Body & SoulSample

The Full Meaning of His Broken Body

Jesus, the Word of God who took on flesh, had the power to defeat death. Yet, He willingly walked into His death for our sake.

His mission was not to escape but to lay His life down. It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around the idea that Jesus would not only know of this appointed sacrifice but make the appointment for that very purpose. He willingly left His place in heaven and became a human with a physical body like ours to give it up for the will of God with a heart of a Savior.

When we think about Christ’s willing sacrifice on the cross, we often parse things out in parts. We dwell on either the enormous, brutal bodily suffering He went through or the great emotional distress He endured by the betrayal of those closest to Him who turned their backs on Him in the final hour. We don’t, however, think of the enormity of the intermingling of these things—the full picture of the body and soul suffering of our Lord.

And yet this is what the sacrifice of Christ was always about. It was never one or the other. It was both—for both, about both, involved both, affecting both—because as with the embodied Christ (and with us) the body and soul are knit together; one affects the other.

And perhaps the greatest picture of this intermingling is in the death itself.

In John 19:31-37, the soldiers pierced Jesus’s side with a spear, but because they saw He was already dead, they did not break His legs. This act wasn’t for no good reason. It was divinely orchestrated to fulfill the prophecy from Scripture that none of His bones would be broken (Ps. 34:20). In this seemingly routine act by a barbaric Roman soldier, the Lord Jesus Christ once again proved who He said He was by fulfilling His supernatural Word and simultaneously presenting to us His humanity—broken body and broken heart. Body and soul.

When the Roman soldier thrust his spear into the side of Jesus between His ribs, he pierced the pericardial sac around His heart containing water to produce the flow of blood (from the pierced heart) and water, accounted for by John in John 19.

The weight of the world and the sin and darkness He took upon Himself in that moment was symbolized in a medical fact of a pierced heart.

Our bodies and souls cannot be separated from each other, and Christ showed us that in His death on the cross.

Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross in His physical body isn’t just something He did—a great occurrence that doesn’t have anything to do with how you live your life. Your relationship to your body and soul becomes increasingly in tune with your Creator (and thus, changes and transforms) as you understand how connected to Him you really are.

The crucifixion was an act of strength in sacrifice through a willing laying down of Christ’s body for us so that in turn, we might bring our full weakness and inabilities in and of ourselves to rely upon Him. First, for salvation. Second, for our daily struggles.

This relationship (and in fact, an entire identity) of reliance was ordained. The truth is, we are reliant upon the Lord whether or not we acknowledge it. It has been this way since God breathed His nǝšāmâ (breath of life) into Adam in Genesis 2:7 and Adam became nephesh, a living soul. Since the fall one chapter later in Genesis 3, all that we have needed to rest in we have, as humans, tried to wrestle away from. And yet, our very bodies (and souls!) were created to be reliant upon our Creator God. (He alone keeps our hearts beating, breath in our lungs, etc.)

When you usher in the reliance on God for daily body and soul struggles, you will find yourself desiring increasingly more of Him.

Read John 19:31-37 slowly, taking in the details of the moments following Jesus’s death on the cross. Thank the Lord for the reality that we can rely fully on Him for everything we need, including new life through salvation in Jesus.