No one could share with
Him the work of suffering and dying for sinners. He was lifted up that
He might draw all men unto Him. "He suffered the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God."[083] On the cross He tasted death for
every man, and made a sacrificial atonement for the sins of the world.
"He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed."[084] His dying was the leading thought and
purpose of His life. Those who were with Him fixed their eyes on His
greatness as manifested in His wisdom and miracles, and looked for His
setting up a kingdom of this world, but He Himself from the very
beginning knew that the path to be traversed by Him was one of agony and
death. He was straitened until this baptism of suffering should be
accomplished.[085] At His first Passover He had intimated that, as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man should be
lifted up. He used this expression "lifted up" three times, and an
Evangelist gives the explanation: "This he said, signifying what death
he should die."[086] Again and again He told the disciples that He had
come to give His life a ransom for many, that He was to be betrayed and
killed, that as the Good Shepherd He would give His life for the
sheep.[087] He intimated that His death was in accordance with the
deliberate counsel and foreknowledge of His Father, and with His own
free and full assent: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay
down my life."[088] And when betrayal and apprehension brought His
ministry to a close, He would allow no sword to be drawn in His defence,
but was brought as a "lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."[089]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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