“May we all remember what Jesus did for us and be satisfied with that.” That’s how I ended my last blog post, but I have a question: Do we really remember what Jesus did for us?
Sure, any person who grew up believing or has been around the church knows what Jesus did: He died for our sins, taking our place on the cross. But do we remember more than the action? When we speak those words, do we acknowledge the full weight of what that means, or has it become so routine and parroted that we gloss over it?
I am not saying that the Gospel being routinely spoken is a bad thing. Certainly not. As disciples of Jesus, it should be our mission to share the Gospel across all nations (Matthew 28: 19-20). I recently realized, though, that I had been guilty of glossing over His sacrifice. If you had asked me whether I was remembering more than the action, my honest answer would have been no.
The Lord revealed this to me when He was helping me with the discontentment thorn in my side. I remember feeling very somber and heavy. It was almost like as if, as the weight of His sacrifice settled in my heart, I could also feel the weight affecting my body. I was in awe of Him like I have never been before. Even now, as I think about it, I still can’t fathom the full gravity of it.
While the Lord was unraveling some deep-rooted perspectives and thought patterns in me, I couldn’t help but sit in His sacrifice. What do I mean by that? I mean I took a moment, amid my busy schedule and humming thoughts, to truly reflect on what Jesus did for me—for all of us. I didn’t gloss over it as had become the norm. I really thought about it and envisioned what it would have looked like. My awe and love for the Lord grew immensely.
As I think about my own glossing over of His sacrifice, it saddens me to think that I diminished what He did. I overlooked and dismissed the single greatest act of love that has ever been done. My sister once said to me “It’s like nailing Jesus to the cross all over again”. I can’t remember exactly what we had been talking about, but that thought horrified me. Dismissing His hanging on a cross so I wouldn’t have to feels the same way. He deserves so much better.
We all must sit in the sacrifice.
I am going to lay out exactly what that sacrifice entailed. I will warn you that there may be some graphic details, but we can’t pick and choose the parts we want to hear. He endured it all and more…more than we will even know. Once you are done reading, I encourage you to sit and reflect on what you just read. Picture it in your mind and then remember that He endured all of it for you. He willingly walked into the pain and suffering for you.
There is this line in the LO Worship song, “Compass” that says, “I see You out in the distance, Your eyes fixed on me.” You were not an afterthought. You were in His sight as He hung on that cross and endured it for you.
The Sacrifice: All Part of the Plan
Before getting into what the sacrifice entailed, it is important to mention that Jesus and His sacrifice were prophesied and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. This foreshadowing can be seen in Genesis 3:15 and in the story of Passover in Exodus 12. Jesus is the “her offspring” mentioned in Genesis 3:15, and the smearing of the blood of a spotless lamb over the Israelites’ doors foreshadows the sacrifice He would make hundreds of years later.
Isaish 53 prophesies about what will happen:
“ Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But 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.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
A perfect sacrifice was needed to atone for the sin that caused humanity’s separation from God, but the ultimate sacrifice was part of God’s plan from the beginning.
The Sacrifice: Mental
When we think about the crucifixion of Jesus, it is very easy to recall the horrific physical pain that He had to endure. We will get to that in a moment. However, there is a mental component to the suffering that is often overlooked. Mentally, Jesus was in deep anguish leading up to and during the crucifixion. He suffered betrayal from Judas, who handed Him over to be crucified, but He was also betrayed by Peter, one of the disciples in His inner circle. Hopefully, betrayal is not something that you will experience often, but the feelings of shock, loss, grief, and an upheaval of what you thought you knew are emotions everyone will experience at some point in life.
The night before His crucifixion, Jesus went away to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, and His prayers were filled with anguish (Luke 22:44). He asked God to take the cup He was about to drink away from Him. He was asking if there could be another way. He was in such turmoil that His sweat was like drops of blood. This is not merely a figure of speech; it can actually happen. There is a medical condition called hematidrosis that can cause a person’s sweat to contain blood. It occurs under extreme anguish or stress, when the tiny blood vessels surrounding the sweat glands rupture. Matthew 26:38 says, “Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” I cannot emphasize enough that He was in such mental anguish, knowing what was about to happen, that His body physically reacted. I pray that no one would ever experience that kind of sorrow and pain.
After the garden, Jesus endured ridicule, insults, false testimony, and more than we will ever fully know. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way—yet he did not sin.” The point I want to emphasize is this: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses”. This applies to every single one of us. He can empathize with every weakness, struggle, and pain that we face. He has experienced the full weight of human suffering—even things you and I may never experience, though others have and will.
As He hung on that cross, He stood in the place of each of us. All my sin, and everything that comes with it, He bore it in my place and experienced what I deserve to experience. He did that for every one of us. I may be repeating myself, but I cannot stress enough the enormity of that truth.
Jesus did not willingly walk into half a sacrifice. He willingly took on the entirety of it—mental and physical.
The Sacrifice: Physical
Like I mentioned earlier, when we think about the crucifixion of Jesus, the most notable aspects are the physical ones. I am going to take you through exactly what Jesus endured. Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19 lay it out.
Before the crucifixion, Jesus was brutally beaten. After Pilate had brought Him before the Jews and they demanded He be crucified, Jesus was flogged. To flog someone is to repeatedly strike them with a whip made of braided leather strands. There were likely metal balls woven into the material, along with sharp pieces of bone designed to tear flesh. Depending on what was used, the impact on the body could include extreme bruising, painful welts, deep, bloody gashes, or likely a combination of all three. Imagine our Savior’s body bruised and torn.
Jesus was also beaten and mocked by soldiers. They stripped him and placed a scarlet robe on Him to embarrass Him and strip away His dignity. They placed a crown of thorns on His head, where it sat piercing His brow—no doubt causing sharp pain with every movement. They spat on Him and beat Him so that Isaiah 52:14 would be fulfilled: “As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—”. The sinless Lamb of God, our guiltless Savior, no longer recognizable.
After being flogged—His back likely a bloody mess—and beaten beyond recognition, John 19:17 states that Jesus carried His own cross. “Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).” Scripture does not specify whether it was the entire cross or only the crossbeam, but many scholars believe the crossbeam is what He carried. Many believe the upright portions of the crosses were already embedded in place, and those who were condemned carried only the crossbar. Either way, the weight Jesus carried after His body had been so badly abused could have ranged from 75 to 300 pounds. The additional weight and exertion required to carry the very object He would soon hang from must have been unimaginable. Imagine our Savior, bloodied and weak, carrying a heavy wooden beam as He walks to His death.
Now we come to the crucifixion itself. To give some context, there was no word to describe the level of pain associated with crucifixion. The word that attempts to describe it now is “excruciating”. In Lee Strobel’s book, The Case of Christ, he sits down with Dr. Alexander Metherell to describe the details of Christ’s suffering. I am going to quote what he says about the crucifixion, but I encourage you to read his full explanation.
Picking up after tapered spikes have been driven into the victim’s wrists, Dr. Metherell explains:
“If the nails had been driven through the palms, his weight would have caused the skin to tear and he [Christ] would’ve fallen off the cross. So the nails went through the wrists. It’s important to understand that the nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs. Do you know the kind of pain you feel when you bang your elbow and hit your funny bone…well picture taking a pair of pliers and squeezing and crushing that nerve. The pain was absolutely unbearable.”
Interjecting here with more information that was provided in an article by the Christian Post, they included that the nerves in Jesus’ feet were similarly crushed. When He was hoisted up, His arms would have been stretched approximately six inches, likely dislocating His shoulders. Dr. Metherell explains that Jesus died an “agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation” due to the stress placed on His diaphragm. The stress positioned His chest in an inhaled state. To exhale, Jesus would have had to push up on His impaled feet to relieve the pressure on His diaphragm. Doing so would have caused the nail to tear against His feet, eventually pressing against the tarsal bones. Every time Jesus needed to breathe, He would have had to endure this pain.
Crucifixion often did not allow the condemned to live long, maybe twenty-four hours at most. Dr. Metherell explains, “As the person slows down his breathing, he goes into what is called respiratory acidosis – the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved as carbonic acid, causing the acidity of the blood to increase. This eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat.” The condemned would then die of cardiac arrest. Suffocation could also be a cause of death, but cardiac arrest seems to be the more likely outcome. Picture the Lamb of God who did no wrong, struggling to breathe as He hangs from His wrists and feet.
I know that was a lot, but take it in. Don’t turn from the truth simply because its ugly and uncomfortable. To release a breath, Jesus had to push up on His nailed feet while His shoulders were out of socket, His torn and tattered back scrapping against the rough wood—all while enduring the residual pain of crushed nerves and the multiple beatings He experienced. He struggled to breathe. He was dehydrated. He was in excruciating pain.
Now remember that He endured all this willingly.
He knew what was going to happen to Him, and yet, because there was no other way, He went to the cross. He took on the punishment we deserved with a completely surrendered and willing heart. He loves me enough to take my place. He loves you enough to take your place. Let that sink in.
Do not rush to the next thing after reading this. Take time to truly absorb what He did for you. Let the weight of it wash over you as you envision what it must have looked like.
I challenge you to sit in the sacrifice.
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