What Really Happened on Good Friday

Resurrection Sunday is this weekend, and it’s the most important event in the Christian calendar. Because of that Resurrection, our sins have been paid for, and we are welcome into fellowship with our Creator. But did you ever wonder what Jesus went through on the Cross to get to the Resurrection?

The Cross was a place of brutality

The Bible describes it in a short and to-the-point sentence: “And they crucified Him.” But there was so much more that went into it. It was brutal. It was a level of pain the human body was never meant to handle. It was humiliating for a Jewish man to be put to death in that manner. But He chose the Cross for you and me. Voluntarily. No one forced Him to do it.

John MacArthur says it this way: “The reason that Jesus Christ was born was to die. It greatly concerns me that there are some today who are always talking about the fact that Jesus was a wonderful person who, through a set of circumstances, got Himself into a mess and wound up getting crucified.

However, the Word of God clearly tells us that Jesus Christ was never trapped, never tricked, never surprised, and was never a victim. He went to the Cross of His own design, of His own will because He was born on Earth for that express purpose.”

Let’s talk in more detail about that purpose, specifically what it meant to “die on a Cross.” It’s a phrase we’ve heard so often, maybe it lost a little of its meaning over the centuries. Here’s what happened, and I’ll warn you that it’s graphic.

Here are some comments by C. Truman Davis, a medical doctor, who wrote a description of what happens during a crucifixion in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 6.

The Cross is placed on the ground, and the exhausted man (Jesus, who’s been beaten to a bloody pulp already) is thrown down backward with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist and deep into the wood. Quickly, he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly so there’s some flex and movement. The Cross then gets lifted into place.

The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and, with both feet extended and toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now crucified. However, that’s when the real suffering begins.

As He slowly sagged down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain. The nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As He pushes Himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, He places the full weight on the nail through His feet. Again, He feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of His feet. There are a lot of nerves in the feet. The Roman legion knew how to inflict maximum torture.

As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward to breathe. Air can get drawn into the lungs, but it can’t get exhaled. He fights to raise Himself to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and bloodstream, and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, He can push Himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.

Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue gets torn from His already-lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber.

Then, another agony beings. It’s a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium (the sack a human heart sits in) slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. It’s almost over now.

The loss of fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air.

At this point, Jesus can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. Finally, His body dies.

He went through a torturous death to save you and me

The Bible records all of this with very simple words: “And they crucified Him.” (Mark 15:24)

He went through all this for YOU. THAT is how much Jesus loves you and me.