The Crucifixion of Christ: To Save Us From Our Sins

In continuing our look at the work of Christ, and in particular, what he did in the past, we now come to the ultimate reason for the Incarnation. Jesus came to save his people from their sins. 

This is what the angel told Joseph before Jesus was born:

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

Every human who has ever existed or will ever exist in the future has sinned. That sin has eternally separated us from God. We are so separated that there is absolutely nothing we can do to get back in God’s good graces. We are so corrupted by sin that nothing we could do would ever make us right with God. For there to be any hope, help would have to come from somewhere else, from someone not corrupted by sin.

That help came from God. The God whose wrath burns against sin provided the way for us to be freed from the penalty of our sin. But in order for God to save us, there had to be an Incarnation. God has declared the penalty for sin to be death, and either sinners have to pay their own penalty, or someone could pay it for them. That person who would pay the penalty would have to be human in order to be able to die, as God can’t die. But that person would also have to be God, because only the death of a sinless God would be payment enough for the whole world. 

So Jesus came into the world as fully man and fully God to save us from our sins. He was born to die.

That’s why the crucifixion of Christ is his ultimate past work. We’ll camp out here for a few posts as we unpack the importance of this act of sacrifice, but today, let’s look at the crucifixion itself.

The Bible doesn’t give us a detailed description of the crucifixion. Basically the Gospels say something like, “and they crucified him.” The details were left out probably because the readers of the Gospels knew exactly what these looked like. They had seen the pounding of the nails and heard the screams of the victims plenty of times before, so there was no need to paint a picture for them.

For us, though, we need the picture, so we can draw from both the Bible and from historical accounts of crucifixions to have a good idea of what happened that day.

Most victims were laid on the ground and nailed through their hands or wrists to the crossbeam with their arms raised, then hoisted up and hanged onto the vertical beam. Soldiers would then nail the victim’s feet to the vertical beam. They would do this with the victim’s knees bent, so the victim, by raising and lowering his legs, could move up and down the cross. 

When the victim was on the cross with his arms over his head and knees bent, he would have difficulty exhaling. Stuck in this position, the victim would suffocate in a short time. But the Romans didn’t want their victims to die in a short time. The purpose wasn’t just death, but excruciating pain and a slow death. In fact, the word “excruciating” comes from the Latin word excruciatus, which means “out of the cross.” The pain of crucifixion was so great that the Romans created a special word for it.

The Romans didn’t want a slow death, which is why they bent the knees when nailing the feet to the cross. This way the victim could push himself up in order to breathe. But that put all the weight on the nails, causing extreme pain, so the victim would eventually relax his legs, relieving some of the pain, yet bringing back the difficulty of breathing. So up and down on the cross the victim would move, until his energy to move was gone.

Jesus was on that cross from 9:00 am until 6:00 pm, moving up and down, going from great pain and the ability to breathe a little easier to a less (but still agonizing) pain but great difficulty breathing. And remember, Jesus’s back had been torn open by his flogging, and he was moving that back of his up and down on a rough wooden cross. 

The enormous physical pain of the cross was just part of what Jesus felt that day. 

Even worse for Jesus was the pain of bearing sin. Jesus was sinless, and as such he was revolted by sin. On the cross, out of love for us, he took on all the sin of all mankind (see Isaiah 53, Hebrews 9:28). He, God the Son, was abandoned by God the Father, who turned his back on Jesus as he bore our sin. The wrath of God against sin was poured out on Jesus. The emotional pain Jesus felt that day was far worse than his physical pain.

Late in the day, John says that Jesus uttered the words, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The actual word used is tetelestai, a word used by merchants to signify that something was “paid in full.”  The punishment for our sins had been paid. In the words of an old hymn, “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.” 

Finally, when Jesus was ready, he said these words:

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46)

And with that, God the Son was dead. No one, neither Roman nor Jew, took his life. Jesus gave it away. For you and for me.

In order for your sins to be forgiven, Jesus had to die. As someone once said, “Criminals were crucified because of their rebellion against Rome. Jesus was crucified because of our rebellion against God.”

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

The ultimate work of Christ was that he died for you. He died so that you might live. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that you won’t have to. He experienced the cross so that you can experience salvation.

So what about you? Have you accepted the gift that Jesus offers, the gift of the forgiveness of your sins and eternal life with him? If you haven’t, why not do that now? If you want to accept Jesus as your Savior and become God’s child forever, here’s all you do:

• Admit to God that you’ve sinned against him.
• Believe that Jesus paid the penalty for your sins and that he rose from the dead, and 
• Commit your life to Jesus and his leadership, trusting in his ability to give you life with him forever.

If you’ve never done that, why not now? 

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