hearts. He was a continual reproach to them, so they cast all reproaches upon Him. The worst of all was that they called Him a blasphemer because He said God was His Father, and that they blasphemed Him by saying, “He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils.” He who bore all this must have been indeed a Man of Sorrows. The joy did not kill the sorrow; it made the sorrow keener, for the more He rejoiced in His Father, the more it pained Him that men should misunderstand His Father’s purposes; the more He did the works of His Father, the more horrible it was that they should take them for the acts of Satan. But it is also true that the sorrow did not kill the joy—nay, that it brought forth His joy. He set His face as a flint. He gave Himself to show that His Father was not the cause of the misery of the world, but that it was because it was at war with Him. He worked to show that death and the grave and hell were His Father’s enemies, and that His Father could and would vanquish them. So He went down into death and the grave and hell Himself. They did all that they could do to Him. And having endured all that unspeakable sorrow and agony, He rose again the conqueror of them all; He rose, as it is written, in the glory of the Father. He had triumphed over them in the name of His Father, and through the power of His Father; He had triumphed over them for you and me, and for the whole universe. He had shown that He was Lord over them; He had shown that His Father’s will was to give Life, Eternal Life, to those who had fancied that He was their tyrant, and that He had doomed them to death.
And so the Lord who pleased not Himself entered into His Father’s joy—the joy of saving and redeeming men; and in that joy He has dwelt ever since, and dwells now. But still we are bound to think of Him as the Man of Sorrows, as the man who bore all the sorrows that men have borne and do bear. And His Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, is with us now, that we may enter both into His joy and His sorrow. If we ask that Spirit to come and dwell with us, we shall find that He is indeed a Comforter. For He teaches us of God’s infinite love, and Christ’s infinite sacrifice; He shows how the troubles which men have are not proofs of God’s hatred, seeing that they all fell upon His beloved Son, but may be means of drawing us to trust in Him, and give ourselves to Him. His Spirit, the Comforter, will teach us not to please ourselves as we are all trying to do, but to forget ourselves, and live in Christ and for each other. The Spirit will teach us to bear the reproaches in our own heart which men are putting upon our Father in heaven, and to do what we can to overcome them by proving that His will is to bless them, and deliver them, and do them good. His Spirit will teach us to enter into the sorrows of our fellow-men, which are the sorrows of Christ, and to look for a day when the darkness shall pass, and the earth shall be set free from its bondage, and the sons of God shall shout for joy because their Father’s face is shining without a veil.