The Murder of Jesus

Although there's not really a holiday I don't love and believe in celebrating to the fullest, Easter is probably my favorite. Maybe it's the time of year: spring has sprung, flowers are beginning to bloom, the air is warming up, and, most importantly, gray winter is fading into nothing but a memory. Maybe it's the celebration of Christ's resurrection-- although Easter baskets brimming with prizes and candy seem to blur our motivations for celebrating. The reason we celebrate Easter is, after all, to celebrate Christ's victory over death, the payment of a debt we could not possibly pay.

I don't want to in any way undermine the resurrection. Obviously, as Christians, it is the linchpin of our salvation. I think, though, that we're quick to skip over the gruesomeness of the crucifixion in order to lighten our hearts with the hope offered in the resurrection-- admittedly, this is beyond awesome. But if we're not careful, it kind of belittles the miracle of the resurrection. Unconsciously, we start thinking of the resurrection as though Jesus just woke up from a power nap and slipped out of the tomb for a quick stroll. It's so easy to fast forward to the happy ending, what makes Good Friday so very, very good.

We are eternally indebted to our Savior for His glorious resurrection, for His perfect fulfillment of prophecy, but we would be remiss to gingerly look over the gory details of what happened on that heartbreaking Friday. After all, it didn't look very Good at first.

"Jesus had already been slapped and beaten repeatedly, even before He was delivered to Pilate, so his face was undoubtedly swollen and bleeding already. After the scourging, His back would be a mass of bleeding wounds and quivering muscles, and the robe they fashioned for Him would only add to the pain of those wounds. They stripped Him of His own garments, which suggests He was quite literally naked apart from the robe they fashioned for Him... They fashioned a crown of thorns... many varieties of these grow in Jerusalem to this day-- some with two-inch barbed quills that would penetrate deep into His head as the crown was pressed hard upon Him... Then, as the Jewish priests had done, they spat on Him, and one of them took the reed from his hand and used it to strike Him repeatedly on His head... Jesus knew these things were part of God's own plan for Him, so He suffered them all willingly, patiently, unpertubedly."

"A Roman cross large enough to crucify a grown man might weigh as much as two hundred pounds-- an extremely heavy load to bear in any circumstances. But for someone in Jesus' already weakened condition, it would be virtually impossible to drag such a load from the Praetorium to a place of crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem... The soldiers evidently grew impatient with Jesus' agonizing pace, and they grabbed Simon along the way... He [had been] arrested, beaten repeatedly, held without sleep all night, beaten some more, flogged by a Roman scourge, beaten and mocked again. After several hours of such sheer agony, combined with blood loss and shock, it is no wonder He was too weak to carry a two-hundred-pound cross to Calvary by Himself."

"The Romans... made sure that all crucifixions took place near major thoroughfares in order to make the condemned person a public example for all passersby. So Jesus' crucifixion took place outside the city, but in a heavily trafficked location carefully selected to make Him a public spectacle. "

"Apparently just before they nailed Him to the cross, the soldiers offered Him... myrrh, which acts as a mild narcotic. The soldiers may have offered it for its numbing effects just before they drove the nails through the flesh. When Jesus tasted what it was, He spat it out. He did not want His senses numbed. He had come to the cross to be a sin bearer, and He would feel the full effect of the sin He bore; He would endure the full measure of its pain."

"Christ would have been nailed to the cross as it lay flat on the ground. The nails used were long, tapered iron spikes, similar to modern railroad spikes, but much sharper. The nails had to be driven through the wrists (not the palms of the hands), because neither the tendons nor the bone structure in the hands could support the body's weight... Finally, a single nail would be driven through both feet, sometimes through the Achilles' tendons. After the victim was nailed in place, several soldiers would slowly elevate the top of the cross and carefully slide the foot into a deep posthole... causing the full weight of the body to be immediately borne by the nails in the wrists and feet."

A few "symptoms" of a crucifixion:
-lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbing with incessant anguish
-arteries becoming swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood
-burning and raging thirst
-great waves of cramps sweeping over the muscles
-air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled, creating partial asphyxiation

I know this was long, and congrats if you made it through the devastating details. But when I read this book-- The Murder of Jesus by John MacArthur-- I felt convicted as never before to look the ultimate sacrifice dead in the eye and appreciate it for it's full worth; that is, the most horrific, humiliating, agonizing death imaginable... It makes the sacrifices that are asked of us-- a tithe, abstinence before marriage, treating our body as a temple, and so on-- look ridiculous in comparison. The way that He suffered in silence... the way that I moan and groan about the simplest of hardships... How great and wide and wonderful and inexplicable and undeserved and outrageous is the love that God has shown us not just through the resurrection of His precious Son, but through the murder of Jesus as well.