When I Survey...(Part 3)
"See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e're such love and sorry meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?"
When we survey the wondrous cross of Jesus, we cannot help but imagine the suffering the Son of Man must have experienced. An examination of Roman crucifixion reveals that some men did not even survive the scourging itself. The rapid loss of blood from flesh ripped down to the bone was enough to throw the body into hypovolemic shock. Jesus probably experienced some of this effect when He lacked the physical strength to finish carrying His cross to the hill outside Jerusalem. More blood had been squeezed out from the crown of thorns pressing in around his skull. To hold Him on the cross, soldiers would drive three spikes, one through each wrist right below the hand, and a single spike hammered through both feet. Therefore, blood would have flowed from His head, His hands, and feet. Asphyxiation, the inability to pull the body up to draw breath any longer, was usually the final cause of death for a crucified man. Isaac Watts' hymn urges us to see the love and sorrow flowing through that blood.
But the greatest suffering Jesus experienced was not the pain, nor was it the humiliating shame of the nakedness and ridicule of being a public spectacle of mockery (to which Hebrews 12:1 alludes -- "despising the shame"), but it was the separation from the Father as He experienced the weight of the fullness of sin upon Himself so that the sin could be crushed with His death. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that Jesus actually "BECAME SIN" for a teleological purpose -- "so that WE might become HIS righteousness." It was His love for you...and for me...that compelled Him to finish the process. What a scene! What a Savior!
To His Glory,
Caleb
