Complimentary Story
As we approach the season of lent and Easter it has been a time of sober contemplation on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The crucifixion itself is a hideous way to die, arguably the most gruesome ever, but at least the most dreadful and repulsive form of torture at that time. In addition to the crucifixion, Jesus endured a humiliating mock trial, in fact six mock trials, a beating, and a flogging.The beating began as soon as Jesus was taken from the garden place of prayer. All along the route to the first trial before Annas, the former high priest and father in law of Caiaphas, Jesus was manhandled and abused. This went on as He was dragged from trial to trial. Annas, Caiaphas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod, and then back to Pilate this was the order of the mock trials. The worst beating was suffered at the hands of the Roman soldiers when He was alone with them before His flogging. This is where the soldiers mocked Him and placed the thorns on His head.
A Roman flogging was different from a Jewish flogging. The Jewish method described in Deuteronomy is civilized by comparison. Jews were only allowed to lash a person 40 times, and most often in an effort to adhere to the letter of the law, they stopped at 39. The Romans placed no such limits on the number of lashes, indeed some referred to the Roman method as “halfway death.”
Before the flogging, or scourging, the victim was stripped of all his clothing and bent forward over a low stump or post. At the base were four metal rings to which the wrists and ankles were shackled. The beating was done by a man called a lictor, believe it or not, a professional in the grim art of torture. The whip was something else again, designed to inflict the maximum pain. It was a piece of wood, maybe 14” - 18” long, with leather thongs attached. At the end of each thong were sewn bits of glass, bone, or jagged metal. The lictor stood behind the victim, and brought the whip back in a skilled and practiced delivery. With a dull thud, the strips of leather smashed against the back of the rib cage. Now the bits of debris would whip around to the front of the ribcage to cause additional bruising, and most often lacerations, as the lictor yanked the whip mercilessly back into position for another lash. After several methodical lashes up and down the back, the victim’s skin was a shredded bloody mess. Often the sufferer would pass out from the pain, at which time they would be doused with a bucket of salt water, although there is no such dousing recorded in the case of Jesus. The idea was to keep the person conscious to be able to inflict pain upon pain. Often the person died on the stump under such cruel torture, and it was the lictor’s duty to employ discretion to prevent death, if the person was destined ultimately for crucifixion.
At this point in the passion story Jesus indeed must have been “halfway dead,” yet His crucifixion loomed ahead. On the way to the cross, Jesus stumbled up the Via Dolorosa under the weight of His own crossbeam in what must have been a pain-filled delirium. He may not have made it at all had it not been for the forced assistance of an innocent bystander, Simon of Cyrene.
At the site of the crucifixion the brutality is almost beyond comprehension. I quote the author Jim Bishop, from his book, The Day Christ Died. “The executioner laid the crossbeam behind Jesus and brought Him to the ground quickly by grasping His arm and pulling Him backward. As soon as Jesus fell, the beam was fitted under the back of His neck and, on each side, soldiers quickly knelt on the inside of the elbows and held the wrist flat against the beam. The executioner probed the wrist of Jesus to find the little hollow spot where there would be no vital artery or vein. When he found it, he would position a square cut iron nail over the spot and bring the hammer down on it with skill and tremendous force. The executioner would quickly jump across the body to the other side and repeat the grisly task.
When the executioner was satisfied that Jesus arms were secure and could not, by struggling, pull Himself loose and fall forward off the cross, he directed the soldiers to lift the crossbeam to the post. Jesus was literally dragged by the wrists until He was lifted off the ground while He writhed in pain. When the cross beam was set firmly in place, the executioner would kneel in front of the cross while two soldiers hurried to help nail the feet, right over left, in place. If the feet were pulled downward, and nailed too close to the foot of the cross, the prisoner always died quickly. Over the years, the Romans learned to push the feet upward on the cross, so that the condemned man could lean on the nails so as to stretch himself upward. Some historians describe a block of wood on the upright to support the feet. We don’t know for sure if this was employed in Jesus crucifixion.
Jesus probably was aware of these two unendurable circumstances: First, the pain in His wrists was beyond bearing, and that muscle cramps knotted His forearms and upper arms and His shoulders. Second, His pectoral muscles at the sides of His chest were momentarily paralyzed. This induced in Him an involuntary panic; for He found that while He could draw air into His lungs He was powerless to exhale.
In order to keep breathing, the victim on the cross had to stay in constant motion, and so dragged himself up and down, up and down, constantly, so as to make breathing possible. With each second, the pain mounted. His arms, His legs, His entire torso screamed with pain. Slowly and steadily, He was being asphyxiated, as though two thumbs were pressing against His throat.”
Some suggest crucifixion victims die of suffocation; others suggest exhaustion, as the body eventually wears out from the unendurable pain and the unnatural suspension of the organs and muscles. None the less, the experience is horrific, one for which we have no frame of reference to relate.
Jesus spoke several times from the cross. We quote the things He said from there, but to actually hear Him speak must have been something else. I can only imaging a trembling pain-filled voice shouting between precious gasps of air, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Indeed, in spite of all the physical pain, this had to be the worst element for Jesus to face that day, the separation from the love of the Father, something He had never experienced in all eternity. Again, I suggest we cannot fathom this separation. Even if we are not Christians, every one of us on earth, regardless of our situation, are still connected to the love of the Father in some way. Hell defined, is the separation from our Father in Heaven.
Why, you are probably wondering, have I written in such detail about the passion? The quick answer is that we must never take lightly the sacrifice which Jesus endured for us. I cannot listen to an account of Christ’s crucifixion without some emotion bubbling up from deep in my soul. Even as I proof read this very article I am brought to tears by the incredible suffering. I began to question why this is such an emotion-filled subject for me, and I have realized, to my shame why it is.
The Bible states that Christ died for our sins, past, present, and future. If that is the case, then every time I sin, I take part in the crucifixion all over again. I scourge His back with a whip, I spit on Him as He passes by carrying the crossbeam, I pound a nail into His wrist. We tend to view things from a safe distance, especially the passion. We think, those people hurling insults, and pelting Jesus with stones, as He carried His cross were brutal heathens, we would never participate in such behavior. Yet we do, every time we take the Lord’s name in vain, lash out at someone in anger or lust in our heart for someone, or something. I for one, cannot separate myself anymore from those brutal heathens and the things they did, I would have been right in there with the worst of them had I been there. Actually, you or I don’t even need to be there to participate; our sins were there in our place.
In closing, I can only say these two things: First, God help us if we ever take for granted the sacrifice that was made to pay for our sins. Second, give us grateful hearts to acknowledge that we, who accept Jesus as our Savior, will never have to suffer the pain of separation from the love of our Father in Heaven.
