“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

Sorrows (Heb): Makob from Kaab: To feel pain, to grieve, to make sad, anguish, affliction

There are things that are universal among us, times of joy and times of great sorrow. The ebb and flow of life is as the tides: times to abound and times to be abased (cf. Philippians 4:12). This is a learned experience, as the Apostle states, “I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need”. There is a sorrow that is of the common thread, that we all know and endure as faithful followers of our Lord.

There are also things that are uncommon among us, and the sorrows of Christ are of these. What makes the sorrows of Christ uncommon is the vicarious nature of them. Christ not only suffered for His own common life experience, but He chose to suffer for ours.

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).

The Prophet poignantly points out the uncommon nature of Christ’s sufferings, “He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” This is not the norm of human experience. It is sufficient to carry one’s own griefs and sorrows; but to carry the griefs and sorrows of others is extraordinary, and beyond the common thread of our lives. To suffer is human, to suffer in the stead of others is divine.

When in the time of Israel’s bondage in Egypt the Lord appeared to Moses in the desert at the mountain of God, at Horeb. The Lord said to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows” (Exodus 3:7).

There is something very mysterious in the words of the Lord to Moses that we may easily overlook. The Lord said, “I know their sorrows”. This “knowing” is not the normal, simple awareness of a matter; rather, it is the deep, personal understanding of one’s affliction by having known the sorrow in one’s own experience, whereby there comes a “knowing” of the sorrow empathetically, and a subsequent moving of one’s heart and soul toward another. Thus, there followed in the case of Israel, the sending of Moses by the Lord to Pharoah with the command, “Let My people go”! (cf. Exodus 5:1).

The Apostle had a great desire to “know” in this way and wrote thusly in his Epistle to the Philippians:

“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death” (Philippians 3:10). Then to the Colossians writing: “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is lacking in the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His Body’s sake which is the Church” (Colossians 1:24).

This is an amazing expression of the heart of a man of sorrows who suffers, who carries the griefs and sorrows of others, thus fulfilling the law of Christ. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

Do we know the pain of others? Have we felt it in our souls? Do we grieve? And does it make us sad? Are we in anguish for the afflictions of our sisters and our brothers?

The Man of Sorrows walks among us. His Spirit has been imparted to His Body, of which Body are we. His desire is for us to know Him. His great desire is for us to be sent, as was Moses in his time. He wants us to be a man of sorrows, and we can be if we so desire as the Apostle did to know Him, and so to live in Him by the power of His resurrection with His grace so working in us to bring it to pass.

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