This Sunday, 4/21/2019, is Easter Sunday. We will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, our Lord and Savior. On that Sunday, He not only defeated physical death but also spiritual death and the sin which leads to that death. The victory that He bought and paid for by the shedding of His own blood is freely available to anyone, a gift from Him to anyone who will confess Him and truly submit to Him as Lord. This is the most precious gift that anyone can ever receive. It is also by far the most expensive. I think that the price which He paid is something we don’t reflect on enough. I want to ask you to think about it with me now and, as you reflect on the uncomprehendibly high price that He paid, also reflect on what this says about just how much He loves you and just how much He wants you to love others.
There can be no better example of the love that Jesus has for us than what He endured for us on the first Good Friday. This occurred two millennia ago and yet it remains and will forever remain the greatest example of love. Think about all that He endured on that Friday. I mean really think about it.
We say that “Christ died for our sins”. I think we say that and hear that so much that many of us become numb to the full meaning of it. Yes, He died but He didn’t just die. He suffered, horribly. Crucifixion is the most horrific form of execution ever devised. This is to say nothing of the scourging, which He endured before the crucifixion and which, in itself, killed many men. It is unfathomably terrible what they did to Him, for our sake.
Here are some of the details of what He went through.
First, the scourging. He was stripped almost naked. His hands were tied to a post, above his head. He was whipped, repeatedly, across his shoulders, back, and legs, with a whip which branched out into several strips, each of which had two lead balls at the end. As the beating progressed, the skin was broken open and the subcutaneous tissue was as well. Muscle tissue was exposed and, in some cases, even some of the vertebra. Think about that. They beat him until you could see his back bone in some places. The beating would not have been stopped until he was very near death. Actually, the scourging did kill many men.
Then, the trip to Calvary. The type of cross used by the Romans consisted of a vertical beam, usually fixed in place at the site of execution, and a separate horizontal beam, carried by the prisoner from the prison to the place of execution. This horizontal beam wade, on average, about 100 pounds and was tied across the shoulders of the prisoner. We know, from the Gospel of John, that Jesus carried the cross part of the way Himself and we know, from the other three Gospels, that He was unable to carry it the whole way Himself and Simon of Cyrene then carried it for Him. Tradition holds that, while carrying the cross, Jesus fell at least once and possibly multiple times. This fact is not mentioned in Scripture but it would seem very likely. After the scourging, He would have been very weak and near death. In that circumstance, could you carry a long piece of wood, weighing 100 pounds, tied across your shoulders, on probably uneven ground, without falling? I doubt Jesus could either. Without being able to catch himself, He most likely literally fell on His face,, sustaining many severe injuries to his entire body.
When they got to the site of the crucifixion, Jesus hands were nailed to the horizontal beam. Some people say that these nails were actually placed through His wrists. They say that the nails going through Jesus hands would not have supported His weight and that, in the original languages of the Bible, that hand and wrist were sometimes interchangeable. I don’t think it really matters much if it was his hands or wrists but I tend to think it was his hands. The prophecies that for-told Jesus crucifixion said that none of His bones would be broken. I have read some material that says that it would not be possible to drive a nail through the eight tightly packed together bones of the wrist without breaking one of them. Either way, it would have been excruciatingly painful.
Then, the horizontal beam was put in place in it’s slot on the vertical beam and His feet were nailed to the vertical beam. Again, there is some debate as to how this nailing was actually done and, again, I don’t think it really matters.
So, now, He is there, hanging on the cross. With all His weight being put on His arms, He can’t breathe. He has to push up with His feet in order to exhale,. This would put great pressure on the wounds in His feet and would cause His back to slide up and down against the rough timber. At this point, He has experienced and continues to experience tremendous blood loss. He eventually goes into shock, if He wasn’t already in shock when He was put on the cross. All this went on for 6 hours. He eventually died, most likely, from heart failure.
Think about that for a while. That’s just the physical horror.
He also took God’s full wrath, the full punishment that you and I should receive for our sin. For our sin, we deserve to burn in Hell for eternity. If you question why we deserve that, I will have a later post on that topic. Hell is a lake of ever lasting fire. In Matthew 13:50, Jesus called Hell a furnace of fire. Think about a big roaring bonfire. Now think about jumping into the middle of it. It would be probably some of the worst pain you can imagine but it wouldn’t last for long because you would die very quickly. In Hell, you can’t die, even though you would welcome it, so you wouldn’t have the escape of physical death. You would just burn for ever. Some how, in that 6 hours on the cross, supernaturally, Jesus took that suffering, not just for one person but for all of us.
Why did He go through that? 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that Christ never sinned but he took our sins on himself and Romans 5:8 says that He died as punishment for those sins. He literally never did anything wrong, ever. Yet, the sins of the rest of humanity were placed upon him and He bore the punishment for those sins. Not only did he bear the horrors that any man would have borne who was executed by scourging and crucifixion, but He also somehow supernaturally took all of our eternities in Hell, compressed into those few hours. And none of it was because of anything He had done. It was because of what we did. Talk about the ultimate injustice. Why did He do that?
He certainly didn’t have to do it. Jesus was fully man and so He suffered as much as any man would, actually He suffered more, as I have said. However, He was also fully God and, thus, He could have easily stopped what was happening to Him. I think we sometimes forget that. Speaking of His own life, in John 10:18, Jesus said “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” In Matthew 26:53, just before His trial, Jesus said to Peter “do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?” In John 19:11, Jesus told Pilate “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above”. Clearly, by His own admission, He could have stopped it. So, why didn’t He?
It was because of His love! In Luke 23:34, as Jesus hung on the cross, He said “Father, forgive them”. He wasn’t only referring to those who had just physically nailed Him to the cross. He was talking about all of us whose sins sent Him to and held Him on that cross. He was talking about us. That’s how much He loves me and how much He loves you! He knows absolutely every bad thing you have ever done and every less than kind or unclean thought you have had. Also, Those times when what you did looked good on the outside but, in your heart, your motives weren’t pure, He knows that too. He knows you better than anyone possibly can, the good and the bad, and, still, He quite literally went through Hell for you. Do you know anyone else who loves you quite that much? That’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around, isn’t it?
And when you’re done trying to wrap your mind around that, wrap your mind around this. As hard as that standard for love is to comprehend, that is the same love that we are commanded to show. In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus said that the greatest commandment is for us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. He said that the second greatest commandment is to love one another as much as we love ourselves.
Look at what Jesus said to His disciples, just after the last supper, when they were on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane and His crucifixion was only a few short hours away.
John 15
9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.
10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
11 “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
Verse 10 says “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love”.
We have to show Christ like love in order to keep His commandments.
Verse 11 says “that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full”.
Christ like love is absolutely necessary to experience true joy.
Verse 12 says “love one another as I have loved you”.
We are to show exactly the same love toward others that Christ showed to us.
Verse 13 says “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends”.
Here, Jesus set the standard for the love that we are to show, to be willing to lay down your life, just as He was about to do.
Do you love? How do you love? Do you exhibit regular love or do you exhibit Christ’s love? Do you love only when it’s easy and convenient or do you go out of your way to look for ways to show His love? Do you only love when it’s natural to love, when the object of your love is a parent or a sibling or a child or a close friend? What about when someone has hurt you or wronged you. What about people who you have major disagreements with, religious or political or philosophical? What about people who are just not at all nice? Are you kind to them? Do you pray for them? I confess, I don’t always act that way, but you and I both should. Jesus did. He loved and taught Judas for 3 years, even-though He knew that Judas would betray him and he knew that betrayal would lead to Him experiencing all the horrors I talked about earlier. We need to constantly ask God to help us to show that kind of love to others.
2 Corinthians 3
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
1John 4
16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us that as we behold God’s glory, we are to be transformed into the same image. When people look at us, they should see His image. 1 John 4:16 tells us that God is love. Therefore, how do we show people His image? We show them His love.
