1 Peter 4:1-6 For as much then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind… The Redeemer of the world is in one sense infinitely above us; but in another sense He is actually beside us. His sympathy is as true as His sovereignty. I. TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS WERE. "He suffered in the flesh." No one can read the Gospels without seeing indications of those sufferings. 1. There can be no doubt that Jesus was exempted from many of the physical ills from which we suffer. We can only think of Him as healthy, not only because of His birth, but because the exacting nature of His self-forgetful work required a perfect physique. Besides this, we must remember that many of our physical sufferings we bring on ourselves. Idleness, self-indulgence, artificial modes of life, irregularities, are the causes of many of the ills which flesh is heir to; but the life of Jesus was exquisite in its simplicity and unstained by a single vicious propensity. And this reminds us further that He could not have suffered, as we do, from a sense of personal sin, from the remorse which follows after our utterance of an unkind word, or the indulgence of an evil propensity, or from the tumult of passion which rises up within a sinful heart. Yet He was a sufferer. "He was a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief." "Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." But besides these His whole life was a martyrdom. His sensibility, not only to physical pain, but to mental and moral agony, must have been exquisite. 2. Think, too, of His utter loneliness. His was the solitude of a holy soul surrounded by sinners; of a heavenly spirit in contact with things earthly and sensual; of a mind whose higher thoughts not a single being on earth could appreciate; whose truest objects in living and dying as He did none could comprehend. 3. That expression, "in the flesh," reminds us of His uncongenial surroundings. He lived and died among a despised people, and was regarded as an outcast even by some of them! Often must He have felt as the Jews did when, exiled from home and fatherland, they hanged their harps upon the willows, and wept as they remembered Zion, saying, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" II. HOW THESE SUFFERINGS WERE ENDURED BY HIM. 1. It is evident that He accepted them as God's appointment for Him here. "The cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?" indicates His attitude to trouble right through. If a day's ministry brought Him no result, He did not repine; if His own nation rejected Him, He meekly accepted the result, though with unutterable sorrow over the issues of it to them; if the Cross was to be faced, He went forth willingly to Calvary, there to die — the just for the unjust — to bring us unto God. 2. Notice also that our Lord never allowed Himself to be absorbed in His own sorrows. He was always ready to enter into other people's joys and griefs, whatever His own sorrows might be. He is not so absorbed in the joys of heaven that He will not listen to the faltering cry of the lowliest penitent. I have known some sufferers who have been armed with the same mind. Their unselfishness has been sublime. Their couch of pain has proved the centre of joy and peace to those who circle round them. III. BUT HOW CAN WE DO THIS? (A. Rowland, LL. B.) Parallel Verses KJV: Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; |
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