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| His Final Hours series |

* How He Loved at His Arrest

* How He Loved When He Was Accused

* His Unstoppable Love

* How to Love Like Jesus Did

Jesus Pain Leading to the Cross

Thus far, I’ve emphasized the emotional, mental suffering Jesus endured leading up to the cross, but even before the cross He also endured incredible physical suffering. While our focus in this series is the emotional suffering He endured, let’s remember what He did endure for us physically.

After He was arrested, He was brought to the Jewish high priest where He was struck, spat on, mocked, blindfolded, and beaten. He was then delivered to the Roman Governor Pilate. When Pilate was unable to satisfy the crowd, he had Jesus scourged (a Roman judicial punishment where He was severely beaten with a whip that had bone and metal in it). Then Jesus was delivered to be crucified. The soldiers made a crown of thorns and pushed it onto His head while they mocked Him. He was made to carry His cross to the site of His crucifixion (though He was unable to do so, having already been beaten so severely). Only after all of this was Jesus crucified: the most painful death allowed under Roman law.

We’ve seen though that, in spite of all this, Jesus remained focused on loving and serving others. Whether it was the very people who abandoned and betrayed Him, like Peter and Judas, or just the people He came across along the way, like Pilate, Jesus’ heart was turned towards us even in His darkest hours.

Loving through the Pain

In being crucified, literally every breath that Jesus took caused Him excruciating pain. He would have to push up on the nail in his feet to be able to breath in. With how weak He was at this point, this was incredibly difficult (which was why He died before the soldiers were able to break His legs). So every word He said came at great cost. Whatever He said must have been very important to Him. What did He say?

The Soldiers

After Jesus was delivered to be crucified, the soldiers continued to mock, beat and abuse Him. How did Jesus respond to this? He forgave them. More than that, He asked the Father to forgive them. As they were crucifying Him, He said this:

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”Luke 23:34

He endured pain to utter these words. Through the pain He made it a point to forgive the soldiers who were mocking and mistreating Him...