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.
The permanence of the blotting out is the removal of the handwriting, the documents which were against us had been paid and cancelled and can not be presented again!
We all know that the blotting out was done once and for all by the eternal blood of Jesus that was shed on that Cross... for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Heb.9:22). His blood was the medium used in the blotting out.
Our sins were blotted out by the blood of Jesus, covered and canceled... once and for all.
II-NAILING IT TO THE CROSS:v.14
The second thing Paul emphasized in what he saw was that,the handwriting or the lists that was against us was not only blotted by the blood of Jesus but also completely fastened between His hand and the wood. It was a long list of our mistakes, our lies and lusts, our greedy moments. The prodigal years. Dangling from the Cross is an itemized catalog of your sins! The bad decision from last year. The bad attitude last week. There in broad daylight for all heavens to see, is the lists. Jesus knew the price of those sins was death.
When Christ was crucified,God nailed the Law of sin and death to His Cross,the guilts and all the debts we all owed as a result of sin... never to be removed again. It was fastened there for all eternity. At that point on, the"principalities and powers"that Paul mentions in Col.2:15 would triumph over us. But now, as a result of the fastening of our guilt and shame, the picture was changed and the powers have been defeated! That happened when the condemnation of the moral law was nailed to the cross. The NRSV smoothly translates it;"erasing the record that stood against us with legal demand. He set it aside,nailing it to the cross."
III-TRIUMPHING OVER THEM:v.15
Finally, Jesus had disarmed satan and his devils to an open shame. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil"(Heb.2:14).
Like a Conqueror, Jesus made a show of these captives and put them in an open shame. That is, in the face of the whole universe; a grand victory, over all the powers of hell! Paul was painting a word picture of a Roman emperor returning from a victory, displaying in a triumphal procession the kings and princes whom He has taken as captives, dragging satan and his legions including the spoils from such campaigns riding on His triumphal chariot.
In Conclusion, the world had seen the dying, suffering, foolishness of that Crucifixion.... But we who had been given the grace to believe had seen what Jesus had undertaken and seen during that moment. A grand victory parade. A Conqueror riding in His chariot. His Chariot? the Cross!
Jesus had blotted out all condemnation brought about by sin.
He has nailed it eternally fastened between the wood and His hands.
He has triumph over all our foes.
That is our benefits to partake. Out of His sufferings, we saw by our faith in Him the other side of the cross... His chariot of victory.
For,in all these things we are more than conquerors through Jesus that loved us!
From now on, have no joy which is not connected to Christ and have no success which is not traceable to Him alone!
"Now thanks be to God,which always causeth us to triumph
in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge
by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour
of Christ, in them that are saved..."
-2Corinthians 2:14
GOD BLESS US!
