Good Friday | Understanding Crucifixion
Today I want to help you meditate on the sacrifice of Christ. Good Friday was a good day for the world, but a very bad day for Christ. It is a good day for us because it was a bad day for Jesus.
Crucifixion was first practiced by the Medes and Persians, and then used by Alexander the Great who lived about 300 years prior to Christ. Eventually it was adopted and perfected by the Romans.
One source described crucifixion as "a particularly cruel and degrading form of capital punishment." Crucifixion was universally recognized as the worst form of torture and execution. The pain was so horrible that there were no words that could describe it, so they invented a new word -- excruciating. The word literally means "from the cross." Crucifixion was so horrible that the Romans only used it on slaves and foreigners. They considered it too harsh and cruel to use against a Roman citizen.
The crucifixion of Christ did not begin on the cross; it began with flogging. In a typical Roman flogging, the victim was tied to a post with his arms and hands tied up over his head in order to fully expose his entire backside -- back, shoulders, buttocks, and legs. The harsh whipping or scourging usually lasted for thirty-nine lashes, but often it was more than that. It all depended upon the mood of the soldier. The special whip had several names: cat of nine tails; flagellum; flagrum; scorpion. It had nine braided leather strands with heavy metal balls woven into them. Whipping would create deep bruises which would eventually bust open as the flogging went on. The whip also had pieces of sharp bone, metal, or bronze woven into the strands. These would dig into the flesh as the whip hit the body, and then rip off flesh and cause deep cuts to the bone as the whip was pulled back.
One scholar who studied Roman floggings said, "As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh."
Eusibius, a historian from the third century wrote about Roman floggings, "The sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victims were open to exposure."
The flogging was so severe that it would cause the victim to go into hypovolemic shock due to massive blood loss.
At this point Jesus would have experienced four things. First, His heart would have been racing to try to pump blood that wasn't there. Second, His blood pressure would have dropped, causing him to fall down and pass out. Third, His kidneys would have stopped producing urine to try to hold on to fluid. Fourth, He would have been very thirsty to try to replace the lost fluids from blood loss. Many victims did not survive the flogging.
In a typical Roman crucifixion, the victim would have been flogged at the site of the cross. In His case, Jesus was flogged first, and then He had to carry His cross to the site of the cross. The cross could have weighed between 100-200 pounds. Jesus carried the cross all the way outside the city to the site of the crucifixion, a place called Golgotha (Latin -- Calvary), meaning Place of the Skull.
The crucifixion started about 9 AM Friday morning. The soldiers began by nailing his hands and feet to the cross. His hands were stretched out on the crossbeam, and 5-7 inch spikes were nailed into His wrists. In the language of that time, the wrist was considered to be a part of the hand, but the nails weren't driven into the hands because the flesh and bone in the hands cannot support the weight of the body, so the nail would rip through the hand.
The pain of the nails was terrible. The nail would have pierced the median nerve, the largest nerve going out to the hand. One person described the pain like this. Think of the pain you feel when you hit your funny bone. That nerve is called the ulnar nerve. Imagine squeezing and crushing that nerve with a pair of pliers. That's the pain Jesus felt.
The cross usually consisted of two parts. The vertical beam remained in the ground, and the crossbeam was likely the part that Jesus carried to Golgotha. Once His hands were nailed to the crossbeam, the soldiers lifted Jesus up and connected the crossbeam to the vertical beam. Now all of Jesus' weight was supported by His nail-pierced wrists. The weight of His body would have immediately caused His arms to be stretched out an extra six inches, dislocating both shoulders. Then the soldiers drove a single nail through Jesus' overlaid feet.
Also consider that Jesus was likely stripped naked in order to increase the humiliation.
Once Jesus was nailed to the cross, He was left to hang there for hours. It started at 9 AM, and He hung until His death at 3 PM. Six hours. This was the genius behind crucifixion -- a long, slow, torturous death.
How did Jesus die? Scholars believe He died from asphyxiation and cardiac arrest. Asphyxiation is a fatal lack of oxygen. Cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating and you die. When Jesus was on the cross, His body hung in an inhale position. Every time Jesus needed to exhale, He had to push up on His feet, which would have caused the nail to tear through the foot and brace up against the tarsal bone. He would lift Himself up to exhale, and then sink down to inhale. This would have become exhausting over time. Eventually His breathing would have slowed down, leading to an irregular heartbeat, which eventually led to cardiac arrest and death.
And to think, Jesus endured all this for you. See how much He loves you? Put your faith in Him. Follow Him. Serve Him. Take some time today to thank Him for His sacrifice, and to renew your commitment to Him.
“God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10
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