“I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who tore out my beard.  I did not hide my face from scorn and spitting.”

– The Prophet Isaiah 50:6; About 720 B.C.

“This is Jesus the Messiah, the peerless sufferer. And this one who suffered, on whom men spat, was the eternal God. One might ask, ‘Did God really die?’ No, for God cannot die; yet he who died was God. He who was a prisoner in Pilate’s hall, accused of sedition, was the King of kings. He who was taken from that hall and covered with an old red cloak and knelt before in mockery, he who had a reed put into his right hand, was none other than the almighty Lord. And he on whose sacred shoulders fell the cruel flagellation of the Roman scourge until the whip made deep scarlet furrows down his blessed back, he was the God who created and who still sustains the heavens and the earth and all things that exist or ever have existed. He was a suffering man, but at the same time he was the Son of God – and he is the Son of God today – and God the Son too. As you think of his pain, couple with it the thought that he bore all that agony voluntarily that we might be saved. No man could have scarred that blessed back of his unless Christ had been willing, out of mighty love, to suffer in this way for his people. None could have plucked Jesus’s hair unless he had put himself into the position to have it plucked, in order that he might redeem us from all our iniquities. God’s people often suffer for the cause of Christ because they cannot avoid it. But Jesus was spit on, and he could have withered into nothingness all who stood about him had he so chosen. Blessed be the majesty of that omnipotence that controlled omnipotence so that mighty love could prevail and not rescue the suffering Savior from the cross so he could redeem wicked sinners”

(From: the Spurgeon Study Bible, by Holman Bible Publishers).