Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus,
delivered him to be crucified.
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the
governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And
they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown
of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And
kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And
they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they
had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him
and led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:26-31)
1. “Then he released for them
Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified” (vs 26). In two words, “having
scourged” Jesus, we have everything that was
intended with “to flagellate v. — to
beat severely with a multi-strand whip whose strands have bits of metal or bone
knotted into them; the highest level of Roman beatings, which preceded
execution” (Bible Sense Lexicon). The time it took to do this is not played out for us. But
the act of it, the experience of it, would have been so horrible to bear. Each
lash of the whip was multiple strikes of leather thongs embedded with bone,
lead, or brass designed to tear the prisoner’s body to shreds. This could result
in bone being visible, and even the intestines exposed. By this first step of
hatred, Jesus was severely wounded and weakened. “Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot
fathom this. You bore this to satisfy God’s wrath against me”!
2.
“Then
the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters” (vs 27). From the courtyard to
the headquarters meant that Jesus would have been forced to walk along with his
body torn to shreds from the whipping he had already endured. The jostling of
the soldiers around him, the pushing and shoving to prove themselves so
superior to him, the hateful inflicting of as much pain as possible because
these people were all filled with Satan’s hatred of God, would have been
hopelessly unbearable.
3.
“and
they gathered the whole battalion before him” (vs 27), which would have meant even more men who wanted
their turn gaining bragging rights by giving him their push and shove of
hatred.
4.
“And
they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him” (vs 28). This must be pictured
as the act of stripping Jesus’ torn and bloodied clothes off his shredded torso,
not with any gentleness or consideration included, and then replacing them with
a robe that would have added more pressure to all those wounds.
5.
“and
twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in
his right hand”
(vs 29). The crown of thorns was from a plant that had thorns more like spikes
than what we think of with a rose or blackberry bush. The point is that Jesus’
head would likely already be bleeding from the flogging, and this battalion of
soldiers was now adding injury to injury by pressing a thorny crown onto his head.
6.
“And
kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And
they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head” (vss 29-30). There is no way Jesus
would have had “hurt feelings” by being so mocked the way we would feel them.
But there is some sense of the weight of hatred that was in this whole event,
and the mocking of his glorious name would clearly deprive everyone of the joy
of honoring his name. The spitting would not have “hurt”, although there is a
disgustingness to it that cannot be ignored. But the fact that they would take
the reed, or stick, whatever they found at hand to represent a king’s scepter,
and each of the soldiers from this battalion would pay their mock homage, spit
on Jesus, and then smack him on his thorn-crowned head before giving the next
soldier his turn, shows how hateful Satan is in inflicting as much pain as
possible to the despised Son of God.
7.
“And
when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes
on him and led him away to crucify him” (vs 31). Again, the simple act of now stripping Jesus of
the robe they had placed on him and replacing it with the torn garments he was
wearing, would have repeatedly pressed on his wounded body with the evil
gleefulness of unrestrained hatred. And with all that, it is now time to
complete the evil as they lead Jesus away to be crucified.
“Lord Jesus Christ, I honor you for this,
and I praise you for your lovingkindness toward me in bearing this. It is such
a clear representation of the suffering you were about to endure as you propitiated[1]
the wrath of God against my sin.”
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1]
“Propitiation” is an amazing
word that describes how Jesus bore God’s wrath against our sin. He experienced
the full justice of God against everything wrong that any repentant sinner has
ever done. When Isaiah prophesied, “yet he bore the sin of many” he was
referring to what the apostles would teach as “propitiation”. Peter gave a
glorious expression of this when he wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his
wounds you have been healed” (I Peter 2:24), a beautiful statement of the
prophecy Jesus fulfilled on the cross. Here are the Scriptures that use this
word (each needs its own study!), sadly often missed in the poorer
translations:
Romans
3:25 – “whom God
put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was
to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed
over former sins.”
Hebrews
2:17 – “Therefore
he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a
merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people.”
1
John 2:2 – “He is
the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of
the whole world.”
1
John 4:10 – “In
this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.”
No comments:
Post a Comment