25It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.26The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”27And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.29Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days,30save yourself, and come down from the cross!”31In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.32Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.
Adam Hamilton, author of 24 Hours That Changed the World, our Lenten Study for this year, writes this about the meaning of the crucifixion known in theological terms as the atonement:
The Atonement was not about changing God or making it possible for God to forgive us. It was, rather, about changing you and me. Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection constitute a divine drama meant to communicate God’s Word to humanity, to make clear to us our need for redemption and forgiveness, to show us the full extent of God’s love and lead us to repentance. John’s Gospel begins with a prologue in which he speaks of Jesus as God’s Word. Jesus was God’s vehicle for communicating with us, his Word made flesh. In Jesus, God’s divine nature was united with human flesh to reveal his character, his love, and his will for humanity... He has set an example for us of a kind of love that alone has the power to save humanity from its self-destructive ways. Sacrificial love transforms enemies into friends, shames the guilty into repentance, and melts hearts of stone. The world is changed by true demonstrations of sacrificial love and by selfless acts of service.
How does this change of our hearts occur? Leslie Weatherhead, Pastor of City Temple in London during the blitz, put it this way:
How does this change of our hearts occur? Leslie Weatherhead, Pastor of City Temple in London during the blitz, put it this way:
See the power of the cross! Here is love indeed! You may take the physical expression of that love, you beat it, you lash it, you crown it with thorns, you nail it to a cross - and then? You cannot do anything more than kill the body in revolting circumstances. When you have crucified God, you cannot do anything else but sit down and watch him there. Probably you will break down and become changed. Few eyes could see the agony of God with any insight and remain unchanged. From the cross God reigns all-powerful, for love is the only all powerful force. And carry our heads as high as we may, they will bow before him at last. Believe as fiercely as we may that his methods are impractical and that our methods of force, our "practical" methods, are making the world sweet and clean, free and safe, and we shall realize at last that all such methods collapse and break down. We shall find that love that keeps on loving never breaks down. It may suffer all the signs of defeat, but it is never defeated. It haunts the mind and the conscience afterward and meets people in their thoughts from which no violence and no locked doors can keep it; and because God has made us as we are, it can find, quietly hidden in the-depths of every person's nature that which would bring him to say, "I'm sorry" and to change his life. This is the way in which God wins. Thus he achieves his purposes. This is the secret of power, a power compared with which that revealed in the solar system is as nothing and that which fills the heavens with stars is as the power of a child rolling marbles along the nursery floor.
But perhaps, the poet expresses it best. Here are the words to one of the anthems our choir is singing at the Good Friday Tenebrae Service:
Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted
Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, see Him dying on the tree!
This is Christ, by man rejected; here, my soul, your Savior see.
He’s the long expected Prophet, David’s son, yet David’s Lord;
by His Son, God now has spoken: He’s the true and faithful Word.
Tell me, all who hear Him groaning, was there ever grief like this?
Friends through fear His cause disowning, foes insulting His distress;
many hands were raised to wound Him, none would intervene to save;
but the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that justice gave.
You who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great
here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate.
See the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load;
It’s the Word, the Lord’s Anointed, Son of Men and Son of God.
Here we have a firm foundation, here the refuge of the lost;
Christ, the Rock of our salvation, His the name of which we boast.
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded, sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded who on Him their hope have built.
Hallelujah! Amen.
This is Christ, by man rejected; here, my soul, your Savior see.
He’s the long expected Prophet, David’s son, yet David’s Lord;
by His Son, God now has spoken: He’s the true and faithful Word.
Tell me, all who hear Him groaning, was there ever grief like this?
Friends through fear His cause disowning, foes insulting His distress;
many hands were raised to wound Him, none would intervene to save;
but the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that justice gave.
You who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great
here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate.
See the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load;
It’s the Word, the Lord’s Anointed, Son of Men and Son of God.
Here we have a firm foundation, here the refuge of the lost;
Christ, the Rock of our salvation, His the name of which we boast.
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded, sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded who on Him their hope have built.
Hallelujah! Amen.
