It is still dark when they tie His hands. Jesus has already been tried by night, passed back and forth like a cursed object between Annas and Caiaphas. He has been spit on, slapped, mocked, and falsely accused. The rooster has already crowed, and Peter, His most vocal disciple, has already wept in shame. By the time the sun begins to rise, the Son of God has already been flogged. And it’s just 6:00 a.m. Most people are still in bed, but Jesus has not slept. The leaders of Israel who have been entrusted with God’s law and should have longed for His coming, deliver Him over to Rome with blood in their eyes and lies on their tongues.
Pilate, Rome’s butcher of Judea, walks out to the crowd with Jesus at his side. Jesus is wearing a purple robe, soaked in blood. A crown of thorns has been twisted and shoved onto His brow. His face is bruised and swollen. Strips of His back hang loose from the scourging. The crowd quiets as Pilate says, “Behold the man.”
What do you see when you behold Him? Do you see the King of glory clothed in disgrace? Do you see the Judge of the world being judged by sinners? Do you see His beauty disfigured? His strength emptied? His dignity stripped? This is not weakness, it is restraint, it is the Lion choosing to bleed like a lamb.
The angry crowd rises like a wave. “Crucify Him!” they shout. Pilate tries to reason: “Why? What evil has He done?” But reason is drowned out by rage. “Crucify Him!” He falters. He tries to release Jesus. He’s played this political game before, shifting blame, dodging responsibility, managing optics. But this is different. He has never faced a man like this, silent, steadfast, unflinching. He has never faced a crowd so possessed by hatred. He has never stood this close to truth incarnate… and felt so exposed. So he caves. And the chief priests, the spiritual shepherds of Israel, say the most damning words ever uttered by religious men: “We have no king but Caesar.”
What do you do when those who speak for God trade truth for power? What do you do when the courtroom crowns a lie? What do you do when light stands before men, and they reach for darkness? What do you do when the Son of God is handed over, and doesn’t resist? You start to realize: this is no accident. This isn’t chaos. This is choreography. Every insult, every blow, every step in the morning light has been deliberate. Every hour is on schedule. Every wound is on purpose.
The Lamb is led away. And the hands that formed the world are bound. And the mouth that spoke stars into existence is silent. And the sun rises, not on just any day, but on the darkest day in human history. And yet, if you have eyes to see it, you’ll know this hour is not defined by the hatred of man, but by the mercy of God. From the break of dawn to the moment of death, every hour of Christ’s suffering was deliberate, measured by mercy, and endured for you.
The Nails Strike
It is closing in on 9:00am as He is being led to Golgotha. The stone streets and temple walls are warming as the sun is rising higher. Jerusalem is stirring, as somewhere a mother is making breakfast and merchants are opening for business. Life carries on, while the Author of life is led to die.
He stumbles under the weight of the cross as the crowd jeers and the soldiers curse. Blood from the scourging soaks the beam as splinters grind into raw muscle. His breathing is already labored and His steps are slow. His strength is fading. So they pull a passerby from the crowd, Simon of Cyrene, and make him carry the cross behind Jesus. He lifts the weight of the wood as Jesus continues lifting the weight of wrath, sin, and shame.
Luke 23:33 NASB When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.
They reach the hill, and without ceremony, they strip Him. The robe clings to the open wounds on His back, and as it’s pulled away, flesh tears with it. Exposed before the very world He came to save, He is laid down on the wood. Spikes are driven through His wrists, Roman iron punching through nerves and bone with brutal precision. The scream that follows is deep, escaping His throat like a groan of creation’s Maker being unmade. His feet are pinned together and nailed in place. The cross is lifted and dropped into the ground with a violent thud, sending a jolt through His already battered frame. From that moment on, every breath He takes is a decision between pain and suffocation.
This is crucifixion, the punishment reserved for the worst of criminals, the slow unraveling of a life by blood loss, exposure, and suffocation. This is what the sinless Son of God endured. Not instantly, not quietly, and certainly not cleanly. It was public, humiliating, and violent, drawn out over hours, designed not merely to kill, but to strip away dignity until nothing remained but agony and shame.
The Prayer That Exposes Us
Why does the sinless Son of God allow it? Why does the One who silenced demons not call down angels to intervene? Why does He remain pinned in place while mockers circle like vultures, taunting Him to save Himself? Because silencing evil in that moment would have meant ending us all. He allows it because He came to forgive, and forgiveness requires a sacrifice. From the cross He gives a final and clear expression of His divine purpose:
Luke 23:34 NASB But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
That is not Jesus excusing ignorance. That is Jesus exposing the full insanity of sin. These men aren’t innocent. They are not unaware that they’re crucifying someone. They’re just blind to who He is. And that’s the indictment. That’s the problem. If they really knew who was hanging on that cross, if they understood the weight of it, they wouldn’t be gambling for His clothing like it was just another Friday. They wouldn’t be mocking with wine-stained breath. They wouldn’t be sneering, “Let Him save Himself, if He’s really the Christ.”
And if we understood the weight of our sin, we wouldn’t live like we do either. We tend to dismiss small sins as unimportant, unaware they’re silently growing stronger until they dominate us. It’s easy to find ourselves thinking more about weekend plans than about Christ bleeding out for the very compromises we still cling to. We can be physically present but mentally checked out, scrolling our phones, distracted by small comforts, or numbing ourselves just enough not to feel too much. If you look at the cross long enough, you’ll start to see the real problem isn’t just out there. It’s not just Roman soldiers or Pharisees or first-century mockers. The insanity that nailed Jesus is still in us. That’s what sin is, insanity. And Satan wants to keep it that way.
Like a tiny leak that sinks a massive ship or a small breach that destroys an entire dam, these “insignificant” sins can utterly destroy your soul. It’s not just a “harmless moment”. It is the reason that our Lord’s back is shredded and His lungs are filling with fluid. You can’t love the cross and keep petting the sin that put Him there. Thomas Brooks wrote, “Sin is never more dangerous than when it wears the clothing of harmlessness.” Satan wants you to rationalize what God has called rebellion. He wants you to rename it, repackage it, and resize it until it doesn’t seem all that bad. Until you’re laughing with the soldiers at the foot of the cross.
That’s what makes Luke 23:34–35 so haunting. Because while Jesus is praying for their forgiveness, the crowd is watching. Watching. Not repenting. Not falling to their knees. Just staring. Curious. Detached. “Let’s see if Elijah shows up.” They’re treating the Son of God like a circus act while He suffocates in their place.
And here’s the question you’ve got to ask: Are we any different? Do we watch the cross from a distance, casually, treating His suffering like a fact to affirm instead of a soul-wrecking reality to respond to? We are good at confessing our sin in general while defending our sin in particular. We say we’re sinners, but when someone calls out our pride? We call it confidence. We say we need grace, but we still hold on to our bitterness like it’s justified, like we’re the exception. We sing, “Jesus paid it all,” and then walk out of here and plan to charge it all again tomorrow. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
Jesus didn’t die for some vague idea of sin. He died for your real ones. He died for the secret habits you’ve been negotiating with for years. He died for the slander you called “concern.” He died for the lust you call “weakness,” the gossip you call “processing,” the critical spirit you call “discernment.” He died because we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know what we’re playing with. We don’t see how far gone we are. We don’t realize how deaf we’ve become to the warnings of the Spirit. We don’t know how hard our hearts have grown, even while sitting in church, like soldiers gambling for His clothes while the Son of God is gasping for breath above.
And yet… He prays, “Father, forgive them.” Not “Father, judge them.” Not “Father, crush them.” He hangs there, nailed between two criminals, lungs collapsing, blood dripping, heart laboring, and His instinct is not self-preservation but intercession.
You want to know what love is? Love is staying nailed to the cross for people who mock you while you die. Love is praying for the ones who don’t even know how lost they are. Love is Jesus, bloody and broken, saying to the Father, “Don’t hold this against them. Take it out on Me.” And if that doesn’t undo you, then maybe you don’t know what you’re doing either.
This isn’t a guilt trip. This is a wake-up call. Don’t waste the cross. Don’t treat the agony of Christ like background noise while you plan your weekend. Don’t pretend sin is small when Jesus didn’t treat it that way. Don’t kneel in worship on Sunday while cutting deals with rebellion on Monday.
If you’re breathing today, it means the prayer is still being answered. “Father, forgive them.” There’s still mercy. There’s still time. But that time won’t last forever. So fall on your knees, not just in song, but in repentance. Lay down your excuses. Burn the playbook of your self-justifications. Stop calling what God hates “no big deal.” Because what we tend to write off as “just a little thing” is what nailed Jesus to wood. And if we really saw it for what it was, we’d stop flirting with it, and start trembling over it.
Preparing to Remember
So what do we do now? We don’t shrug. We don’t sanitize. We don’t stuff our conviction under a smile. We respond. We repent. We remember. Because that’s what Jesus asked us to do. “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Not out of routine. Not to tick a religious box. But to remember. To remember His body, broken because we’ve been so stubborn. To remember His blood, poured out because we’ve played games with sin. To remember the cost of forgiveness so we stop pretending grace is cheap.
Communion isn’t a sentimental snack. It’s not a nostalgic moment for the spiritually-minded. It is a declaration: I am not innocent. But I am forgiven. I didn’t earn it. But I receive it. It’s a way of saying, “The lies stop here. The excuses die here. The cross is enough, and I believe that.”
So in a moment, we’ll sing. Then we’ll come to the table. But don’t come casually. Take this moment, right now, to examine your heart. Not just in general, but in the specifics. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what you’ve renamed, what you’ve excused, what you’ve protected. Bring it to the cross. Don’t let Christ’s cry, “Father, forgive them,” fall on ears too proud to admit they need it. Let it fall on you. Let it free you.
And when you take that bread and that cup, don’t do it with distracted eyes or half-hearted faith. Do it with trembling. Do it with gratitude. Do it with joy. Because this cross didn’t end in death. It ended in victory.
