“Unless you see yourself standing there with the shrieking crowd, full of hostility and hatred for the holy and innocent Lamb of God, you don’t really understand the nature and depth of your sin or the necessity of the cross.”
It’s that time of the year, when people all around the world starts talking about a Cross and somebody who hung on it, and you see people all around decorating with palms. For many, It’s just the next big Christian season, but for the world, this wasn’t just an ordinary event. This event changed the world, it broke the walls of darkness and bought the heaven and earth closer. This season, let us take a closer look into the journey to the cross. This wasn’t an event that was sudden or unexpected, No! It didn’t come as a surprise to Jesus. He came down to this earth for this very purpose. The baby born in that manger to climb that tree. In his life on earth, during his public ministry, Jesus had in fact predicted multiple times that he would be crucified and that he would go through the torture beyond what a human being can go through. Mainly in 3 places in his journey Jesus predicted that he would suffer a death no man ever has and it is known as Passion Predictions.
Before we enter into that, let’s remind ourselves about the price Jesus had to for humanity’s redemption. The victim of crucifixion would be laid down on top of the cross and then fasted to it with arms out-stretched. The might be tied to it, or as in the case of Jesus, spikes would be used to nail them to it. After the victim was fasted to the cross, it would be lifted up and the post would be slid into a hole to hold it up right. The cross only had to be high enough to lift the victim off the ground.
Crucifixion was designed to prolong and increase the agony of death. The Romans generally would not use this on their own citizens, but reserved it for slaves, non Roman citizens and those convicted of the grossest crimes. Among crucifixions agonies were severe inflammation, the swelling of wounds were the nails had been driven through, the pain of torn tendons, muscles strained from the contorted position of the body and the effort to lift one’s self to breathe, a throbbing headache, burning thirst and the constant feeling of suffocation. Suffocation is what eventually causes death. In order to breath, the victim would have to lift themselves by their outstretched arms and push down on their feet shattered by the spikes. Eventually, the victim could no longer lift themselves to draw in any air.
As horrible as the physical torture of the cross would be, that is not the emphasis here for it is not the worst part of the suffering Jesus endured. It has been said that only the damned in hell know what Jesus suffered when he died on the cross. In a sense that is true for they suffer the eternal death of separation caused by their sins, but they have never been in heaven. Jesus descended from the regions of infinite delight in the closest possible fellowship with the Father to the abysmal depth of bearing the curse of sin that caused Him to cry out, “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?”
“Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.”