Easter Thoughts

I'm deeply moved each year during this holy week as we again get a fresh reminder of the suffering that Jesus endured for each of us. I'm reminded again that it was my fingerprints on the whip that struck our Savior that day. My prints were on the hammer that drove the nails. These sobering facts always bring a freshness to my relationship with Jesus. This year I'm especially drawn to the scourging that Christ endured. It's interesting to me that a scourging was never usually given with any other punishment, but Jesus got that plus the crucifixion. The Romans actually never expected the prisoner to survive the scourging and in fact would try to wrap the tails of the whip around the abdomen of the victim in order to disembowel them. This way soldiers didn't have to stand out in the heat for hours while the victim died the slow suffocating death of crucifixion. So forty stripes save one were administered. Thirteen on the left shoulder - thirteen on the right shoulder - and 13 on the loins. The psalmist said:

Psalm 129:3 - "The plowers plowed on my back; they made their furrows long."

I've no doubt that Mel Gibson's Passion, as graphic as it was, could not even do justice to what Jesus went through in that horrific 6 minutes of scourging.I certainly am not trying to downplay the importance of the cross, because that's where Jesus died for our sins and bought our salvation - but I believe the whipping post was just as powerful. At the whipping post He took those stripes that bring emotional and physical healing and deliverance:

Isaiah 53:5 - "But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our inquities; the chastisment of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

Every stripe He took was for each sin we've ever committed. Somebody had to pay - and it was all laid on Him. Make's this weekend a whole lot more special.