Creator, Father, King #229

He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

“CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!”

The bloodthirsty cries filled the morning air in Jerusalem. Pilate, the ineffective Roman governor, realized he wasn’t going to convince the frothing mob of Jesus’ innocence. So he caved in to their malice.

“I am innocent of this man’s blood,” Pilate declared, unconvincingly. “The responsibility is yours!” Then he delivered Jesus to be tortured and crucified. Pilate’s words couldn’t have been hollower.

The Roman soldiers tied Jesus to a post and scourged him. This was a particularly vicious, sometimes fatal, punishment where bareback victims were whipped with leather straps embedded with fragments of bone and metal designed to rip open the flesh to expose organs and bones.

Roman crucifixions, amazingly, were worse. They were excruciatingly painful, lengthy, and public—often held in well-traveled areas. The message was clear: “Don’t mess with Rome, or this could be you.”

Long nails were driven through the condemned individual’s wrists and feet and into a rough wooden cross, which was set upright into the ground. If the victim didn’t die of shock, dehydration, or other internal wounds, they would often asphyxiate as their broken body struggled to breathe. Jesus endured this horrific experience for six long hours (Mark 15:25, 34). Then he gave up his spirit.

What’s It Mean?

For the next twelve days, we will focus on what God graciously did for us through the death of his Son.

Volumes of books, articles, and sermons have been produced on what Jesus suffered for our sake—and rightfully so. Yet we will never fully understand the pain he endured. It’s beyond human comprehension.

And that’s okay. A medical dissection of Jesus’ sacrifice isn’t the end goal. Christ wasn’t a martyr. He was God incarnate—the Word made flesh who suffered to pay sin’s exceedingly great price and redeem the people God has chosen “before he made the world” (Ephesians 1:4).

As today’s verse says, through Jesus’ wounds, we are healed. The gospel isn’t a clinical report for medical journals. It’s a glorious message of substitutionary atonement where a sinless Savior died so that you, a sinner, could have peace with a holy God.

That was the purpose of the suffering. That was the mission of the Cross. That was what he accomplished for you!

Now What?

Read all four Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; and John 19:17-37).

Did You Know?

More than seven hundred years earlier, Isaiah prophesied about Jesus’ sufferings in remarkable detail. You can check it out in Isaiah 52:13–53:12.