To keep our hearts focused on the true meaning of Easter, many a Christian study the end chapters of the Gospels, follow Passion Week devotionals, watch Jesus’ life movies and documentaries, and fill their ear buds with Easter songs.
As we rightly do all that: read, watch or sing of the pain, the flogging, the mocking, the spitting, the insulting Jesus had to endure … is our heart filled with pity or with praise?
“The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” And they said many other insulting things to him.” Luke 22:63-65
“Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” “He is worthy of death,” they answered. Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?” Matthew 28:65-68
“Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” Mark 15:15
Why can’t our hearts go to pity when the passages describe the inhumane torture Jesus endured?
He told us not to.
Here’s Jesus’ response to the “women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. ‘ ” Luke 23:27-28
Praise should flow instead out of a grateful heart of the Messiah willing to be “numbered with the transgressors”, willing to be “crushed for our iniquities”.
Yes. Accused. Mocked. Hit. Slapped. Insulted. Beaten. Crucified. Pierced. That was the cost for our sin. And that’s how far my loving God was willing to go, right on the cross.
Treated as the lowliest criminal. Is there any other cruelty they had forgotten to do to Jesus? It was bad. It was horrible. It was inhumane. But, nothing took Jesus by surprize.
He knew before coming in this world what it would take for the transaction to be completed, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”. (Hebrews 9:22)
He was in control, and that should make us sing praise. As He was approaching the end of His ministry, He knows in detail what will take place. Jesus predicts Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, His own crucifixion and resurrection. That’s why in the garden of Gethsemane His beads of sweat turn into drops of blood, because He’s “sorrowful and troubled” for what’s yet to come.
Jesus showed full control even in His last breath.
“With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Normally, a person first dies, then the lifeless head tilts down. Jesus ‘bowed’ his head as a statement of willingly laying down His life as ransom.The blood of the Perfect Lamb is dipped once and for all in hyssop as Moses and his people did for the first Passover. Now Jesus is declaring not I am finished, but It is finished. Tetelestai in Greek. Paid in full.
Worthy of praise and not of pity.
Read and Meditate: Isaiah 53:2-5
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.”