The Crucifixion

“And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on His right and one on His left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’"—Luke 23:33-34

It was the end of His journey on earth. It was the end of a tumultuous week, one that began with cheers of salvation and ended with cries of condemnation. It was the culmination of a journey—the last paragraph of a novel penned in eternity. It was and is the greatest story the universe has ever known. The story began in Genesis, when it was foretold that a son would be born of the woman, Eve’s seed, who would crush Satan under His foot (Genesis 3:15).

It was that time, that hour, that moment—when all of the prophecies of a coming Messiah would be realized. It was the hour that He had been sent for, the moment where He would suffer on our behalf. He had to suffer for our sins. It had been foreordained since the foundation of the world—this was the crescendo to the divine symphony. Satan had been attempting to stop this moment from the time of Jesus’ birth. From the moment the song of salvation began as a faint pulse in the heart of the Garden as the forbidden fruit was being crushed under their feet—the song of salvation started with one note—one prophecy on which the entire salvation of man hung. Satan sought to silence it, to snuff it out, to circumvent, distort, and stop the song of salvation before it culminated in a crescendo of rapturous praise of both angelic beings and redeemed man.

When the time came for Jesus to be born, Satan worked hard to snuff out Jesus as a baby, killing many children in the process (Matthew 2:16-18). When that didn’t work, he gathered his power and tried to tempt Jesus to sin in the desert (Luke 4:1-13). The crux of the temptation in the desert was not adultery, theft, or murder—but to circumvent the divinely foreordained plan of salvation that required suffering as the established agent of identification with humanity. In other words, He wanted Jesus not to identify with sinful man. Two out of the three temptations of Satan that have been recorded for our benefit involved Jesus doing something that He could easily and rightfully have done; to turn stones into bread and to have angels catch Him if He were to jump from the pinnacle of the temple were well within His power and right as the divine Son of God. But each of them would have circumvented the process of His being able to identify with man. Man cannot do such things, but as the divine Son of God He could. And if He would have, we would have been lost, because He had to completely identify with us in our fragile states—using the same resources afforded to us so that we too could avoid sin and resist Satan’s subtle schemes. It was a cunning but ineffective tactic.

When personal temptation didn’t work, Satan sought to turn the disciples. He somehow used Peter on the occasion when Peter attempted to rebuke Jesus and convince Him that suffering should not be the way the Son of God should secure redemption (Matthew 16:22). This attempt was recognized by Jesus as a satanic ploy and denounced as such (Matthew 16:23).

But Satan wasn’t finished; he found a footing in Judas and entered into him in order to kill the divine Son of God (Luke 22:3). Little did he know that even that had been foreknown and set forth within the plan of God. Now was the moment—the holy moment when the one God sent the one who knew no sin but became sin for us “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”—2 Corinthians 5:21.

He endured torture. He was scourged with a flagellum—a horrendous device of leather with pieces of metal and glass in it—used to tear off human flesh. He was beaten with rods, spit upon, mocked, hit, slapped, and stripped naked. It was horrible and beyond our imagination. If we would have seen it, we would have not been able to look upon Him—so horrible was the torture He went through. He carried His cross and went to Golgotha. He laid down His life upon the cross—was nailed in the hands and feet, then hoisted up before a watching world. The suffering inflicted upon the individual who endured the horror of the cross required the invention of a new word—excruciating, which literally means “out of the cross.”

The sign above His head said “The King of the Jews.” In jest it was placed above His head for all to see, but the truth it revealed became a mirror of mockery to those who did it. It was not an indictment against Christ, but against humanity as a proclamation of redemption—the culmination of God’s song of salvation in the Savior of the world. The instrument of the cross played the melody of God’s majesty for all the world to hear. The payment for our sins was preordained via the suffering of the Savior. He died on the cross, was buried, and laid in the tomb. It is no wonder that one of His last statements on the cross was, “It is finished.” The payment for sins had been met—the wrath of God had been satisfied and we no longer have to work to earn our salvation—Jesus paid it all.

The wonder of the cross truly displayed the reality of Jesus’ offering Himself for us. Now we must, in faith, offer ourselves to Him. We offer ourselves in love, gratitude, and humble adoration—knowing what our sins cost God—the life of His Son. May our lives sing the song of salvation as we take up the instrument of the cross each day—playing it in our daily lives for all to hear and understand what Jesus Christ did not only for us—but for them as well. Amen.