Christ in the Psalms of Suffering

To speak of Messianic psalms as if there are only a few psalms that speak prophetically of the sufferings and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ is a serious mistake. Christ’s presence in the psalms is pervasive.  They are his songs first, and ours only as we are one with him.

One of the best ways to come to a better understanding of this is to look at the psalms of suffering as interpreted in the light of New Testament teaching about suffering.

In 1 Peter 2:20 Peter teaches us that we endure two kinds of suffering in the world.

For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.

Sometimes we suffer for our sins. God chastises us for disobedience and thus corrects us and brings us to repentance. At other times we suffer for righteousness’ sake. Men attack us for our faith and try to use suffering to make us deny the Lord.

Christ also suffered in both of these ways and sang about both of these kinds of suffering in the Psalms.

Christ’s Suffering with Us

On the one hand he suffered with us in those sufferings that belong to our fallen condition.

Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. Heb 2:17-18.

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Heb 4:15

Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Heb 5:8

When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses.” Matt 8:16-17

He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He suffered everything that His people suffer here in the world. He knew all human troubles: sickness, pain, weariness, hunger and thirst, poverty, loneliness, betrayal, injustice, fear, and everything else that men endure because of the fall. He was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, and more sorely tempted in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked for the cup to be taken away from him. He came under the curse of the law, and the wrath of God. He entered as fully as possible into the sufferings of his people. He did not come among us to observe our trouble while he remained insulated from it all. What belongs to being men after the fall, except for sin, he also endured.

This we may call a fellowship of Christ with the sufferings of his people. He joined us in our weakened, troubled, suffering human nature.

The Psalms are full of this suffering of Christ with us in our weakness.

As a father pities his children,
So the LORD pities those who fear Him. 
For He knows our frame; 
He remembers that we are dust. Ps 103:13-14

Israel of the Old Testament understood the main idea of these verses: that God is compassionate toward the weakness, trouble, and difficulties of our lives here. But how much more light is shed on the verses by the sufferings of Christ in the New Testament! The Lord knows our troubles and temptations not only abstractly, but personally, for his Son took upon himself the flesh and blood of the children. He was touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Who is like the LORD our God, 
Who dwells on high, 
Who humbles Himself to behold 
The things that are in the heavens and in the earth? Ps 113:5-6

Israel knew well the condescension of the Lord to the needs of his people, but the incarnation, of which they could have known only by prophecy and dimly, is a fulfillment of those words of which even the New Testament church cannot realize the full significance. He humbled himself to behold things in heaven and earth when he took our human nature.

If this is true, then Christ’s voice in singing the Psalms, joined the voices of His people in crying to God from the depths. In the troubles of which we sing, he joined us. In chastisements and trials his sorrowful voice was lifted up with ours. In struggle with temptation, he too called upon his God in prayer and song.

These psalms of suffering, then, are not Messianic in the usual sense of the word, in the sense that they speak directly of Christ’s own sufferings. Nevertheless, Christ sang them because he partook of our sufferings. We can hear His voice in Psalm 6.

O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger, 
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure. 
Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am weak; 
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are troubled. 
My soul also is greatly troubled; 
But You, O LORD--how long? 
Return, O LORD, deliver me! 
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake! 
For in death there is no remembrance of You; 
In the grave who will give You thanks? 
I am weary with my groaning; 
All night I make my bed swim; 
I drench my couch with my tears. 
My eye wastes away because of grief; 
It grows old because of all my enemies.

The psalm is partly about trouble with enemies, a dominant theme in the Psalms. It is also about weakness, probably sickness, and the threat of death, and these suffered under the chastising hand of God. Of these Christ could and did sing.

Hear him also in Psalm 39:4-5.

LORD, make me to know my end, 
And what is the measure of my days, 
That I may know how frail I am. 
Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, 
And my age is as nothing before You; 
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. 

If he had not been killed by the Jews and Pilate, our Lord would have lived the seventy or eighty years normally granted to men, no more. The frailty of life was a part of his humiliation.

You carry them away like a flood; 
They are like a sleep. 
In the morning they are like grass which grows up: 
In the morning it flourishes and grows up; 
In the evening it is cut down and withers. ... 
For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; 
We finish our years like a sigh. 
The days of our lives are seventy years; 
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, 
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; 
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Ps 90:5-6, 9-10

Christ knew the pain of separation from God and the longing to be with Him again.

As the deer pants for the water brooks, 
So pants my soul for You, O God. 
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. 
When shall I come and appear before God? 
My tears have been my food day and night, 
While they continually say to me, 
"Where is your God?" Ps 42:1-3

In the Psalms we hear our Lord crying out to his God for deliverance from the manifold temptations and trials of life, and we are comforted because we know that he, now exalted to heaven, is still able to sympathize with us in our sufferings. He remembers that we are dust.

Suffering with Christ

Besides our suffering for sin, there is also our suffering for righteousness’ sake.

When the Word became flesh and dwelt amons us, he suffered at the hands of wicked men who hated him for his righteousness. They harassed him with perplexing questions hoping to ensnare him in his words, tried to throw him off a cliff and stone him, mocked him, spit on him, beat him and finally crucified him, all because he would not compromise the truth of God or depart from the righteousness of God’s commandments.

Our God calls us to join Christ in these sufferings for his sake.

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth,” who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously. 1 Pet 2:21-23

Christ suffered as a righteous man. His enemies hated him exactly because he was righteous and they were wicked. They attacked him and demanded his death, not for any fault they found in him – they could not find any – but because of his upright and sturdy confession of the truth.

It is not proper, in this connection, to speak of Christ suffering with us. He is the righteous one, and we, when we suffer for righteousness’ sake, suffer with him. In Genesis 3:15 God created the antithesis, the division of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The war between these two seeds is the fundamental fact of the history of the world. That antithesis exists by and in Christ, the seed of the woman. He is the divider and the dividing line, the door of the fold that keeps the sheep safe from the wolves. In suffering for righteousness’ sake then we suffer with Christ, not he with us. This is what Paul meant when he said,

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. Phil 3:8,10

He bore about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. The world hates us because we are not of the world, as Christ is not of the world.

The Psalms are, of course, full of the conflict between righteousness and wickedness, and of the complaints and prayers of the righteous in the sufferings the wicked inflict on them. The antithesis is one of the dominant themes of the Psalms. We could point to hundreds of passages, but we must learn to recognize in all such passages that in them the people of God know the fellowship of Christ’s suffering.

My dishonor is continually before me, 
And the shame of my face has covered me, 
Because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles, 
Because of the enemy and the avenger. 
All this has come upon us; 
But we have not forgotten You, 
Nor have we dealt falsely with Your covenant. 
Our heart has not turned back, 
Nor have our steps departed from Your way. Psalm 44:15-18

O LORD my God, if I have done this: 
If there is iniquity in my hands, 
If I have repaid evil to him who was at peace with me, 
Or have plundered my enemy without cause, 
Let the enemy pursue me and overtake me; 
Yes, let him trample my life to the earth, 
And lay my honor in the dust. Psalm 7:3-5

Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us! 
For we are exceedingly filled with contempt. 
Our soul is exceedingly filled 
With the scorn of those who are at ease, 
With the contempt of the proud. Psalm 123:3-4

In all these passages and many more we claim a righteousness that is not our own. It is the righteousness of God in Christ and becomes ours only because Christ had it first and practiced it fully during his whole life on earth.

There is another aspect to this question of our suffering with Christ which cannot be ignored. He fought and suffered as our king. We fight and suffer as his subjects and as soldiers in His army. But exactly because he is our king and we are his people, his sufferings are ours, and ours are his. This idea, too, finds expression in the Psalms.

For You have been a shelter for me, 
A strong tower from the enemy. 
I will abide in Your tabernacle forever; 
I will trust in the shelter of Your wings. Selah
For You, O God, have heard my vows; 
You have given me the heritage of those who fear Your name. 
You will prolong the king's life, 
His years as many generations. 
He shall abide before God forever. 
Oh, prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him! Ps 61:3-7

But those who seek my life, to destroy it, 
Shall go into the lower parts of the earth. 
They shall fall by the sword; 
They shall be a portion for jackals. 
But the king shall rejoice in God; 
Everyone who swears by Him shall glory; 
But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped. Ps 63:9-11

Such psalms make sense only because of the relationship between the king and his people. The life and safety of the king are the well-being of the people, and the well-being of the people the joy of the king.

Conclusion

There is, therefore, a double fellowship of suffering in the Psalms. Christ suffers with us in all the troubles, chastisements, and temptations that belong to us by the fall. And we suffer with Christ, our king, for righteousness’ sake. The bridge that joins them is Christ’s suffering of the punishment of our sins. He entered our sufferings in order to take our sins on himself, and we are partakers of his because his substitution for us in the judgment separates us from the world and makes us righteous, and therefore hated, like himself.

There is also a fellowship of glory and rejoicing between Christ and his people. His victories are ours, and our victories explainable only by his. The deliverance of Jacob cannot be without the deliverance of Christ. The triumphs, joys, and praises of the people of God are also those of Christ. Together they celebrate and praise the God of their salvation.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; 
Whom shall I fear? 
The LORD is the strength of my life;
 Of whom shall I be afraid? 
When the wicked came against me 
To eat up my flesh, 
My enemies and foes, 
They stumbled and fell. 
Though an army may encamp against me, 
My heart shall not fear; 
Though war may rise against me, 
In this I will be confident. Ps 27:1-3

When the LORD brought back the captivity of Zion, 
We were like those who dream. 
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, 
And our tongue with singing. 
Then they said among the nations, 
"The LORD has done great things for them." 
The LORD has done great things for us, 
And we are glad. Ps 126:1-3

In the Psalms the voices of Christ and his people mingle and intertwine, and also at times speak alone. His people sing alone, of course, in confession of sin, in prayers for purifying, and in all those outpourings which are not the outpourings of faith, but of despair and doubt and sinful fear. These are not Christ’s. In Psalms 32, 38, and 51 it is not Christ who confesses sin. In Psalm 73 he has no envy of the wicked. And in Psalm 78 it is not his history which is recounted.

On the other hand, there are parts of the Psalms where, if our voice is heard at all, it is heard muted and subdued by the powerful crying of our Savior. There are sufferings he endured in which we do not participate. It is Christ who cries, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. David was the author of Psalm 22, but where in the Scriptures do we find, even of him, that they pierced his hands and his feet, that they parted his garments among them, and cast lots upon his vesture? In Psalm 69 it is Christ who grieves,

I have become a stranger to my brothers, 
And an alien to my mother's children; 
Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, 
And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me. Ps 69:8-9

Yet in this same Psalm, in the midst of Christ’s own outpourings, we say,

O God, You know my foolishness; 
And my sins are not hidden from You. 
Let not those who wait for You, O Lord GOD of hosts, be ashamed because of me; 
Let not those who seek You be confounded because of me, O God of Israel. Psalm 69:5-6

Perhaps there is, after all, a sense in which the peculiar sufferings of Christ are ours. He said that some of his apostles would be baptized with his baptism and drink of his cup. In a less significant way we too experience being forsaken by God. We are crucified with him, and therefore our voices may indeed join his in those cries which are particularly his. And he was made sin for us. Dare we conclude that his voice too is heard in confession, not for his own sins, but for ours which he bore?

The voices of Christ and His people are, however, most frequently heard together. Christ grieves with us in our troubles. Having once suffered and sung the same himself, he, though now beyond such suffering, is still able to pity us and to condescend to us in mercy. We cry with him for justice against our enemies and celebrate with him victories won and salvation granted. His righteousness is the righteousness for which we are persecuted. Psalm 16, Peter tells us in Acts 2, is a song of Christ, for he alone does not see corruption. But it is also our hope that we shall not die, but live and declare the works of the LORD.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; 
My flesh also will rest in hope. 
For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, 
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 
You will show me the path of life; 
In Your presence is fullness of joy; 
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:9-11

In the Psalms we sing of Christ, to Christ (for he is the God of our salvation), and with Christ. The Psalms are full of him. They are full of Him not in an abstract way, but because they are his and we are one with him. By that unity each participates, in great measure, with all that happens to the other.

And Christ is not in them obscurely. In some psalms, his presence may have been somewhat obscure to the people of God in the Old Testament, but the New Testament sheds a light on them which makes the obscure plain and easy to see. We know better, can appreciate more fully, can sing with deeper understanding, because we interpret what was prophetic and promised in the light of fulfillment. The Psalms, therefore, are not less appropriate today than then, but more appropriate. They are Christ’s, and, because they are his, ours too.