y
beginning knew that the path to be traversed by Him was one of agony and
death. He was straitened until this baptism of suffering should be
accomplished.[085] At His first Passover He had intimated that, as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man should be
lifted up. He used this expression "lifted up" three times, and an
Evangelist gives the explanation: "This he said, signifying what death
he should die."[086] Again and again He told the disciples that He had
come to give His life a ransom for many, that He was to be betrayed and
killed, that as the Good Shepherd He would give His life for the
sheep.[087] He intimated that His death was in accordance with the
deliberate counsel and foreknowledge of His Father, and with His own
free and full assent: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay
down my life."[088] And when betrayal and apprehension brought His
ministry to a close, He would allow no sword to be drawn in His defence,
but was brought as a "lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."[089]

The views which the Jews entertained with regard to the triumphant
progress of Messiah did not accord with the statements of their
prophets. The sacred writers who foretold His coming pointed indeed to
victory as the ultimate issue of His mission, but they also clearly
associated His life with conflict and suffering. From the first
intimation of a Deliverer, which spoke of a heel bruised by man's
malignant adversary, there was indicated in every type and prophecy the
truth that Messiah was to be "a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief," whose triumph was to be achieved through suffering. The
expectation current among the Jews that deliverance would be wrought by
Messiah, without humiliation or suffering, showed that they
misinterpreted the messages of the prophets. Familiar with the letter,
they failed to grasp the spirit of the prophetical writings. Jesus laid
this ignorance to their charge when He said to them, "Ye do err, not
knowing the scriptures";[090] and He upbraided the two disciples on the
way to Emmaus because they had failed to discover that their Redeemer's
glory was to be won through conflict: "O fools, and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?"[091]

The suffering which Jesus endured was both bodily and spiritual.
Persecut