The Crown of Thorns

“Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting a together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of Jews!” (Matthew 27:27-30 ESV)

“And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.” (Mark 15:17-19 ESV)

Brutal, terrible, vicious…but just how important was Christ’s crown of thorns? Frederick S. Leahy puts it this way in The Cross He Bore: Meditations on the Sufferings of the Redeemer:

If we are to receive the crown of life, Christ must receive the crown of thorns. He cannot be our Saviour any other way. That is what Krummacher means when he comments that in the crown of his deity alone, Christ could only say to a dying thief, ‘Be thou accursed’; but in the crown of thorns he can say, ‘This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’ In the crown of his deity alone, he can only say to a Magdalene or a publican, ‘Depart from me’; but in the crown of thorns he can say, ‘Go in peace, your sins are forgiven you.’ It is in his diadem of thorns that he stoops low in humiliation and shame and sorrow to seek and to save sinners. It is only by the sharp torn of his suffering that the poisonous thorn of our sin is drawn. In other words, apart from the cross God cannot forgive sin.

Leahy continues:

In this apparent weakness he is the mighty conqueror of Satan and sin and death, the overcomer of this world. The cross appears as foolishness to the world, but to God’s redeemed people the cross is victory, salvation, the power of God.