The Life-Long, Chronic Suffering of Jesus
When we think of Christ as the “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3), we often think primarily of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Of course, the four Gospels do consistently depict Christ’s Passion Week of suffering, crucifixion, and death on our behalf.
However, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John also constantly depict Christ’s life of suffering. I just completed a lengthy, focused study of Christ’s suffering in the four Gospels. I have well over 100 pages of single-spaced type notes. I have collated 256 Gospel passages (not just verses, but passages) about Jesus’s suffering. And most of that suffering was before the last week of Christ’s life. The conclusion of the matter:
The Gospels highlight the life-long, chronic suffering of Jesus.
Matthew includes 67 passages about Jesus’s chronic suffering; Mark contains 54 passages; Luke highlights 62 passages; and John depicts 73 accounts of Jesus’s suffering—256 Gospel passages.
What Isaiah 53:3 prophesied, the Gospels picture:
Jesus: Man of Sorrows and Suffering; Acquainted with Grief and Pain.
What Does God’s Word Say?
Don’t just take my word for it. Take God’s Word for it.
Go here to download a free 40-page PDF that collates and introduces 256 Gospel passages about Jesus’s suffering, and 102 Gospel passages about Jesus healing the suffering: The Gospels and Suffering.
And the Commentators Say…
Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of biblical commentators.
I don’t want to just take my word for it! Living as we do in an era where everyone is talking about trauma, I wanted to be sure that I was not reading traumatic-suffering into the text of Scripture. So, I studied what several commentators—who wrote before our modern era of trauma theory. Specifically, I collated what they said about Isaiah 53:3.
First, here’s Isaiah 53:3 in a few different translations.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain (NIV).
3 He is despised and rejected of men: he is a man full of sorrows, and hath experience of infirmities (1599 Geneva Bible).
3 People despised and avoided him, a man of pains, well acquainted with illness (Complete Jewish Bible).
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (ESV).
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (KJV).
3 He was despised and abandoned by men, A man of great pain and familiar with sickness (NASB).
3 He is despised and chadal ishim (rejected by men); a man of sorrows, and acquainted with suffering (Orthodox Jewish Bible).
What is being predicted about our Messiah when Isiaah says He will be a “man of suffering, familiar with pain”? Here’s what pre-trauma-theory-commentators say.
“A man of sorrows; whose whole life was filled with, and in a manner made up of, an uninterrupted succession of sorrows and sufferings. Acquainted with grief; who had constant experience of and familiar converse with grievous afflictions: (Matthew Poole’s Commentary).
Jesus “was מכאבות אישׁ, a man of sorrow of heart in all its forms, i.e., a man whose chief distinction was, that His life was one of constant painful endurance” (Keil and Delitzsch).
“His whole life was not only humble as to outward condition, but also sorrowful (Matthew Henry).
“A man of sorrows – What a beautiful expression! A man who was so sad and sorrowful; whose life was so full of sufferings, that it might be said that that was the characteristic of the man. Here, the expression means that his life was characterized by sorrows” (Barnes Notes).
“Man of sorrows—that is, whose distinguishing characteristic was sorrows. Acquainted with—familiar by constant contact with. Grief—literally, ‘disease’; figuratively for all kinds of calamity (Jer 6:14)” (Jamieson-Faussett-Brown Bible Commentary).
“A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: or ‘known by grief’; he was known by his troubles, notorious for them; these were his constant companions, his familiar acquaintance, with whom he was always conversant; his life was one continued series of sorrow, from the cradle to the cross; in his infancy his life was sought for by Herod, and he was obliged to be taken by his parents, and flee into Egypt; he ate his bread in sorrow, and with the sweat of his brow; he met with much sorrow from the hardness and unbelief of men’s hearts, and from the contradiction of sinners against himself, and even much from the frowardness of his own disciples; much from the temptations of Satan, and more from the wrath and justice of God, as the surety of his people; he was exceeding sorrowful in the garden, when his sweat was as it were great drops of blood; and when on the cross, under the hidings of his Father’s face, under a sense of divine displeasure for the sins of his people, and enduring the pains and agonies of a shameful and an accursed death; he was made up of sorrows, and grief was familiar to him” (Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible).
“A Man of sorrows. The word translated ‘sorrows’ means also pains of any kind. The ‘sorrows’ of Jesus appear on every page of the Gospels” (Pulpit Commentary).
Christ’s entire life was characterized by suffering and sorrow, by pain and grief.
So What? Our Sympathetic High Priest
The life of Jesus was one of chronic suffering. The ministry of Jesus is one of consistent ministry to the suffering.
No wonder Jesus is able to empathize with our weaknesses and sympathize with our suffering. He suffered.
The author of Hebrews reminds us:
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).
Consider just one obvious example that connects the suffering of Jesus to our suffering:
Jesus’s hunger and His compassion for the hungry.
We’ve read it so many times that we might skip right past the obvious. “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (Matthew 4:2). Well, yes! Of course! Hungry. Starving. Famished. After forty days and forty nights of fasting.
When we recall Jesus’s intense experience of hunger in Matthew 4:2, it helps us to understand His compassionate empathy for the hungry in Matthew 15:32.
“Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.”
Yes, Jesus does get us!
Yes, Jesus is our sympathetic, empathetic High Priest.
Jesus heals the hungry and He heals all manner of suffering throughout His ministry. In Jesus, Soul Physicians of Embodied-Souls, I collate 102 Gospel passages and 618 Gospel verses where Jesus heals the suffering. We can summarize it like this:
The Man of Suffering is the Healer of the Suffering.
And for You?
In a future post on Jesus’s suffering and our suffering, we’ll be even more specific about areas of His suffering that relate to our suffering. But for today, we’ll be a bit more broad in our application.
What about you?
- In your chronic pain, how does it minister to your soul when you see and turn to Jesus who experienced chronic suffering?
- In your suffering, what does it mean for you to know Jesus—the Man of Suffering?
- In your suffering, what does it look like for you to go to the Man of Suffering to receive mercy and to find grace to help you in your time of need?
- In your traumatic-suffering, how does it minister to your soul when you cling to Jesus as your empathetic High Priest who is able to sympathize with your suffering?
- In your terminal diagnosis, do you see and turn to Jesus who went through His entire life aware of His upcoming death by crucifixion.
- In your daily suffering, how can you cling to the Man of Suffering whose constant experienced was one of suffering and sorrow?
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