At our ministry a few days ago a couple other guys and I were cleaning out a shed and there was a big cross that needed to be moved out of the shed to the other side of the church maybe 50 yards away. So I picked up the cross, and my first thought was, “Wow… I need to workout more.” After a few moments of struggling I picked it up and Luis, the grounds keeper, showed me the easiest way to carry it. So I began my walk over there, still kind of struggling and hurting from the corners of the wood digging into my shoulder. Halfway there a bunch of kids came out and started pointing and saying, “Jesús!” And getting in the way of where I was walking. I finally got to where it needed to go, and set it down with a big sigh of relief. Alex snapped a cool picture of it.
After I set it down, I knew God wanted me to stop and think about how much Jesus went through when He was carrying His cross. And man it hit me hard.
First of all, when Jesus was carrying his cross, He did it after He was beaten beyond recognition. Stop and think about that for a while. He had a crown of thorns twisted into his head, He was beaten with fists and reeds, and He was whipped on the back with whips that had pieces of metal and glass on the end to completely tear apart His flesh. They whipped Him and beat Him so much, that you couldn’t even tell it was Jesus anymore. My next thought was the weight of His cross. The crossbeam that Jesus carried was about 100 pounds, and He carried that after He was beaten beyond recognition. Then I thought about how far He carried it. The Via Dolorosa is the path Christ took to the crucifixion site, and is about 650 yards. He was beaten so badly that Simon had to bear His cross for Him at some point. Even if He carried His cross for a quarter of the way it’s still hard to imagine Him doing that for us. The entire way there He was mocked, spit at, pushed around, and just completely degraded by the very same people who praised and loved Him the week before. Lastly, He didn’t just take up His cross to go set it somewhere. He took up His cross to be nailed to it, to hang there; bloody, beaten, and suffocating. And finally to die on it. Die for the same people that drove the nails into His skin. For you and me.
All that is so hard for me to comprehend, but that is nothing compared to what happened to Jesus next. Luke 22:44 says, “Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” My friend Cy and I were talking about this and he helped me realize that Jesus was not sweating blood because He was afraid of what some Romans were about to do to Him. He was sweating blood because He was about to take on the punishment of every sin, committed by every man, in the past, present, and future. For three days He took the penalty that we all deserve, and paid it in full for us. He was about to take on the entire wrath of God. That’s why He was sweating blood. The King of the universe took our beating, our place on the cross, and the complete wrath of God for us.
That’s how much God loves you.
