Sixteen “Uses” of Christ’s Sufferings (1)

Use 1. See the love of Christ, who laid not His bodily life down only, but His soul. “The redemption of the soul is precious,” says the psalmist, Ps. 49:8, precious indeed, when it cost not His precious blood only, but His precious soul also. Not with corruptible things, gold and silver, but with the precious blood of Christ were we redeemed. As the body is more worth than raiment or estate, so the soul more than the body. Christ gave not His estate only, nor His body only, but His soul.

Use 2. See the love of God, who gave not His Son up only to the hands of men to be executioners of His body, but Himself laid on upon His soul; and that because justice called for the soul, the very soul, ere it would be satisfied. Which no creature being able to reach, rather than we should not be redeemed, He will be the executioner himself; ties Him to the cross, and with His own hand whips Him, because no creature could strike strokes hard enough. A tender mother hath not the heart to whip her child for its own fault; God bruiseth Christ’s soul Himself for others; Zech. 13:7, “Awake my sword against the man God’s fellow”; yea, Isa. 53:10, “It delighted the Lord to bruise Him.” So much was His heart in our salvation, that this (otherwise the most abhorred act that ever was done) was sweetened to Him by its end, our salvation, and made a matter of delight, not simply, but in relation to the end.

Use 3. Let us not think much to suffer any thing in our body for Christ; He hath done more for us, He hath suffered in His soul. All that men can do is but to kill the body, they cannot reach the soul, Matt. 10:28. And therefore all that we can fear from them is but outward; in comparison of what Christ endured, it is but whipping through the clothes; all that is done to the body, Matt. 20:22. “Can ye drink of the cup He drank of, and be baptized with the baptism He was baptized with?” Rom. 8:29. He exhorts us to cheerful suffering; because therein we are conformed to Christ’s image, who yet was in suffering the first-born among many brethren, and so had a larger portion in them than ever any had.

Use 4. Did the chief of Christ’s sufferings lie in His soul? Let the chief of our obedience be placed in our souls and in soul-worship. God said to Christ, “My Son, give me Thy soul”; and Christ says to us, “My son, give Me your hearts.” Obedience in the inward man is the soul of obedience. “Sanctify the Lord in your hearts,” 1 Peter 3:15: there especially is God ennobled. God seeks for such to worship Him as worship Him in spirit. “Bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness, etc.” 1 Tim. 4:8. There godliness is opposed to bodily exercise, and therefore godliness is put for the service of the inner man, which is only godliness, in which (Rom. 7) the apostle says he served the Lord, which he calls serving Him (ver. 4 of that chapter) in the newness of the spirit. The papists, whose worship is all bodily, are all for Christ’s bodily sufferings, and deny this of His soul. But let us place the main of His obedience in the suffering of his soul, and so seeing His love, give up our souls to Him chiefly to obey Him with.

Use 5. Comfort to those that are distressed in soul.

(1) You are herein conformed so much the more to Christ.

(2) He knows the heart of a sinner distressed, and so is moved to pity more feelingly. He became a merciful High Priest, in that He was tempted in all things as we, sin only excepted. Pity is more kindly when it is from experience of the like extremity.

(3) In that He suffered in His soul, He thereby purchased comfort for thy soul. As in other things we make use of Christ’s sufferings to relieve us against the particulars we are distressed in, so also let us in this. When we are poor, we may consider Christ was poor that we might be made rich; when we suffer from men, we may have recourse to this, that by His stripes we are healed: so when in soul, that He was buffeted in spirit to free us; His soul was heavy unto death that we might be comforted; God spake to Him in wrath that He might speak peace to us. Speaking comfort, in Scripture phrase, is called speaking to the heart.

Use 6. When we think of Christ crucified, let us especially think of the sufferings of His soul, so much forgotten and denied. To this end He ordained the cup in the sacrament; as the bread to represent to our faith the body of Christ, so the wine the pouring forth of His soul, which is called the blood of the New Testament. That as the blood of the Old was the blood of bulls and goats, in which blood lies the life, as the Scripture speaks, the souls of beasts being but the spirits of the four elements which run in the blood, so that thing which that type signified, was the soul poured out, there being nothing nearer to represent the soul more lively than the blood, with which therefore all was sprinkled.

Use 7. See the heinousness of sin by this, that Christ was made a curse; as He said, if thou wouldst see what sin is, go to mount Calvary. It is true that the utmost real evil of the thing itself which we call sin consists in this, that it is the transgression of the command of the great God. But the utmost representation to make that evil known to us, is the cross and the curse of the Son of God, blessed for ever. We seldom conceive of the greatness of injuries, as they are in themselves committed; so we are apt to slight them; but we do measure them best by the anger and the wrath they beget in the party wronged (if he be not partial in his own cause), and by the furious expressions of his wrath returned back again upon the offence. So whilst we view sin in its direct and proper notion, and that it is an injury against the great God, so we should never have seen the full vileness of it; for as God is in Himself invisible, so is the evil of Sin; and as Christ is the liveliest image of the invisible God, so are His debasement and His sufferings the truest glass to behold the ugliness of sin in, and the utmost representation to make us sensible of it. The throwing down the angels out of heaven, the cursing the earth and all Adam’s posterity for Adam’s sin, the drowning the old world, and overturning Sodom, and the fire unquenchable which burns to the bottom of hell; these were such considerations as make us stand amazed and cry out, Oh, what is sin, that Thou dost so remember it, or the sinfulness of it, that Thou dost punish it in the destruction of the best creatures Thy hands have made! But all these tragedies are but as lighter skirmishes, and but shows of justice and wrath, in comparison of the death and sufferings of His Son. For how greatly incensed must that anger be by sin, which so infinite, so ancient love, to such a Son, could not quench nor yet allay! How deep in guilt must that fault be, for which justice is bold to exact no less satisfaction than the blood of God! For what crimes are kings at any time put to death? Here God blessed for ever is made a curse, the Light and Life of the world and fountain of life is killed, the Lord of glory debased, the fulness of the Godhead emptied, emptied to nothing He who is one with God in essence, in title to glory, is separated and accursed from Him and by Him, and laid as low as hell; and all this because He was made sin.

Use 8. Think what a miserable and fearful condition it must needs be to be found out of Christ and in your sins. And be assured of this, that either Christ or you must bear the full weight both of your sins, and the curse due to them. That Christ was made a curse may be both an evidence of the certainty of the curse and wrath to come, and of the fearfulness of it. Of the certainty, for if from former examples of God’s vengeance upon other sinners like themselves, Peter argueth the assured inevitable destruction of ungodly men, that “if He spared not the angels nor the old world, etc.”, 2 Peter 2:5,6; He would therefore certainly not spare them. If further, from the chastisements brought upon His own dear children, God Himself bids Jeremiah tell the nations that they should certainly drink—Jer. 25:29, “For, lo, I bring evil upon the city that is called by My Name, and should ye be unpunished?” — much more is it argued from this, that He brought all this evil and these curses on His Son. If God spared not the natural branch, nay, the root of branches, which bears all His olive branches, how will He spare those that shall be found wild olives, growing on their own stock, bearing all their wild olives and sins themselves? If He not only upon whom God’s Name is called, but whose Name is in Him, did and must drink of the cup, shall not the wicked of the earth drink the dregs of it? And as it may argue the certainty of it, so the fearfulness also. It was an use Christ made of it then when He was a-leading to be crucified, “If they do this to the green tree, what will they do to the dry?” If He who was a green tree, and was by reason of His sap and fullness of grace no fit fuel for the fire, had no matter in Himself for God to be angry with, yet it burns so fiercely on Him, standing but in the shade and within the imputation of our sins; if the curse withered Him that He looked like a tree growing on the dry ground, Oh, how will it rage upon dry trees, fitted for hell; upon fir trees that are full of, and bring forth, gum and rosin, fit fuel for that fire! And if the whole curse did light on Him, and the respect to and dignity of His person abated nothing of it, God spared Him not, surely a sinner out of Christ shall be abated nothing neither, but pay the utmost farthing. See in God’s dealing with His Son the most vivid type and resemblance of the curse to be executed upon all sinful unbelievers out of Him. Cursed he is throughout his whole life, as Christ also was made a curse in His. The curse seized on Him when He was made flesh, and began to break out upon Him in the spots of human infirmities, making Him all over like sinful flesh; which curse secretly followed Him, and increased upon Him in the fruits of it, and left Him not till it had brought Him to the accursed death, when it appeared to all the world that He was made a curse indeed, when He hanged upon a tree. Why, and cursed wert thou in thy conception, and cursed was the womb that bare thee, and a thread of curses are drawn through the web of thy frail life. And though a sinner may bless himself in honors, riches, pleasures, yet all these have a curse in them unto him; cursed is he when he eats, cursed when he lies down and rests, and cursed when he awakes again; and this curse leaves him not till it brings him to his end, and after that to judgment, when it appears he is cursed indeed, however accounted happy in this life. And learn to see and tremble, and to avoid it, how the curse will then seize on thee by what was done to Christ, if it prove not then that He was made a curse for thee. Then was his day of judgment and ours in Him, Isa. 53:8. And therefore in that day’s passages with Him, we may raise our hearts up to see what shall be then.

Dr. Thomas Goodwin (1600–1679) was converted under a sermon preached by Dr. Bainbridge in his early twenties. Throughout his long and useful life, he served as preacher at Cambridge University, lecturer at Trinity Church, pastor of a London church, president of Magdalene College, prominent delegate to the Westminster Assembly, and co-founder (with John Owen and Jeremiah Burroughs) of independent Congregationalism. He was one of the most famous English Puritan divines, whose preaching and teaching were used to the conversion of a number of students destined to become renowned Puritans. His writings were much honored by the Spirit in the lives of scores of God’s people throughout the centuries. Many renowned forefathers, such as Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, and George Whitefield, have penned their indebtedness to him. In addition to twelve volumes of profoundly experiential treatises (most of which sorely beg reprinting), Goodwin was responsible for the first draft of the Savoy Confession of Faith.

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