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The Price
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[August 06, 2009]
-- As often as we eat the
bread and drink the cup we proclaim the Lord's death, death on a
cross. Today, we have made the cross a thing of beauty. The harsh
reality of this most cruel of execution devices is no longer grasped
by the people of the world. In Jesus' day, crucifixion was regarded
as the worst, the most degrading form of execution, reserved
especially for traitors. The land was dotted with the upright stakes
which, even when empty, served as reminders and warnings to those
who might entertain ideas of insurrection.
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 The condemned man was usually scourged and forced to carry the patibulum, or heavy crossbeam, of the device of his own execution to
the place of his death. He was mocked and ridiculed, buffeted, and
spat upon all the way there. Then, he was thrown down against the
crossbeam on the ground and fastened to it, either with thongs or
with long spikes driven between the bones of his arms. The soldiers
dragged him to the place where the upright was already planted in
the earth and fixed the crossbeam to it. Throughout the time that he
hung there, stripped naked, he was subjected to all the verbal abuse
his wicked tormentors could imagine. In this form of execution the
sadism of the executioners was fully vented.
The victim knew that when the sun went down and the crowds went home
the beasts would come and attack him as he hung there. To all the
physical abuse was added the emotional agony of knowing, when death
had claimed his soul, his body would hang there, food for the
carrion eaters. He almost certainly would never be buried -- the
final and utmost humiliation. Death by crucifixion -- the mind
recoils from the thought of the horror and obscenity of such an end. |
For Jesus, death on the cross went even beyond this, for in addition
to all the other agony, He drank to the full the cup of God's wrath
for all the sin of all the ages. Jesus willingly suffered this for
us. Never forget it. Remember the price He paid for our sin and,
remembering, commit yourself to proclaim His death and resurrection
that others, too, will remember.
[text from file received by Edna Anne Baughman Smith]
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