THE CRUCIFIXION

At the crucifixion what were the pains of Christ?

If you were the world’s greatest artist could you paint a picture that would fully capture the pain that Jesus endured? I think not. You might paint the outward appearance of his suffering but how could you picture the broken heart of Christ?

•         You might sketch the cursed tree but not the curse that held him to that tree.

•         You might paint Jesus bearing the cross but not Christ bearing our sin.

•         You might describe the nails that pierced his hand and feet but who could describe the eternal justice that pierced both his flesh and his spirit that day?

•         You could show the soldiers spear but not the darts of hatred that men threw at him.

•         The cup of vinegar that he tasted but not the cup of wrath that he drank to the last drop.

•         The disciples turning their backs on Jesus but not God turning his back on his only begotten son.

•         The blackness of the noon day sun but not the blackness of sin that caused it all. Your sin and mine caused it all. The load of sin is without doubt the cause of his greatest suffering. It was our sin that held him to the cross, not the nails.

MENTAL AGONY: The mental agony that he endured cannot be sketched on a canvas.

MOCKING: Jesus endured the embarrassment of 6 trials.

1.      After the Jewish trial, early in the morning… “The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, "Prophesy! Who hit you?" And they said many other insulting things to him,” Luke 22:63-65.

2.      After Harold’s trial… “Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant
       robe, they sent him back to Pilate,” Luke 23:11.

3.      At Pilate’s trial… “…and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in
      his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’” Matthew 27:29.

4.      On the cross… “Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, `I am the Son of God,'" Matthew 27:39-43.

THE AGONY OF HOLDING BACK HIS POWER:

 “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” Matthew 26:53-54. “Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp,”Isaiah 37:36. Think of the power of 72,000 angles! Think of the power Jesus had his beck and call. Think of the effort Jesus had to use to hold back that power.

Could you hold your hand on an ant hill and allow them to eat away at your flesh?

TH THE SHAME HE SUFFERED:

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Hebrews 12:2, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame,” (Scorn= a feeling of anger or something despised). He became an adulterer, homosexual, whoremonger, murderer, and torturer for us. Not that he committed these sins but he bore the shame and the penalty as though he were the guilty one. This is justification in reverse. Through his sacrifice we can be just as if we had never sinned. Through the cross he became just as if he had committed every sin.

THE PAIN OF FOREKNOWLEDGE:

 “”But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.’ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die,” John 12:32-33. If we knew ahead of time that we were soon going to suffer terribly, we would start suffering now.

Now that we have described some of the unseen pain in the mental and spiritual realms, let us notice his physical suffering.

AGONY IN THE GARDEN:

Luke, the doctor, records... “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground,” Luke 22:43-44.

Though rare, blood sweating is well documented in medical literature. Under saver emotional stress tiny capillaries near the sweat glands can break, thus the blood is mixed with the sweat. This situation causes the victim to become very weak and can cause him to go into shock.

TOUCHIER TO HEAD AND FACE:

“I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;

I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting,” Isaiah 50:6.

At the trial before Annas... “Meanwhile, the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching, ‘I have spoken openly to the world,’ Jesus replied. ‘I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.’ When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby struck him in the face. ‘Is this the way you answer the high priest?’ he demanded,” John 18:19-22.

 Would you volunteer to see what happens when someone is
 struck in the face? The skin at first turns red,then yellow, then
 black & blue. It’s not very pretty.

After the trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin... “Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy!" And the guards took him and beat him,” Mark 14:65. The marginal note says, “Beat him with rods in the face.”

After the trial before Pilot... “They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face,” John 19:2-3. Matthew adds....  “…and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head… They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again,” Matthew 27:28-30.

It’s no wonder that Isaiah said, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him...” Isaiah 53:2.

TORTURER THAT JESUS RECEIVED TO HIS BACK:

 “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged” John 19:1

This part of the story is told in only 8 words yet this was probably the most horrible part of his suffering. The victim would be striped and his hands tied above his head in order to tighten the flesh on his back. A whip made of leather thongs, with either iron balls or sharp rocks fastened to the ends of each, would be brought down against the shoulders, back, and legs of the victim. The first time the whip was laid against the victim, the skin would be cut through and blood would begin to ooze from the wounds. The balls of iron causes deep bruises on the other side of the person’s body. With repeated blows the skin on the back would begin to hang down in long ribbons. The whole area would soon become an unrecognizable mass of torn and bleeding flesh. The Jews had a law that a man must not be given him more than forty lashes, Deut 25:3. But Jesus was whipped at the hand of the Romans, not the Jews. The Romans generally stopped the beating when they thought the victim was close to death. At the foot of the whipping posts there were often dish shaped indentions carved out of the rock. These large cups were filled with wet salt mixed into a salve. After the whipping, this salt was often rubbed into the wound to cause the pain to intensify. Many people died. Some went insane and most went unconscious. After the scourging the soldiers put the scarlet robe back on Jesus and mocked him as king. Then, after the blood had clotted against the robe, it was ripped from his back which would have felt like the careless removal of a surgical bandage. The pain was probably almost as intense as in the initial whipping.

THE CARRYING OF THE CROSS:

It appears that the heavy cross was laid across Jesus’ already lacerated shoulders and that he was unable to carry it very far. A North African onlooker, Simon by name, was forced to carry the cross to the place where Jesus would be crucified. At the top of the hill, Jesus was stripped (probably completely), and then thrown down against the timber.

TORTURE TO JESUS ARMS AND LEGS:

Did the nails go through Jesus’ wrists or the palms of his hands? If Isaiah 49:16 is speaking about the crucifixion then we have the answer. “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” Heavy wrought iron square nails were driven through Jesus’ hands and feet. As the cross was raised the pain very rapidly increased until it seemed to climax as all of the weight of Jesus’ body was supported by the nails. Then suddenly an explosion occurred throughout his complete body for the cross was allowed to drop with a thud into the hole that had been dug for it.  Now Jesus’ arms and legs were aflame with pain. Instinctively Jesus would have pushed on his feet to relieve the pain in his arms and immediately a horrifying agony would saturate his legs and feet. It would have taken but a few seconds for Jesus to realize still another horror of the cross. In a slumped position Jesus could exhale but he could not draw air into his lungs. To inhale Jesus had to push hard on the nails in his feet and pull on the nails in his hands. Up and down, up and down, against that old rugged cross, Jesus’ tender back was scraped each time he took a breath. The reason the soldiers broke the legs of the victims was to make it impossible for them to push on their legs and the arms quickly became so weak that the victim would soon die due to lack of oxygen. Still another horror of the cross soon became evident. Great waves of cramps swept over his muscles. The weakened muscles knotted up and caused deep, never ending pain. Slowly, so slowly, the minutes ticked by. Every second must have seemed like an hour. The hours must have seemed like days. For six long hours Jesus hung there! Did the words of 2 Peter 3:8 come to Jesus’ mind? “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

Now his tortured lungs are making frantic efforts to take in small gulps of air. Now his sick body is experiencing a burning fever and he cries out, “I thirst” and then later, “It’s finished,” John 19:30. “When Jesus had received the drink, he said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”  When Jesus said, “It is finished,” the Greek word used here means “it has been completed.” Jesus had just then completed the payment for your sins. Now you should never need to pay.

John 15:12-13 says, “Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.”

It is far worse to reject Jesus today, in his robes, than it was to to crucify him, then, in his rags, for now we know but then they did not understand.

When I think that God, His son not sparing, sent him to die; I scarce can take it in. And on that cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.

There is a green hill far away without a garden wall, where the dear lord was crucified, who died to save us all. We do not know, we can not tell the pain he had to bear but we believe it is for us the hung and suffered there.

THE CRUCIFIXION

1.      List three pains of mental agony that Jesus suffered.

 

2.      How many trials did Jesus go through before he was crucified?

 

3.      How many angles did Jesus say God would send if he asked him?

 

4.      How much power did one angle have?

 

5.      What was the cause of the greatest shame that Jesus endured?

 

6.      What type agony caused Jesus to sweat blood?

 

7.      Why did Jesus allow people to spit in his face?

 

8.      What was the first recorded suffering that Jesus received at the hand of his enemy?

 

9.      What proves the greatest love?

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