“Christ also suffered...who did no sin.”
John Henry Jowett (1864-1923) pastored in England at the beginning of the 20th century. He was dearly loved and known for his passion for the and sensitive shepherd's heart. Jowett believed that in his day there was a tendency in the church to belittle sin (I wonder what he would think about the situation today!). Knowing this about him caused me to take extra care in reading his commentary on 1 Peter which speaks of the sufferings of Christ and of Christians. I was taken over with emotion as I read his insights on 1:21-22. If you take the time to read it, I'm sure you will be too. I am indebted to this dear pastor of a century ago for awakening in my soul a sense of the magnitude of the sufferings which were my Savior's to bear for me:
“Christ also suffered . . . who did no sin.” [1 Pet. 2:21, 22] The two phrases must be conjoined if either is to receive an adequate interpretation. The earlier term discloses its significance by the light of the later term. If we would know the content and intensity of the suffering, we must know the character of the sufferer. “Christ also suffered.” [1 Pet. 2:21] The word is indeterminate until I know the quality of His life. Suffering is a relative term. The measure of its acuteness is determined by the degree of our refinement. The same burden weighs unequally on different men. Lower organization implies diminished sensitiveness The higher the organization the finer becomes the nerve, and the finer the nerve the more delicate becomes the exposure to pain. The more exquisite the refinement, the more exquisite is the pang.
"I do not limit the principle to the domain of the flesh. It is a matter of familiar knowledge that in the body it is regnant. There are bodies in which the nerves seem atrophied or still-born, and there are bodies in which the nerves abound like masses of exquisitely sensitive pulp. But the diversity runs up into the higher endowments of the life, into the aesthetic and affectional and spiritual domains of the being. The man of little aesthetic refinement knows nothing of the aches and pains created by ugliness and discord. The rarer organization is pierced and wounded by every jar and obliquity. It is even so in the realm of the affections. Where affection burns low, neglect and inattention are unnoticed; where love burns fervently, neglect is a martyrdom. If we rise still higher into the coronal dominions of the life, into the domain of moral and spiritual sentiments, we shall find that the degree of rectitude and holiness determines the area of exposure to the wounding, crucifying ministry of vulgarity and sin.
"We must interpret the rarity and refinement of His spirit if we would even faintly realize the intensity of His sufferings. “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” “No sin!” The fine, sensitive membrane of the soul had in no wise been scorched by the fire of iniquity. “No sin!” He was perfectly pure and healthy. No power had been blasted by the lightning of passion. No nerve had been atrophied by the wasting blight of criminal neglect. The entire surface of His life was as finely sensitive as the fair, healthy skin of a little child. “Neither was guile found in His mouth.” There was no duplicity. There were no secret folds or convolutions in His life concealing ulterior motives. There was nothing underhand. His life lay exposed in perfect truthfulness and candor. The real, inner meaning of His life was presented upon a plain surface of undisturbed simplicity. “No sin!” Therefore nothing blunted or benumbed. “No guile!” Therefore nothing hardened by the effrontery of deceit. I ask you to try to imagine the immense area which such a life laid open to the wounding implements of unfaithfulness and sin.
Now, it is a Scriptural principle that all sin creates insensitivity. “The wages of sin is death,” deadened faculty, impaired perception. “His leaf shall wither!” Sin is a blasting presence, and every fine power shrinks and withers in the destructive heat. Every spiritual delicacy succumbs to its malignant touch. I suppose that Scripture has drawn upon every sense for analogies in which to express the ravages of sin in the region of perception. Sin impairs the sight, and works towards blindness. Sin benumbs the hearing and tends to make men deaf. Sin perverts the taste, causing men to confound the sweet with the bitter, and the bitter with the sweet. Sin hardens the touch, and eventually renders a man “past feeling.” All these are Scriptural analogies, and their common significance appears to be this—sin blocks and chokes the fine senses of the spirit; by sin we are desensitized, rendered imperceptive, and the range of our correspondence is diminished. Sin creates callosity. It hoofs the spirit, and so reduces the area of our exposure to pain.
“Who did no sin!” No part of His being had been rendered insensitive. No perception had been benumbed by any callous overgrowth. Put the slightest pressure upon the Master’s life, and you awoke an exquisite nerve. “And they disputed one with another who should be greatest.” . . . “And Jesus perceiving their thoughts!” How sensitive the perception! The touch of a selfish thought crushed upon the nerve, and stirred it into agony. Such is the sensitiveness of sinlessness, and in this vulgar, selfish, and sinful world it could not be but that the Sinless One should be “a Man of Sorrows,” and that He should pass through pangs and martyrdoms long before He reached the appalling midnight of Gethsemane and Calvary."
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