Day 10 " Love Unimaginable"

When I was sixteen, I was part of a group of high school students from the North Shore area of Chicago who went on a ski trip to Colorado with Young Life, a Christian outreach group. I knew little of the organization at the time, but I loved to snow ski and had never been to Colorado. It was a trip that change my life forever, but not for the skiing.

Each night following an awesome day of skiing in the majestic Rocky Mountains, we would gathered together after dinner to hear a message from the Bible about God's love for us. The consistent theme each night was that there is a God who created us and wanted to have a personal relationship with each one of us. But like sheep, each us have gone our own way and that the sin in our lives have separated us from such a loving God. Each night we would hear a message with a somewhat different perspective about His love. It was the evening that we heard about Jesus and what he endured and suffered upon the cross that broke my heart and led me to believe and accept Jesus as my Lord and savior. Who could love us that much? Unimaginable!

What Jesus incurred during the last days of his life is a great testimony of God's love for us.

You can discover for yourself all that Jesus endured by reading the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament section of the Bible. I have also copied and pasted information below from EThoughts.org (crucifixion_description) that also describes the crucifixion.

"No one takes it from me (my life), but I lay it down of my own accord." John 8:18

Jesus Christ: death on a cross - description

'And they shouted, "Crucify!"...'

A Medical Description of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

This may disturb you, so don't read it if you don't want to; it's pretty horrific... The physical trauma of Christ begins in Gethsemane with one of the initial aspects of His suffering - the bloody sweat. It is interesting that the physician of the group, St. Luke, is the only one to mention this. He says, “And being in agony, He prayed longer. And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.” Though very rare, the phenomenon of hemathidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process alone could have produced marked weakness and possible shock. After the arrest in the middle of the night, Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin (the ruling council) and Caiaphas, the High Priest. A soldier struck Jesus across the face for remaining silent when questioned by Caiaphas. The palace guards then blindfolded Him and mockingly taunted him to identify them as they each passed by; they spat on Him and struck him in the face. Condemned to Crucifixion.

In the early morning, Jesus, battered and bruised, dehydrated, and exhausted from a sleepless night, was taken across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia. It was there, in response to the cries of the mob, that Pilate ordered Bar-Abbas released and condemned Jesus to scourging and crucifixion. Flogging first. Preparations for the scourging are carried out. The prisoner is stripped of His clothing and His hands tied to a post above His head. The Roman legionnaire steps forward with the flagrum in his hand. This is a short whip consisting of several heavy, leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached to the ends of each. The heavy whip is brought down with fill force again and again across Jesus’ shoulders, back and legs. At first the heavy thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as the blows continue, they cut deeper into subcutaneous tissues, producing first an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises which are broken open by subsequent blows. Finally the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. When it is determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner is near death, the beating is stopped. The half-fainting Jesus is then untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement, wet with His own blood. The Roman soldiers see a great joke in this provincial Jew claiming to be a king. They throw a robe across His shoulders and place a stick in His hand for a sceptre. A small bundle of flexible branches covered with long thorns is pressed into His scalp. Again there is copious bleeding (the scalp being one of the most vascular areas in the body). After mocking Him and striking Him across the face, the soldiers take the stick from His hand and strike Him across the head, driving the thorns deeper into His scalp. Finally, they tire of their sadistic sport and the robe is torn from his back. This had already become adherent to the colts of blood and serum in the wounds, and its removal, just as in the careless removal of a surgical bandage, cause excruciating pain - almost as though He were again being whipped, and the wounds again begin to bleed.

The walk to crucifixion

The heavy beam of the cross is then tied across His shoulders, and the procession of the condemned Christ, two thieves and the execution detail, begins its slow journey, The weight of the heavy wooden beam, together with the shock produced by copious blood loss, is too much. He stumbles and falls. The rough wood of the beam gouges into the lacerated skin and muscles of the shoulders. He tries to rise, but human muscles have been pushed beyond their endurance.

The nails of crucifixion

At Golgotha, the beam is placed on the ground and Jesus is quickly thrown backward with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square, wrought-iron nail through the wrist and deep into the wood. Quickly, he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flexion and movement. The beam is then lifted in place at the top of the posts and the titulus reading “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” is nailed in place.

The pain of crucifixion

The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each. As he pushes Himself upward to avoid the stretching torment, He places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again there is the searing agony of the nail through His feet. Again there is the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the metatarsal bones through the feet.

Crucifixion - the medical effects

As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen. Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber. Then another agony begins. A deep crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues - the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain. Jesus gasps, “I thirst.”

Crucifixion - the last gasp

He can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. With one last surge of strength, He once again presses His torn feet against the nail, straightens His legs, takes a deeper breath, and utters His seventh and last cry, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

Apparently to make doubly sure of death, the legionnaire drove his lance through the fifth interspace between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart. Immediately there came out blood and water. We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Our Lord died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium.

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If you made it to this point, you have read about the horrific death that Jesus incurred on the cross. But as horrific and terrible as it would have been for someone to go through such an experience, I found it that it was the love and compassion of Jesus that broke my heart as he prayed to the Heavenly Father to forgive the very soldiers who were in the act of crucifying him:

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them for they do no know what they are doing." And they

divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Luke 23:34

What???? Are you kidding me? Who could possibly love that much? Unimaginable! Unfathomable! But if Jesus could love the very soldiers who were killing him, I concluded, he could love me too! And, if God could love me, then He can surely love you.

When we know that we are loved, life takes on new meaning and purpose

Until tomorrow...