The sugary agony

        

                  

    A time has come again to invigorate our memories 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 minded could 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.