Crucifixion

Years ago, someone lent us a book describing the horrors of crucifixion during the reign of the Romans.  Today I looked at a number of sites on the same subject.  Apparently, it was inarguably the most hideous form of torture of that time.
The scourging was typically the initial part of the procedure.  The Roman soldier would wield a whip of several cords which had bits of metal or bone attached to the ends.  As the whip was pulled back, the skin and muscle were ripped off the back, buttocks, legs, and sometimes the shoulders, neck and head as well.  The scene in "The Passion of the Christ" couldn't come close to the actual agonizing hideousness of what Jesus endured.
The soldiers mocked Him, putting a scarlet robe on His bleeding back, bowing before Him and then tearing the robe off Him again when they had enough of  slapping Him and spitting in His face.  It was even customary to pull out the beard of the condemned men, and this was prophesied of Jesus in Isaiah 50:6.  Jesus endured the additional torture of having a crown of sharp, stinging thorns pressed into His head, and the soldiers kept striking His head with a reed, driving the thorns deeper and deeper into His scalp.
Then the rough heavy wooden beam of the cross was laid across that torn-up back, rubbing into the open wounds with every step, every movement.  The victim was already weak from loss of blood, but still this was required of him.
At the site of the crucifixion, the spikes were driven into the hands or wrists and into the crossbar.  It seems the upright post was often left in place for one victim after another.  If this was the case, that beam with the victim attached would be raised by ropes into position with the full weight of his body hanging from those spikes.  Or if the whole cross was being raised at that time, it would be dropped into a hole and the body hanging there would be jarred, again with all the weight supported from those spikes.  The shoulders would dislocate.  The nerves in the hands and wrists would be screaming.  The chest couldn't expand.  The criminal would be suffocating.
Until....the feet were nailed to the cross, allowing the victim to push himself up enough to draw in a breath.  But the agony of supporting the body's weight on the spikes in the feet would be too much and he would lower himself to hanging from his hands again.  The need to draw another breath would drive him to push up on his feet again.  All his muscles would begin to cramp and spasm.  This up-and-down motion was repeated over and over and over, sometimes over many days before death won out.  With each push up or slide down, the rough wood exacerbated the pain in the exposed nerves of the scourged back.
Agony upon agony upon agony.
Then there was the aspect of the indignity and the shame attached to this particular form of capital punishment.  It was understood in that society that if someone was crucified, he had to be the lowest of the low, worthless, despicable, to be derided and jeered at.
Why would our Lord have to endure such a death as this?  Why was He so beaten that Isaiah 52:14 described Him prophetically as having "His appearance marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of man"?  Why could He not have been pushed off a cliff as was attempted when the people in His hometown of Nazareth rejected His message?  Or anything less dramatic and horrendous than dying on the cross?
Jesus had said of Himself, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."  He became what the serpent symbolized:  sin and evil.  We have this amazing verse in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "....(God) made Him (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  He took into Himself all sin, the embezzler's who bilked the life savings from hundreds of people, the cruelest dictator's, the worst mass murderer's, the pedophile's, and certainly all ours, however black and shameful they may be.  When we accept His substitutionary death as being for us, each one of us individually, then our sins are wiped away.  Just a little earlier in the same chapter, we read "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them".  Our slates are wiped clean.  No smudge or stain remaining.  Our trespasses have all been imputed to Jesus who bore them on the cross for us.  How entirely amazing!
Galatians 3:13 says "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree')."  He actually became a curse for us.  This was to free us from all the curse of the law.  If you wonder what God considers a curse, read Deuteronomy 28 starting at verse 15.  It includes everything you don't want to have in your life:  defeat before your enemies, poverty, sicknesses of every kind, broken families, bondage, children taken away into captivity, and on and on.  Jesus literally became a curse to set us free from all of that.
If you don't know Isaiah 53:5, please learn it and repeat it often:  "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed."
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."