The most precious thing in all of time and eternity is at once both entirely free and the most expensive thing ever purchased.
Salvation costs nothing to the one who receives it, but only because the amazingly, incomprehensibly high price was paid in full by another. The apostle Peter said, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
When Jesus died on Calvary, he paid a price that human minds have difficulty comprehending. Many years ago, a lawyer named Earl Wingo examined the trial of Jesus, examined the laws of the Jews and the Romans and determined that 18 laws were broken in order to put Jesus to death. Yet Isaiah said that he “opened not his mouth.” Matthew 27:26 tells us that he was scourged. A thousand years or so before it happened, Psalm 129:3 prophetically described it as plowers plowing on his back.
Isaiah tells us that his beard was physically yanked off of his face, and that people spit in his face, beat him in the face, and yet he did not hide his face from any of it. The result was that his face became “marred more than any man.” Mark tells us that a crown of thorns was placed on his head, inch-long, pliable thorns that pierced the skin, hit the skull and turned like a fishhook to exit somewhere else.
Mark further says that they smote him on the head with a reed, and the tense used indicates that they did it over and over again. A concussion was inevitable, perhaps even multiple concussions.
Judas, a man he regarded as a friend, betrayed him. The disciples in general fled in fear. Peter denied he even knew him, going so far as to curse when he did so. They took his clothing before crucifying him, leading the writer of Hebrews to say that he “despised the shame.”
His hands and feet were pierced. There are around 7,800 nerve endings in each foot. The hands are even worse, with around 2,500 nerve endings per square centimeter. Having those nails driven through any part of the hands or feet, even the wrist or ankles, was absolute agony with every blow. When the cross was lifted up and then dropped into the hole with him already attached to it, Psalm 22:14 tells us that his bones came out of joint.
He experienced severe dehydration, which normally leads to extreme headache, muscle cramps and swelling of the tongue. Each of the seven statements he made on the cross was an act of grace, spoken through the cracked lips of a dehydrated man.
He had trouble breathing. When a person was crucified they usually drowned as their lungs filled with fluid, or else their heart stopped beating when the pressure of the fluid around it got too great. The only way that a crucified person could breathe was to push up with his legs, thus putting his back in agony as the splinters from the cross dug into the open wounds.
He had to watch his own mother weep in agony below his cross, breaking his own heart. He was, in his own words, forsaken by God, as our sins were poured out on him. This was his own father. He lived a sinless life, yet Paul told the Corinthians that he “became sin for us.”
It is for all of this that the aged apostle John said that Jesus was the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sin. Simply put, no one else did this for you, no one else could have ever done this for you, so nothing and no one else will satisfy God the Father.
As you go about your day today, remember the cross, remember the cost.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books which are available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.