THE HOUR OF DEEPEST HUMILIATION

 

 

I have always been amazed at the humiliation that the Saviour must have suffered at the hands of His captors prior to the crucifixion. Mark records that after His arrest, Jesus was brought into the palace of the high priest (Mark 14:53,54) where a mockery of a trial was conducted condemning Him to death and where His accusers ‘began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him….and the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands’ (v 65). Luke records that ‘the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him, and when they had blindfolded him, they struck him on the face and asked him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote thee? And many other things blasphemously spake they against him’ (Luke 22:63-65). Imagine a God who creates worlds, controls the elements, performs miracles, and has the power to subdue all enemies under His feet, allowing and enduring such humiliation at the hands of pathetic, weak and sinful humans. My dearest friend once told me that ‘meekness is strength turned tender’. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the Saviour’s sufferings during His earthly ministry were tolerated due to His meekness and His consistent focus on His mission. 

 

That His love for the Father and for us was the primary motivation for His focus cannot be disputed. This, however,  made me understand  further Christ’s tolerance of the unjust treatment He received in His final hour. The humiliation in question came immediately following the Saviour’s agony in Gethsemane which  James Talmage called ‘the hour of His DEEPEST humiliation’ (Jesus the Christ, p 611). But what could be deeper and more humiliating than being spit upon, smitten and stripped naked to be crucified on the side of a road? I reflected and then I understood the humiliation a God in His pure and sinless state would have suffered when He took upon Himself my sins, your sins, our families’ sins, our nation’s sins, the world’s sins and indeed the sins  of all mankind from Adam to the end of the world. In fact, ‘in that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, “the prince of this world”, could inflict’ (Jesus the Christ, p 613). Imagine a man who would NEVER do anything wrong, to any degree, taking upon himself all the existent sins as if He had committed them Himself. The spiritual anguish He suffered was no doubt due to all corroding feelings associated with sin and evil such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, lack of esteem, self-hatred, fear of God’s wrath….and indeed, deepest humiliation. Following the humiliation of Gethsemane, would any other be worse???

 

Will the sinner for whom you suffered, 

Who rejected and reviled Thee

Weep in the end for Thy pain and Thy sorrow?

Will his heart understand

When he kneels before Thee

The debt he owes for the existence

Of his merciful tomorrow?

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Christ by David Beraru)