“Our Lord Jesus was not only in the brunt of danger, and in the faintness of His agony, but He was in full prospect of a cruel death. He knew all that was to be done to Him.
When you and I have to suffer, we do not know what is before us; it is a happy circumstance that we do not.
But Jesus knew that they would buffet Him. He knew that they would blindfold Him. He knew that they would spit in His face. He knew that they would scourge Him. He knew that the crown of thorns would tear His temples.
He knew that He would be led forth like a malefactor, bearing the gibbet on His shoulder. He knew that they would nail His feet and hands to the cruel cross.
He knew that He would cry, “I thirst.” He knew that His Father must forsake Him on account of the sin of man that would be laid upon Him.
He knew all that. These huge Atlantic billows of grief cast their spray in His face already, His lips were salty with the brine of His coming grief.
But He did not think of that! His one thought was for His beloved, those whom His Father had given Him. Till He dies, He will keep His eye on His sheep, and He will grasp His Shepherd’s crook with which to drive the foe from them.
Oh, the all-absorbing, self-consuming love of Christ! Do you know that love, beloved? If so, let your hearts reciprocate it, loving Him in return with all the strength of your life, and all the wealth of your being.
Even then you can never love Him as He has loved you. O faulty saints, you who do love Him, and yet often fail Him, you who do trust Him, and yet are oftentimes dismayed, gather strength, I pray you, from this wonderful love of Jesus!
Is not the love of Christ a mass of miracles, all wonders packed together?
It is not a subject for surprise that He should love, but that He should love such worms as we are, that He should love us when we were dead in trespasses and sins, that He should love us into life, should love us despite our faults, should love us to perfection, and should love us until He brings us to share His glory.
Rejoice, then, in this wondrous care of Christ,—the dying Christ with a living care for His disciples.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Living Care of the Dying Christ,” in Majesty in Misery: Select Sermons on the Passion of Christ, Volume 1: Dark Gethsemane (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2005), 222-223. [MTPS, 40: 316-317]
