The Pain of the Cross
Big Idea: Jesus suffered physically, bore humanity's sins, experienced abandonment, and faced God's wrath on the cross to pay for sin and offer salvation as a free gift through faith.
If you like pain, there's something wrong with you. No one will ever feel the same pain that Jesus experienced on Good Friday. As Jesus came closer to the cross, his suffering intensified. He told his disciples:
Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." (Matthew 26:38)
Jesus was deeply troubled by his impending death, fearing not just the physical suffering, but also the burden of humanity's sins. I think it's safe to say that nobody will ever experience the sort of pain that Jesus did.
Four Kinds of Pain
I'd invite you to consider with me four types of pain that Jesus experienced at the cross. These come from Wayne Grudem's study of the Atonement in his Systematic Theology.
The first type of pain Jesus experienced was physical pain and death.
Some people have died pretty awful deaths. The Bible never claims that the physical death that Jesus experienced is more painful than what anyone has ever experienced. But make no mistake: death by crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised by man. Mark says curtly: "And they crucified him" (Mark 15:24).
If you lived at that time, you would have a pretty vivid picture of what crucifixion involved. Now we have some idea, but the ugliness of that death is somewhat lost on us. Death by crucifixion essentially involved slow death by suffocation. The crucified criminal would have their arms outstretched, and a nail would be driven through the wrist, hitting the median nerve, the largest nerve in the hand.
The pain would be worse than that terrible pain felt when you bang your funny bone – you know how painful that is. The two feet would be placed together, one on top of the other, and a nail would be driven through them. The cross would be raised, and the criminal would have a choice. He could support most of his body weight with his arms, but this would pull his chest cavity upward and outward, making it hard to breathe. When the criminal needed to breathe, he had to push himself up with his feet, causing intense pain from the weight on the nails in his feet and the pull from the nails in his wrists.
Remember that the criminal's back had been torn open from a prior flogging, causing it to scrape against the cross with each breath. Eventually, amid great pain, the one being crucified would die of asphyxiation. You wouldn't want to die that way! In some cases, crucified men would survive for several days, nearly suffocating but not quite.
The English word "excruciating" comes from "the cross." This is the physical pain that Jesus experienced for you and for me. But this wasn't the only type of pain that Jesus experienced.
Jesus also experienced the pain of bearing sin.
How do you feel when you have sinned? Many of us know the anguish of letting God down. We feel terrible, even tortured, when we carry the weight of a terrible sin. Even more so when the sin is a significant one. And this only intensifies as we grow closer to God.
Jesus was completely holy. Jesus hated sin with his entire being. Out of obedience to the Father and love for us, Jesus bore the sins of those who would eventually be saved. He took upon himself all the evil against which his soul rebelled. Every sin of every person who would one day believe was borne on that cross by Jesus.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24)
As the hymn says:
He took my sins and my sorrows;
He made them his very own.
He bore the burden to Calvary
and suffered and died alone.
I have a friend who is allergic to animal hair. We were walking through the Canadian National Exhibition's farm exhibit when she started to gasp. We had to get out of that building pretty fast, or she literally would have died. She was so allergic to animal hair that she couldn't be near animals for even a few minutes. The reaction that God has to sin is much stronger than that. God can't abide being in the presence of sin. He hates it! And yet Jesus willingly took upon himself our sins – all of our sins – just so that we could be forgiven by God.
Jesus experienced physical pain and the pain of bearing our sins, but there's more.
Jesus also experienced the pain of abandonment.
You know when I really need my friends? In times of trouble. When we are going through difficult times, that is when we really need our friends.
Jesus was going through his darkest hour, and he cried out to his closest friends for their support:
"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch." (Mark 14:34)
And they let him down. His friends abandoned him. When he was arrested, do you remember what happened? "Then all the disciples deserted him and fled" (Matthew 26:56). These are the disciples of whom it is written:
It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. (John 13:1)
These disciples, to whom Jesus had revealed his love, now turned their backs on him and left him.
Jesus endured physical pain, death, the burden of sin, and the deep sorrow of abandonment by his friends. But there's more to his experience.
Jesus also experienced the pain of the wrath of God.
God is angry with sin. As Grudem notes, Jesus bore the guilt of our sins upon the cross alone:
God the Father, the mighty Creator, the Lord of the universe, poured out on Jesus the fury of his wrath: Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world" (Wayne Grudem).
Romans 3:25 says:
For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made write with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was entirely fair when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. (Romans 3:25 NLT)
It's a myth that God simply forgot about sin and the punishment for sin in generations before Jesus. He had forgiven sins, but stored up his righteous anger, generation after generation. At the cross all the fury of this stored-up wrath was unleashed against Jesus. The pain would have been immense. The Bible says: "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).
Jesus fell into the hands of the living God, in all his anger. He became the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation is a word that means "a sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God, thereby making him favorable toward us." God demanded that sin be paid for. And Jesus paid for the sin.
Wayne Grudem writes:
To bear the guilt of millions of sins for even a moment would cause the greatest anguish of soul. To face the deep and furious wrath of an infinite God for even an instant would cause the most profound fear. But Jesus' suffering was not over in a minute – or two – or ten. When would it end? Could there be yet more weight of sin? Yet more wrath of God? Hour after hour it went on – the dark weight of sin and the deep wrath of God poured over Jesus wave after wave. Jesus at last cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why must this suffering go on so long? Oh God, my God will you ever bring it to an end?
This is the payment that Jesus made on our behalf on the cross. Jesus bore the punishment for us when he died. You can see that his death involved much more than physical agony. He also suffered from the weight of our sins, abandonment, and the fury of God.
Now think. Christ bore all the guilt of our sins. He bore the full wrath of God against sin, and the penalty that we deserved. If you are a believer, your account has been marked "paid in full." As the song says:
Jesus paid it all;
all to him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow.
Think about what made him bear all this suffering. It was your sins and my sins. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that we are all sinners. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Heaven saw this sin-problem and its tragic consequences: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). This is a gift offered to us all.
Our Response
I read an article by Mart DeHaan this week that tells us about this free gift.
It's a gift offered to all.
God offers this gift to everyone. He is no respecter of persons. He does not defer to wealth or poverty. He doesn't favor good looks or plainness. He doesn't care if you're intelligent or average. He offers this gift to every person of every nation and social status.
This gift is needed by all.
All of us need this gift, because no one can merit eternal life. All of us from birth have been guilty of rebellion against God. Nobody could come up with a substitute for this gift. This gift is undeserved. There is nothing we can do to earn the mercy, love, or forgiveness of God. Paul wrote: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
No one can earn the gift of salvation. But people are declared righteous because of their faith, not because of their work (Romans 4:5).
This gift has been paid for.
The gift which we can't earn has been fully paid for and is available in our name. All legal debts can be canceled as soon as we accept the offer. Christ gave his life for ours, exchanged his righteousness for our mistakes, and purchased us to be welcomed into Heaven's family.
This gift must be accepted by faith.
There is only one condition for receiving this gift: belief. We must believe that we are sinners; that Jesus Christ died for our sins; that God wants to give life and forgiveness to all who will believe that Christ died for their sins. Without faith, we cannot receive this gift. Only those who trust God can know that he is their only hope for eternity.
Jesus suffered the pain of the cross to give us this gift. Thank God that he loved us enough to do this for us! The question for you is clear: Will you accept this gift?
