It Got Ugly

Getting Closer to Jesus: From our perspective as Christians, nearly two thousand years after the event, the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus have become a thing of redemptive beauty. This was God at his best—his love, grace, mercy, redemption, and sovereignty on display as Jesus was beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross for the sins of the world.

Yet on that exact day Jesus was forced to endure this suffering, it got ugly—beyond description. So brutal was his treatment that we would have averted our eyes in horror were we to witness it first-hand. So disgusting was Pilate’s cowardly desire to placate the rabid hatred of the Jewish leaders that we would have shaken our heads had we witnessed it for ourselves. So unhinged was the hatred of the Jewish leaders for their Messiah we would have dropped our jaws in disbelief had we witnessed it with our own eyes.

The prophet Isaiah described the physical horror that Jesus endured as so graphic that we would have had to turn away, unable and unwilling to grasp what Jesus actually experienced:

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (Isaiah 53:3).

John 19:1-3 tells us,

Pilate had Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip. The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put a purple robe on him. ‘Hail! King of the Jews!’ they mocked, as they slapped him across the face.

Thirty-nine times the whip, crafted for maximum damage to a human body, was brought down upon Jesus’ back, ripping open the flesh, tearing at the nerves, muscles, and sinew, laying him open to the bone.

Amazingly, Jesus survived a trauma no human should ever—perhaps could ever—have to endure, but only to have a crown of long, sharp Judean thorns forced upon his brow, penetrating down to the skull. Then the soldiers who had mockingly crowned him began to beat the defenseless Jesus, punching him time and again with full force in the face.

It got ugly the day God died—so bad was the physical violence that the prophet Isaiah said,

Many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness. (Isaiah 52:14)

Then Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman governor, who was to hear his case. After the Jews brought their trumped-up accusations against the Lord, and after Pilate had interviewed him, he tried to release Jesus: “I find him not guilty.” Pilate said. “Take him yourselves and crucify him. (John 19:6) Not guilty—that usually secures freedom for an innocent man, yet Pilate was more afraid of man’s opinion than dispensing deserved fairness. And in that moment, Pilate secured his dark place in history as the one who could have freed an innocent man yet sent him as a lamb—the Lamb—to the slaughter.

It got ugly the day God died—the innocent dying for the guilty:

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. (Isaiah 53:7-8)

But what of the Jewish priests and officials! Here we find misguided religion at its worst. The long-awaited Messiah was finally among them—his life of love on display in every action, every miracle, every word—yet they are so blinded by hatred they stop their ears and cry all the louder, “crucify him” as Pilate weakly pleads for Jesus’ release.

It got ugly when God died—those who were his own people willingly, knowingly, viciously sent their Eternal King to his death by claiming loyalty to a temporal king.

Yet for all the human ugliness inflicted upon Jesus, Isaiah tells us that it was “the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…to make his life an offering for sin.” While man’s darkness was being exposed, God’s sovereignty was powerfully moving events toward a glorious end, the redemption of sinful man.

Yes, it got ugly the day Jesus died, but Jesus had to take the ugliest of human darkness and sin into himself so that he could crush to death what would crush him to death. It got ugly for Jesus, but it became a thing of beauty for you and me.

Take the Next Step: Read through Isaiah 53, taking time to pause after each thought to offer gratitude to God that in Jesus’ death, sin met its match and you found your freedom.