Archive for April, 2010

The Son of God died.

It’s one thing to theologically get it. But sometimes it can be helpful to slow down and consider the intense reality of what actually took place on the cross—to consider our Savior’s suffering and what he endured in our place.

In the chapter “Cross: God Dies” in Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, Mark Driscoll and Dr. Gerry Breshears walk us through what Jesus endured in our place.  This explanation of Jesus’ suffering isn’t to simply gawk at the grotesque brutality of the cross, but to feel the weight of sin—to see what atonement required and rejoice in the glory of the gospel.

Driscoll and Breshears say that throughout scripture, blood is inextricably connected with sin for two primary reasons:

1. Shed blood reminds us that sin results in death.
2. God is sickened by sin, which causes death, a connection first made in Genesis 2:17 and repeated throughout the Bible.

So the shedding of blood points to the sickening reality of sin and death. Blood is sacred, epitomizing the life of the sacrificial victim put forward as atonement. Virtually every sacrifice in Scripture included the sprinkling or smearing of blood on an altar, showing that atonement of sin necessitates the substitution of life for life.

What did the crucifixion really look like?
(Modified excerpt from chapter 8 )

Crucifixion is so horrendous that a word was invented to explain it—excruciating—which literally means “from the cross.” The victim was affixed to the cross with either ropes or nails. Crucified people could hang on the cross for anywhere from three to four hours or for as long as nine days, passing in and out of consciousness as their lungs struggled to breathe while laboring under the weight of their body.

None of this was done in dignified privacy. It would be like nailing a bloodied, naked man above the front entrance to your local mall. Crowds would gather around the victims to mock them as they sweated in the sun, bled, and became incontinent from the pain.

After Jesus was arrested he was eventually blindfolded as a mob of cowardly men beat him mercilessly. He was then stripped in great shame, and the Bible simply says that they had him scourged. Scourging itself was such a painful event that many people died from it without even making it to their cross. Jesus’ hands would have been chained above his head to expose his back and legs to an executioner’s whip called a cat-o’-nine tails or a flagrum. Two men, one on each side, took turns whipping the victim. The whip was a series of long leather straps. At the end of some of the straps were heavy balls of metal intended to tenderize the body of a victim, like a chef tenderizes a steak by beating it. Some of the straps had hooks made of glass, metal, or bone that would have sunk deeply into the shoulders, back, buttocks, and legs of the victim. Once the hooks had lodged into the tenderized flesh, the executioner would rip the skin, muscle, tendons, and even bones off the victim. The victim’s skin and muscles would hang off the body like ribbons as the hooks dissected the skin to the nerve layers. The damage could go so deep that even the lungs were bruised, which made breathing difficult. Some doctors have compared the damage of flogging to the results of a shotgun blast. The victim would bleed profusely and would often go into shock, due to severe blood loss and insufficient blood flow near and through the heart.

Jesus’ bare back and shoulders, though bloodied and traumatized, were then forced to carry his roughly hewn wooden cross to his place of crucifixion. If Jesus carried the entire cross, it would have weighed a few hundred pounds, and many think it is more likely he carried just the crossbar (patibulum), which would have been about one hundred pounds.

Doctors have said that the trauma from the heavy crossbar crushing his chest into the ground could have caused a bruised heart, similar to the chest trauma caused by a car accident without a seatbelt where the driver is violently thrown against the steering wheel. Understandably unable to continue carrying his cross on the roughly one-mile journey to his execution, a man named Simon of Cyrene was appointed to carry Jesus’ cross. Upon arriving at his place of crucifixion, they pulled Jesus’ beard out—an act of ultimate disrespect in ancient cultures—spat on him, and mocked him in front of his family and friends.

Jesus the carpenter, who had driven many nails into wood with his own hands, then had five to seven-inch rough metal spikes driven into the most sensitive nerve centers on the human body, through his hands and feet. Jesus was nailed to his wooden cross. His body would have twitched involuntarily, writhing in agony.

At this point during a crucifixion, the victims labored to breath as their bodies went into shock. Naked and embarrassed, the victims would often use their remaining strength to seek revenge on the crowd of mockers who had gathered to jeer them.

Crucifixion usually kills by asphyxiation in addition to other factors—the heart is deeply stressed, the body is traumatized, the muscles are devastated, and the blood loss is severe. Doctors have thought that Jesus likely had a chest contusion and possibly a bruised heart from falling with the cross on top of him, which caused an aneurysm. Subsequently, Jesus’ heart would have been unable to pump enough blood and his lungs would have filled up with carbon monoxide. Jesus not only lived through all of this, but he even spoke lucidly and clearly with enough volume to be heard by those present. Likely sensing he was having a heart attack, Jesus used his final moments to declare his victory over sin. In an effort to silence Jesus, the soldiers took a sponge soaked in vinegar—possibly used in the public restroom as the ancient version of both toilet paper and disinfectant—and put it on a stick and tried to shove it in his mouth.

At last, with this foul taste on his lips, Jesus said in a loud voice of triumph, “It is finished.” At this moment, the atonement for sin was made and the holiness, righteousness, justice, and wrath of God were satisfied in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus then said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Jesus reserved his final breath from the cross to shout his triumphant victory to the world by confirming that he had been restored to God the Father after atoning for human sin.