Chronological Gospels: Matthew 27; Mark 15
This week we enter into the heart-breaking, chain-breaking part of God’s redemptive plan. As we read through Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, I encourage you to take your time. Don’t fall into the temptation to speed through the story you’ve heard and read so many times before. Read each word, study it, analyze it, and notice the things God may draw out differently this time.
Jesus has been brought before Pontius Pilate by the religious leaders who demanded Jesus be crucified, which is one of the most horrendous and humiliating deaths. It is said to have been “perfected” by the Romans as the perfect way to kill someone by torture. In Rome, it was reserved for slaves, disgraced soldiers, and foreigners, and usually took between 6 hours and 4 days for a person to die on a cross. It was a long and excruciating death. The Roman soldiers on duty were not permitted to leave until the victim was dead, so they would often torture those on the cross further to speed up the process in horrible ways.
As Jesus was on the cross, being mocked, beaten, tortured, and spat on, He bore the weight of all of mankind’s sins for all time to die with Him there on that cross. At the moment before He breathed His last, He cries out to God “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” To die in sin is to die without the presence of God. Jesus experienced God turning His back on His One and Only Son at that moment, and Jesus was in even greater agony.
This was the death Jesus experienced, and this is the death we deserve for our sins. That separation from God that agonized Jesus is the eternal fate that awaits those who die in their sin. Jesus died a humiliating, torturous, agonizing death in our place, was separated from the Father because He was carrying every sin in all of history, and He did it so that we would not have to – if only we would have faith and believe in Him as the Son of God, and our Savior.
What does Jesus’ death on the cross teach you about God?
What does this part of the story teach you about sin?
