Crucifixion was not a pretty picture.
A medical doctor provides a physical description:
A heavy beam is tied across the prisoners
shoulders. He is forced to walk with the beam burdening his progress. The bean, as
is the rest of the cross, is intentionally rugged. This is so it tears the
skin of the person being crucified as they hang from it. The ruggedness speeds up
his impending death.
I keep saying his, since women normally were
stoned to death rather than crucified.
The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted
man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood.
The legionnaire feels for the
depression at the front of the wrist.
He drives a heavy, square wrought iron
nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly, he moves to the other side
and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to
allow some flex and movement
The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot
is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes
down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed.
The victim is now crucified. As he slowly sags down
with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots
along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain - the nails in the
wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves.
As he pushes himself upward to avoid
this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his
feet.
Again he feels the searing agony of the nail
tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet. As the arms fatigue,
cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, throbbing
pain.
With these cramps comes the inability to push
himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled.
He fights to raise himself in order to
get even one small breath.
Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and
in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided.
Spasmodically, he is able to push himself
upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain,
cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation,
searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down
against rough timber.
Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain
deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to
compress the heart. It is now almost over.
The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical
level-the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood
into the tissues and the tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in
small gulps of air.
He can feel the chill of death creeping
through his tissues...Finally, he can allow his body to die...
All this the Bible records with the simple words,
"and they crucified Him" (Mark 15:24).
What wondrous love is this? Many people don't know
that pain and suffering our Lord, Jesus Christ went through for us...because of the
brutality, crucifixion was given a sentence to only its worst offenders of
the law.
Thieves, murderers, and rapists would be the types
of creeps who got crucified. Yet, here Jesus is being
crucified between two hardened criminals...
What did Jesus do?
Did he murder anyone?
Did he steal anything?
The answer as we all know is NO!!
Jesus did nothing to deserve this type of death,
yet he went willing to die, in between two thieves, so that we might be saved.
He only was guilty of Love in the First Degree
And there, in between the sinners, was our
Savior slain for our sins.
