The Hostile Reaction to the Cross; John 19:17-24

John 19:17 ^NASB “They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.” The first thing to note here is what He is carrying is not the full cross. There are two sections to the cross. The vertical piece is permanently planted at the place of execution, so all that Jesus is carrying is the cross-piece and it would be carried across His shoulders like a yoke with His arms over it, probably tied on so He wouldn’t drop it. The picture that John gives us here is a fulfilment of the type of Isaac who carries his own wood up to Mount Mariah in Genesis 22:6 for the burnt offering. As they are going they don’t go very far before Jesus in His physically weakened condition cannot go any further. He collapses physically and so we are told that they pressed into service a passer-by who is coming in from the country.

We learn from ancient writers that criminals were always crucified along major roads so that crowds would see them and be moved by fear. This is also in fulfilment of Old Testament types and mandates that the blasphemer was always to be executed outside of the gates. Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:35-56. At this time in history the site of what is believed to be Golgotha was outside the city. We know that because of the description of the Gospels. A few years after this Golgotha was incorporated into the city when Herod Agrippa had to expand Jerusalem.

Mark 15:21 ^NASB “They pressed into service a passer-by coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene (the father of Alexander and Rufus), to bear His cross.” There is a mention of Rufus at the end of Romans, so it could be the same person, but this kind of little note seems to suggest that his readers would be familiar with Alexander and Rufus.

Then we have an interlude related to the prophesy to the daughters of Jerusalem in Luke 23:28-31 ^NASB “But Jesus turning to them said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’ For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?’” It is somewhat unusual that here in the midst of this dramatic time when Jesus is just physically exhausted that he stops and makes this kind of statement. But it is a prophetic warning of what is going to happen to Jerusalem. He addresses the women there is the vocative idiom, Daughters of Jerusalem, which comes from the Old Testament and is used to address the inhabitants of the city. It is used many times in the Old Testament: 2 Samuel 1:24, the term “daughters of Jerusalem”; “daughter of Zion” in Zephaniah 3:14 and Zechariah 9:9; “daughter of Jerusalem in Song of Solomon 2:7. This is a warning of the coming persecution and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. He is saying weep for yourselves and your children for because of your negative volition divine judgment is coming. When He says “if they do these things” He is referring to the leaders of the nation. If they do these things “when the tree is green.” In other words, when the Messiah is present and they have all of the blessing of the presence of the Messiah, when everything is positive and bountiful and fruitful, if they are this negative and destructive now how much more destructive will they be when it is a time of discipline and cursing, a time of famine and drought when the tree is dry? So it is a contrast: the tree is green versus the tree is dry is the contrast between a time of blessing and a time of suffering. So on the way to Golgotha He announces a coming judgment on the nation of Israel.

Then we come to the second major scene which is the crucifixion itself. This we find in Luke 23:32, 33 and supplemented with Mark 15 and Matthew 27. Luke 23:32, 33 ^NASB “Two others also, who were criminals, were being led away to be put to death with Him. When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.” Matthew 27:34 ^NASB “they gave Him wine to drink mixed with gall; and after tasting {it,} He was unwilling to drink.” Mark 15:25 ^NASB “It was the third hour when they crucified Him…. [27] They crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left.”

Jesus is not alone when He goes to the cross, there are two others with Him. John calls them robbers and thieves and uses the same word that he uses to describe Barabbas, and so it is generally believed that these two thieves were part of Barabbas’s gang. The typical procedure to show just a semblance of mercy prior to crucifixion was to give wine mixed with myrrh. It was designed to provide some level of an anaesthetic or sedative so that it would somewhat lessen the pain. The Lord refuses it completely. Why? Because He doesn’t want to have His mental capacity diminished whatsoever. He is going to go through the full degree of suffering but between 12 noon and 3 pm in His omniscience He is going through every single sin of human history and His dying as a substitute, and He is not going to have in His humanity His brain power affected to any degree by having it anaesthetised. He is going to focus fully and completely on all of the suffering and all of the sins of human history and there He is going to pay the penalty for human sin. Mark tells us that the time of day now is 9 o’clock in the morning.

What exactly is crucifixion? Historically it probably goes back to the Medes and Persians, although there is evidence that the Greeks crucified pirates as early as the 7^th century BC. But it was the Medes and the Persians who systematised it and were the first to use it on a large scale for punishing criminals. When Alexander the Great conquered the Medes and the Persians the Greeks adopted the practice of crucifixion and it began to make its way across the Mediterranean area. The Carthaginians adopted it and refined it and then in the Punic wars as the Romans became aware of it they adopted it and made it their primary form of punishment for the lowest criminals and for slaves. According to Tactus the Roman historian it was a punishment that was applied primarily to the lowest classes, to slaves, to foreigners, and to the worst of criminals. It was the most common form of punishment for slaves who had tried to run away. The Romans exempted the upper classes from crucifixion because it was so horrible. The Jews even practiced crucifixion. During the first century BC at the time of the Maccabean period Alexander Jannaeus executed 800 prisoners by crucifixion. In 4 BC the governor of Syria crucified 2000 Jews for insurrection. But Josephus who gives a fairly detailed account of that period records no crucifixions other than Jesus between the time of 6 AD and 40 AD which was the time of the first Roman prefecture. One thing that is interesting to note on this is that one of the popular interpretations of Jesus is that he was some sort of political revolutionary or that he was just another messianic figure during a time of tremendous unrest and disruption in Judea. But that is only true of the later period from about 47 AD to 70. The period from 6 AD to 40 AD is a time of relative peace and calm. In fact, Josephus only uses the word Messiah once and that is in reference to Jesus. According to Josephus there are no other false messiahs coming along, he does not portray this as a time of revolutionaries and insurrection but as a time of relative peace between Judea and Rome. It is not until later on, around 45 AD, that there begins to be a tremendous amount of unrest in Israel.

There is a lot of debate as to what kind of cross was used to crucify Jesus. The Greek word stauros [stauroj] and it simply refers to a stake that is used in execution. In earlier forms what they would do was take a single stake and plant it in the ground, and then throw the person on it so that his body was impaled. That would bring about a relatively quick death. That was refined to where they would take a stake, take an individual and take their hand on either side of the stake and would either tie them or nail them to the top and they would just hang there. Then it was refined even more and it go to the point where the Romans would put a cross-piece on that stake and then either by means of rope tie the arms to that cross-piece or nail them to it. Sometimes a picture is seen where the cross that they crucified Jesus on was like the shape of a capital T, so that the cross-piece fits on the top of the vertical post. But that does not seem to fit the description in the Scriptures because there is a sign with the indictment against Jesus, that He was the King of the Jews, and it was hung over His head. So there has to be something above His head on which to nail this and it is generally believed that the cross looked more like a small t or a plus sign with an elongated bottom. What they would do is take the vertical post and cut a deep groove in it and after nailing the criminal’s hands to the cross-piece they would lift it up by means of a pulley system and wedge it in place into the slot.

The Greek word for hand and the Hebrew word can refer to anything at the end of the arm. It includes the wrist, it is not just technical for the hand. The palm of the hand is made up of mostly muscle tissue and flesh, so if a nail was driven there and then hang a body-weight from there it would just rip loose. The Romans discovered that there was a tremendous sensitivity to pain in the wrist. So what they would do in the development of their torture is drive the nail there between the two bones of the forearm and it would hand on the bone at the base of the palm. That bone would carry the weight of the body and it would put pressure from that nail against the carpel tunnel nerve which is one of the most excruciating and painful thing that can be experienced.

In crucifixion what also happens is that as the victim hangs there all of the organs in the abdomen are pushed upward against the diaphragm so that it becomes more and more difficult to breath as the person loses strength. So they would push themselves up a little bit in order to relieve that pressure and get a breath. Eventually, and usually from 36 to 72 hours depending on the strength of the individual, death would take place. This was why it was so unusual that Jesus died in just a little over six hours on the cross.

So Jesus is put there in the midst of the other two. By emphasising the fact He was put there in the middle it goes back to a Jewish rabbinical tradition that when three persons are present the most honoured takes his place in the middle.

Then we come to another interlude which has to do with His prayer to the Lord in Luke 23:34 ^NASB “But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’…” This is a perfect example of how impersonal love handles rejection, ridicule, dishonour, abuse, hostility and antagonism. None of us have even gone through the kind of rejection that Jesus experienced during this 24-hour period. The people he came to save have rejected Him, ridiculed Him, despised Him, hurled all kinds of verbal and physical abuse at Him, and yet he does not respond with mental attitude sins of anger, resentment, bitterness or vindictiveness. He keeps His mouth shut, His mental attitude is focused on the Lord, there are no mental attitude sins and there are no overt sins. He is perfectly relaxed. That is the emphasis on impersonal love. Jesus’ prayer exemplifies for us the exact attitude that we are to have towards other people.

Here Jesus emphasises the fact that, especially in relationship to the Roman soldiers, they had no appreciation or understanding of the dimensions of what they were doing in crucifying the eternal second person of the Trinity.

Then we see that prophecy is fulfilled here. John 19:18 ^NASB “There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between.” Mark 15:28 ^NASB “And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And He was numbered with transgressors’.”

The third scene is the Jewish antagonism to the sign. This is mostly revealed by John in 19:20-24 ^NASB “Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, ‘JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.’ Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin {and} in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’; but that He said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written I have written’.”

It was written in Hebrew so that all the Jews would be able to read it and understand it, it was written in Latin so that the Roman soldiers would all understand it, and it was written in Greek which was the common language of the eastern Mediterranean area and all the people who went by would be able to read it and understand it. This is how the sovereignty of God works in conjunction with the free will of man so that this announcement that Jesus is the King of the Jews is an announcement of the truth.