Carrying the cross by himself,
he went to the place called Place of the Skull (in Hebrew, Golgotha).
There they nailed him to the cross.
Two others were crucified with him,
one on either side, with Jesus between them.
John 19:17-18 NLT
***
At the heart of the story stands the cross of Christ
where evil did its worst and met its match.
Assorted Authors
***
He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
Isaiah 53:3 NLT
***
“The God of all creation came in the human flesh
and experienced firsthand,
the pain of being despised and rejected.
He knows all the emotions we struggle with.
He knows what our suffering feels like,
and He carried it all to the cross.”
Brett McBride
***
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all.
Isaiah 53:4-6 NLT
***
“The personal desolation Christ is experiencing on the cross
is what you and I should be experiencing–
but instead, Jesus is bearing it, and bearing it all alone.
Why alone?
He’s alone so that we might never be alone.”
C.J. Mahaney
***
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 NLT