The Cross Throughout the Scriptures - Part 3
John 19:1 Pilate took Jesus, and scourged Him.
The victim was severely beaten about the back, shoulders, and sides of the chest until he was raw and bleeding profusely from thousands of small gashes.

After this happened to our Lord and Savior, He was punched and beaten in the face, spit upon, had a crown of thorns forced upon His head and then mocked.

Mar 15:19 And they kept beating His head with a reed, and spitting at Him, and kneeling and bowing before Him.

He was paraded through Jerusalem with a crossbeam tied to His back to face one of the cruelest and most humiliating forms of punishment in the ancient world, crucifixion.

Only one word can describe death by crucifixion: agony.

It was humiliating, tormenting, slow, and public.

Psa 22:14 “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.”

“Calvary marked the greatest hour in the entire meritorious history of Deity.”

Gal 6:14 But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

At the cross, the meritorious attributes of God come to their most majestic expression.

Rom 5 - At the cross, God declares the wicked, righteous, without a shadow of blame or unrighteousness falling upon His righteous character.

It is only when the believer discovers the glory of the cross that he first comes to see the Bible in its truest light.

1. The Cross Appears.

Gen 3:15

The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, Rev 13:8.

Act 2:23 this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.

Eph 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,

1Pe 1:20 For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you.

Ecc 12:7 then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

Could it be that God’s original plan in the creation of man should fail?

Was Satan to be permitted to lord it over man, having deceived him and having brought him under his bondage?

Was there no hope of forgiveness and liberation for Adam’s race?

Could a reconciliation be effected and man be brought back to God, freed from Satanic oppression?

Would God forever be dishonored, His Fatherhood denied, and His purposes unfulfilled?

Was it in God’s power to undo what the wicked one, under whose power the whole world lies in, had done? 1Jo 5:19.

Was God to be frustrated eternally because man was made in His image and for the satisfaction of His heart but man sinned?

2Pe 3:8

Though the immediate result was rebellion and sin, the final outcome of it all would be restoration.

The Lord God turned the curse into a blessing, Deu 23:5.

What Satan meant for evil, God would turn into good, Gen 50:20.

Rom 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

1Jo 3:8 The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

Man could not be restored by a divine command.

Man had chosen to follow the ways of Satan in the same way: to use his own free will against the will of God.

Without freedom of choice, man would not be man, nor would he ever be able to satisfy the desires of God’s heart.

Rev 12:9 Satan deceives the whole world;

The mere exercise of divine authority and divine power could not fulfill the demands of the case.

Man must learn to hate “self,” Satan’s agent within man as the governing principle of his life.

He could undo the First Adam’s rebellion and sin by refusing Satan’s claims upon man, in the full and free exercise of His own free will, and shatter the alliance.

The Seed of the woman, Christ our Lord, would bruise the serpent’s head.

Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries 2002