Our Ancestors Trusted

Psalm 22:4-8

Celtic Prayer Book, (Aidan’s Readings)

The Lord did not complete His suffering. It has been given to the church to complete the sufferings of Christ. Suffering not yet filled up waits out there for us. The body which is the church is part of Christ. There is suffering yet to be endured, yet to be known, yet to be embraced by that part of Christ which is called the body.

We thank God that no member of the body will ever know or endure all the sufferings Jesus experienced while living on earth. Each one of us – because we are in some mysterious way one with Him, will taste some part of His experience of suffering. Within our fellowship one may know ridicule, another physical pain, another rejection; perhaps someone may taste what it means to be vilified and verbally, socially crucified. Perhaps there will be one within our fellowship who will touch that awful thing Christ touched in that last moment on the cross -- the dark night of the spirit.

There is one aspect of the cross none of us will ever know, praise God! We will never know what it means to be the sin-bearer. He and He alone has experienced that, the one thing none of us should have escaped, and the one thing He need never have known. He became the sin-bearer and took the suffering that was ours.

Now we must step into our place in the body of Christ and receive and bear some segment of the suffering which is Christ’s – that part of Christ which is the church.

“You took always the lowest place and did it so completely that no one ever since has been able to wrest it from You.” (Abbe Huvelin)

Have we been delivered as our ancestors trusted?

How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His Only Son, to make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turned His face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One, bring many sons to glory.

Stuart Townend