What pleases God is to take patiently suffering which is endured for doing well and acting with “conscience toward God.” Nothing is harder to us naturally than this. How indignant we feel when our well-doing only serves to bring trouble upon us!

What will help us in this? Two things. Firstly, the example of Christ. Secondly, His atoning sacrifice and its results.

No one ever did well like the Lord Jesus. No one ever was so misjudged, reviled and persecuted as He. Moreover, He did no sin, no guile was ever in His mouth. There was nothing in Him or His life to justify the smallest slur being cast upon Him. Yet no one suffered as He, and no one ever took the suffering with such meekness and perfection. He fulfilled the word of Isaiah: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth” (Isa. 53:7). In all this He was an example for us, for we are called to His path, and to follow His steps. The consideration of Christ in all the glory of His perfection cannot fail to have its effect on us, conforming our thoughts and ways to His. If called upon to suffer, we too shall commit ourselves to Him who judges righteously, instead of attempting to avenge ourselves.

Yet even so, we are not as He was, for we have sins and He had none. We needed, therefore, the atoning sacrifice of which verse 24 speaks. He who did no sin “bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” This is something altogether beyond us. We cannot follow in His steps here.