Ought Not Christ to Have Suffered These Things?

When the two disciples spoke to the Savior on the road to Emmaus, not knowing it was He, they explained why they were so troubled.  They told Him of “Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.”  Then they lamented, “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.”  They were suggesting that because Christ suffered and died, He couldn’t have been the one to redeem Israel and He couldn’t have been the Messiah.  It was as if they said, “It was so close to being Him! Everything fit the prophecies until He suffered and died, and then we knew it couldn’t have been the Messiah.”   The Savior responded to this concern boldly, saying, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”  The Savior then began “at Moses and all the prophets” and “expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:19-27).  In other words, He used the scriptures to show why the Messiah needed to suffer, or at least how it had been prophesied by the prophets that Christ would not just be a Deliverer as these two disciples assumed, but that He would also need to suffer and die.  Peter used the same language when he preached to the people soon thereafter at Jerusalem, “But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled” (Acts 3:18).  The prophets which came before Christ indeed prophesied of His suffering and death and those waiting for the Messiah should have recognized that this would be part of His ministry.

               So what scriptures do we have from before the time of Christ that prophesied of His suffering and death?  From Adam we know that the animal sacrifices the people were commanded to perform were to point them to the great sacrifice of the Son of God.  The angel said to Adam, “This things is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth,” clearly prophesying that just as the animal on the altar gave its life, so too would Christ sacrifice His life for the people (Moses 5:7).  Later Enoch wrote of His vision of that sacrifice and how he “beheld the Son of Man lifted up on the cross, after the manner of me” (Moses 7:55).  The most obvious reference to the suffering of the Savior in the Old Testament is that of Isaiah who wrote, “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).  Isaiah also gave us these words of the Savior, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6).  The writer of Psalms declared, “The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet” (Psalm 22:16).  Zechariah prophesied of Christ’s suffering by speaking of a day when the Jews would recognize Him as the Messiah: “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zechariah 13:6).

               The Book of Mormon teaches very clearly of this suffering and shows indeed that the prophets before the meridian of time knew of the suffering of the Savior.  Nephi quoted the prophets on the plates of brass who spoke of these things: “The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up, according to the words of Zenock, and to be crucified, according to the words of Neum” (1 Nephi 19:10).  This seems to indicate that the ancient prophets in Israel knew far more about the suffering and death of Christ than we might think by just reading the Old Testament.  And the Book of Mormon prophets themselves, from Nephi (“I, Nephi, saw that he was lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world”) to King Benjamin (“he shall suffer temptations, pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue”) to Samuel the Lamanite (“it behooveth him and becometh expedient that he dieth”), all knew and testified boldly of the suffering of the Son of God (1 Nephi 11:33, Mosiah 3:7, Helaman 14:15).  There is no question that the prophets before Christ came knew that He was going to suffer and die as part of His long-awaited ministry among the children of men.  And so we too should not be surprised if some small suffering is a part of our experiences as we seek to emulate the life of Him who suffered infinitely for us all.