e the lash of pain.
Did God love him? Why, then, must such things be?

God loved Christ with a perfect love, but we read that "although he had
done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased
Jehovah to bruise him; he hath put him to grief" (Isa. 53: 9, 10, A.S.V.).
What strange language! He had done no evil, he was guilty of nothing, and
yet "it _pleased_ the Lord to bruise him." Is it true that love is tender,
the tenderest of all things, and yet can bruise and find pleasure in it?
But this is just what happened. Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, was
"smitten, stricken of God." When we remember Gethsemane, the crown of
thorns, the cruel cross, it does not seem an act of love for God to give
his Son over to such suffering; yet it was love, truest love. Why did God
thus deal with him? It was not because the Father-heart did not feel that
agony. It was the only means to an end, and love desired that end so much
that it pleased it to make the great sacrifice that out of it might come
the infinite joy of a world's redemption.

There is nothing that brings Christ so close to men as his sufferings;
there is nothing that makes men trust in him so much as the story of those
last days. If that story were taken from the pages of the Bible, what
would Christ be to us? Only a great teacher whose morality was high and
wonderful, though to us unattainable; but with this record added, he
becomes a Savior and makes his righteousness attainable by us all. Had he
not suffered, he could not have brought us to God. How much poorer we
should be today without the story of Gethsemane and Calvary, without
knowing that "it pleased the Lord to bruise him" and that out of his sighs
and tears and groans has flowed into our hearts a fountain of joy and love
and tenderness whereby we have been enriched and the angels of God have
been caused to sing a song for joy!

If God was pleased to bruise his own beloved Son, need we marvel if he is
sometimes pleased to bruise us? If we are sometimes bowed down with grief,
if anguish takes hold upon us, if the sky grows dark above us, and if God
seems to have turned away, is it any proof that he no longer loves us? Is
it not only the proof that God sees something to be accomplished that can
be accomplished in no other way, and that he is pleased for the sake of
that gain to let us suffer? The things that are worth while come through
pain. Joy does not make us stronger nor bring us nearer G