What does does a scene of Jesus enduring excruciating when being NAILED to a CROSS have to do with us?
At the urging of a beloved brother in Christ I will once again witness the ANSWER to my opening question in this UPDATED post ABOUT GOOD FRIDAY from A.D. 2014.
What happened April 18, Good Friday, 2014?
As for Good Friday ~30 years ago (a guess in recalling that eventful year):
I could NOT find any more significant event than this..
Born again in the Holy Spirit!
I am witness that God filled me with His Holy Spirit of new Life in Christ Jesus twenty years ago on Good Friday.
Roger@talkofJesus.com
The convicting evidence of my sin and Christ’s Sacrifice was given to me by the Holy Spirit as I prayerfully walked through the Stations of the Cross, when “Jesus is nailed to the Cross.”
NOTE: YouTube labels the LINK ABOVE (same link below)
Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)
I recommend it for any TEEN and adult who wants to see a 'Passion of The Christ' violent representation of NAILING JESUS TO THE CROSS FOR OUR SINS!
WE deserve what you see Christ enduring.
Christ’s suffering for my sins was excruciating!
Our conviction for HIS trial in darkness and swift execution of injustice ought to point toward the darkness of our own souls as we consider the Sacrifice of this innocent Son of Man on a Cross for us.
The Trial of Jesus
IF you dare to look into the shadows of the dark mirror of your mortal soul consider the accounts of the trial, torture and excruciating death of Jesus Christ!
Mark 14: … Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders…
And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together.
And they all condemned him as deserving death.
65 And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!”
And the guards received him with blows.
ALL this took place during the darkness of night.
However because of Rome, their captive government and Herod their King did not have the authority to execute a man… no death sentence.
And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.
Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
And he answered him, “You have said so.”
… But the chief priests stirred up the crowd…
And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?”
And they cried out again, “Crucify him.”
Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?”
But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.”
(Is that not what the crowds of these last days shout at mention of the Name of Jesus Christ?)
So Pilate (politician & diplomat), wishing to satisfy the crowd…
Understand the excruciating pain JESUS our Lord and Sacrifice suffered for our sins. From the Vine's Expository DictionaryPICTURE IT (even if you couldn't watch the video)
Scourge (Noun and Verb):
(akin to A: Latin, flagello; Eng., “flagellate”), is the word used in Mat 27:26; Mar 15:15, of the “scourging” endured by Christ and administered by the order of Pilate. Under the Roman method of “scourging,” the person was stripped and tied in a bending posture to a pillar, or stretched on a frame. The “scourge” was made of leather thongs, weighted with sharp pieces of bone or lead, which tore the flesh of both the back and the breast (cp. Psa 22:17). Eusebius (Chron.) records his having witnessed the suffering of martyrs who died under this treatment. Note: In Jhn 19:1 the “scourging” of Christ is described by Verb No. 2, as also in His prophecy of His sufferings, Mat 20:19; Mar 10:34; Luk 18:33. In Act 22:25 the similar punishment about to be administered to Paul is described by Verb No. 3 (the “scourging” of Roman citizens was prohibited by the Porcian law of 197, B.C.).
.. he [Pilate] delivered him [the unjustly scourged Jesus] to be crucified.
16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.
17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18 And they began to salute him,
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.
Then they led him out to crucify him.
Truly, don’t you sometimes think that this is what you deserve for some of your sins?
Shouldn’t a Holy God punish ALL true sin?
How will we escape the wrath of God for so many sins of our past?
So they took Jesus, 17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.
18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.
19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read,
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
XI Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
Any Christian familiar with the stations of the Cross will recognize this moment commemorated.
It was the moment on a Good Friday about 30 years ago I was born again in the Spirit!
At the conclusion of my updated GOOD FRIDAY post in the year of our Lord 2023 on TalkofJESUS.com I will include a text for you to prayerfully READ as if you walked through all of the excruciating agony Jesus suffered prior to being NAILED to the CROSS.
Roger@talkofJesus.com
Jesus stands in the most human of places. He has already experienced profound solidarity with so many on this earth, by being beaten and tortured. Now he is wrongfully condemned to punishment by death. His commitment to entering our lives completely begins its final steps. He has said “yes” to God and placed his life in God’s hands. We follow him in this final surrender, and contemplate with reverence each place along the way, as he is broken and given for us…
Jesus had walked… for three years (by comparison to eternity, a blink of an eye).
Having been handed the baton of faith after more forty years of my race on the wrong path, I have walked with the Lord toward the cross a mere twenty years. Though I have endured the hardship of the race (a sprint in terms of time), a marathon of pain and suffering have not yet brought me in view of the finish line.
By our certain faith we must press on toward the crown given by Christ Jesus our Lord until our time is come to pass on the baton of faith.
Jesus has his face set toward Jerusalem. The crowds have followed. Many have fallen away. Some have been saved. Some have endured.
Yet as in the life of the faithful widow; as in the life of the resurrected (Lazarus and others); as in the life of the weary Disciples and worn-down flesh of our Savior, the race is not finished.
The race is not finished for Jesus as He looks upon Jerusalem. His race is not finished until the Cross.
Neither has our race reached the finish line of faith until we, too, have drug the Cross of Christ to the sanctuary of the Holy Place of our rest.
Luke 9:23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
As we approach the HOLY WEEK of our Christian faith, I invite you to take sanctuary in our Lord Christ Jesus.
Take a fresh look at the GOSPEL, the Good News of our Salvation in the Cross by the Sacrifice of the Blood of our Lord.
READ once more the entire story of JESUS, through the witness of the Apostles John and Matthew; or the early witnesses of the church after Jesus’ resurrection: Luke and Mark.
It may be helpful to some of you if I share a portion of my own witness, although your personal time in the Gospel is a better witness.
We have begun the penitent season of Lent with a call to the church and a personal rebuke to many of us to get right with Christ Jesus in our relationships with others.
I would be remiss to neglect my own history of sinfulness by contrast to the great grace, love and righteousness of our Lord in leading me into the path of His eternal blessings.
Those who know me from the first two decades of my life have witnessed how I was raised in the church family. We all worshiped faithfully with Mom and Dad every Sunday. Then, like in most teens, rebellion. Like in most families, brokenness of relationship with each other followed. Most of us were isolated from God, set on our own paths.
Those who know me from my twenties know that I participated in ‘church’ every Sunday, while I sinned greatly. I was married, as many once did in our twenties. (I did the right thing, though most do not bother with such commitment any more.) The wife of my youth broke her vow and ran back to her daddy. I thank the Lord that she became a Christian later and pray that she has remained faithful to the Lord and to her husband.
Those who know me from my thirties know that the Lord led me to a faithful wife, a virgin, a Roman Catholic in belief, faith and practice. We married. She lived as a saint worthy of note in all her witness, while I attended church with her and all-to-frequently became enticed by several sins of the world. She remained faithful also to me, as I would never have been unfaithful to my wife in any desire for anyone else.
By the continued grace of God, we had our only child, now a grown young woman of faith much like her mother (and also like her yet unmarried at just twenty-one).
I will share the story of my salvation with you, God willing, during Holy Week on Good Friday.
Viewing the race nearer the present: after the death of my wife I remarried a woman introduced to me by mutual friends. Though she claimed to be a Baptist, she had no relationship with Christ and with other Christians. (It should have been a warning sign, but I did not heed it.) She divorced me. I continued to hold onto the Lord.
The Lord then led me a long way (from Florida to Pennsylvania) to my present Blessing, my wife Lissette. Lissette was a practicing Christian, member of a local mega-church. (We later moved, at my urging, to worship at a different church. As I said, the church is the people worshiping the Lord together in a place.)
My wife stood beside me and raised her hands in praise to Jesus (something I only rarely did in my upbringing of ‘traditional, worship). She owned Bibles (English and Spanish). She had women’s devotional books. Lissette is a Christian… as I was a christian before I was born again in the Lord in my mid-forties.
One more thing (about my wife): while we were dating (long distance) she discovered that she had cancer.
I immediately prayed to the Lord, “WHY ME?” ( a most selfish question, for it was Lissette who had the cancer). The Lord had taken my beloved wife Becky from me after just twenty-three years. I loved Lissette. “Why me,” I asked the Lord… and the Lord’s answer was immediate and clear answer to my prayer:
“Who better?”
As God is my witness, I had prayed unceasingly on the bed of my grief in February, 1999. I had asked the Lord “Why?’ I had asked the Lord for proof of the continuing life of the soul of my beloved wife.
I contended with the Lord. I wrestled with the Lord until He would give me proof of her resurrection. The Lord gave me clear and immediate signs and assurances three times.
Finally, after three days, I let go of her soul; torn from me by the interruption of the death of one body, made one with mine.
Life is a great mystery, death even more mysterious. Marriage is a great mystery, love even more mysterious.
Praise the Lord, for healing my wife, Lissette, of her cancer!
The indwelling of another soul with ours is incomprehensible to this finite mind of flesh. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God into the soul of the redeemed sinner is a mystery too wonderful and a love so amazing!
I love my wife, Lissette. I love the Lord.
Jesus Christ and my wife Lissette Harned are one with me. I cannot explain it.
Divorce cannot separate us (though it is a good illustration of our unfaithfulness to God).
As a grand ceremony in a place of worship or an authorized signature on a marriage license do NOT make a marriage; as a claim of a lawyer and signature of a magistrate do NOT make a divorce; a baptism, a catechism, a confirmation, an attendance star, a claim, a communion, a contribution, and MANY other things do NOT make a Christian.
No work or law or righteousness will guarantee that a christian will receive the crown of glory at the concluding celebration of Christ Jesus.
Only the Lord can save you.
Will YOU ask Jesus, once more, to fill you with HIS LOVE?
Only Christ Jesus can keep you… can keep my wife (and your beloved spouse)… can keep our children, our beloved family and beloved friends…; ONLY Jesus can save our loved ones; only Christ Jesus can save you for the joy and blessings of His love.
Please pray for me, my wife, and our three beloved children (all young adults).
As Jesus Christ approaches, the time and the place of the Cross are near.
Which way will you turn?
To whom will you look for the finish line of your faith?
one, of an unnamed widow who sacrificed only two mites to God at the Temple (leptons or half-farthing, worth less than half of one cent)
and one, a familiar widow from scripture.
Jesus’ illustrations were not so much about what Christ followers must do for widows.
Jesus uses these widows to demonstrate faith to us.
Jesus’ rebuke here is how God used a faithful widow who was NOT part of the family of God (Israel). He spoke to the people of his own hometown, Nazareth, were Jesus was rejected.
Let the church remember our widows and widowers, that Christ might not need to site the faith of an unbeliever to christians.
Luke 4:25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath.
And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.
Suppose you could only gather sticks to cook some food (what little they had) during a drought. Enter the Prophet of God, Elijah.
And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”
The widow humbly obeys, as she would her deceased husband or any man of authority.
11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”
Now this destitute woman challenges the bold request of this strange man.
12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said…
(‘Good. I’ll be done with this bothersome stranger,’ she must have thought, ‘and return to my misery.’)
The widow’s son is obviously unable to gather firewood, perhaps because he is only a boy in need of everything (as children must depend on father and mother for everything).
Yet the man of God continues:
… But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.
14 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”
For thus says the Lord…
A command to be obeyed (only IF the man is a true Prophet of the Lord God of Israel).
15 And she went and did as Elijah said.
Time passes, but the provision of God does not.
And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
More time passes.
17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18 And she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God?
Once more the woman is bold because God has taken the life of her son.
She continues:
You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”
How inexplicable had been the death of his father to the widow’s young son.
How great the loss of a mother or father to a young child.
Yet with the help of the Prophet, she has raised her son through her grief; and before her grief is ended her son also dies.
How tragic to lose your husband.
How sorrowful to lose your wife.
How unexpected and hopeless is the untimely death of your own child: the flesh and blood of you own womb; the joy of your own seed!
19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.”
And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. 20 And he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?”
Elijah is crying out to the Lord in prayer. The Man of God is pleading for the life of this son even as his mother has plead to the Man of God in her bold faith.
21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”
22 And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23 And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother.
And Elijah said, “See, your son lives.”
24 And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”
RESURRECTION! Bodily resurrection and the resurrection of the soul: both are possible! Both have been witnessed. Both require great faith, as the widow has shown.
The widow of Zarephath had said of Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God;” however before she knew it, she had great faith.
Along comes Jesus to His neighbors in Nazareth and it seems that (like many of us) that they have very little faith.
IF a man came to you and asked for your last morsel of bread, would you give it even to Jesus?
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…
42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,
naked and you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’
45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal.
Have you remembered the widows?
The widowers?
Those dejected by the trials of this earthly life?
Perhaps you are gathering your last sticks for the hopeless situation of your family and along comes one asking you for your last morsel of bread.
How will you answer?
Will you have faith?
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The Crucifixion
