“And He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” – 2 Corinthians 5:15
As we continue to look at the place (Golgotha) where Jesus was crucified, we want to better understand the purpose of this place. The location of Golgotha was chosen with three very specific purposes in mind. First, it was a place for public execution. But it was also a place of excruciating pain.
It is hard for us to imagine, the sympathetic, kind people we are today. But believe it or not, there once was a government that wanted you to hurt. They want you to experience great pain if you were against them. See, the Romans may not have created crucifixion, but they were the ones who perfected it.
Unlike executions in our day, the chief goal of crucifixion wasn’t death; it was pain. The longer and more painful a crucifixion was, the better. The Romans perfected the process and they knew how to keep their victims alive. They knew how to keep their victims conscious long enough for them to experience the maximum amount of pain possible.
Josephus, the first-century historian, witnessed many gruesome crucifixions in connection to the Siege of Jerusalem, and he characterized crucifixion as, “The most wretched of all deaths.” Emperor Tiberius once admitted that he preferred crucifixion over all other forms of capital punishment because it didn’t grant its victims the relief of death until they could utterly take no more.
Words cannot accurately describe the pain of crucifixion. And here is why I want to point this out to you today. I believe many times in our world today, we kind of breeze through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and we don’t really understand what He endured for us.
We don’t really think about it. We don’t want to think about it. We want to skip Good Friday and go straight to Easter. But the fact of the matter is, God sent His one and only Son to do something for you that you would never want to do for yourself.
Just some food for thought…Have you ever stopped to actually think about what Jesus went through for you? Take some time and picture this moment…picture Jesus on that cross…what kind of love that must take to die that way for someone…to die that way for YOU!