"What Jesus Had Done In The Cross"

What is on the Cross that the Apostle Paul had seen in Colossians 2:13-15? ...That it is today a universal symbol of life? In Jesus’death, all who believe in Him may have LiFE... Hope&humility.. Freedom!

The soldiers shove the Carpenter to the ground and stretch His arms against the beam. One presses a knee against a forearm and a spike against His hand. Jesus turns His face toward the nail, just as the soldier lifts the hammer to strike it. So, the hands of Jesus opened up. He was no stranger to the driving of the nails. As a Carpenter, He knew how to drive those nails. As a Savior? He knew what it meant.

The Cross was planted so that the greatest amount of sunlight will pierce the Savior’s eyes.Most condemned during that time hang naked. Below,the curious wait, fascinated by the torture. The macabre scene is played out slowly. Dying should be a private thing,not a public spectacle. There is something obscene about having a mob of people standing around waiting for Him to die.His lips are now dry. Mouth is parched. Blood is hot.The skin is fevered. The real horror is only beginning. What happened until now, would only be compared to a child’s play! And now, one by one His muscles of the back gather in tight knotted cramps! There is no escaping them, no pulling out of them. He was nailed to the Cross.... The pain is now moving from the shoulders to the thorax, to the abdomen. His every muscles now are locked in solid knots and the agony is beyond endurance.The pain and symptoms are identical to tetanus or lockjaw,a state of a muscle undergoing continued contraction. The men below shriek into insanity... Man,with all his genius,has never devised a crueler nor more agonizing death than that of The Crucifixion!...the slow,steady contraction of muscles. Each moment an eternal agony. The neck cramps becoming rigid each passing second. There are flies and insects hovering above pestering His wounds and blood and below the yelps of dogs smelling fresh blood in their nostrils.

As the hour passed, soldiers were inclined to hasten death. They began breaking bones of the two thieves between Him. Standing on a ladder, the legionnaire swings the mallet in a short arc and shatter the right femur(thighbone) instantly. A second, sharp blow shatters the left thigh.And then the other thief. The same procedure was done to sped up their death. These were new pains unto death.

But not with Jesus. He gave up His spirit in time thus not one of His bones were broken.

Could there ever be more intense suffering than this? Christ was crucified. He died the most brutal death ever devised by man! It was designed to allow the slow death erosion of cell, muscles, emotion, bone, tissues, mind, spirit, blood and heartbeat!

That is how they see it. That is how medical science could interpret it.That is how writers wrote about and film-makers portrayed it. But that is not what the Apostle Paul had seen. With the eyes of faith? He had seen the unseen. The power of the blotting out of the handwriting. The potency that is in the nailing to the cross and our participation in the triumphing over the enemies.

Let your spiritual eyes see what the Apostle Paul had seen and now, thanks be to God, who made us, and leads us to know the things which had before was hidden. "I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction.But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had,they would never have crucified our glorious Lord. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God. But we know these things because God has revealed them to us by His Spirit,and His Spirit searches out everything and shows us even God’s deepest secrets."(ICor.1:18;2:8,10 NLT)

Let us perceive what Our Lord and Saviour had done in the cross that day that we should experience the benefits of it as we live a victorious life in Christ Jesus.

I-BLOTTING OUT THE HANDWRITING:v.14

The Apostle Paul had begun with the word in verse 13 that God had forgiven us as He canceled the judgments in His written law that was always against us.Verse 14 explains how we are forgiven.

For Paul, the most important thing that was blotted out at the cross was the condemnation brought about by our sin.That condemnation arose out of a broken moral law. As he says in Rom.7:7,"if it had not been for the law,I should not have known sin"(RSV). A good illustration of it is found also in Paul’s letter to Philemon in verse 18 of that epistle..."I,Paul have written it with mine own hand. I will repay it." In short, crossing thus with X as we do today and so cancelled.