How Jesus Faced Friday

Everyone struggled on crucifixion Friday:

The disciples struggled to keep faith.
Pilate struggled to save face.
Faithful women struggled to help Jesus.
Pharisees struggled to discredit Jesus.
Soldiers struggled to hurt Jesus.
Mary... Mary struggled to watch as Jesus was killed.

We struggle, looking back, readng the account. We struggle to really grasp all that was going on.

But no one struggled more than Jesus.

The Crucifixion of Jesus guaranteed a horrific, slow, painful death. The word "excruciating" literally comes from this process. It means "out of the cross".

Having been nailed to the Cross, Jesus now had an impossible anatomical position to maintain:

• Jesus’ knees were flexed at about 45 degrees, and He was forced to bear His weight with the muscles of His thigh, which is not an anatomical position which is possible to maintain for more than a few minutes without severe cramp in the muscles of the thigh and calf.
   
• Jesus’ weight was borne on His feet, with nails driven through them.
  As the strength of the muscles of Jesus’ lower limbs tired, the weight of His body had to be transferred to His wrists, His arms, and His shoulders.
   
• Within a few minutes of being placed on the Cross, Jesus’ shoulders would most likely have been dislocated. Minutes later Jesus’ elbows and wrists would follow. 
   
• After Jesus’ wrists, elbows, and shoulders were dislocated, the weight of His body on his upper limbs caused traction forces on the Pectoralis Major muscles of His chest wall.
   
• These traction forces caused His rib cage to be pulled upwards and outwards, in a most unnatural state. His chest wall was permanently in a position of maximal respiratory inspiration. In order to exhale, Jesus was physiologically required to force His body.
  His lungs were in a resting position of constant maximum inspiration. Crucifixion is a medical catastrophe.
   
• In order to breathe out, Jesus had to push down on the nails in His feet to raise His body, and allow His rib cage to move downwards and inwards to expire air from His lungs. The problem was that Jesus could not easily push down on the nails in His feet because the muscles of His legs, bent at 45 degrees, were extremely fatigued, in severe cramp, and in an anatomically compromised position.
   
• Unlike all Hollywood movies about the Crucifixion, the victim was extremely active.
  The crucified victim was physiologically forced to move up and down the cross, a distance of about 12 inches, in order to breathe. The process of respiration caused excruciating pain, mixed with the absolute terror of asphyxiation.
   
• As the six hours of the Crucifixion wore on, Jesus was less and less able to bear His weight on His legs, as His thigh and calf muscles became increasingly exhausted.
  There was increasing dislocation of His wrists, elbows and shoulders, and further elevation of His chest wall, making His breathing more and more difficult. Within minutes of crucifixion Jesus became severely dyspnoeic (short of breath).
   
• His movements up and down the Cross to breathe caused excruciating pain in His wrists, His feet, and His dislocated elbows and shoulders.
   
• The movements became less frequent as Jesus became increasingly exhausted, but the terror of imminent death by asphyxiation forced Him to continue in His efforts to breathe.
   
• Jesus’ lower limb muscles developed excruciating cramp from the effort of pushing down on His legs, to raise His body, so that He could breathe out, in their anatomically compromised position.
   
• The pain from His two shattered median nerves in His wrists exploded with every movement.
   
• Jesus was covered in blood and sweat.
   
• The blood was a result of the Scourging that nearly killed Him, and the sweat as a result of His violent involuntary effort to expire air from His lungs.
  Throughout all this He was completely naked, and the leaders of the Jews, the crowds, and the thieves on both sides of Him were jeering, swearing and laughing at Him.
  In addition, Jesus’ own mother was watching. 
   
• His blood oxygen level began to fall, and He developed Hypoxia (low blood oxygen).
  In addition, because of His restricted respiratory movements, His blood carbon dioxide (CO2) level began to rise, a condition known as Hypercapnia.
   
• This rising CO2 level stimulated His heart to beat faster in order to increase the delivery of oxygen, and the removal of CO2
   
• The Respiratory Centre in Jesus’ brain sent urgent messages to his lungs to breathe faster, and Jesus probably began to pant.
   
• Jesus’ physiological reflexes demanded that He took deeper breaths, and He involuntarily moved up and down the Cross much faster, despite the excruciating pain.
  The agonising movements spontaneously started several times a minute, to the delight of the crowd who jeered Him, the Roman soldiers, and the Sanhedrin.
   
• However, due to the nailing of Jesus to the Cross and His increasing exhaustion, He was unable to provide more oxygen to His oxygen starved body.
   
• The twin forces of Hypoxia (too little oxygen) and Hypercapnia (too much CO2) caused His heart to beat faster and faster.
   
• Jesus’ lungs probably began to fill up with Pulmonary Oedema.This only served to exacerbate His breathing, which was already severely compromised.
   
• Jesus was in Heart Failure and Respiratory Failure.
   
• Jesus said, “I thirst” because His body was crying out for fluids. Jesus was in desperate need of an intravenous infusion of blood and plasma to save His life
   
• At three o’clock in the afternoon Jesus said, “Tetelastai,” meaning, “It is finished.”
  Because of the increasing physiological demands on Jesus’ heart, and the advanced state of Haemopericardium, Jesus probably would have felt the exact moment when his heart would fail entirely. The fast beating eventually sustained a point so high that Jesus experienced Cardiac Rupture. His heart literally burst. Therefore, you could suggest that Jesus actually, literally died of a broken heart.

I just described the physical stresses Jesus was under, Joni Eareckson Tada wrote in her book, "When God Weeps" the following description of the emotional and spiritual trauma Jesus was under.

The face that Moses had begged to see—was forbidden to see—was slapped bloody (Exodus 33:19-20). The thorns that God had sent to curse the earth’s rebellion now twisted around his own brow…

“On your back with you!”

One raises a mallet to sink in the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as Colossians 1:17). The victim wills that the solider live on—he grants the warriors continued existence. The man swings.
he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own. Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who holds his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (

As the man swings, the Son recalls how he and the Father first designed the medial nerve of the human forearm—the sensations it would be capable of. The design proves flawless—the nerves perform exquisitely.

“Up you go!” They lift the cross. God is on display in his underwear and can scarcely breathe.

But these pains are a mere warm-up to his other and growing dread. He begins to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during this day an unearthly foul odor began to waft, not around his nose, but his heart. He feels dirty. Human wickedness starts to crawl upon his spotless being—the living excrement from our souls. The apple of his Father’s eye turns brown with rot.

His Father! He must face his Father like this!

From heaven the Father now rouses himself like a lion disturbed, shakes his mane, and roars against the shriveling remnant of a man hanging on a cross. Never has the Son seen the Father look at him so, never felt even the least of his hot breath. But the roar shakes the unseen world and darkens the visible sky. The Son does not recognize these eyes.
“Son of Man! Why have you behaved so? You have cheated, lusted, stolen, gossiped—murdered, envied, hated, lied. You have cursed, robbed overspent, overeaten—fornicated, disobeyed, embezzled, and blasphemed. Oh, the duties you have shirked, the children you have abandoned! Who has ever so ignored the poor, so played the coward, so belittled my name? Have you ever held your razor tongue? What a self-righteous, pitiful drunk—you, who molest young boys, peddle killer drugs, travel in cliques, and mock your parents. Who gave you the boldness to rig elections, foment revolutions, torture animals, and worship demons? Does the list never end! Splitting families, raping virgins, acting smugly, playing the pimp—buying politicians, practicing exhortation, filming pornography, accepting bribes. You have burned down buildings, perfected terrorist tactics, founded false religions, traded in slaves—relishing each morsel and bragging about it all. I hate, loathe these things in you! Disgust for everything about you consumes me! Can you not feel my wrath?”

Of course, the Son is innocent. He is blamelessness itself. The Father knows this. But the divine pair have an agreement, and the unthinkable must now take place. Jesus will be treated as if personally responsible for every sin ever committed. Not for God's sake, but for the sake of humanity.

The Father watches as his heart’s treasure, the mirror-image of himself, sinks drowning into raw, liquid sin. Jehovah’s stored rage against humankind from every century explodes in a single direction.

“Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?!”

But heaven stops its ears. The Son stares up at the One who cannot, who will not, reach down or reply.

The Trinity had planned it. The Son endured it. The Spirit enabled him. The Father rejected the Son whom he loved. Jesus, the God-man from Nazareth, perished. The Father accepted his sacrifice for sin and was satisfied. The Rescue was accomplished.

How did Jesus endure such an ordeal?

It was love. Love for you. Love for me. Love for this world... but how did He anchor that love? If we were to listen to His words on Friday morning, before he was beaten, before he was crucified we can see how Jesus turned a day of immense suffering into Good Friday.

“…for the joy set before him, [Jesus] endured the cross.” (Hebrews 12:2 NKJV)

Jesus faced his Friday by looking into eternity. By making Heaven bigger, his pain became smaller.

At daybreak He tells his accusers,
“The Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Mighty God” (Luke 22:69 NIV).
Matthew’s Gospel adds these words:  “In the future you will see the Son of Man…coming on the clouds of Heaven” (Matthew 26:64 NIV).

When interrogated by Pilate later in the day, Jesus’ mind still lingers in Heaven.  “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36 NIV).

Jesus kept lifting his eyes upward.

“You would have no power if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11 NIV).

On the cross, Jesus speaks to the man beside him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)

Jesus faced His Friday by facing eternity.

Let’s do likewise. As Heaven grows, our struggles lessen.

We can put our full hope and confidence in that fact. God did not leave us without a sign. He did not leave us in despair, with just this empty promise. We can know that as we fix our eyes heavenward... our struggles on earth will fade away.

How?

By remembering, that Sunday is coming.

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(Post influenced by/ quotes by Max Lucado, Joni Eareckson Tada, Stephen Estes, and Dr. C. Truman Davis)

 

Nathan Bryant

is a pastor living in Phoenix, AZ. As a student at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri he majored in Biblical Leadership, New Testament Studies, and Missiology. Nathan has a combined passion for unity and discipleship in the global church.

Christ's Kingdom is bigger than our causes.

Christ's Kingdom is bigger than our boundaries.

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