Matthew 27:33
The following words are quoted from the
19th century pastor, Frederic W. Farrar, who was chaplain to the
Queen of England. His descriptive verbal portrayal is of priceless value in
understanding what our Lord went through for our salvation.
“Go, soldier, get ready the cross!” In
some such formula of terrible import Pilate must have given his final order. It
was now probably about nine o’clock, and the execution followed immediately
upon the judgment. The time required for necessary preparation would not be
very long, and during this brief pause the soldiers, whose duty it was to see
that the sentence was carried out, stripped Jesus of the scarlet war-cloak, now
dyed with yet deeper stains of blood, and clad Him again in his own garments.
When the cross had been prepared they laid it – or possible only one of the
beams of it – upon His shoulders, and led Him to the place of punishment. The
nearness of the great feast, the myriads who were present in Jerusalem, made it
desirable to seize the opportunity for striking terror into all Jewish
malefactors. Two were therefore selected for execution at the same time with
Jesus – two brigands and rebels of the lowest stamp. Their crosses were laid
upon them, a maniple of soldiers in full armor were marshaled under the command
of their centurion, and, amid thousands of spectators, coldly inquisitive or
furiously hostile, the procession started on its way.
The cross was not, and could not have
been, the massive and lofty structure with which myriads of pictures have made
us familiar. Crucifixion was among the Romans a very common punishment, and it
is clear that they would not waste and trouble in constructing the instrument
of shame and torture. It would undoubtedly be made of the very commonest wood
that came to hand, perhaps olive or sycamore, and knocked together in the very
rudest fashion. Still, to support the body of a man, a cross would require to
be of a certain size and weight; and to one enfeebled by the horrible severity
of the previous scourging, the carrying of such a burden would be an additional
misery. But Jesus was enfeebled not only by this cruelty, but by previous days
of violent struggle and agitation, by an evening of deep and overwhelming
emotion, by a night of sleepless anxiety and suffering, by the mental agony of
the garden, by three trials and three sentences of death before the Jews, by
long and exhausting scenes in the Praetorium, by the examination before Herod,
and by the brutal and painful derisions which He had undergone, first at the
hands of the Sanhedrin and their servants, then from Herod’s body-guard, and
lastly from the Roman cohort. All these, superadded to the sickening
lacerations of the scourging, had utterly broken down His physical strength.
His tottering footsteps, if not His actual falls under that fearful load, made
it evident that He lacked the physical strength to carry it from the Praetorium
to Golgotha.
Matthew 27:33
The skulls of redemption
The skull at
the door
The skull
in time
The skull
of priority
The skull
of multiplication
The skull
of faith
The skull
of perpetual jeopardy
The skull of attraction