Lent 2024: What Language Shall I Borrow?

excerpt from Robert Speer shared by Nick Laninga

He said but little, but He said enough, and no word of His ever bore testimony to the truth, or revealed more fully the majesty of His divine life than the uncomplaining patience and self-possession and composure of His conduct under the hideous treatment to which He was subjected; when after His condemnation before Caiaphas, the man who held Him, in pretense that He was a dangerous character spit in His face and mocked Him, and beat Him, and blindfolding Him, struck and reviled Him.

Prophesy unto us, Thou Christ: who is he that struck thee? When Herod with his soldiers set Him at nought and made sport of Him and sent Him back through the streets of the city arrayed in mock royal attire, and became the friend of Pilate again through this sport—cursed be such friendships. When in the hope, doubtless, of showing the people how harmless and inoffensive He was, Pilate had Him before the people with the jeering remark, “Behold the Man!” When, after the surrender of Pilate, the whole band of the governor’s soldiers took Him, stripped, put on Him a scarlet robe, with a crown of acanthus thorns still piercing His brow and staining His face crimson like His robe, and giving Him a reed for a sceptre, played with Him as a mock king, spitting on Him and seizing His sceptre from His hand and smiting Him on the head with it, driving the thorn’s cruel spikes deeper into His brow, when at last they led Him away to Calvary, stripped of His robe, but still wearing His crown.

“Behold the man !” was Pilate’s jeer. That is what all the ages have been doing since, and the vision has grown more and more GLORIOUS. As they have looked, the crown of thorns has become a crown of golden radiance, and the cast-off robe has glistened like the garments He wore on the night of the Transfiguration. Martyrs have smiled in the flames at that vision, sinners have turned it to a new life—-and towards it the souls of men yearn forever.
~Robert Speer from Studies of the Man Christ Jesus

O sacred head now wounded
With grief and shame waighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns thine only crown
How pale Thou art with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How does that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn

What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners’ gain
Oh mine was the transgression
But thine the deadly pain
Lo, here I fall, my Savior
‘Tis I deserve thy place
Look on me with thy favor
Vouchsafe to me thy grace

What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest Friend
For this, thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end?
Oh, make me thine forever
And should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee