I’m finally getting caught up with Reading Classics Together. The discussion of Chapter 5 isn’t up on Tim Challies’ site yet, but I figured I’d get this posted and attempt to get somewhat back on track.
Chapter 5 of A.W. Pink’s The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross is entitled “The Word of Suffering.” In it he unpacks John 19:28, where Jesus said simply, “I thirst.” I am amazed at how much meaning Pink is able to unpack from these two words and the short verse that surrounds it. He is almost Spurgeon-like in his ability to take a small passage and mine it for a significant amount of meaning. He again draws out seven specific points. “Here we see:
- An evidence of Christ’s humanity
- The intensity of Christ’s sufferings
- Our Lord’s deep reverence for the Scriptures
- The Saviour’s submission to the Father’s will
- How Christ can sympathize with His suffering people
- The expression of a universal need
- The enunciation of an abiding principle
Immediately on starting this chapter I was struck by the ultimate irony of Christ’s request. After all, this was not the first time in the book of John that He asked for a drink. In John 4, Jesus began a conversation with the Samarian woman by requesting a drink, then revealed to her that He could provide living water. The incongruity of Christ, the Fountain of Living Water, being thirsty is a major backdrop for this chapter.
The more I think about Pink’s first point, the less I understand and the more I’m in awe of the incarnation of Christ. Pink writes,
“The Word became flesh; He became what He was not before, thought He never ceased to be all He was previously.”
That Jesus was at the same time fully God and fully Man is stunning to me, and especially as he hung here on the cross. I simply don’t understand how Jesus could be God at the same time that He took on Him the sin of the world, and died in His body.
Pink also brings out that Jesus’ asking for a drink displayed His submission to His Father. He could easily have satisfied His physical needs, even on the cross, but in order to fulfill Scripture, to complete every single prophecy, He placed Himself under God’s will and let His need be known. Pink makes two applications of this to our lives, one in regard to thankfulness for all of our blessings, and a second about our own submission to the Father. The author asks,
“First, the Lord Jesus delighted in the Father’s will even when it involved the suffering of thirst. Are we so resigned to Him? Have we sought grace to say, ‘Not my will but Thine be done?’ “
In response to that question, it seems to me that on the surface it would be harder for us to take that attitude than it was for Jesus. He always knew exactly what the Father’s will was, always knew through 40 days of fasting, temptation, exhaustion, unjust trials, horrible torture, and crucifixion that He was carrying out a plan laid out from eternity. Somehow I think that because I don’t always know what God’s will is that it’s harder for me to submit, to willingly suffer. Now, I don’t think that’s right – there is never a circumstance in which I cannot trust the Father to do right; but I think there’s some room for exploration on that subject.
Pink’s final point is that in the words “I thirst” we see an expression of Christ’s desire for fellowship with his people. He reasons from John 4 that Jesus is refreshed by communion with His people, and that our love to Him actually satisfies Him. Something about that emphasis doesn’t seem right to me, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t really ever thought about Jesus having that attitude before. In chapter 2 Pink has written, “to have us forever with Himself is that to which he looks forward with eager and gladsome expectation.” Perhaps that is an aspect of the satisfaction to which Isaiah 53:11 refers.
Where is the Gospel in this chapter? I see it in point #6 – the expression of a universal need. Pink very ably points us to Christ as the only one who can truly satisfy our thirst.
“There is something in every natural man that is unsatisfied,” he says. “God made us, and He alone can satisfy us…Christ alone can quench our thirst.”
There is no more important activity for me than to come to Christ and drink deeply, continuously, and find all my satisfaction in Him. He has promised that if I hunger and thirst after righteousness I will certainly be filled, and He will most certainly keep that promise.
