A Familiar Voice Among the Scoffers

What was it like for Jesus to be beaten and mocked by men whom He created? As they were whipping Him, was He thinking, "I saw you in your mother's womb"? As they squeezed that crown made of thorns onto his head, did He think, "I wrote down all your life's days in my book, before even one of them came to be"?

It's so hard to imagine, isn't it? Didn't they have some inkling of who He was? As they hammered a nail through the wrists of the God of the universe, didn't anything seem out of the ordinary? I want to believe that they had some awareness, that they at least had a conscience and felt some compassion in their torture. Or at least some guilt.

I also want to believe that some of them--all of them--in the weeks and months and years that followed heard the Good News of His resurrection, heard that He did it all for them, and received the gift He offered. Some of them, we know from the book of Matthew, believed on the spot. One of Jesus's guards declared, "Surely He was the Son of God!"immediately after His death. What was it like when this guard met up with Jesus again in heaven, saw Him seated in His honored position at the right hand of God, saw all the angels falling before Him in worship?

This Easter season, my curiosity has lingered on these Roman guards. The idea of flogging one's Creator, of drawing the life blood out of God Himself, it's astounding. Hard as I try, I can't wrap my brain around what that was like and what they were thinking.

There's one more reason I keep thinking of Jesus's accusers and tormentors. It's because in some unfathomable way that defies time and space, I am them.

"Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished."

I'm grateful to Stuart Townsend, who wrote these words to "How Deep the Father's Love for Us." He reminds me that I'm no different from those Roman guards. Just about the time I start to look down on them and wonder what in the world they were thinking, my thoughts are interrupted by my own mocking voice among the scoffers.

We were all enemies of God when Jesus suffered and died for us (Romans 5:10). It was our sin that held Him on the cross. We are every bit as culpable as the Roman guards and Pontius Pilate and the Jewish council. And yet His wounds paid our ransom. They reconciled us to a holy God, making us holy in the process. "It is finished" means that I'm no longer among the scoffers and the mockers. I'm part of the family, a treasured daughter who is wholly loved, fully forgiven.

To make children of God from sinners and scoffers--the miracle of Easter.