Mensa Otabil - Jesus Was Crucified
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Today is Good Friday, the day we commemorate the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll read from Luke chapter 23, verse 33: «And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left.» The death of Jesus Christ occurred under the most painful, most humiliating, and embarrassing circumstances. The extent to which the Son of God went for our salvation is remarkable. The form of His death, the place of His death, and the people He died with were all very humiliating. But that was the price that the Son of God paid for our salvation, and it shows the extent that God will go to bring us close to Himself.
So, we examine those three individually. The first is the form of His death: crucifixion. Jesus was crucified; it was the most cruel punishment of the Romans. It was invented by the Phoenicians and perfected by the Romans. It was a very painful death designed to humiliate the person who was being executed. Jesus Christ not only suffered crucifixion, but He was whipped, He carried His cross, and He was nailed publicly to the cross. Crucifixion was a very slow death which resulted in suffocation.
The second is the place where He died: Calvary. Today, it sounds like a very nice name, but Calvary was a place that was a rubbish dump, Golgotha for the Hebrews. It was a place that was outside the city gates of Jerusalem; that is where people threw all the rubbish. On the hill of Calvary, it wasn’t a nice place; it wasn’t decorated. There weren’t nice flowers and nice trees there; it was just a filthy, dirty rubbish dump. Jesus Christ came from Heaven, the glory of Heaven, to die on a rubbish dump, where all the waste of the city was thrown out. What nobody liked ended up in Calvary; there, in that spot, that’s why Jesus died. He was planted among the filth of the world.
The third is the people He died with: criminals. So, crucifixion, Calvary, criminals-common criminals, thieves who had committed common crimes and were now being executed for their crime. Jesus committed no crime yet was bunched up with them. When you look at the three things happening-the form of death, the place of death, and the people He died with-all of it was designed to carry a message that God will go to the lowest level, in the lowest place, to get us unto Himself. Jesus Christ paid the highest price in the foulest place on Earth, among the most despicable people, the lowest of people, to bring us to the heights of God’s love, grace, and mercy.
Today, when we talk of the crucifixion and the cross, the cross has become a symbol of honor and glory; we actually use it to adorn ourselves. That shows what Jesus did to that cross, and we talk about the thief who found grace of salvation on the cross of Calvary. So, as we contemplate all that happens on this Good Friday, remember the extent God went, to the lowest of the low, to bring us to the highest of the heights.
Let us pray: With me, Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing Your Son Jesus to die for me. I receive His life, in Jesus' name, Amen and Amen.