SUE HARRIS | CONTRIBUTOR

I hate the sight of blood. I have a weak stomach and often must turn away from the gruesome. News flash: don’t ever call me to administer first aid. I simply can’t handle it. Jesus’ crucifixion is no exception.

I remember watching the Passion of the Christ in the theater twenty years ago. This movie follows the last week of Jesus’ life, the Via Dolorosa (the sorrowful way or journey). Passion week. The road to the cross.

It was bloody. It was difficult and, if I’m honest, it was exhausting. I had to look away in a few scenes. Jesus was beaten, bloodied, mocked, unclothed, and spit upon. I had been a Christian a number of years and knew the story: Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I even knew many of the details like the crown of thorns, the scourging, and the striking of his face, but I had never actually seen a dramatization like the film depicted.

I often work in my yard and when I’m working around thorns, I wear heavy-duty gloves and long sleeves to prevent thorns from tearing up my hands and arms. Thorns don’t just scratch your skin; they imbed themselves into your flesh, going deeper and deeper. And they inflict more pain when you try to pull them out. It’s dreadful imagining thorns in the shape of a crown being forced onto the head of my Savior. Watching the scourging on screen was stomach-turning. Jesus was more than simply whipped, as if that wasn’t enough. In a scourging, the whip has sharp tips attached to the end that are made to dig into human skin. The flesh on Jesus’ back was literally ripped apart. And if that wasn’t enough, men struck him in the face. I have never been punched in the face, but my perfect Redeemer was. Time after time after time.

Watching this on the big screen gave me a dramatic view into what happened that day. I can only assume that it was, truthfully, worse. I cried, of course, and I wondered, “Why did Jesus have to die this kind of death?”

Derek Thomas and Sinclair Ferguson write, “His sufferings at the hands of men are intended to un-man the Lord Jesus, to demean and shame his humanity – this holy, innocent, gracious Saviour who had gone about doing good.”[1]

But God is God. Couldn’t he have answered Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to remove this cup? The Father loves the Son. He’s powerful enough to do anything, so why did our atonement require this kind of death? Why the ripping of flesh, the nakedness, the darkness, the demeaning, and shame?

Even the sacrificial system of the Old Testament seems more kind than Jesus’ death on the cross. Back then, animals were simply killed. The Son of Man was cruelly tortured and shamed over hours.

“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” (Is. 53:5). This verse paints the picture for us, doesn’t it? Jesus must experience a brutal death, so that we can receive extravagant grace. It’s the great exchange.

When I watch a depiction of the crucifixion or read the gospel narratives (especially aloud), I weep. I weep because I begin to sense what my sin looks like and feels like to Jesus, the Holy and Anointed One. I’m confronted with what my sin should look like to me. Sins aren’t simply accidents, missteps, or ill-advised word choices. They are transgressions. They are iniquities. They were heaped upon the body and soul of Jesus. He didn’t just die on the cross, he became a curse for us and in turn rescued us from the curse (Gal. 3:13). And he didn’t only die for my sins, he bore the sins of many (Heb. 9:28). That “many” equals all the sins of all time for all the elect. Ever.

That’s why there is blood. That’s why there is shame. That’s why there is darkness. It’s the only way the Lord can separate us from our sins. A man must pay for the sins of mankind and that man is Jesus Christ.

After I watched the Passion of the Christ so many years ago, I was sobered at the cost for my sin. In response, I purchased the DVD (yes, that’s what we used to do when we loved a movie) and I vowed to watch it every year during Holy Week so that I would never forget what Jesus paid for me. That was my desire, anyway. That DVD is still wrapped in cellophane twenty years later. I’ve never had the courage to watch it again. Maybe I should pull it out this year because if I want to celebrate the mercy of the Lord Jesus granting me grace, I should wrestle with what that grace cost him.

[1] Ferguson and Thomas, ICHTHUS p. 95.

Photo by Christi Marcheschi on Unsplash