The Crown of Thorns

New Living Translation Chapter 27

27 Some of the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into their headquarters and called out the entire regiment. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. 29 They wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head, and they placed a reed stick in his right hand as a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mockery and taunted, “Hail! King of the Jews!” 30 And they spit on him and grabbed the stick and struck him on the head with it. 31 When they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified.

A crown. A symbol of authority and majesty—now become neither. Rather a painful and injurious circle of thorns pressed into his head. A scepter not of gold or other precious metal but of a reed, not solid but hollow, not strong, but easily broken. A kneeling multitude, but not in respect or worship—instead in mockery and insult. “Hail! King of the Jews!” They shouted, but not as greeting their king. Instead, they used his title as a weapon, a bludgeon of disrespect to enhance his suffering. Instead of weeping before him at his condition they spit on him, grab the reed stick and use it to hammer the thorns even deeper into his flesh of his head. When they finally tire of attacking Jesus, the soldiers remove the robe they had placed on him and put his own clothes back on.

Each element of a legitimately royal person is here exquisitely twisted by the Roman soldiers to produce a sequence of blows to, if possible, destroy Jesus’ own self-image. Scripted, it almost seems, by Satan himself—to tear Jesus down.

Or is there more to the story? Knowing what horrific death to which they were about to condemn this man considered by some to be the Jewish Messiah, by others a religious troublemaker—was it almost required that they not only remake Him in their eyes as not a king, not a savior, certainly not even very important at all? Perhaps not even really human. It would be easy to crucify Him now wouldn’t it?