A reflection from Robert Leighton, an 18th century Puritan minister, upon “Christ also suffered once for sins” (1 Peter 3:18). Isn’t this more comforting than the bland, “Jesus died for your sins”?
Jesus “whole life was one continued line of suffering, from the manger to the cross.… His best works paid with envy and revilings, called a wine-bibber, and a caster out of devils by the prince of devils; his life often laid in wait and sought for.
“Art thou mean in thy birth and life, despised, misjudged, and reviled, on all hands? Look how it was with Him, who had more right than thou hast to better entertainment in the world (the original meaning of ‘entertainment’ was hospitality or reception). Thou wilt not deny it was his own; it was ‘made by him, and he was in it, and it knew him not’ (John 1:10). Are thy friends harsh to thee? “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Hast thou a mean cottage, or art thou drawn from it and hast no dwelling, and art thou every way poor and ill-accommodated? He was as poor as thou canst be, ‘and had not where to lay his head,’ worse provided than the birds and foxes (Matthew 8:20).
“But then, consider to what a height his sufferings rose in the end, that most remarkable part of them here meant by his “once suffering for sins.” If thou shouldst be cut off by a violent death, or in the prime of thy years, mayst thou not look upon him as going before thee in both these? And in so ignominious a way! scourged, buffeted, and spit on, he endured all, ‘he gave his back to the smiters,’ and then, as the same prophet hath it, ‘he was numbered amongst the transgressors (Isaiah 50:6; 53:12). When they had used him with all that shame, they hanged him betwixt two thieves, and they that passed by ‘wagged their heads,’ and darted taunts at him, as at a mark fixed to the cross: they scoffed and said, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save’ (Mark 15:29-30). ‘He endured the cross, and despised the shame,’ says the Apostle, (Hebrews 12:2).
“We may apply this comfort and stay ourselves or our souls on him, and go to him as a compaasionate High Priest” (Hebrews 4:15). ‘For Christ also suffered.’”
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