past tense: crucified; past participle: crucified
- 1. – to put (someone) to death by nailing or binding them to a cross, especially as an ancient punishment.
For as long as I can remember I have always loved the impact that taking the Lord’s Supper has had on me. As a boy, and a young believer, I would hold the small cup of wine in my hands before drinking it and solemnly think of the sacrifice that Jesus laid before the Father as an atonement for my sins.
Author Michael Card (A Violent Grace) calls us to reflect on the tremendous display of God’s redeeming love toward us by experiencing the agony of Christ suffering through the power of our imagination. Card writes,
Josephus (First Century Jewish historian)revealed the ferocity of Roman flogging when, commenting on the fate of a prisoner of the Jewish War, said that the man was lacerated to he bone with scourges. In face, the only stipulation Roman law made was that a man would be flogged until the flesh hung from his back. The blows fell until the skin split open and the muscles were severed; until ligaments tore and bone chipped. Some men were disemboweled. Many did not survive.
To intensify the suffering of the victim, flogging always preceded a crucifixion. As an unintentional mercy, it could hasten death when it resulted in a massive loss of blood.
Imagine it with me.
Jesus is standing there stripped, shackled, and alone in the circle. The legionnaire steps forward, opens his reach, and begins. The scourges hiss through the air in a wide arc and sink with a thud into Christ’s skin.
The crowd howls.
The scourges rise again and again in the soldier’s fist. And fall. And rise again.
Soldiers sneer and spit. The scourges hiss and thud into purple flesh. Blood flows. God’s chosen people scream for more.
The tormentor grunts and sweats, but keeps reaching back for that terrible, wide arc.
Jesus crumples. Guards rush to jerk Him to His feet. The scourges rise again, and fall.
Look! The righteous anger of God, diverted for all time, is pouring down on this man, His Son.
But the fault is mine, and I must look away.
It is one think to speak in theological terms about an obligatory sacrifice for a fallen world. It is an entirely different thing to stand in the presence of brutal men and their instruments of torture and try to watch, realizing that Jesus endured all that and more for you and me. (Michael Card, A Violent Grace, p. 65-66)
When I partake of the communion elements, I cannot help but think to myself, “Why did He do it.” “Why would God’s Son die for a miserable, evil, and undeserving sinner like me?” The only answers that I have ever come up with, and the only ones that have ever made since, are these: 1) Jesus loves me, and 2) God is gracious.
Romans 5:6-8 ¶ For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare towd how die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.