Christ's Resolute Ascent: The Heroic, Self-Sacrificing, Suffering Saviour

Behold the company ascending the steep rocky mountain road from Jericho to Jerusalem. Our Lord moves far in advance of His followers, His fixed purpose stamped upon His face, a strange haste in His stride that casts astonishment and awe over the silent, uncomprehending disciples.

First, we observe the Heroic Christ—the Ideal Man who unites masculine resolve with feminine compassion. He teaches us that the most tenacious steel is also most flexible; he whose heart holds the most definite resolve may possess the deepest sympathy for human suffering, strengthened by the almightiness of gentleness.

Second, the Self-Sacrificing Christ hastens toward His cross. His surrender was neither carelessness nor fanaticism, but the voluntary death of Him who, by His own will, became the oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world—not preserving a life He ought to have kept, but offering Himself as redemption.

Third, the Suffering Christ. That natural human instinct—when inevitable grief lies before us, to abbreviate the moments between present and pain—drove Him to march faster toward the cross, yet never to turn from it. This instinct never became desire or purpose in Him, yet His haste reveals the burden He bore.

Finally, the Lonely Christ endured unappreciated aims, unshared purposes, misunderstood sorrow, and solitude in death—that no human soul, living or dying, might ever be lonely anymore.