They hated Me without a cause. John 15:25 KJV and NASB
Thou hast known My reproach, and My shame, and My dishonour. Mine adversaries are all before Thee.” Psalm 69:19 KJV
You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor; All my adversaries are before You. Psalm 69:19 NASB
Why did the Lord Jesus need to suffer so violently from the hands of men? Since the propitiation for our sins, the suffering to put away sin, was what He experienced from the hand of God, why the suffering from men?
Abraham offered Isaac on a lonely and private altar unseen by human eyes. Could not the Lord Jesus have given His life in private and without all the physical suffering and humiliation from the hand of His own creatures? The scapegoat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16) was let go into a land “not inhabited.” It died unseen by human eyes, alone, in the wilderness.
While the sufferings from the hands of men did not affect atonement for sin, they were the result of, and the full display of our sinfulness. Calvary was really the collision of two worlds or, better still, the collision of two concepts: absolute holiness and absolute depravity.
The Lord Jesus displayed holiness in its fullness. He came and revealed God in His absolute finality and with total accuracy (Heb 1:1). How did depravity respond to holiness? How did darkness respond to light? How did we, fallen creatures, respond to the full revelation of the heart of God? Calvary is the answer to all!
His holiness drew forth our hatred. He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. We by nature are the exact opposite. We love iniquity. His life of holiness condemned us without His needing to speak a word. As a result, we cast him out of the vineyard. His light challenged our darkness; we sought to extinguish the light. His love exposed our hatred and we rose up and, like Cain, slew Him.
But above all, His revelation of God confronted us with the issue of our sin. Ultimately, the essence of every and all sin is that we wish to be our own god. We have bought into the lie of Satan promulgated in the Garden, that we can be our own little god deciding what is right or wrong. Thus, the inevitable consequence of the appearing of the Son of God in our world, revealing God to us, meant that we vented all the innate hatred and animosity of our evil hearts against Him.
In Psalm 69 He said, that “the reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon Me.” All that the sinful heart of man sought to do to God was done to Christ. The expression of our hatred and malice was inevitable. And yet He willingly came, died, and lives to save.
He suffered for sin; He suffered from sinners; but He also suffered from us as a consequence of our being so sinful.
Consider:
Would Satan have used the crucifixion of Christ to vent his hatred against God on His Son?