From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
July 21 "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man
who is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts." Zechariah 13:7 Would we see, feel, and realize the exceeding sinfulness
of sin, it is not by viewing the lightnings and hearing the thunders of
Sinai's fiery top, but in seeing the agony and bloody sweat, and hearing the
groans and cries of the suffering Son of God, as made sin for us, in the
garden and upon the cross. To look upon him whom we have pierced will fill
heart and eyes with godly sorrow for sin, and a holy mourning for and over a
martyred, injured Lord. To see, by the eye of faith, as revealed to the soul
by the power of God, the darling Son of God bound, scourged, buffeted, spit
upon, mocked, and then, as the climax of cruel scorn and infernal cruelty,
crucified between two thieves--this believing sight of the sufferings of
Christ, will melt the hardest heart into contrition and compunction. But when we see, by the eye of faith, that this was the
smallest part of his sufferings, that there were depths of soul trouble and
of intolerable distress and agony from the hand of God as a consuming fire,
as of inflexible justice and righteous indignation against sin wherever and
in whomever found, and that our blessed Lord had to endure the wrath of God
until he was poured out like water, and his soft, tender heart in the flames
of indignation became like wax, melted within him (Psalm 22:14)--then we can
in some measure conceive what he undertook in becoming a sin offering. For as all the sins of his people were put upon him, the
wrath of God due to them fell upon him. Separation from God, under a sense
of his terrible displeasure, and that on account of sin, that abominable
thing which his holy soul hates--is not this hell? This, then, was the hell
experienced by the suffering Redeemer when the Lord laid on him the
iniquities of us all (Isaiah 53:6).