Did Jesus Suffer Enough to Save Us All?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, How much of Christ’s physical suffering paid for our sins?”

Tom: Dave, this is a one-line question, and I think it’s so critical because I think there’s a great amount of confusion out there with regard to what exactly—Jesus paid the full penalty for our sins, was it what man did to Him? How much of—did God use of this, as we know in going through Isaiah 53 there seemed to be some things that implied the physical torture of Christ. And I’m sure it something that’s on many hearts and minds out there with regard to—well, you have to refer to the film The Passion of the Christ, which is focused on the physical sufferings of Christ. But let’s see if we can put that aside for a second and just talk about what the Scriptures say with regard to Christ paying the penalty for our sins. How much physical suffering was a part of that, do you think, Dave?

Dave: Well, Tom, I don’t think any physical suffering was a part of it. That is what men did to Him. Now, of course, He had to be crucified…

Tom: He had to die, we know that.

Dave: Well, yes, but the manner of His death—He had to be crucified. He would be beaten; He would be rejected by His own people—all of this only points out the horror of the sin that had captured mankind. That man would take his Creator and mock Him and despise Him, crucify Him. That’s sin. That is showing—it’s a demonstration to all eternity of the awfulness of the sinful nature that is in man now. And so it’s so amazing that when man was doing his worst, at the very time when man was venting his animosity, his hatred, against his Creator, that God then does His best, and that God, in that moment we see the love of God in a way we could never see it otherwise, and Christ cries out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And the Father willingly forgives all those who will put their faith and trust in Christ. And that would include even those who nailed Him there.

Tom: So, Dave, does that statement, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?”, does that relate to Jesus paying the…in other words, that was prior to Him suffering the wrath of God, wasn’t it?

Dave: Yes, it was.

Tom: So did it…my point is, did it bring about forgiveness? Salvation? That statement.

Dave: Well, the penalty had to be paid. The penalty had not yet been paid. But this is Christ reacting against their hatred in love. Now Isaiah 53, to which you referred, it says, “It pleased Yahweh, it pleased the Lord, to bruise him. Thou hast put him to grief…” So there was a bruising that came from the Father. And what was it? He laid on Him…well, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we’ve turned every one to His own way.” But the Lord, Yahweh, has “laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Now, that’s something we don’t understand. Paul said, “He was made to be sin for us. He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” You see this powerful and very difficult to understand presentation. Jesus explains the Cross in John 3, before He gets to verse 16, in John:3:14-15 [14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
See All..., He said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” The serpent that bit them is a picture of sin. And that likeness of that serpent was put up on this pole, and Jesus is saying He is going to be the very thing—He will have to become…and I don’t understand it, Tom, but the Scripture says it, and this is what Jesus was agonizing about in the Garden—not that He was going to endure physical sufferings. I don’t believe that that was what made Him sweat as it were drops of blood. In fact, Tom, I think we could even say that many people probably suffered physically more than Jesus did. Let’s take the Inquistion. You’ve got some people on a grate, with the fire under them, and they are being turned over…and slowly…

Tom: Broiled alive…

Dave: Yes, being broiled alive! Or you’ve got people being hung by meat hooks, or in the Iron Maiden, where they can’t get out and they just starve slowly to death.

Tom: Their skin peeled off…. You know, I hate to even bring these things up, but it’s true, Dave, you read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, there are just incredible things that man has suffered.

Dave: Well, what the Muslims have done down through history, and the Syrians in particular, flayed them alive. Skinned them alive. In fact, that is why in the Gulf War, the United States government wanted the Jewish soldiers and sailors, and so forth, pilots, not to have a dog tag that said they were Jewish. They came up with a new category, you remember, “Protestant B”—because they said if the Iraqis capture them, and they know they’re Jews, they will skin them alive. People were literally skinned alive.

So, where did our salvation come from? He had to pay the penalty. He cried out in triumph, Tetelestai! They stamped that on promissory notes, and so forth. It meant “Paid in Full.” He said, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of myself.” He didn’t just kind of expire in weakness and die from the physical sufferings that they had imposed upon Him. But He took our sins, I believe in those three hours of darkness—it says, “It pleased Yahweh to bruise him— You laid on him the iniquity of us all. You made his soul [and this is soul, this is spiritual, this is not physical] you made his soul an offering for sin.”

So somehow Christ took upon Himself the sins of the world, and He paid the penalty at the hands of, “God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—an eternal death, separation from God forever, and He endured in that time because He’s infinite. I can’t understand it, Tom, but I’m sad when the focus is just on physical sufferings that we inflicted upon Him, and we forget that it was—that He paid the penalty for our sins at the hands of a holy God. He took what His own justice demanded. He paid that penalty.

Tom: And, Dave, the sad thing for me, growing up Roman Catholic, the focus had always been upon suffering. You suffered, and by suffering you expiated your own sins, either here or in purgatory, and that’s not what the Scriptures teach, and it misses the gospel. That’s the really grievous thing about it.