By: Scott Adkins, Sling ‘n Stone Ministry
Carter County Times
We call this Friday “Good Friday.” But this Friday, April 7, 33 A.D., occasioned history’s bloodiest Friday ever – the day God’s sinless Son shed His blood to wash away our sin. (Revelation 1:5) (“Jesus… washed us from our sins in His own blood.”)
Bloody Friday began in Gethsemane, where He “sweat great drops of blood.” (Luke 22:44) (“His sweat was like drops of blood.”) Sweating blood presents a rare medical phenomenon: hematidrosis, caused by extreme distress. But Jesus’s suffering that day had only just begun.
After His illegal arrest, Jesus faced the Sanhedrin, where soldiers blindfolded Jesus, spit on Him, and punched Jesus in His face. They mockingly demanded He prophesy who hit Him. Jesus stayed silent, and was then delivered to Pilate, who sent Jesus to Rome’s torture squad. (Matthew 26:17-61).
The torture squad savagely flogged Jesus with the flagrum, a whip that wielded three to twelve leather strands. (Matthew 27:26) Metal balls were woven into each strand, with bone or twisted metal at the tips. These ripped flesh from bone. When Rome’s torture squad finished, Jesus’s flesh hung in bloody chunks and mangled ribbons, exposing bone. His burial cloth shows 120 wounds from this flogging. Pathologists estimate the flogging alone cost Jesus one-third His total blood – plenty enough to send anyone into severe shock.
While He gushed blood, Roman soldiers mocked Him, and draped a purple robe over His torso, bandaging His wounds. They plaited three-inch thorns into a crown and drove those thorns into Jesus’s scalp, severing facial nerves. Then, the Romans ripped that robe from Jesus’s torso, tearing open His wounds. Jesus started gushing blood again.
Romans next saddled His raw, bloodied shoulders with a 120-pound crossbar to carry to His execution. (John 19:17) Exhausted and dehydrated from blood loss, Jesus stumbled; the Romans drafted Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’s crossbar. (Luke 23:26) Atop Golgotha, a Roman crucifixion squad nailed Jesus, the Lord of Glory, to a cross. (Luke 23:33); (I Corinthians 2:8)
The crucifixion squad hammered iron spikes through both wrists, severing Jesus’s median nerves, the wrist’s nerve center. Each hammer strike drove those nails deeper into His median nerve, sending searing flashes of pain through Jesus’s upper body. Then, they hammered another through His instep severing Jesus’s peroneal nerves, the foot’s main nerve center. Each blow hammered that spike deeper through His peroneal nerves, sending searing shockwaves through Jesus’s lower body. Finally, Jesus’s cross dropped into its hole. His entire weight now hung on severed nerves, causing suffocating muscle spasms.
Six agonizing hours and one solar eclipse later (Luke 23:44-45), Jesus died that Bloody Friday because only His bloody sacrifice that day could pay fully for our crimes against God. Ponder that come “Good Friday.” Come Easter Sunday – and every day thereafter? Proclaim His Resurrection, or explain to Him why you didn’t.
For His crucifixion’s pathology, search the internet and read: “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ.”
