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When Jesus Endured Hell

Image by JackieLou DL from Pixabay 

When we think about the sufferings of Jesus, we naturally think of the horrific physical abuse, the unspeakable, brutal violence that was visited upon His body. The Romans had perfected the art of inflicting exquisite pain on the crucifixion victim; Jesus suffered at the hands of experts. And yet the death of Jesus was, in many respects, unremarkable for its time. As ghastly as it was, crucifixion was routine in the Roman world. 

But Jesus’ suffering was unique. 

 No man had ever suffered what he endured that day. It not just the physical and psychological agony experienced by every other crucifixion victim. In the cross, Jesus’ greatest suffering was that he endured the very pangs of hell. He drank the cup of His suffering to the last drop. He bore the deadly curse for us. 

How? Let’s remember how quietly Jesus had responded to His suffering. As he was being tried, he had maintained such composure: He stood silently while His enemies showered him with slander and abuse. He refused to defend himself before Pilate. Later, on the cross, His dying words were few. He didn’t respond to the mockers. He spoke gentle words of comfort to the repentant thief. Even in His dying agony, He quietly arranged for His mother to be cared for after His death. 

But suddenly we hear the quiet man cry out, almost as if in surprise and shock! When Jesus sobbed those words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was quoting the opening lines of one of David’s psalms, words of lamentation that Jews had used for centuries to express their astonishment and grief. 

Could it be that Jesus cried out because He, the Innocent One, was suddenly facing the horrors of hell? 

Jesus endured hell for us not in the whips, not in the nails, not even in the cruelty of the jeering and mocking. Jesus endured hell for us when He stood in our place to absorb the “dreadful curse” that should have fallen on us, when He experienced the kind of total abandonment a man can know only in hell. His disciples had abandoned him. His countrymen had falsely accused him. The Romans had brutalized him. And now, incredibly, His own Father turns His back on him. 

 No wonder He cried out in searing pain. Surely it was a question that must have risen from the deepest parts of His soul: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Why would a loving heavenly Father abandon His Beloved Son, and at such a moment? How could a compassionate Father turn His back on His own Son at His moment of greatest need? 

The Apostle Paul tells us that in the cross, Christ “became sin for us.” This means that when God the Father looked on His Son in that moment, what He saw was our sin – Our arrogance. Our self-righteousness. Our self-absorption and vanity. Our lust and greed. And He had to turn His face away. That’s how Jesus endured hell for us. He stood in our place. He bore the deadly curse for us. He was forsaken by God, for us. 

There is an old American hymn, “What Wondrous Love Is This?” that so beautifully captures what Jesus endured for us in that moment, when He suffered the horrors of hell in our place.
 
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul? 
What wondrous love is this, O my soul? 
What wondrous love is this
that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

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