A time has come
again to invigorate our memory towards the one who voluntarily paid the price
of death for us all and instead hope of eternity. Barabbas, a notable prisoner
was set free by the crowd’s demand and was replace with Jesus for crucifixion
(Matt.27v16).
Hebrews tells us
that Jesus endured the Cross because of the joy set before Him (Heb. 12:2).
Even as He hung in pitiful agony, He was thinking of union with His bride, the
Church.
Actually, nobody
performed an autopsy on Jesus’ mangled body after He was taken down from the
cross. But by any medical doctor, who still humble enough to study the Bible
and spiritually imagine the situation, would describe His death’s pain as
beyond excruciating. In fact, Jesus literally defined the worst pain anyone
could feel.
The saviour
suffering started in Gethsemane, when God laid the sins of the whole world on
His beloved Son, stressful prayer conditions in which blood seeps out of sweat
glands. After His arrest, Jesus was flogged so mercilessly for the sake of all
that his skin was stripped off His back, exposing muscle and bone. After being
slapped, punched, crowned with thorns and beaten with reeds, He was covered
with a red robe and led to Golgotha.
On the
Golgotha, the ever ready Roman soldiers drove seven-inch nails (the uncommon
nails) into his wrists and then they rammed another nail into his feet.
Methinks at that point, doctors suggest Jesus would have suffered dislocation
of His shoulders and cramps, dehydration from severe blood loss, fluid in His
lungs and eventual lung collapse and heart failure that resulted His momentary
earthly death. Yet He refused to take a
pain-killing solution (Matt. 27:34). He chose to endure the agony that turned
death and sorrow into life and eternity for us.
Although the
cross has been shouldered for us, we will still have a penal rule to play. In
Matthew ten verses thirty-eight Jesus instructed us: “And he that taketh not
his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me”. This implied that we
have a duty to carry the cross, which is the sufferings of others; the sincere
desire to starve oneself in place of others, “blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt.5v6).
I pray that
God should give us a fresh revelation of the cross this Easter, and remember
the words of the old hymns that says:”In the old rugged cross, stained with
blood so divine,…” and “ On thy cross, On thy cross, be my glory ever, till my
righteous soul shall found rest beyond thy river…”.
Happy Easter.
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