WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: How do you respond to scenes of extreme violence? Imagine the victims are people you love. Mob violence The soldiers called together a whole company (v 16) – that is, a large number, between 30 and 300. They gathered for a performance, a public humiliation. These soldiers were used to violence. Jesus would have been thrown or tied to the ground and flogged with leather whips. This was not a formalised, controlled punishment: they struck him ‘again and again’, and spat on him (v 19). This was mob violence, out of control. But in Isaiah we read that, ‘by his wounds we are healed’ (Isaiah 53:5; compare 1 Peter 2:24). Taking the curse They put a crown of thorns on Jesus, intending it to be a humiliating imitation of a royal crown. But thorns signify sin and curses – at the fall the ground is cursed to produce thorns and thistles for man, who works it in painful toil. Jesus takes on himself the curse of the effects of sin, including the drudgery and difficulty of our daily work. They put a robe on him, possibly a scarlet military cloak, the closest they had to royal purple. But purple was also the colour of religious leadership, and the sacred veil in the Temple contained threads of blue, purple and scarlet woven together. Finally, they put his own clothes back on him – unwittingly fulfilling the prophecy of what Jesus would be wearing at his crucifixion (Psalm 22:18). Respond: Spend some time in worship of the One who gave so much for us. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-04-04