celebrating the holiday of Easter, we get caught up with Easter baskets, dying eggs pastel colors, picking out the Sunday outfit and when follower of Christ get to the real reason for this time of year - we make the story suitable for others to hear it - we break out the metaphors and analogies, so that people won't get offended or children won't be grossed out. i have been reading the book The Darkness and the Dawn by Charles Swindoll. (there is some great historical research on the last days of Jesus). unfortunately, we got caught up in sensibilities that we have dumbed down the death and resurrection of Jesus. i am not saying that we need to get gruesome about it - but we need to speak the truth of what happened and not come up with clever ways to explain how nature speaks to the Easter season and all the other stories out there that we can tell instead of what the Bible says.
the story of Jesus is personal, so what happens to that aspect of Christ's sacrifice when we begin to exchange the brutality Christ endured, the humiliation he suffered, forgiving those who cast lots for his clothes, beat him and accused him falsely - being forsaken so we could be accepted, then rising in glory after defeating the devil's most powerful weapon - death -with things such as fall, winter and spring?
to start, when we comes across terms such as 'scourged' and 'flogged' we think in our time - our present knowledge. how many of us look at the history of the times of Jesus? with the beating of Jesus we just think of a severe beating - just close enough to death. we don't think of a whip with leather throngs with bits of rock or broken bone at the end so that upon the countless times the strap is administered to the back, it breaks open the skin -and many times going so far down it exposes bone. that is what Christ suffered in Matthew 27:26, Mark 15:15 & John 19:1
when we read of thorns, we think of the thorns on a rose bush -- not 31/2 inch thorns twisted and shoved down on someone's head! Matthew 27:29 so our idea of being bruised and beaten should be a picture of a raw back, pieces of flesh dangling, exposed muscle and possible bone, crown of thorns shoved into your head and then they redress you, oh yeah, and then they strap a crossbeam with chains across the shoulders - all the while you are probably in shock because of the severe beating you just had - and walk your way towards your death. the One who knew no sin, became sin for us, which caused him to be forsaken by the Father. Christ has never known separation from the Father, until He became the sin offering for us. He became forsaken so that you and I could be accepted. who does that? who takes a brutal beating - to the point where their skin is torn open, their blood being spilled out, one who is wrongly accused, declared innocent, yet silently and confidently goes to die on a cross -- the most insane form of capital punishment ever -- all for you to be redeemed to God. who does that? Jesus does that - He did that - He took that all upon himself for you! FOR YOU! because He loved you so much - and God loves you so much, that He gave what was so precious to him, in order that you would be reconciled to the Father and enjoy life eternal!
we can have life eternal because, even though Christ suffered horribly for us and died on the cross - God gave Him the authority to take His life back up again! the only weapon the devil had to use was death -- and Christ crushed it - demolished it - and now Christ sits at the right hand of God and He has been given authority over all things! you too can have victory over death - through Christ - by coming to know Him, relying on Him and surrendering your life to Him!
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