The Word - April 6, 2012 - THE PAINS OF THE CROSS

"And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him," (Luke 23:33a).

There are some who have written that our Lord Jesus was dragged or pushed along the way to Calvary. That is not so. Isaiah says, "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." Led--isn't that beautiful? And then it was that the brutalities began to come His way. He was beaten. The soldiers buffeted Him, mobbed Him and scoffed Him. He suffered every indignity that was possible to heap upon Him.

And there came into focus the words of the prophet written down seven hundred years before, "I gave my back to the smiters. They made long furrows on my back. They plucked off the hair from my beard."

Can you look into the eyes of Him about whom we are writing? Can you picture the fact that He was marred more than any other? Can you see the picture of the form that was so beaten that He was not even recognizable as a human being?

Does the picture of our Savior dying on the cross touch your heart? My dear brother, my dear sister, I believe none of us can ever be the same again, so far as God is concerned, after having Christ's sufferings indelibly fused on our brains. Just to try and understand the mystery; God deserted by God! God in the form of a man hanging, nailed to a Roman cross! For me! For you!

When growing up in Canada, we many times sang that beautiful hymn hardly ever heard any more: "Abba, Father! We approach Thee in our Savior's precious name; We Thy children here assembled access to Thy presence claim. From our sins His blood has washed us; Tis through Him our souls draw near; and Thy Spirit too, has taught us, Abba, Father! Name so dear."

His the wounds, the curse, the gall; His the stripes, He bore them all; His the dying cry of pain; When our sins, He did sustain! "Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small! Love so amazing, so divine, Shall have my heart, my life, my all!