Man of Sorrows

“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.”

Isaiah 53:3–7

“Man of sorrows, what a name…” goes the hymn by Philip Bliss (1875). This name is not a fitting one for the Lord Jesus Christ, otherwise known in the Psalms as “The King of Glory” (Psalm 24). As I consider the kind of atmospher in which God exists, as detailed in Ezekiel 1, for example, I can only imagine that intense, immeasurable glory, power, and brilliance surrounding Him and are the only appropriate conditions in which God can exist.

However, Isaiah says that He is the Man of Sorrows and He is “acquainted with grief.” Was He depressed, unhappy, melancholy? Did He not understand the beauty of a sunset, or the enjoyment of luxury? What was to be so sad about all the time, even to the point that you are called by this title as if it was Who You were? Why not be happy and smile? Why couldn’t He have been called the “Man of Joy?” What was His problem?

I think I know the problem? I think the problem was that He cared. Notice that it says in v. 4 that He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. Further, He was pierced through for our transgressions. The immensity of bearing the weight of the sins of others, even for the King of Glory, made for a heavy, sad, even depressed countenance. I don’t think, for a moment, that Jesus would have be diagnosed with clinical depression. He was looking forward to joy! (Hebrews 12:2). He anticipated the pleasure of God and loved Him infinitely. However, the reality is that sin is heavy. And, for Him who had to carry the sins and the weight of the transgressions of others, there was no way for Him to be giddy, silly, nor even jovial. It was not “all good” for Him.

Rather, our sins of faithlessness, unbelief, rebellion, and a lack of love for the true God was heavy. The sins of unbelief and the rejection and betrayal that shadowed Him His whole life was immensely concerning to Him. It was the reality of the weight of concern and concentration that made Him a Man of Sorrows.

In contrast to a “happy-go-lucky” Christianity, Jesus was a man acquainted with grief. In contrast to the self-styled, tagline depth approach to ministry, Jesus was a man of sorrows. In contrast to the vanity of selfish love for God, Jesus offered Himself as a Lamb that would die. The cross of the Man of Sorrows was always in front of Him.

Beloved, you who profess to know Him, your cross must always be in front of you as well. You must put up with and deal with and even confront the sins in yourself and in those who say they love Christ. Your cross must shadow you daily such that you can feel the weight of the concern for sin in others and what it is doing to the heart of God.

“And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

Luke 9:23–26