The Crucifixion of Jesus: A Six-Day Meditation on Christ’s Ultimate Sacrificeনমুনা

At around noon, all three synoptic gospels report “there was darkness over the whole land” for three hours. The Passover full moon rules out the possibility of an eclipse, so we may guess an exceedingly black, God-sent storm system passes over Judea. This is Jesus’s dark night of the soul. At around 3 p.m., he cries out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This is decidedly not a desperate cry of despair. Jesus is not expressing deep feelings of abandonment toward God. He is not questioning his faith. In fact, he is doing the exact opposite. Because this phrase is a verbatim quoting of the first line of Psalm 22. Rabbis often quoted just the first line of a text (or even the first word, in the case of the Shema), and sharp disciples immediately seized the inference. For those of us unfamiliar with the unbelievable beauty of Psalm 22, here are a few stanzas written by Jesus’s ancestor almost exactly a millennia earlier:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

from my words of groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,

and by night, but I find no rest.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to my jaws;

you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs encompass me,

a company of evildoers encircles me;

they have pierced my hands and my feet—

I can count all my bones—

they stare and gloat over me;

they divide my garments among them,

and for my clothing they cast lots.

All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;

before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,

even the one who could not keep himself alive.

Posterity shall serve him;

it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;

they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a

people yet unborn,

that he has done it.”

(vv. 1, 15–18, 29–31.)

These are the thoughts that run through the mind of a dying Jesus. He knows his situation is dire, yet his is a prayer of complete and total surrender, truth, and faith that God will fulfill his promise. Jesus has voluntarily undergone this entire horrific ordeal because he believes it is necessary to save humanity from sin and death. Without offering up his life as a substitute atonement sacrifice for human sin, people like Mary Magdalene and Rocky and you and I will be obliterated by the radiant perfection of God himself. While Jesus’s bodily death is a political assassination, the spiritual implications reverberate beyond existence itself.

It is afternoon. Jesus calls out for a drink, gasping out just two words: “I thirst.” He does not do this because he suddenly now needs a shot of painkiller after multiple hours of heinous torture. No, he is in complete control of this execution, and he speaks these words to fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 69:21. Someone (not likely a Roman soldier) soaks a sponge in sour wine, impales it on a hyssop branch, and holds it to Jesus’s parched lips. After receiving the wine, Jesus summons the last of his strength and again cries out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46), another bold declaration of unshakeable faith in God—and rather intimately, part of the bedtime prayer that Jewish children pray to their Father in heaven.

Jesus then speaks—or more likely whispers—his last words: “It is finished.” This can mean several things: The task is completed. The purpose is fulfilled. The debt is paid.

At approximately 3 p.m. on Friday, April 3, 3 AD, after three-and-a-half decades of life and no more than six hours on the cross, Jesus bows his head and breathes his last breath.

And through this voluntary sacrifice, all of humanity receives the invitation to choose life everlasting.

This plan has been adapted from the book, A God Named Josh: Uncovering the Human Life of Jesus Christ. Learn more at https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/466100.