Six Hours One Friday

“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit” (Matt 27:45-50).
 
Crucifixion is one of the most barbaric, humiliating, torturous ways to die. One online source notes, “The Romans adopted the practice and elevated it to a level that was unprecedented – at one point crucifying 500 people a day. It was practiced from the 6th century BC until the 4th century AD. The Roman emperor Constantine I banned the practice in 337 AD.”[1] Crucifixion was a slow, painful death that not only humiliated the person being executed but also was a warning to any who would dare defy the Roman government.
 
“…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Shame was involved from the beginning in Jesus’ crucifixion. They whipped him with a flagrum, stripped him, put a scarlet robe on him, twisting thorns into a makeshift crown, and placed a reed in his hand like a scepter. They mocked him, spat upon him, and beat him with rods. They then ripped those robes off, put his clothes back on, and marched him to where he was crucified.  Jesus was stripped naked and nailed to the cross to be humiliated and mocked until he died. In a very real sense, Jesus bore our shame on the cross.
 
As horrible as crucifixion was, it was not the most horrific reality of the cross. When Jesus hung on the cross, he became the object of God the Father’s wrath against sin. He experienced the abandonment of the Father in some mysterious way that goes beyond our ability to fully comprehend. All the punishment for all our sin was poured out on Christ on the cross. In those hours he experienced all the suffering that we would have paid for eternity had he not taken our place. The physical suffering, as gruesome as it was, pales in comparison to the reality that he absorbed the full fury of God’s wrath for all our guilt on the cross.
 
He cried out one last time, “It is finished,” (John 19:30) and gave up his life. His work of suffering on our behalf was complete when he died. “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).  May we exclaim with the hymn writer:
 

My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!—
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Horatio G. Spafford, “It is Well with My Soul”

[1] https://www.ajc.com/news/national/how-did-crucifixion-kill-jesus/C3z0FaYjKCghzENYH9LHzM/#:~:text=It%20could%20take%20hours%2C%20or,and%20yielded%20up%20the%20ghost.