Punished (Good Friday)

Matthew 27:27–30 CSB

27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s residence and gathered the whole company around him. 28 They stripped him and dressed him in a scarlet robe. 29 They twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and placed a staff in his right hand. And they knelt down before him and mocked him: “Hail, king of the Jews!” 30 Then they spat on him, took the staff, and kept hitting him on the head.

He was mocked and beaten IN OUR PLACE.

When we talk about the crucifixion, we tend focus only the actual crucifixion, but Jesus endured much more.

First, “the whole company” (20 or 30 soldiers) circled him like a mob, kicking him, punching him, mocking him, like the cruelest bullies surrounding a helpless child on a school playground, delighting in his pain until he was barely conscious.

When they were finished, Jesus would have been barely able to stand up, covered in spit, humiliated, and quivering in pain.

Then they flogged him.

They used a short whip called a “flagrum”—or, “cat of 9 tails,” with several braided leather thongs with small iron balls and sharp splinters of sheep bone knotted in at various intervals.

He was stripped of his clothing and his hands tied high up on a post.

Then 2 soldiers, one on each side, would with alternating strokes deliver the beating, weakening Him until just short of death or unconciousness.

Matthew 27:31–32 CSB

31 After they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe, put his own clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him. 32 As they were going out, they found a Cyrenian man named Simon. They forced him to carry his cross.

He was stripped and forced to carry His own cross IN OUR PLACE.

The crossbeam would have weighed about 200 pounds; it would have been placed on his back with a placard hung around his neck stating his crime.

The crossbeam itself would have been recycled, which meant it still reeked with the gore of previous victims, rough-hewn and full of jagged edges and splinters.

He was then paraded through the streets before jeering crowds with two Roman soldiers marching in front of him and two in back.

Often, someone in the crowd would come in and punch them or spit on them as they walked by.

Jesus was so weakened from the beating that he eventually collapses, and a random man in the crowd was chosen to carry his cross.

Matthew 27:33–35 ESV

33 And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. 35 And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

He was nailed to a cross by is wrists and ankles IN OUR PLACE.

He hung down, suspended by suspended by nails through his wrists, His feet also nailed to the cross so they were unable to support his weight.

His shoulders and elbows would pop out of joint.

As He hung down He would struggled to breath, and He would start to suffocate, so He hoisted Himself up by His arms to take a breath, which pulled on the nails in His wrists.

Not only did this cause excruciating pain from the nails and from His shoulders being out of joint, but almost immediately cramps would have seized the muscles, and he would have to let go.

For 6 hours Jesus alternates between searing pain and the panicked feeling of suffocation.

Each time he pulled himself up or let himself slide down, his back, lacerated by the whips down to muscle and bone, would be further torn-open by the splintered center-beam of the cross.

Eventually, the victim would give up and die by suffocation.

This was what Jesus was pointing to when he held up the bread and the cup and said, “This represents my body, broken for you; my blood poured out for your sins.”

This was the cup of God’s wrath against our sins.

“He was wounded for our transgressions—our small acts of rebellion, our little lies, our refusal to let him be in charge, to let him be the center, to steal the glory for ourselves—he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was placed on him, and by his stripes we are healed.”

The physical pain of the punishment Jesus endured for us is beyond our comprehension.

And we often focus entirely on the physical pain He endured IN OUR PLACE, but Matthew doesn’t end there.

Matthew 27:45–50 CSB

45 From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over the whole land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Elí, Elí, lemá sabachtháni?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling for Elijah.” 48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and offered him a drink. 49 But the rest said, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.” 50 But Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and gave up his spirit.

He was abandoned and rejected by God, taking on the full weight of God’s wrath IN OUR PLACE.

Luke tells us His final words were “It is finished.”

He is abandoned, deserted, stranded by God Himself, and he feels this intense pain of loss and loneliness in the core of his soul.

In these moments on the cross, Jesus is drinking the cup of God wrath.  He’s draining it to the bottom.

Christ received the wrath of God that had been stored up in the divine anger against every sin that had ever been committed by his people in cosmic rebellion against him.

God delivered up his son to taste the torments and afflictions of hell on our behalf.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says that “For our sake [God] made him to be sin,” and in Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” 

FOR US, IN OUR PLACE.

Band come up and begin to play

Let that sink in.

Jesus endured all of this not because He HAD to, not because we asked Him to, but because He, motivated by love and justice, WANTED to.

Good Friday is good because, for those who trust in Jesus, the accusations, mockery, beatings, whippings, the pain, the abandonment, the scorn, and the shame, and THE CROSS that was meant for us… Jesus endured it all IN OUR PLACE.

It was OUR sin that led Him to the cross.

It was OUR sin that was upon His shoulders.

It was OUR sin that turned the Father’s face away.

Begin to sing How Deep the Father’s Love