Christ suffered for us, leaving us His example, that we might follow Him.
Peter next relates how the Lord Jesus did not reply in kind when wicked men reviled Him, and when He was made to suffer, He did not threaten His tormentors.
It was foretold by the Spirit of Christ how He would have scorn and ridicule and reproaches heaped upon Him.
Sure enough, during His ministry, he was greatly dishonored by the religious and secular leaders of Israel.
In one instance, when His detractors could raise no defense against Christ's teachings, they descended to the slur of calling Him a Samaritan possessed by a demon.
The Savior replied that He had honored His Father, but they had dishonored Him. He sought not His Own glory, but He was glorified by His Father.
At His trial, all manner of calumnies and falsehoods were spewed out against Him, but He refused to give an answer in reply.
And on the cross, as Jesus hung in shame and woe, these same wicked men reviled Him, and wagged their heads at Him, and tauntingly repeated the lies they tried to use against Him at His trial.
Worst, perhaps, was their repetition of what Jesus had foretold of them centuries earlier: they smeared Messiah by asserting that God wouldn't have Him, as He hung on the cross for us.
All this is amazing when we recall that the Lord Jesus has an infinite power by His Word, by which He made the world! His power was and always will be incalculable in its magnitude.
In fact, even as He hung on the cross, He was upholding the very universe by the Word of His Power.
Jesus could have rendered His persecutors to cinders with not just one word, but with one thought!
But Jesus would not. |
