By David Scott Robertson
Last evening my wife and daughter and I saw Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ."
Our reaction to the film parallels many positive reports you may have already read or heard. It's difficult to put into words the profound impact the movie has already begun to make in the lives of my family.
An eight-year-old child that I was escorting to the R-rated movie (with permission from his mother) asked me as we were going in if we were going to get Cokes and popcorn. My reply was "No, son. This movie is not entertainment."
Perhaps my eleven-year-old daughter Abbey summarized it best when I asked her reaction on the drive home from the theater: "Daddy, until I saw this movie I never really understood what Jesus did for me. Now I'm glad that I'm a Christian." We had her sleep with her mother last night while I slept in another room.
Our family prayed before we viewed the film that the Holy Spirit would do in us what He wanted to accomplish. I believe God is answering that prayer.
As I write this, the Holy Spirit continues to massage deeper truths into my spirit. I can't speak for anybody else but me, but I suspect the effects of this movie on my life are going to be far-reaching and it may take some time to realize its full impact.
It's now the "day after," and I find myself sitting in my office with the lights off meditating on the movie. The graphic scenes of Jesus' profound suffering that justifiably earned an R-rating are being played and re-played through my mind and are being engraved on the tablet of my heart.
Still, I do not believe that Mel Gibson and his associates were able to capture the full measure of the sufferings of Christ. I believe that his team has done a more than satisfactory job, perhaps even the greatest job ever by a group of filmmakers, in bringing this true story to the screen without including excessive and unnecessary embellishments or detractions from the gospel text of the passion of the Christ.
Still, I don't believe that any human being or group of human beings will ever truly know the full extent of the outpouring of God's love through Jesus' sacrifice, nor the depths of His suffering and abuse during the last twelve hours of His life.
My thoughts today, oddly enough, drift to imaginary conversations of Roman soldiers re-uniting back at the barracks after an unusually difficult day at work.
"What just happened here?"
"I don't know what came over me. My lust for blood was insatiable today."
"I can't believe I said the things I said to Him. I don't know where I came up with the curses I cursed Him with."
"Did you see Him stand up after we whipped Him the first time?"
"I can't explain my irresistible urge to ram that crown of thorns on His head. I couldn't help myself."
"When I spit in His face, He looked at me. I'll never forget that look."
"Malchus! Malchus! What's up with you?"
"Truly this man was the Son of God."
It is my conviction, not in a dogmatic way, but firmly nonetheless, that Satan and his fallen angels were there en masse at the passion of the Christ.
I also believe that at least twelve legions of angels were there, hands on weapons, poised to strike immediately at a single command of their King, Jesus. Agonizingly, it never came.
But it's the demons' powerful influence over human beings at the passion of the Christ that my thoughts drifted to seated in the darkness of my office this morning.
I believe they played a key role, spurred on by their bloodthirsty master, Satan, to influence Roman solders to set new benchmarks in cruelty, to work a crowd into a murderous frenzy, to whisper key phrases into the ears of religious leaders who parroted the evil words out loud to an insecure Pontius Pilate persuading him to accept their unreasonable request to release Barrabas and permit the murder of Jesus of Nazareth.
The unconverted, unregenerate Roman soldiers that day were morbid puppets manipulated and guided into saying and doing things I believe even hardened soldiers didn't normally do. But this was not a normal day. And Jesus was no ordinary prisoner.
As the scriptures say, "…at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6).
And at just the right time, the ex-archangel Lucifer and his demonic followers, who had been excommunicated from heaven along with their fallen leader, seized the opportunity to kill the Christ and orchestrate the greatest upset in the history of the world.
And Satan laughed in his arrogant pride.
Having said all that, I want to revisit a writing I released a long time ago called "The Unrecorded Sufferings of Christ." Perhaps it's time to think about such things. Perhaps it time for us to petition the Father not for a raise at work or another blessing to add to the list, but for a revelation of the cross; for a greater understanding of the passion of the Christ.
"The Unrecorded Sufferings of Christ - Revisited"
by David Scott Robertson
"He [Jesus Christ] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not" -- Isaiah 53:3
Jesus Christ was familiar with the concept of suffering. You see, there's no teacher like experience. Jesus was well acquainted with the full range of pain that a human body can experience.
The climax, of course, the cataclysmic centerpiece of human history, culminated in the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ. The bleeding began in the Garden of Gethsemane.
"And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44).
And it did not stop until He was drained to the dregs on the cross. Much blood was sacrificed at the whipping post. The flogging, the flogging was horror and agony personified. The flogging scene from the movie "The Passion of the Christ" pushed me closer to the edge than I've ever been. As devastating as the flogging was, it was survivable. But the cross was fatal 100% of the time.
We read the Bible narrative about the horrors of crucifixion. And there is no short supply on the Internet of commentaries that add to our understanding of how death is achieved on a cross. Medical doctors have written detailed explanations of what physiologically happens to the human body during the actual process of dying in this brutal manner. Although history books can tell us about the particulars of a victim being nailed to a cross, they cannot adequately communicate the level of suffering that takes place upon it.
Here is what I want you to consider today: Were there other unrecorded sufferings of Christ? Could it be that the half has not yet been told? Is it possible that Jesus endured more, much more suffering than at first believed?
Perhaps additional sufferings took unorthodox and unaccounted for forms. It would be impossible to refer to these as "lesser" sufferings. God alone knows the full extent of the agony that took place that day. Point your attention, if only for a moment, to the subtle sufferings of Jesus the Christ…
Consider this one fact and ponder its profound implications: The hands of Jesus Christ were immobile while nailed to the cross. He was incapacitated. His hands could not perform routine duties that hands are designed to do.
I think about the flies that must have been drawn to Him by the smell of blood; biting flies with no way for Jesus to flick them off.
Have you ever had a broken arm or known someone in a cast? Have you watched a friend go crazy trying to scratch an itch they couldn't get to? Was this the case of our Lord?
Ever had a cramp or a "charley-horse" in your leg while in bed asleep and the only thing that brings relief is to jump out of bed immediately and walk it out? If Jesus had any cramps He could do nothing about it except grunt and bear it.
Do you think He had a headache that day? Have you ever had a head-on collision with something or somebody and knocked yourself silly? The Lord had several head-on collisions that day.
"…and they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. 'Hail, king of the Jews!' they said.
They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again" (Matthew 27:29-30).
No aspirin or medication for Jesus. The ultimate Pain Reliever had no access whatsoever to any pain reliever.
Have you ever been so thirsty that all you can think of is getting a drink? We know He was thirsty because He said on the cross, "I thirst" (John 19:28). I'm sure Jesus' thirst was beyond anything you or I have ever experienced. Psalm 22:15 prophetically captures a few of Jesus' words on the cross:
"My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death."
Have you ever "pulled a muscle" during work or exercise? Torn a ligament? Strained a tendon and had to go to an orthopedic doctor to get it checked out? I cannot imagine that Jesus didn't suffer all sorts of muscle pulls, rips, tears, strains and tender tissues being forced out of joint.
If a chiropractor could have x-rayed Jesus' spine after His death, what story do you suppose the x-rays would tell? What problems would an MRI reveal? What would the cat scan say? Not a bone broken, but as the prophetic Psalm of Christ on the cross, Psalm 22 says: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint."
None of us enjoy being subject to outside weather and the elements without having the proper clothing to regulate our body temperature. Jesus was at the mercy of the weather that day with no ability to adjust for it. Chapped lips? Sun in His eyes? Sweat in the cuts? Salt in the wounds? Cold? Hot? Too bad.
Have you ever had the unfortunate experience of having a bug fly in your ear? What's the knee-jerk reaction of your body? A finger immediately goes to the ear to help dig the pest out!
What if Satan sent a bug? Or bugs? Demons entered pigs one time (Matthew 8:30-32) so why not control bugs? Did the devil have the power to arrange it? Even a gnat can be a nuisance when it keeps dive-bombing your face. Flies? Mosquitoes? Spiders? Ravens? Crows? Vultures? Were they present and accounted for on Golgotha's hill that day?
Have you ever had a stopped up nose and needed to "blow it?" You reach for a tissue and you blow your nose. Jesus had no tissue and no reach to blow his nose or wipe His brow and dry up salty sweat in His stinging wounds.
Have you noticed that most artwork of the crucifixion depicts Jesus wearing an undergarment? Or was He, in fact, crucified naked? Normal crucifixion protocol called for complete humiliation and degradation.
Now what I am about to say is almost unspeakable, but…did the Son of Man have to "go to the bathroom" that day while nailed to the cross? If He had to obviously He couldn't go anywhere but on Himself.
Ever had a blood test where they prick the end of your finger? For most people the jab of a lance or a sterile needle drawing blood is an unpleasant experience. What about hundreds of dirty splinters raking over a raw, bloody back as Jesus labored to breathe? Just dropping the cross into the hole and the sudden jolt at the end would have caused most men to faint in pain.
What about when they tore His clothing off prior to putting Him on the cross? The coagulated blood had caused His garment to be like an adhesive to His skin and the soldiers carelessly ripped it off re-opening the wounds. We don't read about it but I believe it may have happened just that way.
From the foul-smelling saliva that was spit upon Him to the foul words that were vomited on Him from the very "enemies" for whom He was dying, Jesus endured unimaginable, and I believe unrecorded, sufferings on the cross.
None could compare, I suppose, with what I'm about to say. Pain of the body is one thing, but pain of the heart can be unbearable. Jesus had to endure the worst of the worst of sufferings while on the cross:
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
As Jesus' life ebbed away, the Light of the World began to flicker. As Jesus became sin for us, His Father in heaven who in the beginning said "let there be light" withdrew. And the Bible records: "From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land" (Mat 27:45).
For three hours the same darkness that hovered over the face of the deep before the world began returned, and the earth, in a way, once again became without form and void.
For the first and only time, God the Father had to turn His back on His Son who bore the sins of the world and prompted an agony so deep, so intense, so immense, that Jesus cried out:
"…'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'--which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Matthew 27:46).
I write this thought today not to subject you to spurious thoughts carrying shock value, but to somehow try and wrap my own mind around the astonishing and lavish price that God paid for my sin and for your sin in order to adopt us into the family of God.
It's been said that the Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God.
Writing this thought today helps me focus a little bit more on the unimaginable horror of sin
and the incomprehensible price it cost God to redeem us from it.
Some have said that God paid much too high a price for us. Who can argue with that?
Nevertheless, Jesus paid a debt He did not owe, so we could gain a life we could not earn.
Given that, how can we doubt the love and caring concern of our living Savior? No matter what you face to today, consider the problem in light of the cross.
We've talked about the unrecorded sufferings of Christ, but we haven't even considered the unrecorded sufferings of God the Father who had to watch His Son, His only Son, suffer and die in such a shameful and painful manner. And all this for sinners, many of whom would never repent and embrace God's love at all despite knowing the facts of the passion of the Christ.
To my view, the only thing that could conceivably be worse than the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ is for you and I to refuse to accept His sinless life and vicarious death as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So then, let us take to heart God's passionate declaration of love forever settled in heaven, permanently written in His Holy Word, and infinitely memorialized as scars on the hands, feet, and side of His beloved Son.
The next time you are tempted to ask yourself, "where is God in all of this?" remember…
"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
DSR
2/27/04