The cross is the singular most discussed topic of all of history. There is literally no other event in all of world history that remotely compares to the crucifixion of Jesus. It truly is the singular most important world-changing event. It is because of the cross that we have BC and AD for our calendar. If we did not have the cross, we would be either still counting years by ruler or like the Jews, who started from creation and counted forward. We count from the birth of Christ forward. But the reason we start with Christ’s birth is that that is when the most important person in history was born. But without the cross, Jesus’ birth doesn’t have the same weight. The cross is why Jesus came to us to begin with. All Jesus did and experienced was for this one moment of history that literally changed how everything operates.
The physical torture Jesus endured is beyond harrowing. At the time, it was the most severe form of torture known to man. The whipping was just the opening. Roman soldiers, taking their cat o’ nine tails, edged with glass, rocks, bones, or whatever would rip into flesh easily. And they made a sport out of it – who could make the most devastating blow. Scripture describes Jesus being unrecognizable, just a standing hunk of meat. Some would not survive such a beating due to the loss of blood, let alone any infection that would finish the job. The crown of thorns, the mocking, and the mob assault added to the mix. The crown of thorns not only drew blood but would cause serious head pain that would make anyone lose concentration easily. Getting beaten up and having your beard ripped out in chunks doesn’t help either. And that’s all before being driven down the streets of Jerusalem outside the city, being forced to carry the very cross that would be used to execute Him. Jesus was so weak from all this that He could not physically carry it anymore, and so they had to pull a man from the streets to finish the job. Then, finally, He was nailed to the cross and hung naked, having to rely on His very weak body to get a breath. The very setting of the cross into the hole would make most joints get dislocated.
Often, it could take 2-3 days for someone to finally die on a cross. Jesus didn’t make it for at most six hours, to include the events we know and the three hours of darkness. Jesus died of a burst heart, indicated by the water and blood flowing out of the chest wound from a soldier’s spear, meaning it was already settling out from each other. Then the earthquake happened, and even the centurion on site acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God.
Jesus’ death on the cross was unlike any other death or self-sacrifice. While it has been echoed in Narina and Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, Jesus was the root of it. The notion of a sacrifice preceded Jesus, going all the way back to Genesis. What is unique in the Bible and in Jesus is the key component that the sacrifice must be pure and innocent, and a substitute for others. Absolutely perfect. While other myths would have the concept of a pure maiden giving her life, none of them have a sacrificial element. Only Aslan in Narnia, who is hard to deny was meant to BE Jesus, gets close. But these are all snapshots, pictures, and shadows of the one reality that Jesus did.
Jesus did not die merely sacrificially; He died as a substitute. We had sinned, and we deserved the full wrath of Almighty God. Throughout history, man has sought to downplay the severity of our crime against deity or to increase the value of humanity. We love trying to make our own sins not very significant, and we also love making ourselves victims deserving of being rescued. So we’ll call our sins “mistakes” or “imperfections,” but we’ll say that we are so valuable in God’s eyes that He couldn’t live without us. That’s heresy. Jesus didn’t die to show us how valuable we are to Him. He died because of how heinous our sin is. And we need to remind ourselves every day of the severity of our sin, developing a hatred for it so that we would put it to death. It is such a slap in the face of Jesus to proclaim His death and resurrection and our salvation just to live however we want.
The thing about the cross that we have missed is that we, too, must die. Jesus didn’t merely die as our substitute, representing us. We have to be “in Christ,” which means we must die, too. We won’t face the wrath of God as Jesus did, but our old sinful selves must be put to death so that we may be raised in new life. We love citing John 3:16, but we recoil at Luke 9:23. If we are in Christ, we have a new master, and it’s not sin and it’s not self.
Jesus didn’t die to free us from the hands of the devil; Jesus died to free us from ourselves. Satan is just a deceiver, but he would be completely powerless if we simply didn’t listen to him. All he can actually do is just dangle carrots in front of us, and because we are our own problem, we lunge at those carrots and get ourselves in trouble. And if Satan didn’t do that, we’d still find our own trouble. That’s why Satan simply leaves most people alone because they are so good at their own sin. Jesus died to save us from that. He died to save us from ourselves, so we need to put self on that cross daily so that we live not the very lives that cost Jesus His life to begin with, but that we might live a resurrected life in Christ, which we will cover next week.
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