The Shameful Sufferer

Spurgeon devotes this sermon almost entirely to meditating on the shame Christ endured — arguing that shame is uniquely terrible to human dignity, and all the more so to one of Christ's noble, sensitive, and deeply loving nature — and walks listeners through its three forms: the shameful accusations of blasphemy and treason hurled at one who was perfectly holy and entirely loyal; the shameful mockeries of his person, his royalty, his prophetic office, his priesthood, and even his dying prayers; and the shameful death of crucifixion itself, the punishment reserved exclusively for the worst class of slaves, inflicted publicly before a Passover crowd while accompanied by jeering onlookers. He then turns to the inward dimension of the cross that no words can adequately capture: the soul of Christ enduring what was equivalent to hell itself, bearing all the wrath of God and the assault of every demonic power, utterly forsaken by his Father at the moment of greatest need — a suffering so vast that the rocks split and the sun went dark. He concludes with a brief but piercing application: the motive that carried Christ through all of this was the joy of saving sinners like us — people who were, in fact, his own enemies and the very ones whose sins drove the nails — and this love ought to make every Christian willing to bear any shame, loss, or mockery that following Christ may bring.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on January 30th, 1859.