In Search of a Suffering-Messiah

Recently a student taking the Christology Class that I help teach asked a good question. She was looking for where in the Old Testament the sufferings of the Messiah– a key emphasis of the New Testament authors– were clearly portrayed. I wrote a response that she thought was helpful and I thought it might make a good post. Here you go:

Becky—

Great question. I remember when I first read Paul’s statement before Agripas, the Roman Emperor, when he insisted that he had preached nothing besides what was in the scriptures: That the messiah must suffer, and that he would be the first to rise from the dead. I sat back in my chair and said out loud, “where does it say that?” Happily, my journey to an answer was not long. (acts 26)

First, you are off to a good start with Isaiah 53. For sure, that is one of the focal points for the doctrine of a suffering Messiah. The other biggie would be Psalm 22 (why have you forsaken me…i can count all my bones…the bulls of bashan surround me). Right off the bat we see verses that point to Jesus’ physical suffering.

But for more than that, I think you have to branch out a little in your search. The doctrine of the Suffering Messiah is more than just a few verses that talk about Jesus getting beat up. Its an entire understanding of the humiliation/exaltation of the Christ and is bound up in his unique person. When we look at the New Testament writers, they repeatedly reference the necessity of Christ’s suffering to enter into His glory. You’ve referenced Luke 24:26— that’s great, because we see there Jesus himself unfolding the scriptures in this way. Because of passages like this, we’re not looking only in the Old Testament to find the suffering messiah, but we’re also looking in the New for places that they interpret the Old particularly through the lens of humiliation/exaltation.

To emphasize that point we could look at the classic NT explanation of suffering/glory, Philipians 2:5-11. I’ll save the bulk of this passage for class (its one of Stephen’s finest moments), but for now we can say that Paul is quoting verses from the Servant Songs in Isaiah, stringing them together in a way that explains how the Christ could only enter into glory after (even because of) his sufferings.

Next, we can add Psalm 16. The proper messianic interpretation of this verse is that God resurrected Jesus, not David. Of course, for the Christ to be resurrected he had to be dead first. Peter, when he had the opportunity to explain the outpouring of the Holy spirit in Acts 2, sees the whole thing in a single progression beginning with Christ’s suffering and death (acts 2:23-24). Only after Jesus was raised did he ascend into glory and pour out his Spirit.

Psalm 110 is the same thing: the verse speaks of Christ’s glory, but the book of Hebrews effortlessly links it to suffering. The doctrinal emphasis of Hebrews is this mysterious explanation of how the Creator of the universe descended and then was awarded the seat at the Father’s right hand (i.e. Psalm 110, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool). In his effort to apply this verse correctly to Christ, the writer ropes in Psalm 8. At face value, Psalm 8 isn’t a Suffering-Messiah psalm at all; there’s a funny disparity between the part about man being made lower than the angels and another part about everything being put under man’s feet. For the writer of Hebrews, the gap is explained by Jesus, and if you read between the lines with Messianic lenses, you can see Christ suffering: “But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…”

Later in Hebrews, the author interprets yet another psalm to mean Messianic suffering: Psalm 40. In Hebrews chapter 10, the writer quotes the psalm and zeros in on the phrase “a body you have prepared for me.” In the mind of this NT author, the fullness of the interpretation of how the Christ fulfilled God’s will (“Behold, I have come to do your will O God…”) is in the understanding that Christ offered his very body as a sacrifice for sin. So then Psalm 40 makes the cut. Outside of the paradigm of a Messiah who must first suffer in order to enter into His promised glory, many of the deepest meanings of these psalms would have been veiled to us. The humiliation/exaltation pattern is what makes for the fullest theology of Christ’s Sufferings and how the Old Testament prophesied of Him in this way.

I hope that helps.
–Bret