The Horror of the Cross
GOOD FRIDAY'S PURPOSE
For a moment, I want us to examine the darkness of this day. I want us to stare directly into the total eclipse that happened on that fateful evening. And I want us to see what Jesus allowed us to do to Him. It is my hope, as the light on another Good Friday goes out, as you lie down this evening to prepare yourself for Sunday, that the lonely, ugly darkness of Good Friday will turn into the most blinding and glorious victory come Sunday.
GOOD FRIDAY IN THE TEXT
23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His outer garments and made four parts, a part to every soldier and also the tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. 24 So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be"; this was to fulfill the Scripture: "They divided My outer garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots." 25 Therefore, the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" 27 Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" From that hour, the disciple took her into his own household. 28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished to fulfill the Scripture, said, "I am thirsty." 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. 30 Therefore, when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. - John 19:23-30
PREPARATION FOR CRUCIFIXION
It is nearly impossible for us to fully comprehend the utter brutality and depravity of the Roman crucifixion in its original context. John does not provide all the gory details because he assumes you have seen one.
To help bridge this gap so that we can grab hold of how awful it is, some have compared it to the modern electric chair - which is a feeble analogy that fails to capture the true horrors. The electric chair, as odious as it was, at least allowed the condemned a mask to cover their faces and preserve a shred of dignity. On the electric chair, their death was meant to be quick and out of the public view.
Crucifixion, on the other hand, was explicitly designed to prolong the victim's torture as long as possible, crucifying them unclothed, naked, and ashamed while putting their debasement on full display for all to see.
Crucifixion was a ritualistic, ceremonial act of dehumanization where the person was treated as subhuman filth - they became an insect undeserving of the slightest dignity or mercy. Crucifixion was an advertisement that the wretch hanging on this beam had become an outcast of society, the lowest scum unfit to be considered part of the human race. The verbal assaults and jeers of the spectators were not simply allowed but an integral part of the sadistic spectacle.
The torturous process began with a vicious scourging, as the victim was stripped naked and bound to a wooden stake to maximize exposure. The Roman lictors wielded whips with straps of leather that would wrap around the body. At the ends of these straps were materials like bone and metal, shards of glass or potshards so that when the straps would wrap around the body, these sharpened objects would embed themselves like fishing hooks in the victim's back, buttocks, and legs. Then, as the Roman Lictors forcefully yanked those straps away, chunks of flesh, muscle, and tendons would be ripped out of the body.
By the time the forty lashes ended, which the Romans observed was the maximum a person could take before collapsing into circulatory shock, the person's skin hung in bloody ribbons, their muscles and nerve endings were agonizingly exposed, and their insides were grotesquely visible through those ravaged remains.
This was not the end of the suffering; however, this beating was merely meant to enhance the suffering that was soon to come. With every nerve ending and muscle fiber now exposed on the wretch's back, pushing up the rough-cut wooden cross beam would be a peculiar kind of hell.
In Jesus' case, the gospels record how a crown of thorns, in the shape of prison shanks, was forced down onto His scalp, piercing the flesh of His head, perhaps touching His skull. A mock purple robe was placed on His flayed body, absorbing some of the blood loss but also heaping further excruciating pain, humiliation, and mockery upon Him, since purple was the color of Kings and royalty. This was unique to Jesus; this was additional suffering that He endured at the hands of the merciless Lictors.
After He was scourged and brutalized, He was then paraded through jeering crowds as a spectacle of shame on the road to Calvary. Before the rest of the city knew what had happened, the holier-than-thou hyenas gathered around Him like vultures, stalking their soon-to-be victim.
On His meat-exposed shoulders, the splintered heavy cross-beam was placed, causing every nerve ending in His body to writhe with pain. With every agonizing step, the load eventually became too heavy for Him to bear, causing Him to collapse under the weight of it. With help from a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, Jesus eventually made it up the hill to His final destination.
Upon arrival, He would have seen the upright wooden beams lying hauntingly upon the ground. Along with the cross beam Symon was carrying, this cruel board was about to be His home. With the crowds milling about in maniacal fascination, with a joy that could only come from demons, the dust from the hilltop would have been churned up, embedding dirt and dust in Jesus' exposed wounds and sores.
With railroad spikes for nails, his hands were nailed through the wrists right in the gap where the Radius and Ulna meet because the soft tissue of the palms could not have supported the body's weight. After the cross-beam was attached to the upright post and the feet were likewise nailed into place, the beam was lifted upright and dropped into a large hole that stabilized the cross for days to come.
The G-force from this drop would have been excruciating. In the same way, we experience sensations when we are dropped; every uncovered capillary on Jesus' body would have scraped against the vertical pole. His body would have pulled against the nails as the cross hit rock bottom, and the nails would have prevailed.
THE CRUCIFIXION PROPER
It is at this point that the extended agonizing process of crucifixion itself began.
Each exhaled breath came with tremendous effort and pain while you were hanging on the cross. This is because the Romans had PhDs in torture. They understood that in that position, gravity would put pressure on your diaphragm, suffocating and asphyxiating you.
So, in order to breathe, the crucified man would need to push Himself up, using His shredded pierced feet or pulling Himself up by the nail-pierced wrists - dragging His exposed back up rough cut board. This was an indescribably torturous undertaking, ravaging an already-ragged body. But the one on the cross would continue to do it because it is not in our nature as people to suffocate when there is some action we can undertake to stop it.
In this state, death could linger for hours or even days, depending on the strength and the will of the victim. The elements would have certainly taken their toll. The Mediterranean sun would have scorched the exposed body, adding second-degree burns in addition to the exposed organs. Insects smelling the stench of coming death and the urine and feces piled below the victim would have swarmed, gathering about the open wounds, feasting on the fluids and exposed flesh.
An unquenchable thirst would have consumed every lucid thought of Jesus as His body steadily dehydrated. From that moment onward, bodily fluids and functions became helpless and degradingly uncontrolled. The searing agony from the median nerve being torn through the spiked wrists repeatedly shot bolts of torment through the arms. With every pounding heartbeat, the body's weight pulled it against the abrasive wood of the cross, threatening to become its executioner.
Through it all, onlookers hurled streams of blasphemous mockery and abuse. They would spit upon the condemned, ensuring their utter humiliation and the annihilation of personhood. No shred of dignity was permitted to the victim, as even their face was exposed to this onslaught of this degradation.
THE FULFILLMENT OF PSALM 22
Now, before crucifixion was invented, God had foretold through the Hymn-writer David that this is what would happen to His Son! As you can read in this messianic Psalm, the Son was going to be forsaken by the Father in fulfillment of Psalm 22:1. He was going to be mocked and insulted by the swarming crowds in fulfillment of Psalm 22:6-8. He would be surrounded by His enemies in fulfillment of Psalm 22:12-13. He would undergo torture, suffering, and despair in fulfillment of Psalm 22:14-15. His hands and His feet would be pierced in fulfillment of Psalm 22:16. His bones would be out of joint, and His heart would undergo a pericardial effusion in fulfillment of Psalm 22:14.
His clothing would be confiscated by His captors who would gamble for His garments in fulfillment of Psalm 22:18. And just before death swallowed Him whole, His tongue would stick to the roof of His mouth, His body would enter into the most vicious dehydration, and He would pine away for something to drink in fulfillment of Psalm 22:15. All of this and more was fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
THE "SOUR WINE" IN THE ROMAN WORLD
And just like David wrote all of those years beforehand, near the end of our Lord's suffering, He cried out that He was thirsty (John 19:28). John tells us:
"After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, "I am thirsty." 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. 30 Therefore, when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit." - John 19:28-30
For years, I have believed that this was a momentary act of mercy after the horror that the Romans put Him through and the mockery of the Jews who put them up to it. Someone had mercy upon Jesus and gave Him something to drink.
But, after studying this very act, I now believe this is not so. Instead of offering even the smallest act of mercy, giving Jesus a clean drink to abate His immense thirst, the soldiers cruelly provided a sponge, a sponge that was soaked in this cheap, vinegar-laced filth.
As I have learned, the sponge itself was not the closest object they could find. They were not using a nearby sponge because it was available. No! This was a deliberate and extreme insult steeped in the basest of humiliations.
In the Roman world, public toilets existed for the elite or the military within society. These toilets would be made from rock, with a hole cut into the center for the excrement to drop. They were built side by side, with no stalls or walls for privacy, making it inevitable that your body would touch the person sitting beside you while you were going.
In the front of these rock-hewn latrines was another hole cut into the rock, and it was large enough for the person to reach in and clean themselves before going back to whatever they were doing before.
At this time, toilet paper had not yet been invented. So the Roman soldiers developed a small sponge attached to a shortened stick. They would moisten and insert this sponge through a front-facing hole to clean themselves before returning to duty.
After visiting these very public latrine facilities, soldiers and others would dip these sponges into jars of vinegar - the cheapest acidic solution available - to disinfect their sponge before the next usage.
So when Jesus was offered a vinegar-soaked sponge, this was no act of mercy. This was like offering to use toilet paper to wipe His face. They took an item covered in human filth and symbolic of the utmost debasement, and they thrust this vile object directly into the face of the Son of God as He suffered for the sins of the world.
It was not enough for Jesus to simply endure the overwhelming physical trauma of the crucifixion for us. He had to go down to the lowest depths in order to rescue us. He had to swim in the depths of the septic tank to pull us out. And as He gasped for air, with the unmistakable stench of human waste upon His lips, with those same lips, He said: "It is finished."
CONCLUSION
If you want to get a picture of how ugly our sin is to God, look at the horror of what Jesus went through to ransom you. It was in this moment that Jesus breathed His last, finishing redemption for you and I. Dying, not for the sins that He committed, but hanging there, being tortured there, becoming a mockery there, and tasting that polluted vinegar upon His lips there, for our sin!
Our sin put Him there. As the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 3:13-14:
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." - Galatians 3:13-14
Though the darkness of Good Friday looms heavy and the anguish of Christ's suffering seems insurmountable - take heart, dear ones - because Sunday is coming.
