Bible Tools

The Suffering Servant
By Horane Smith

Consider the things your Saviour Jesus Christ had to endure on the evening of the Last Supper.

1.	The Knowledge that Judas Iscariot, who had sat at Jesus' feet, witnessed His miracles and been among his closest friends for three and a half years, had betrayed Him was a source of deeply felt pain for Jesus on that night.

2.	Jesus knew His excruciating painful death was approaching. He said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death," (Matt 26:38). He prayed fervently and with deep sorrow and anguish of spirit. This was part of the suffering He had to endure - part of the sacrifice He had to offer.

3.	He endured the ordeal of a bogus trial, of being spit upon, slapped, and buffeted.

4.	Jesus experienced the pain of having His closest friends forsake Him, of hearing Peter, who had vowed to follow Him even unto death, deny Him.

5.	The ordeal continued all night and into the next day, ending with his death in the afternoon.

All these things were essential components of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His suffering was foretold many years before.

Concerning the suffering servant of God, Isaiah wrote: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But He was wounded (tormented) for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and wit His stripes (bruises) we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

"He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb so He opened not his mouth (Isaiah 53: 3-7).

If you read the entire chapter of Isaiah 53, you will see that the sacrifice of Jesus was not restricted to the moment of His death. In truth, His sacrifice was a life long experience, but His final offering commemorated in the Lord's Supper, began in the evening He was taken from His disciples.

It's also interesting to note that the Lord's Supper is not a slightly adjusted Passover. True, it is a "Passover ," of sorts but it is much more than that.

When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, He drew from scriptural/historical imagery other than the sacrificial lamb of the Passover feast.

After He gave His disciples the cup, He said "Behold, the blood of the New Covenant (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20).

The blood of the lamb in Egypt provided protection from the plague wrought by the death angel, but Israel did not enter into covenant relationship with God until the covenant was set forth, agreed to, and ratified with blood - and that took place several weeks after the Passover event.

Of course, the Synoptics clearly tie the Last Supper to Passover but the point is that the Supper represents not only Christ as he is seen in the Passover (Exodus 12) but Christ as He is seen in the covenantal sacrifice (Exodus 24) and Jesus' own words make that the truth as plain as day.

Yes, the elements of the Lord's Supper do represent Christ Passover but they also represent Christ the sacrificial offerings of the Old Covenant. The sacrifice of Christ was portrayed in each sin offering (Is. 53:10; Hebrews 13: 10-12), including the offerings of the Atonement sacrifices (Leviticus 16: cf. Hebrews 9). In the Passover sacrifice (I Cor 5:7), in the covenant-ratifying sacrifice that took place at Mount Sinai (Matt. 26-28) and in the other sacrifices.

We need to understand that the Lord's Supper is a New Covenant symbolization of the Truth portrayed in all these sacrifices, not just Passover.

The Lord's Supper is not an exact continuum of the Old Testament Passover. Christ, the suffering servant, did not merely change the symbols of Passover and move it to a new time. No, He instituted something brand new - a ceremony that powerfully expresses the same Truth of the Gospel that was expressed in all the sacrifices, offerings, and Levetical ceremonies of the Old Covenant.

Each year, when we gather at the Lord's table to partake of His Supper, let's think deeply of the suffering He endured on the fateful evening, of the agony He experienced as the weight of our transgressions bore down upon His shoulders; and let's remember that we are called upon not only to accept His sacrifice, but to willingly participate in it - "That (we) may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering…"