When I was growing up My dad would say “grab your ankles” when he was about to spank us kids. He knew that bending over put tension on our backside and any pain he would inflict would be intensified through our posture. The picture I have attached is a drawing of Jesus at the whipping post. Before Jesus was crucified, he was flogged, stretched over a post so as to expose his back and backside and put tension on it to intensify the effectiveness of the whipping he was about to endure. Jesus never committed a single sin. Yet he was about to be punished. When my dad would punish me, it was because I was guilty of something rebellious and wrong. I had sinned and deserved punishment. Jesus was sinless. Yet he submitted himself to torture and death. Why? He knew what was coming and and he did it anyway. Why?
He was innocent and he did it anyway. Why?
Jesus knew how and when and what was coming to him and for him in Jerusalem and yet he went there willingly. Why?
Matthew 20.
“17 Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, 18 “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death 19 and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”’
Why? What prompted him to continue on into Jerusalem knowing he was about to die in the cruelest, most painful way that mankind had ever invented?
Obligation?
Duty?
Compulsion?
No.
It was love.
In Isaiah we read this:
“4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus knew we needed him to die in our place so he suffered the death we deserved. Then he was raised to life that we can live forever with him, this man who willingly walked into Jerusalem, knowing it would kill him.
He did it for us.
He did it for me.
He did it for you.
Today, what will we do about this?
“ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John.3:16-17 NIV
Today. How will we respond to this great love?
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