“Reproaches”

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Let not those who hope in you be put to  shame through me, O Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel.  For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. 

For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. (Ps 69.6-9)

This psalm is quoted numerous times in the New Testament, not only showing that God’s predictions about the Messiah came true, but telling us more about the Messiah and his purpose than we would have seen by simply observing his life, death, and resurrection.

The psalm is not exclusively about the Messiah, as verse 5 makes clear: “O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.”  A centrally important part of Christ’s character is his sinlessness, and this admission of folly and wrongs committed cannot be reconciled with that fact.  As usual with the Old Testament prophecies, there was a simpler, more fleshly meaning intended for the Jews when it was written; then, as more time passed and the promises about the Messiah began to pile up, it became clear that even many of the old Scriptures, the ones they thought they understood already, weren’t just about the here and now, but looked forward to something far greater in the age to come.

In this case, the prediction was that the Messiah would not be treated very well—that he would be associated with shame and dishonor, and bear “reproaches.”  That’s not a word we use very often, and it’s tempting  to replace it with a more relatable word like “insults”; but that would detract from its weight.  Insults are a dime a dozen, but reproaches cut to a deeper level.  They’re not merely intended to hurt someone’s feelings, but to make them an object of public scorn.

David apparently composed this prayer at a time when he bore that kind of public blame without cause—not that he’d never done anything wrong, but that he hadn’t done what he was accused of doing.  How much worse, how much more unjust was the situation when Christ was the target of such  derision from the vast majority?  When we think about Jesus’ death, we generally focus on his role as the substitute, accepting the penalty for our transgressions.  This is, of course, appropriate, as Isaiah tells us:

Surely he has borne our griefs

          and carried our sorrows;

     yet we esteemed him stricken,

          smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our

               transgressions;

          he was crushed for our iniquities;

     upon him was the chastisement that

               brought us peace,

          and with his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53.4-5)

But that’s not the whole story.  Paul brings our passage from Psalm 69 into his instructions in Romans 15, telling us to bear with each other and put up with each other’s weakness, pleasing our neighbors and not ourselves.  “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (v3).  It’s not just that the shame and dishonor we deserved was laid on his shoulders instead.  It goes deeper than that.  The people who scoffed at God, scoffed also at his Son.  Rather than retaliating, Jesus allowed them to do it, accepted the shame and derision, and said, “‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (Lk 23.34).

When we reject God’s commandments today, in a sense we participate in crucifying Jesus, even though it happened long before any of us was born.  Not only are we contributing to the burden of sin he had to bear on the cross, but in a way we are “crucifying once again the Son of God to [our] own harm and holding him up to contempt” (He 6.6).  We might not think our little slip-ups in the heat of the moment amount to anything, and in comparison to the inexhaustible grace of God, that’s partly true.  His blood is more than adequate to atone for all the sins of the world—past, present, and future.  How could a relatively decent and moral person’s fairly mild sins amount to even a drop in the bucket, in comparison to the horrendous acts of evil committed even by some who later repented and turned to Christ?  Yet, just as the police officer isn’t swayed by the argument, “that guy was going way faster than I was,” God isn’t concerned with assigning ranks to our sinfulness.  The standard is simple: righteous, or wicked?  But we can’t claim righteousness on our own merits, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Ro 3.23).  Since we’ve all sinned, we’ve all contributed to Christ’s crucifixion.  Not only did he bear our sins on the cross; he also bore the brunt of our sins!  Yet he offers forgiveness.

His offer stands today for those who treat him so poorly, holding him up to contempt.  The offer stands until he returns, and we do not know the day or the hour that will be.  What’s a sinner to do?  We can see the basic answer in the very next verses of the psalm with which we began.  They looks forward to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and our imitation of that process:

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.  At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.  Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. (Psalm 69.13-14)

Jeremy Nettles

Share