Why Crucifixion

  The Lord was “Crucified.” Matthew 27:31, says, “…they led Him away to crucify Him.”  We cannot possibly have too vivid of a picture of what Jesus took for us on the Cross of Calvary.  Klausner, the Jewish writer, says, “Crucifixion is the most terrible and cruel death which man has ever devised for taking vengeance on his fellow man.”  He continues with, “The criminal was fastened to his cross, already a bleeding mass from the scourging.  There the criminal hung to die from hunger, thirst, and exposure, unable to defend himself from the torture of the gnats and flies that settle on his naked body and on his bleeding wounds.” Our modern day pictures painted of Jesus hanging upon the Cross do not give the full picture of what Christ suffered.

  The results of sin have affected many and left them unable to defend themselves from the destruction of sin.  Many young people are victimized by exposure to pornography, humanistic views and a world despising of the things of God.  A great famine of hearing the Word of God is causing many around the world to literally die of spiritual hunger and thirst.

  For this reason, Jesus carried the battlefield wound of crucifixion. The wounds that He was afflicted with in the conquest for the souls of man were a curse for Him but a blessing for us.  These blessings do not come as a reward for good works but for God’s name sake.  God had given the prophet Isaiah great understanding of the work of the Lord, he writes, "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)  God had revealed to King David some powerful truths of God’s loving hand, he writes, “[God] does not treat us our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities… as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

  The great news about Easter is that it records the end of the life of Christ upon this present earth before He was taken up to be once again with His father.  Yet, before He leaves this earth, He opens the way for man to enter into the Holy of Holies for communion with God.  The Bible says at the moment Jesus gave up His spirit willingly, the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom.  What Christ suffered opened the way for repentant mankind to have his relationship restored with God and Christ.