The cross of Christ is ubiquitous within Christianity. You see it hanging around peoples necks, decorating churches, engraved on the covers of Bibles. It is clean, sanitized, and doesn’t really move us when we see it.
Every Easter, and sometimes more often than that, pastors of churches will take a moment to ponder what Jesus endured on the cross and in the hours leading up to it. The beatings, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails—each torture excruciating in its own way. Physical torment beyond our imagination.
And all this is true. Jesus did endure unimaginable physical torture. And unlike movies from the last century that show a character who barely flinches, Jesus would’ve felt it all, every blow, every lash, the nerve-grinding pain of the nails. Just thinking about it pulls at my heart strings. Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” went way over the top to show the physical sufferings, shocking audiences with scenes that are difficult to watch. It also defined the top of the scale from which all other movies are compared.
Going Deeper
But there is something deeper going on. You see, what Jesus endured was not necessarily any more painful than what any other victim of crucifixion would have endured. Most of them lingered for days on the cross, suffering in unimaginable agony. Yet Jesus died after only six hours.
I have heard various explanations for why Jesus died so quickly, but I don’t buy most of them. They all assume that Jesus experienced some physical trauma that was greater than anyone else, leading to His quick demise. The problem is, He was in the prime of His life. Thirty-three years old, physically active, strong, and healthy. There was no physical reason why you should die so much more quickly than everyone else.
However, the Bible gives us some clues. The first clue we find in Matthew 26:38. As He was entering the garden of Gethsemane, He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even to death.“ That word soul comes from the Greek word psyche, which indicates that this sorrow was in His mind, not in His body. And it was a sorrow so intense that He felt like it was going to kill Him.
A Sword
Just a few minutes before, Jesus had said something very interesting. In Matthew 26:31, He quoted a Bible verse from the Old Testament. “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man that is My fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” Zachariah 13:7. This is God speaking, saying that He is going to turn a sword on the Shepherd.
You can almost feel the anguish of God‘s heart as He says the words, “against the man who is My fellow.“ That word fellow implies companionship. Jesus was with the Father in heaven, joined together in close companionship. And as He grew up on this earth, He was able to connect with His Father. Their connection was one of Jesus’ sources of strength on this earth. We see this in the numerous places that mention him going out alone to pray (see Matthew 14:23, Mark 6:46, Luke 6:12, 9:28, 11:1).
Christians typically think of the sword mentioned by Zechariah as the sword of justice. They liken it to the wrath of God. And they’re not wrong. Jesus asks for “this cup“ to pass from Him. Throughout scripture, a cup is used to refer to wrath (see Psalm 11:6, 75:8, Isaiah 51:17, 22, Jeremiah 25:15–17, Revelation 14:10, 16:19). Most striking is the reference to the cup of the wine of the wrath of God poured out without mixture in Revelation 14:10.
Wrath
Humans tend to think of wrath as something that is active, stemming from anger. It goes something like this: God is angry about sin. Those who don’t accept Jesus will feel the full force of that wrath when He kills them or tortures them forever in the lake of fire, depending on what view of the second death they hold. The problem is, God is not a man, and He does not get angry the way that humans do. He doesn’t lose His temper. Hell is not the outpouring of an angry God, determined to punish those who have rejected Him, like some spoiled child throwing things around and making a disaster because he didn’t get his way.
I should probably write a blog post about the wrath of God one of these days. It really deserves its own article. But for the sake of this one, notice Romans 1:18. It says that “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Then Paul goes on to talk about how that wrath is manifested. “Wherefore God also gave them up. . . .” Verse 24. “For this cause God gave them up.” Verse 26. See also Acts 7:42. God gave these idolators up to whatever they wanted. He stopped interfering and let them have their way.
When God stops trying to work on their hearts, when He withdraws His presence from them, withdraws the influence of His Holy Spirit—that was His wrath. It is a sobering thought. Those who refuse to pay attention to the evidence of for God in their lives and instead reject the influence of His Spirit and choose to live however they feel like it, will experience the withdrawal of God from their lives, leaving them free to do whatever wicked thing they want without pangs of conscience.
Hold that thought for a moment.
Attachment
Earlier I said that Jesus had a close connection with His Father. In psychology, we call that connection attachment. Babies come out of the womb with a drive to connect with their caregiver. And that drive. for connection is a need that persists throughout life. As children grow, their attachments shift from their parents to their friends, and ultimately to a spouse if they marry. Ideally, they will have a healthy attachment, but sometimes that connection forms poorly, or not at all.
There are many studies on attachment. There are ethical considerations when experiments are performed, but that has not always been the case. More than once, a very sad experiment was performed. The first time was in Sicily in the 13th century as well as in the United States in 1944.. They took healthy infants and raised them with virtually no human contact. The caregivers were instructed to feed the babies and keep them clean, but not to look at them in the eye, not to talk to them, and not to touch them anymore than absolutely necessary.
In the US study, at least half of the babies died within a few months, causing them to end the study early. The few that survived past the end of the study did not fare well; some of them died not long after, and those that survived likely suffered irreparably damaged emotionally. They required that secure attachment and relationship with someone, even as infants. None of them died for any physical cause. Their psyche died, and the body followed not long after.
There is a famous study, at least in psychological circles, called The Still Face Experiment. It’s difficult to watch, but it’s short, and nothing can teach better than this visual.
Notice that when the mother‘s face goes still, the baby tries to get—not her attention, for she is looking at him, but her responsiveness, her attunement. He wants some indication that she can relate to him in some way. As the seconds tick by and she remains passive, he becomes more and more distressed. Of course, the experiment lasted for a very short time, and as soon as the mother became responsive again, everything was fine in baby’s world again.
Gethsemane & Calvary
My studies on attachment led me to think about Jesus and what He went through in Gethsemane. The cup of God‘s wrath that He was metaphorically holding was not about the physical torture that He was going to endure in just a few hours. To think that He was afraid of the scourge and the cross and the nails would be to make Him less brave than many of the martyrs that died for His sake. No, the wrath that He had to drink was the separation from His Father that He was beginning to experience. Luke said that an angel came to strengthen Him, which implies that if the angel had not come, Jesus would have died there in Gethsemane.
When I think of the distress that that little child endured when mother was no longer responsive—made glaringly evident because little children have no filter and no ability to hide their feelings—I feel that I have a tiny glimpse of what Jesus must have experienced when He prayed, “Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this pass for Me!” Matthew 26:39. He reached out, and for the first time in His existence, His Father wasn’t there. There was no response. Even His disciples were asleep. There was no one to whom He could connect. And it was crushing at His life.
The angel had to come, had to encourage Him, or He would have never made it to Calvary. Prophecies were still unfulfilled, leading all the way down to the last few minutes before His death. God could not allow Him to die in Germane. But on the cross, that sense of separation returned, graphically illustrated in the plaintive scream, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”
Jesus endured the sense of separation from His Father, because it was the only way to save you and me. He was separated, so that we never have to be. He experienced abandonment to give us the opportunity to be with Him forever—now and in eternity. This is the kind of God we serve—a God that would risk everything, even His own existence, and the most awful separation imaginable, to demonstrate how much He loves us!
