The Cross Part 9

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 8
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9. Jerusalem might not be scandalized by the bodies remaining on the cross on the sabbath-day; for it was a high day! We read also this (John 19:31-33): The Jews, therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath day, besought Pilate that their legs might be broken. But Jesus was dead already; so they brake not His legs as they did those of them who were crucified with Him. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in it a new sepulcher.... there they laid Jesus. (John 19:41, 42.)
Observe what a disgraceful kind of death, and how man did everything to add insult and shame and disgrace to Him in it. I think if those who did it had understood how the Lamb's sufferings were the expression of what was God's estimate of man's vileness: how nauseous and loathsome man's sin was to Him, they could not, in their self-righteousness, have more strongly expressed themselves against such an estimate of themselves than they did against Jesus. I do indeed think that this was in Satan's mind while leading them on. And 0 poor self-accusing sinner! stop thy self-accusations, and listen to God's charge and accusations against thee in the cross, for there He she wed His utter detestation and abhorrence of thee; and 0, there He was bearing the judgment of His own detestation of thee, that while He condemned thy sin, He might pardon thyself!
His being crucified was indeed a thing to be noticed; and it is but a little onward and we find the fact made a title for the Lord by the angels, and an interest in it that which made them love those that felt it.