Dr. Wm. Stroud, in a very clear, scientific treatise upon the subject of the physical cause of the death of Jesus, after describing the heart and its functions, proceeds to portray the dilated condition of this organ resulting from powerful emotion. He adds, “In young and vigorous subjects the blood collected in the pericardium soon divides into its constituent parts, namely a pale watery liquid called serum, and a soft clotted substance of a deep red color termed crassamentum.” Thus the statement “came there forth blood and water” indicates a ruptured heart; but there are other indications also. In the Gospel written by Luke, who was a physician, we read of the bloody sweat which indicates rupture of the heart caused by mental agony: “Being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Other physicians have noted these statements and know that they clearly prove the physical cause of Jesus’ death to be ruptured heart as the result of the most awful mortal agony, and at least one unbelieving physician, impressed by these physical proofs of Jesus’ sin-bearing for the human race, was led to put faith in Him as his Redeemer.
In the light of this knowledge of the physical cause of Jesus’ death, how increasingly sacred does the garden of Gethsemane scene become. There, the God-Man was beginning to enter the atmosphere of human sin, and as the agony became intense, He could feel the fatal distension of the heart, the coldness of the extremities, the difficult breathing-and He knew what these symptoms indicated. Still the agony increased and great drops of bloody perspiration fell to the ground and death seemed near; yet He must go to the Cross. He could not die in Gethsemane. His trust in God never wavered, “and there appeared unto Him an angel from heaven strengthening Him” (Luke 22:43). He calmly met the mob that came out to take Him, went through the weariness of the illegal trial, suffered indignities of various kinds, took up His heavy cross and turned toward the hill of Crucifixion. Oh, how our hearts go out to Him-“The Man of Calvary”-The Lamb of God!
The lifeless body is now taken down from the Cross and prepared for burial. Those tender eyes that had looked with compassion upon the multitude again and again during His earthly ministry and had beamed lovingly upon the little children surrounding Him, were now closed in death. Those hands that had touched the leper, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the diseased, hang limply at His side as the body is lifted from the Cross. That voice that had stilled the waves, cast out demons, raised the dead, uttered words of Life and hope, is now still. He who a little while before had said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” now lay quiet in death. Jesus was dead.
Then His body was placed in the tomb and a great stone was rolled to the door of the sepulcher (Matt. 27:57-60). Had Pilate cared to place an inscription upon the stone, he would have written, “Here lies Jesus, King of the Jews.” Had Satan written the inscription, it would have read, “Here lies Jesus of Nazareth, whom I have overcome”; but if God had written the inscription, it would have been, “Here lies the sinful human race.”
The teacher will find it necessary again and again to call attention to the fact that what was true of Jesus Christ as our Representative is true of us. The two aspects of His death must clearly be seen if the members of the class are to possess an intelligent, adequate conception of God’s Redemptive Plan. The truths of Redemption should never be presented in such a manner as to lead the hearers to feel that Christ died for them that they might not die; that He suffered for their sins that they might escape punishment. Rather should they be clearly shown that when the stroke fell on Him, they were executed; when He suffered death, they died in Him. This is the representative aspect as taught in the Bible. (See 2 Cor. 5:19 and Rom. 6:1-11.) The sinless Last Adam gathered the entire sinful race of the First Adam in His arms and took them to Calvary. The stroke fell upon Him and upon all whom He embraced; and, as sinners, the entire human race disappeared from the horizon of God’s holiness.
A young Christian who had been meditating much upon the Redemptive work of Christ, found difficulty in perceiving how she, as a sinner, received what she deserved in Christ’s dying for her. She believed the facts as stated in the written Word of God, but her sense of justice said, “I ought to be punished for my sin. It does not seem fair for another to be punished for what I have done.” God very preciously gave her the illumination that she needed one night in a dream, in which she saw one whom she loved standing as a culprit before a stern, frowning figure representing Justice. The face of the wrongdoer wore a guilty, apprehensive look, as if the descending rod in the hand of Justice was about to administer a deserved yet fearful punishment. Just as the heavy rod was about to fall upon the extended hand of the culprit, the young woman herself, personifying love, rushed forward, and placing her upturned hand in the hand of the guilty one, caught the full force of the blow. The culprit’s face revealed the consciousness of having received deserved punishment and at the same time it manifested true sorrow for the wrongdoing; a sorrow that was awakened by love’s suffering interposition and substitutionary act. The young woman was then able to see that she had been punished; that personally, she received what she deserved as a sinner; but Christ had felt the force of the blow.
Here we see both identification and substitution. When we say, “Christ died for me,” we refer to an element of His death that we could not share-(the force of the “stroke”): this is the Substitutionary Aspect of His death. When we say, “In Christ I died,” we refer to the fact of our identification with Him in His death as our Representative.
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