16 The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace … and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17 They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18 And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 19 Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. Mark 15: 16 – 19
The extreme cruelty and barbarity of being flogged and crucified is a well testified fact. Flogging, 39 lashes with a leather thong embedded with stone or metal chips to flay the skin to the bone is unbelievably cruel, but so too is crucifixion. None of the Gospel writers dwell on the details but it is known that it involved driving long nails into a man’s wrists and ankles onto a wooden cross, lifting the cross into a vertical position and waiting till the condemned died from asphyxiation, dehydration or exhaustion.
In Jesus’s case it was much more than physical, it was also the humiliation and mockery that he had to endure. Crucifixion was only inflicted on the basest criminals and was considered incredibly shameful and disgraceful.
First the whole company of the Roman soldiers mocked him. Everything was a parody and insult of Jesus’s royalty. A purple robe and a crown of thorns. The scornful, false homage ‘Hail King of the Jews’, the chant given to Caesar. Jesus was beaten with a staff signifying a royal sceptre. The soldiers fell to their knees in false reverence and spat on him instead of giving him the kiss of homage used when greeting royalty and they mocked him with their words (Psalm 22: 7). The psalmists frequently agonised over the torture of verbal abuse.
The mockery continued all through those long six hours of crucifixion from the passers-by and even one of the thieves hanging next to him. They called on him to save himself, believing him incapable, not realising his mission was to save the world, not himself.
And of course, the chief priests and religious leaders joined in the derision. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” Matthew 27: 42 – 43. Jesus, despite the agony, the humiliation, the shame, the insults remained focussed on his mission.
After three hours, darkness settled over the land. The greatest crime in eternity had to be done in darkness, the devil believing he could kill the Son of God. You could not put the Prince of Light to death in anything but darkness. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). The agony of being separated from the love and presence of God as the sins of the world were placed on him and he took the cup of the wrath of God. What happened next in the spiritual realm is a mystery. All we do know is that when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit Matthew 27: 50. No matter what scientific or medical reason you give for the actual cause of death, the one thing that is certain is you do not give what I believe was a faith-filled victory shout, ‘it is finished’ (John 19: 30). It was so unusual, indeed unique, that the Roman centurion responsible for the crucifixion was convinced ‘Surely he was the Son of God.’
We read too that Jesus did not die from natural causes, he gave up his spirit. He decided when he would die. What a terrible, glorious day that first Good Friday was. The disciples and the women must have been devastated, the Roman soldiers terrified and the religious leaders unmoved. Our wonderful Saviour died in the most humiliating, shameful way mocked by all except his few disciples to save the very people who had committed this tragic act.
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