Day 4: John 19:1-27
Stories: Jesus’ crucifixion
Curiosities:
1) Not counting it enough to torture and execute a man, the Roman soldiers decided to make sport of Jesus as He was being led to death. When we read that a Roman had someone flogged, most likely it was with something akin to what they called a “cat of nine tails.” It was a whip with shards of glass and pottery embedded into the many ends of the whip designed to remove large chunks of flesh as the person was whipped.
2) Pilate seems to have figured that if he flogged and mocked Jesus in front of them that the Jews would have pity on Him and ask Pilate to release Him. Pilate had no idea how much they hated Jesus.
3) When Pilate heard that Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God, he became very afraid of Jesus. In other accounts we know that his wife had a dream the night before about him and that Pilate should have nothing to do with Him.
4) Interestingly enough, the Jewish leadership, who hated their Roman rulers, conveniently claimed Caesar as their king when it meant getting Jesus put to death.
5) Jesus commands John to take care of His mother, Mary, after His death. We know from church history that Mary followed John around wherever he lived from this time forward. We know that she ended up in Ephesus and most likely died there. This begs the question of what happened to Mary’s other children. Where were they? Had they died?What about James, the brother of Jesus?
Paradoxes: Crucifixion is a means of torture and execution that exemplifies the height of human depravity. The process was meant to be the most painful, excruciating prolonging of a death sentence possibly ever created. God came to earth to save us and chose to die in the most gruesome and terrible means man has ever invented. Pure righteousness bore our sins on the cross – our greatest wickedness was placed on Him while He suffered the greatest wickedness man has ever displayed publicly.
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