Today, as I read the crucifixion account in Matthew 27:32-66, I have a picture in my mind of Jesus Christ, so broken by the whipping that had skinned him, torn his back, shoulders, and sides to shreds. I see the robe, as skin, covering the bones, the strips of muscle that still remain, the pulsating organs underneath, as blot clotted into its fibers.
I see the soldiers push a long wooden beam at him, making him take it and carry it across his back and shoulder, its coarse weight pushing against his mutilated body as he staggers under it and then falls. Jesus, the God-man, so committed to suffering in human flesh and refusing to heal his own body with divine power he never lost, collapsing and another man pressed into carrying the beam for him.
I see Jesus Christ pushing up on the nails in his feet to gulp a breath of air, then slumping forward in pain, then feeling the tightness in his lungs as their air supply is squeezed, so pushing up again on the nails in his feet for another gasp. Meanwhile, travelers heading up the hill to Jerusalem for the observance of the day God rescued them from slavery, mocking the Lamb that was dying to save us from slavery to sin and hell, staring at his bare, torn, blood-dripping, heaving figure.
And then it is pitch black for three hours, miraculously black in the middle of the day, the blackness shrouding his nakedness and pulsing, while all my sin oozes across his soul, wrapping its fingers around it, coating it, all my guilt, the shame of all my wickedness and the wickedness of every person who will one day turn to him in faith, all cast to his account. Murders, rapes, adulteries, abusive fits of violence, greed, all current and future blasphemies against himself, countless unkindnesses, lies, and more. Suddenly, he is being punished justly. He is being, not tortured, but punished, and for all that sin on his account, it is just, and death itself is just. And yet, he never did any of it. He had substituted himself for us. In that moment, God was reconciling us to himself as Jesus cries out in the torchlit night of an afternoon, “My God, My God–why have you forsaken me?!!!”
No call from heaven. Just whispers, then laughter from earth. Then another piercing call, and a final exhaling. His body stops heaving, slumps motionless, strangely hanging, three nails mounting it to the sky.
Then an earthquake, and something Matthew’s readers would see the import of: the curtain, that holy veil separating the priestly room of sacrifice and prayer for mercy, was torn and the room fell open to the world. The temple, his body, was destroyed. No more sacrifices need be made. The sin-covering and wrath-bearing body and blood of our Lord had been successfully given for us. Even the shroud between life and death was torn in two for a time. The Son of God had been offered to his Father for the sake of the world.
All that remained for the day was to take down the body, wash it as best as possible, bind up its gaping holes, and lay it in a tomb. Politically, one more task was necessary, to seal the tomb and to post a guard, lest disciples steal the body and start a hoax.
Application: Nothing remains for you. “It is finished,” Christ said from the cross. If you will turn in repentance and believe in his taking your place, you will be saved. If you have done so, remember that each day, you can look back on this when you are troubled. What a wonderful Savior!
Read from God 