The Suffering of Christ by Joe La Bianca

Hebrews 2:10
In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
God brought many sons to glory. People from every tribe, language and nation appear as saved souls in heaven in the Revelation. Still, many more will sadly reject the kind offer of absolute restoration found in the gospel. Jesus became the perfect Savior through suffering. Of course, Jesus was always perfect. That is precisely why He is the Savior. The perfect gave His life for the sinful to bring us to God. But Jesus was made perfect in that He completed salvation when He suffered and died. Salvation was incomplete until Jesus said, “It is finished.”
The ancient Jews, as well as the Jews of today, expected a triumphant Messiah who would never know defeat. When the rabbis considered the profile of Messiah, they observed a contradiction. The Torah, the Psalms and Prophets portrayed both a suffering Messiah and a triumphant one. To solve this apparent contradiction, the rabbis taught that there were two different Messiahs. They never considered that there were not two Messiahs, but rather one Messiah with two advents or missions.
His first mission was to heal the enmity, His second one, to heal the physical universe. His first advent was for the spiritual, His second, physical. His first was about forgiveness and His second about judgment. This view of Christ is fitting. To believe that salvation is made perfect through the suffering Savior is suitable, proper, and consistent with the Old Testament.
When we choose to believe in the suffering of Jesus for our sins, God will then bring us salvation. He shall carry us to glory and open wide the gates of heaven. Honor, praise and dignity are ours, through the merits of Jesus. The wonderful Savior Jesus lavishes all good things on His children. Jesus is said to be the Captain of our salvation. Another rendering is Author.
By the suffering of Himself on the cross, He authored our salvation. Jesus, the creator of the universe, created our salvation too. When it says that through suffering, the Author of salvation was made perfect, it means that suffering was required in order for Jesus to cause our healing with His wounds. It doesn’t mean that the character of Christ was not perfect. It means that until Jesus suffered and died, our salvation was not complete. But when Jesus said that it was finished, the salvation of the world was completed. Now all that is left is to believe it. To take part in this completed salvation, we need only to believe the story. The word gospel means good news or story.
It was necessary for Jesus to suffer to bring about His death on the cross. Without Messiah’s death, we would have no life, and so the efforts of Jesus are perfected or accomplished through the hardship and pain He endured so that we would not have to undergo the agony of our own condemnation.
Jesus is our Substitute. Remember that Jesus not only died for us, He took our punishment. That is why He was crucified. Sin deserves punishment. God did not want to punish us for our sins, so He prepared a body for His Son. He sent His only Son instead. Jesus was willing to do this for us. He said, “Here am I - it is written about me in the scroll - I have come to do your will, O God.” When you finally understand what this means, then you will have peace.
Too many treat Jesus as a mere example to follow, and if someone follows that example well enough, God will let him into Heaven. This is the sin of unbelief and the delusion of many people. Believing Christ in this way takes all the power out of the cross. Christ is not a mere example, though you will find no better one. Christ is the unique Savior who has accomplished something no one can ever do. He is the only one of His kind. He died for the sin of the world, and is the only Savior. You can call no one else for help. On Judgment Day it will be Jesus sitting on that powerful chair we call a throne.
The world, and all it’s religions, believe that they bring themselves to God by their supposed good works, that God is some kind of good deeds assessor who rewards better people and punishes lesser ones. When God calculates people it is always negative. People are bad, all people. There is no one good, no not one. If you call someone good you are calling them God. There is only one who is good.
Christianity is the only faith that teaches man’s total inability to save himself. Jesus brings us to glory. We do not somehow bring ourselves to glory. The only place we can bring ourselves is hell. Jesus is the Good, we are the bad. Believe in the only Good and be saved from what you are.
When we realize that we exist for God, and through God, that’s when we find happiness. Why are we here? We are here for Jesus and through Jesus. True life is found only in the Lord Jesus, for our being is found as we look to the Savior. We do not exist for and through ourselves, or any idol. Our purpose is in Christ. We are here because of God, the Triune, and by way of His almighty hand. We owe our existence to the God of the Bible. This is why we are here, to believe in the One God sent. This is the work of God, to believe in the One God sent. Jesus was dispatched from Heaven to heal our hearts by the cross, and when His message is heard and believed upon, it is only then that our reason for being is realized.
If Jesus is the One who author’s our salvation, then it stands to reason that we cannot save ourselves, for He is the originator of deliverance. If we cannot save ourselves, then why do we try? Why can’t we just let go and let God? When we finally admit that only Jesus saves, then we can know the joy of being brought to glory. We fight God when we try to do it ourselves. You cannot believe that only Jesus saves if you are trying to save yourself by works.
Hebrews says we exist through God; we do not exist through human effort. Our earthly straining has nothing to do with the sanctifying suffering of Jesus. But we can fellowship in Christ’s sufferings by identifying with Him through faith. We can become a part of the work of Christ when we confess His name before men. We fill up what is lacking in regard to Christ’s suffering when we proclaim Christ’s suffering. For without believers in Christ, what Christ has done is truly lacking. The Savior is one part and those who are saved is the other. This completes the salvation equation.
The suffering Jesus is comely. Those terrible wounds are somehow beautiful to the believer, for they are the healing blows of grace. Christ is the fragrance of life in the nostrils of the faithful. This same aroma is the stench of death to the unbeliever. This is why Jesus is attacked by the world. If He really rose up, the faithless are doomed, and they know this.
The cross on the top of a church has become a symbol of religion, an emblem so greatly misunderstood. If the simple gospel of grace was really out there as it should be, people wouldn’t see the cross as something else, they would look at that holy intersection and see life. They would say, “I should have died for my own sin, but God died in my stead.” The love and gratitude that always accompanies simple faith in Jesus would overflow from within at the sight of the cross. The work of God was completed through the suffering of Jesus. Our suffering can never redeem. We do not become exempt from hell because our lives have been difficult. Without Jesus our hard time down here will become an eternally hard time in hell. With Jesus we have the hope of one eternally day in the presence of what God is; Love.
Jesus underwent suffering for our good. It is finished, for Messiah has come, with prophetic credentials, healing love, uncompromising purpose, and saving grace. Be a son or daughter of glory, and be brought there by the God for whom, and through whom everything exists.