One of the books I’m currently reading is The Cross He Bore: Meditations on the Sufferings of the Redeemer by Frederick S. Leahy. What I have appreciated about it is that for the size of the book, the author helps show how even some of the details I would be prone to overlook are of the utmost importance to the suffering of Christ, and how that fulfilled the Father’s wrath.
Such an example comes from the 11th chapter, where Leahy explains how important it was for Jesus to refuse the wine and myrrh/gall mixture offered to him while hanging on the cross.
First he explains how the cup of wrath needed to be kept pure.
Not only would the Saviour drink the cup of divine wrath, with its steadily increasing bitterness, but also, in terms of his suffering, he would drink no other cup, nor would he accept any admixture. He would drink the cup that the Father had given him unmixed. Not a solitary drop of any other potion must blend with that prepared by the Father. That cup must be kept pure.
He continues:
Dilute that cup with a single extraneous drop and it is no longer the cup of God’s wrath. For that matter, add one foreign ingredient to the cup of God’s mercy and it ceases to be such. God’s wrath and God’s mercy alike are unmixed.
Leahy then explains how the myrrh/gall was typically used to dull the pain of those being crucified. Christ refused the drink, because he needed to feel the full pain and suffering of the cross. As Leahy says, “Nothing must be allowed to insulate his spirit from the reality of the situation.”
He must suffer to the utmost. He must feel the full ‘sting’ of his death. No anesthetic was permissible.
Leahy continues by saying how by refusing the cup the soldiers offered, he was also refusing a cup Satan himself offered and then considers what would have happened if Jesus had drank the mixture.
Then, with a befuddled brain, he could not have prayed for the soldiers who were waiting to nail him to the cross. Then those seven great sayings on the cross would never have been uttered. Then his obedience would at last have been broken and all would have been lost. How much was at stake as they pushed the rim of that cup towards the Saviour’s lips! Everything! All of the divine decree, all of prophecy, all of redemption was at stake as that appealing cup was offered to the suffering one again and again.
Leahy concludes the chapter by pointing to Matthew 26:29, where Christ refused another cup, the sacramental cup, until the consummation. The sacramental cup we drink at communion as a relationship between “‘…commencement and fulfillment.’”
As we take the sacramental cup in our hands, may we be profoundly conscious that this is a foretaste of that heavenly banquet. Our thoughts might well be of the cup Christ drank, the cup he refused, and the cup from which he will drink with us in glory.
4 comments:
Recently as I was reading one of the gospel accounts, I came across a note which said that the mixture you mentioned was commonly used as a painkiller. I hadn't really thought through the implications of what it all meant. Thanks for sharing this text, it definitely helps me gain a greater understanding of the cross.
Definitely sheds a different light on something seemingly so insignificant but in reality carrying huge implications. Most particularly I appreciated this post for drawing my attention to that which is to come, a "foretaste of that heavenly banquet".
"I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
O Death, where is your sting?
Oh Grave, where is your victory?"
Hosea 13:14
He takes the full cup of sin and death's sting.
He drinks deeply and fully.
He dies, I live.
Amazing
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