THE DOCTRINES OF CHRIST 
HOME PAGE: Greeting in the glorious name
of our God and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ
ETERNAL LIFE
MINISTRIES
The Infallible Word of God
the Highest
“You
shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall make you FREE” (Jn 8:32)
A BIBLICAL, MEDICAL, AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE SUFFERINGS
OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
By HARRY A. PEYTON
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
DEDICATION (2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (3)
PREFACE (5)
INTRODUCTION (5)
CHAPTER 1: GOD'S PREDESTINED LAMB AND PLAN FOR
ETERNAL LIFE (7)
God’s Purpose in Creating Angels and Mankind (9)
CHAPTER 2: GOD’S REMEDY FOR THE SINS OF MANKIND, THE
LORD JESUS CHRIST (13)
Man’s Need for a Sinless Redeemer (13)
Jesus Christ Our Kinsman Redeemer (15)
A Redeemer Must Be a Kinsman
of the One Being Redeemed
A Redeemer Must Be Capable
of Paying the Price of Redemption
A Redeemer Must Be Willing
to Redeem the One Who Needs Redemption
CHAPTER 3 THE SUFFERINGS OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
(21)
Jesus’ Sufferings in His Childhood (21)
Jesus’ Foreknowledge of His Sufferings and Dead (23)
Jesus’ Sufferings in the
Jesus’ Sufferings at the Hands of the High Priest
and His Soldiers (27)
Jesus’ Sufferings at the Hands of King Herod and His
Soldiers (28)
Jesus’ Sufferings at the Whipping Post (29)
Jesus’ Sufferings at the Hands of the Roman Soldiers
at the Praetorium (33)
Jesus’ Physical Sufferings at
Jesus’ Emotional Sufferings At
Jesus Forgave All of His Enemies at
Permanent Deliverance from
Bitterness and Hate in Two Months (52)
Six Steps on How Forgiveness
Takes Place in the Heart (59)
Anyone Who Rejects
BIBLIOGRAPHY (71)
ENDNOTES (72)
Copyright May 30, 1996 by
Harry A. Peyton under the title of “The Doctrines Of Christ.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: BIBLICAL
HERMENEUTICS: The
author emphatically believes that the Word of God is INFALLIBLE only in the
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE it was written in, and all translations of the Bible
regardless of how good they may be are NOT infallible. Since this is true, the
author has performed Greek and Hebrew Lexical and Grammar studies in all of his
books, as well as compare scriptures in R. Young’s Literal Translation, S.
Morris’ Literal Translation, J. P. Green’s Interlinear Bible, NAS, NIV, 1917
JPS Holy Scriptures (Jewish Publication Society), 1985 JPS Tanakh, WTT Hebrew
Masoretic OT Text, LXX (Greek OT Septuagint), STE (Stephanus’ NT Textus
Receptus), and the NT Byzantine Textus Receptus by M. Robinson and W. Pierpont
with the New King James Version of the Holy Bible.
The author whole-heartedly
believes he has formed his beliefs firmly on the truths of the Bible, and not
on denominational teachings. In other words, a real student of the Word of God
must study the Bible with an open and unbiased mind, comparing Scripture with
Scripture and then allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. This author uses the
ancient ANTIOCHIAN LITERAL-HISTORICAL METHOD of INTERPRETING the Bible.
Therefore, the author will interpret all scriptures in a literal exegetical
fashion, unless the language and the context demand a spiritual interpretation.
I definitely believe that
the Alexandrian Allegorical Method of interpretation by means of spiritualizing
most scriptures is an abomination to our Lord (2Pe 3:15-16). This heretical
method was made popular by the ancient Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus (13
BC-50 AD), which was later adopted by most of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and
Post-Nicene Nicolatian-Balaamite Catholic Clergy.
THE REASON WHY THE
AUTHOR’S BOOK IS FREE: Since
Almighty God, the Lord Jesus Christ, gives His Salvation and His Word to all
freely (Rev 22:17, Mt 10:7-8, 1Co 9:16-19), this book is given without charge.
Therefore, fell free to download it in digital form or copy it in written form
and share it with others. Since this book is copyrighted, the author forbids
any alteration of its contents, and the reproduction of it in any form for
Marketing Purposes.
This book may be placed on
anyone’s web page as long as the author’s Website Address is attached to it and
an email is sent to him stating the website. This book must not be used to sell
a product. McAfee Site Advisor reviewed my website and stated: “We tested this
site and did NOT find any significant problems” (www.siteadvisor.com/sites/doctrinesofchrist.com).
Therefore, this website is free from any viruses!
THE AUTHOR’S
WRITING PREFERENCES:
All capitalization in quotes from the Bible, History, or Commentators will come
from the author. All quotes from the Bible will be in dark red and from the NKJ
Version of the Holy Bible, unless another version is stated. The author in most
places will quote verses from the Bible instead of commenting on a verse and
giving a reference, for he believes that the written Word of God has greater
power to inspire and enlighten a heart to understand and act upon truth than
the elegant oratory, comments, or writings of any man. If any of author’s books
have been a blessing to his beloved readers, and they would like to send a love
offering to him, feel free to do so.
If anyone wishes to send any
biblical, historical, or scientific materials relating to the Bible, send it
to: Harry A. Peyton; 148 Little Creek Hills RD, Alto, NM 88312; Email
address: DoctrineOfChrist@Hotmail.com. Many
of the books written by the author are filled with Historical studies from the
Ante Nicene Fathers (100-325 AD), Jewish Rabbis (The Talmud), Jewish Historian
Josephus (95 AD), as well as other ancient historians.
DEDICATION
Jesus Christ, our great God
and Savior came to give Eternal Life to all who will enter into a covenant
relationship with Him through the New Birth, and walk with Him in Spirit and
Truth. This book is designed to reveal the absolute truth pertaining to the
Eternal Life that our Lord Jesus purchased for us through His peerless death,
burial, and resurrection. It is dedicated to all the courageous men, women, and
children of the present and past centuries, who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and
believed His Truths. I would especially like to acknowledge those who suffered
social scorn, loss of income, loss of property, imprisonment, torture, and
martyrdom for their faith in Christ’s New Birth message and their monotheistic
belief in Jesus’ Supreme Deity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to acknowledge
my Lord, Jesus Christ, whose love, grace, and inspiration made this book
possible. May He use this work for the propagation of His Gospel; so many souls
may be able to enter into His great Kingdom. I would also like to thank Bridget
Joseph and Peter Meredith for their invaluable assistance in correcting the
grammar errors in this book. I deeply appreciate their labor of love.
I would like to give a
special thanks to the following Medical Doctors for the great internet articles
they wrote on our dear Savior’s physical suffering: “On The Physical Death Of
Jesus Christ,” (a Study by the doctors at Mayo Clinic: William D. Edwards, MD;
Wesley J. Gabel, MD; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI); “A Physician Analyzes the
Crucifixion,” by Dr. C. Truman Davis; “Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion of
Jesus Christ,” Compiled by David Terasaka, M.D. I would also like to thank Dr.
Graham Dark for his great work, the “On-line Medical Dictionary,” which helped
me to understand the medical terms used in the above articles. All medical
facts on the physical sufferings of our Redeemer, which are given in this book,
are based on the studies these Medical Doctors have done.
The author regrets that He
could not quote directly from these doctors for two reasons: A) I have felt led
by the Holy Spirit to write of the sufferings of our dear Savior in a very
personal way, instead of just quoting the hard cold facts. Some of the
paragraphs on the suffering of Christ closely follows what these Medical
Doctors have written, but are written in a way that will help my readers to
feel the emotional impact of His sufferings.
B) Most readers would not
understand many of the medical terms they used. Therefore, I have taken most of
these terms and replaced them with terms that could easily be understood. I
have given these doctors credit for the information I have used from them by
placing an endnote number by that information. If my readers would like to read
what these great Christian doctors have written, I have given their website
addresses in the endnote section of this book. It would definitely be
advantages to my readers to read all of these articles, for they will without
doubt increase their love and appreciation of
PREFACE
This book will answer
questions such as: Was Calvary in God’s mind before the world was created? Why
did God create angels and men? What is a Kinsman Redeemer and how does it
relate to our Lord? Was our Redeemer handsome? Did our Savior suffer or
experience any hardships as a child growing up? What happen to our Redeemer
physically and emotionally, when He was praying in the
What did our Redeemer die
from: haematidrosis, loss of a large quantity of blood, hypovolemic shock,
exhaustion, dehydration, asphyxia, carbon dioxide poisoning, the fluid that
built up in His pericardial sac that enclosed His heart, respiratory acidosis,
or a combination of all of these critical conditions? Did our Savior, in His
human nature, experience emotional torments, such as: deep depression, feelings
of rejection, and feelings of worthlessness at
INTRODUCTION
“Looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before
Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand
of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
I have written this book on
Our Lord told His bride in
Since our Savior desires for
us to agape love Him with our whole being, how does one do that? How does one
obtain or keep that kind of love? How does one love Jesus with a love that
surrenders their all to Him? You know, a love that is willing to make any kind
of sacrifice for Him. I love what Reverend Paul Price said about being in love
with Jesus; he said: “When you are in love with the lover of your soul, His
slightest wish becomes your greatest command!”
The year was 1974, and I was
in my first year of
Brother Jones then asked:
“How does one do that?” I thought to myself, well that is a good question; how
can I love my God with more love that I do now? Being a young man at that time,
I impetuously spoke out and said: “I can pray more, I can fast more, I can read
my Bible more, and I can witness for my God more.” Brother Jones quickly
replied: “Brother Peyton all these things are very good, but they are the
natural fruits of a fountain called love.”
Brother Jones then said: “If
your want to love your Savior with agape love, then all you have to do is to
read and mediate on
Christian and non-Christian
friends, our relationship with God begins at Calvary, and it must continue with
CHAPTER 1
GOD’S PREDESTINED LAMB AND
PLAN
FOR ETERNAL LIFE
As my dear readers and I
examine the Word of God pertaining to the salvation Almighty God provided for
lost humanity through the peerless death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ, we will discover that it was in the mind of God
before the creation of the world. Who among God’s people would knowingly rob
God of His deity? Yet, this is what some do when they rob God of His
foreknowledge. One of God’s many attributes is that of omniscience, which means
He knows everything. God’s foreknowledge is not predestination, for God’s never
predestined Lucifer or Adam’s fall. This came about from their freewill. The
doctrine of predestination of individuals is a lie from hell!
Because God has foreknowledge,
He knew how the world would begin before He ever created it, and He knows how
it will end. Nothing can happen in the world that will take God by surprise.
Our God is truly an omniscient God. In Acts 15:18 the Bible stated: “Known to
God from eternity are all His works.” The prophet Isaiah also confirmed this
truth when he wrote of God’s foreknowledge saying, God declared: “The end from the beginning and from ancient times things
that are not yet done” (Isa 46:10). The prophetic Word of God explicitly
called the Lord Jesus Christ, the “Lamb slain FROM
the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). The expression “The foundation of the world,” definitely refers to
the creation of the world, as can be seen in the following passages of
scripture: Psa 18:15, 102:25, 104:5; Isa 48:13; Mt 13:35; Jn 17:24; Heb 1:10,
9:26.
The apostle Peter gave us
some insights into God’s predestined Lamb, when he boldly declared that we were
redeemed, or bought out of the slavery of sin, not by gold or silver but by: “The Precious Blood of Christ, as a Lamb without blemish
and without spot”(1Pe 1:19). He then went on to say that Christ, as the
sinless Lamb was “Foreordained BEFORE the foundation
of the world” (vs 20). Paul, like Peter and John, spoke of God’s
predestined Lamb, when he told the church that God: “Saved
us… according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ
Jesus BEFORE time began” (2Ti 1:9).
God’s grace has always been
and forever will be in the Lamb of God. When I meditate on the meaning of the above
scriptures, all I can say is that God is truly awesome. All of the above
scriptures without dispute teach that God had in the past, and has in the
present, and will forever have in the future, only one plan of salvation for
mankind, and that is
All the animal blood
sacrifices of the past, from the time God slew and skinned some animals in the
Garden of Eden to clothed Adam and Even naked bodies, which was a type of God
making an Atonement for their sins, to Abel’s animal sacrifices, to all the
Patriarchs’ animal blood sacrifices, such as Job who: “OFFERED BURNT-OFFERINGS”
for his children every morning, “for Job said: ‘It
may be that my sons have SINNED” (Job 1:1-5, JPS Holy Scriptures published
by the Jewish Publication Society).
It is very evident that all
the Patriarchs KNEW that animal blood sacrifices was the only thing God
accepted as Atonement for their sins. All of these sacrifices in the days of
the Patriarch and during the time of the Law of Moses pointed to Calvary, even
though majority of God’s people did not have this great revelation; or in other
words, they did not fully comprehend what those animal sacrifices really
represented and how they pointed to Calvary (Hebrews 9:22; 10:1-18). Many of
God’s Old Testament prophets prophesied about
Conclusion: The Word of God definitely
proclaims, for all to read, God ordained before time began that the death,
burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would be the
foundation in which Eternal Life would be offered to all of mankind. Therefore,
God in EVERY COVENANT He made with mankind included Calvary in it, that is,
blood sacrifices of animals (Gen 8:20-9:9; 15:9-18). The Bible is very clear
that all Men of God in the Old Testament offered up animal blood sacrifices to
God!
The apostle Paul speaking of
the Old and New Covenant boldly proclaimed that Jesus: “is the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death, for the
redemption of the transgressions under the First Covenant, that those who are
called may receive the promise of the Eternal Inheritance…. Therefore NOT even
the First Covenant was dedicated without BLOOD. For… WITHOUT shedding of BLOOD
there is NO REMISSION” of SINS (Heb 9:15-22). Our Savior stated this
truth of salvation this way: “this is My BLOOD of
the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the REMESSION of SINS” (Mt
26:28). Therefore, no one in any age could be saved without encountering
God’s Purpose in Creating
Angels and Mankind
Since God had a plan of
redemption, that is
God in a sense was like
Adam, that is, before Eve came into existence. Adam being alone was very
lonely. God knowing the loneliness that was in Adam’s heart said: “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen
2:18). Therefore, God being alone before creation, greatly desired someone to
give His love to, and receive love in return (Jn 21:15-18)! As a result,
somewhere in eternity past, angels and mankind came into God’s mind. Because
God wanted true genuine love from angels and mankind, He gave them some of His
own attributes, such as, intelligence.
God did not create angels
and men because: A) He was bored and need some entertainment. B) He wanted to
be a King; therefore He needed someone to exercise His power over. Those who
believe this probably believe this is the reason why God gave angels and
mankind LAWS to follow! C) He wanted worship; therefore He needed someone to
fall down and adore Him, and verbally flatter Him. Those who believe these
things are inadvertently declaring that God is on ego trip and He is not the
epitome of perfection. No my friend, our God does not have any of these
attributes.
If the Almighty was on an
ego trip and created men and angels so he could have subjects to be king over
or to worship Him, He would have never given angels and men the power of
self-determination. He would have made them robots. However, God did not desire
robots; He desires true genuine love, which can only come through the power of
choice. It stands to reason, if our loving Heavenly Father had any of these
attributes, then all He would have to do is appear in heaven, where all nations
could see Him on satellite television, as He hurled thunderbolts of lightning
to the earth. As a result, by the time He reached terra firma, everyone would
be on his or her knees praising Him out of fear; and everyone no doubt would be
ready to submit to His rulership. If Lucifer had God’s power, he would
definitely do this, for he is an egotistical, self-centered, satanic
psychopath.
Because our God is
omniscient, He foreknew that sin and misery would come into the world as a
direct result of given His angels the ability to choose their own destiny. God
obviously foreknew that some of these angels would become devils, by
degenerating into selfish, self-centered, arrogant tyrants, wanting to exalt
themselves by enslaving others. The Bible clearly declares that God did not
create angels, or men, with these evil attributes, but He created them as good
and holy beings. This expressly means that God did not create Lucifer as an
evil being. Lucifer became that way through his incessant rebellion against his
Creator (Eze 28:12-19). Lucifer is the personification of the spirit of
domination, which has always been associated with witchcraft. Lucifer, his angels,
his demons, and their human disciples, can only receive worship as gods as they
completely dominate those under their power.
Some have asked: why did
Lucifer and some of God’s angels rebel against their Creator, since they all
lived in a paradise where there was NO sin, sorrow, sickness, physical defects,
hunger, poverty, or anything else that would make them miserable? They lived in
a perfect utopia. God poured out nothing but His goodness upon them. They lived
in and bathed in the beautiful, thrilling, presence of the Spirit of Almighty
God. As one deeply meditates upon this, and searches for an answer, one comes
to the revelation that Lucifer, the fallen angels, and the angels that remained
faithful to God, were not truly thankful to God for all of His blessings before
sin came into the world.
Well, one might ask why not?
From what little we know of this age, I believe the angels had no real
understanding of good and evil. They probably knew of this concept, but did not
fully understand it. How could they truly understand the evilness and misery of
evil, since evil did not exist at that time? They had nothing to COMPARE their
state of being to! How could they thank God for perfect health, when they had
no idea of what sickness was? How could they appreciate living in a state of
total bliss, when they had no idea of what sadness was? Therefore, how could
the angels, love and appreciate God, who gave them so many beautiful and great
gifts, when that is all they had ever known?
To illustrate this point,
let us examine Adam’s understanding of evil. After Adam and Eve sinned, God
told the angels: “Behold, the man has become like
one of us, to know good and evil” (Gen 3:22). Now what did God mean that
Adam and Eve now knew “good and evil?” The
Bible reveals that God told Adam about “good and
evil” when He created him. “The LORD God
commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day
that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:16-17). It is very
evident that Adam received an “understanding of good
and evil” after he sinned, that he did not have before he sinned.
Adam was like child whom a
parent instructs about evil. Now this child may know what the parent said about
evil, but he or she really cannot understand the evilness and misery of evil,
until they actually see it in someone else, or experience it. For then, and
only then, can that child visualize or completely understand what evil is.
Another example, God told Adam that he would die if he sinned. Now Adam, as a
child, may have known that it meant that he would cease to exist, but how would
he really understand this concept, since he never actually seen someone or
something die? In the garden, no animal, tree, or plant died. How could he fear
death, if he had no idea of what fear was?
One more example: let us
imagine two angels talking to each other before sin came into the world. One
angel’s name was Paul and the other was called Peter. Peter says to Paul: “God
told me that we are happy.” Paul replied by saying: “What is happiness?” Peter
says: “Well I am not sure, but God said it was the opposite of sadness.” Paul
replied: “What is sadness?” Peter says: “When I asked God that question, He
said it is when you do not feel good.” Paul replied: “What does feeling good
mean?” Peter says: “I do not know, but God said it is the opposite of feeling
bad.” Peter goes on to say: “God says feeling happy or good is how we feel
right now.” Paul replied: “But this is how I always feel.”
Peter then says to Paul:
“What is it with you? Why do you always have to know why this or why that, or
what does this mean or that mean? Why can you not accept what God says without
question?” Paul replied: “I do not question what God says is the truth, but I
want to understand the Word of God and the ways of God, so I can LOVE and SERVE
Him with ‘ALL of my heart, ALL of my soul, ALL of my mind, and with ALL of my
strength’ (Mk 12:30; also Deu 6:5). This is why I ask so many questions.”
As one meditates on the
above statements, it becomes obvious that God’s angels did not fully understand
Word of God and the ways of God. Therefore, I do not believe God really
received agape love from any of the angels, even from those who were faithful
to Him. It was only after Lucifer and his angels rebelled that misery came into
creation. As a result, God’s faithful angels, seeing the miserable state of the
fallen angels who were barred from heaven and the presence of God, finally came
to a complete understanding of the concept of “good
and evil.” It was at this time they came to the full realization of
God’s goodness to them. This evoked in them a true love and appreciation for
their Creator.
Since God gave men and
angels the power of self-determination, He will never violate their freewill.
He will intervene in certain events in man’s history to fulfill His prophetic
plan. He will even answer men’s prayers and help them in times of adversity,
but He will never violate their freewill. This means that God cannot be held
responsible for what evil angels and men do! If angels and men decide to
transgress His good and holy laws, He will not stop them. If evil men want to
steal, rape, murder, or commit any other atrocity against their fellow man, God
will not violate their power of choice. If they want to pollute the human race
with diseases, by passing their infected genes on to their innocent offspring
of future generations, God will not stop them.
The Word of God nowhere
teaches predestination of individuals, but only of the Church. The Church is
God’s reason for creation! The door of salvation is wide opened to all that
want to be a part of God’s Bride. The Almighty openly displayed His love for
mankind by becoming a man, and dying as a man, for man’s sins. The Bible
confirmed this great truth when it stated: “God was
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (2Co 5:19); and “Hereby perceive we the love [agape] of God, because He [the humanity that God dwelt in] laid
down His life for us” (1Jn 3:16). What was the result of this
magnificent act? “We love [agapao] Him, because He first loved [agapao] us” (1Jn 4:19).
My dear readers do not let
anyone deceive you, into thinking that you can just love God a little bit, and
make it into heaven. This is a lie Satan and all of his fallen evil comrades
want you to believe. The Lord Jesus Christ desires true genuine love from you
and I, and He will not settle for anything less. The Bible confirmed this great
truth, when it declared: “You shall love
[agapao] the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great
commandment” (Mt 22:37-38).
The apostle Paul speaking
about the reward, that those who love God with their whole being would receive,
said: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have
entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that
love [agapao] Him” (1Co 2:9). The apostle
James speaking of Eternal Life wrote: “Blessed is
the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive
the crown of [Eternal] Life, which the Lord
has promised to those who love [agapao] Him”
(Ja 1:12).
Jesus told His Bride, if
they remain faithful to Him until the end, she would receive “in the age to come Eternal Life” (Mk 10:30; Lk
18:30). Since all born-again believers right now have Eternal Life (1Jn 3:15),
this must mean that we will receive Eternal Life as a permanent possession in
the resurrection, if we agape love Him to the end (Rom 2:7; 1Ti 6:12, 19; Tit
1:2; 3:7; 1Jn 3:15)! In the resurrection, God will exalt redeemed men over the
angels, who have loved Him enough to use His grace to overcome the world, the
flesh, and the devil. John said it this way: “And he
who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over
the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron…. I will give him the
morning star” (Rev 2:26-28, also see 3:21, 1Co 6:2-3, Psa 8:3-6).
No one in the universe will
agape love and appreciate God more than redeemed men and women, for they have
experienced the depths of God’s love in all of their sufferings on earth.
Therefore, at the end of the ages when death is no more, there will never be
any more rebellion against God by any of His creatures; everything will go back
to where it was before the fall of Lucifer and his angels! There will be no
more sin or sinners in God’s universe!
CHAPTER 2
GOD’S REMEDY FOR THE SINS OF
MANKIND,
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
Man’s Need for a Sinless
Redeemer
Since every man, excluding
our Lord Jesus Christ, has sinned many times since their birth, they would
never be able to save themselves, much less someone else. Therefore mankind needed:
a Redeemer who could save them; a Redeemer who could mediate between them and a
holy God; a Redeemer who was so holy, righteous, sinless, and impeccably pure,
that His blood could propitiate and expiate the sins of mankind; a Redeemer who
would be willing to pay the price for their redemption; a Redeemer who would
love them enough to actually die for their sins; a Redeemer who would be
willing to impute all of the benefits of His atonement, to those in slavery,
whereby God would be able to declare them forgiven, righteous, and justified in
His sight.
God’s redemption and great
love for mankind through Christ is beautifully illustrated by Hosea’s love for
his wife Gomer, who redeemed her from slavery. This woman was a harlot and
after she gave Hosea children, she left him to chase after her old lovers.
After a time her lovers left her destitute, whereby she was sold into slavery.
Hosea searched for her and found her and because of his great love for this
harlot, he was willing to forgive and redeem her by paying the price for her
redemption. God’s message in this story is two fold: it not only beautifully
illustrates God’s love for
Our spirit, soul, and body
had been sold into slavery to these gods. Because we believed Satan’s lie, we
believe our happiness depends on any one of these gods of sin. But Jesus, our
great Kinsman Redeemer, has come not only to forgive us of our sins, but also
to set us free from all the slavery of sin; for God’s sinless Lamb came to “save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). There
is a world of difference between God saving us “in” our sins and “from” our sins. The Bible speaks of our bondage to
sin this way: “Don’t you know that when you offer
yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you
obey - whether you are slaves to sin which leads to death, or to obedience
which leads to righteousness.” For “we know
that the law is spiritual,” but we are “unspiritual,
sold as a slave to sin” (Rom 6:16, 7:14, NIV).
The picture that God is
communicating to us, through the apostle Paul, is one where you and I were
slaves who were bound tightly by the heavy iron chains of sin. Our master was
sin; therefore Satan became our god, for he is the god of all sinners. His
demon comrades made their bid to entice us to more and deeper sins, so they can
possess us. They, like sin, are cruel taskmasters and the entire human race
from Adam’s day on to the present has made themselves their prisoners through
their slavery to sin.
Mankind had no hope for
deliverance, until our God and great Kinsman Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ,
came into the market place of this world as a human being; and as a sinless
man, He purchased our salvation and our deliverance from the slavery of sin
through His holy, sinless blood. Because of His great love for us, our Kinsman
Redeemer was willing to pay a tremendous price to deliver us from the wrath of
God and set us free from all of our old sinful lovers, who dominated and
enslaved us, whereby we would become His loving and faithful Bride.
Jesus Christ Our Kinsman
Redeemer
Since God foreknew that man
would fall into sin, God devise a plan of redemption before creation began,
this plan as I stated before, was the “Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). The Creator, in His great
love for man, designed this plan in such way that He would personally take
responsibility for man’s salvation. Therefore, He did not place man’s salvation
into the hands of any angel or other being, but God in His infinite love became
the Lamb of God.
A Redeemer Must Be
a Kinsman of the One Being Redeemed: The Word of God declared that a person who has sold
himself into slavery could only be redeemed by one: “Who
is near of kin to him in his family” (Lev 25:49). Therefore, according
to the Word of God, a redeemer must be of the same family of the person who is
in bondage. How is this truth applied to our great Redeemer? God is informing
mankind, through this law, that the only way they could be redeemed from the
penalty and bondage of sin was by having someone who was member of their to pay
the price of their redemption.
Therefore, if God Himself
wanted to be our Redeemer, He would have to become a man. Paul speaking of this
wrote: “Therefore, when He came into the world, He
said: ‘Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared
for Me” (Heb 10:5). The Word of God speaking about the humanity of Jesus
declared that the Logos came: “In the likeness of
sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3). The word “likeness”
is the Greek word “homoioma,” which according
to Dr. Walter Bauer in his Greek-English
Lexicon of the NT and Other Early Christian Literature defines “homoioma” as:
The state of being similar
in appearance, image, [or] form.[1]
Jesus speaking as a member
of the human race said: “The SON of MAN has come to
save that which was lost” (Mt 18:11). Jesus speaking about the sufferings
His HUMANITY would experience declared: “The SON of
MAN must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and
teachers of the law, and He must be killed, and on the third day be raised to
life” (Lk 9:22, N.I.V). Peter called Jesus: “A
MAN approved of God” (Acts 2:22, KJV).
Paul speaking of Him as our
High Priest wrote: “Every High Priest is ordained to
offer gifts and sacrifices [for sin]:
wherefore it is of necessity that this MAN have somewhat also to offer”
(Heb 8:3, KJV). What did the man Jesus Christ as our High Priest offer up for
our sins? Paul shouting it from the mountain top for all Jews and the entire
world to hear proclaimed: “By His own blood He
entered in once into the
Paul speaking of Christ as
our Mediator in the Book of Hebrews says, the man Jesus: “Offered Himself without spot [or sin] to God,” and because of this: “He is the mediator of the New Covenant” (Heb 9:14,
15). The Word of God indisputably teaches that there is only “One mediator between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus”
(1Ti 2:5). Jesus speaking of His blood as the one and only way any one can
approach God said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the
Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn 14:6). Let my
dear readers take note; the Bible irrefutable declared that the HUMANITY of
Christ, not His deity, is the one and only mediator between a holy God and
sinful men. Therefore, no man or woman, no matter how holy he or she may be, or
how close to God he or she may be, could ever become our mediator.
Now according to all the
above passages of Scripture, the man Jesus Christ is the one and only mediator
that God will accept as a Mediator for mankind. Since this is the absolute
truth, how does Jesus, as our one and only Mediator and High Priest, forgive
sins we commit after we become born again, that is, enter into His New
Covenant? Does He go into the temple in heaven and offer up an animal sacrifice
for us every time we sin? Does He offer Himself up as a sacrifice for our sins
again? God’s Holy Word indisputably declares: “This
MAN, after He had offered ONE SACRIFICE for sins forever, sat down... waiting
till His enemies are made His footstool” (Heb 10:12,13). In other words,
Jesus is finished with making sacrifices for sin!
Therefore, there cannot be
any more sacrifices for sins, for Jesus can die no more: “For by ONE OFFERING He has perfected forever them that are
sanctified” (Heb 10:14). I am so happy to know that the precious sinless
blood of the man Jesus Christ will cover my sins immediately, when I confess
and truly repent of them. For Jesus’ blood is the ONE and ONLY meditation, His
Deity will accept for the sins of mankind. Jesus Christ is truly our Kinsman
Redeemer because He belongs to the family of man. So without doubt, the Bible
unequivocally declares that our Kinsman Redeemer had to be a human being,
before He could qualify to be the Savior of the World.
The infallible Word of God
also declared that our Kinsman Redeemer had to be God. For the Scripture
proclaimed: “Behold the virgin shall be with Child,
and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated,
‘God with us” (Mt 1:23; cp with Isa 7:14). In the Greek the last part of
the verse reads thus: “meta hemon ho Theos”
or “with us THE God.” Jesus is also called “ho Theos” in John 20:28. Let my beloved readers
take note; the Bible definitely declared that our Kinsman Redeemer was going to
be “the ONE and ONLY God with us.” According A Grammar of the Greek New Testament by
Dr. A. T. Robertson declared:
Among the ancient writers ho
Theos was used of the God of absolute religion in distinction from the
mythological gods.[2]
Professor Ray Summers of
Baylor University in his Greek grammar book entitled Essentials of New Testament Greek speaking of “ho Theos” wrote:
The Greek definite article…
was much used and is of tremendous importance in the interpretation of the New
Testament. In all probability it was originally a demonstrative pronoun; it
retains that force frequently in the New Testament. The basic function of the
Greek article is to identify. At this point an important differentiation should
be observed. When the article is used with a construction, the thing emphasized
is ‘identity’.[3]
The prophet Isaiah in
another place again spoke of the supreme deity of the Son of the Virgin Mary
when he boldly declared: “For unto us a Child is
born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty GOD, EVERLASTING
FATHER, and Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6, cp with Jn 14:5-10). In this
scripture, the Word of God explicitly called our Kinsman Redeemer the “Mighty God” and “Everlasting
Father.”
The great apostle Paul
called Jesus: “God manifested in the flesh”
(1Ti 3:16); and said: “In Him dwells ALL the
fullness of the GODHEAD [Deity] bodily”
(
Let my dear readers take
note; the Word of God emphatically declared that the Almighty God became a
human being. I certainly concur with the prophet Isaiah, went he spoke of God
or the Creator becoming a man: “Who has believed our
report” (Isa 53:1)? It is easy for man to believe that God sent Michael
the
A Redeemer Must Be
Capable of Paying the Price of Redemption: The Bible declared that the kinsman redeemer must
pay: “The price of his [relative’s] redemption,” in accordance with the amount of “money with which he was bought” (Lev 25:51). In other
words, the redeemer had to pay a pro-rated price of the full amount to purchase
his relative from slavery. Therefore, the price of redemption was determined by
subtracting the number of years he served from the number of years that was
required to pay off the debt. Then the value of those years was subtracted from
the full amount of the debt.
Redemption is not
redemption, unless a price is paid. Since the entire human race sold themselves
to sin, and became slaves to sin, and thereby provoked the wrath of God upon
themselves, our Kinsman Redeemer had to pay a tremendous price for their
redemption. The human race was sold into slavery for life; therefore, the full
price had to be paid for their deliverance. The redemption of man: from sins
committed in the past, from the very bondage of sin that enslaves him, from the
curse of spiritual and eternal death, and from God’s promise of retribution and
punishment, required an enormous payment or sacrifice on the part of our
Kinsman Redeemer. So with this in mind, what kind of payment did our Kinsman
Redeemer pay, in order to satisfy some of God’s holy attributes, which cried
for punishment and death?
For a full and complete
payment to be made, God required His Kinsman Redeemer to be a sinless human being.
God speaking of
Since Jesus’ fleshly nature,
which He received from His mother, was the same as yours and mine, it could be
enticed or tempted to sin. The Scripture speaking of the human nature of Christ
proclaimed: “He was in all points tempted as we are,
yet WITHOUT SIN” (Heb 4:15). This means that our holy Kinsman Redeemer,
in His nature as a man, faced every temptation that is known to man and never
sinned one time.
The Bible emphatically
reveals that Jesus, in His nature as Almighty God, could not be tempted to sin:
“For God cannot be tempted by evil” (Ja
1:13). When I meditate on the above passages of Scripture, all I can say is,
there are not enough adjectives in the languages of men that can describe our
Lord’s holiness. There is only one word, which can truly describe our Savior,
and that is “GOD!” Jesus is and forever will be God! The Lord Jesus Christ is
without dispute, all God and He is all Man; in other words, He had two perfect
and separate natures. Therefore, God’s requirement for salvation was a sinless
human being, who would be willing to die for the sins of lost humanity.
The Almighty God, as our
great and holy Kinsman Redeemer, obviously paid an awesome price to satisfy His
own demands for retribution and punishment for sin. Instead of God pouring out
His entire wrath on you and I, who are sinners and justly deserve punishment,
He poured it out on the holy, innocent Lamb of God, who never committed one
sin. The Bible teaches that God: “Made Him
[His Humanity] who KNEW NO SIN to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2Co 5:21); in
other words, we might be declared righteous in God’s sight through the
precious, sinless, blood of the Lamb of God.
Isaiah expressed this
beautiful truth this way, 700 years before God took upon Himself a human
nature: “The LORD [YHWH] had laid upon Him [His Humanity] the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). The great
apostle said it this way: “Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written,
cursed is every one that hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13). Paul also declared
our Kinsman Redeemer: “Delivered us from the wrath
to come” (1Th 1:10). This is why the hearts of the redeemed gladly and
thankfully sing out: “Thank God for the Lamb” and “Thank God for His precious
sinless blood!”
A Redeemer Must Be
Willing to Redeem the One Who Needs Redemption: The Bible revealed that the kinsman redeemer
could decline to redeem his relative, if he felt that the price of redemption
was too high, or if he just did not want to pay it. Therefore, the one in
slavery would “not” be “redeemed,” and he would serve out his term of slavery
(Lev 25:54). This verse clearly teaches us that the kinsman redeemer must be
willing to pay the price of redemption.
Even though Jesus, as our
Kinsman Redeemer, belonged to the family of mankind, and met all of God’s
qualifications to be a redeemer, if He was not willing in His Humanity to die
on Calvary’s Cross, then mankind was doomed to misery, torment, and eternal
death. All I can say is: thank God, our holy, sinless Kinsman Redeemer was
willing to die for my filthy, rotten, vile sins. Thank God, our Savior was
willing to bear in His own body the sins of the entire world!
Paul quoting Psalm 40:6-8
spoke of Christ’s willingness to become our sin offering. He wrote: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no
pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come -- In the volume of the book it is
written of Me -- to do Your will, O God” (Heb 10:6-7). When our blessed
Redeemer prayed in the garden He told His God: “Nevertheless
not My will, but Yours, be done” (Lk 22:42). Paul speaking of Jesus’
willingness to do God’s will wrote: “As a Man He
humbled Himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of
the cross” (Phi 2:8). The great apostle proudly proclaimed that Jesus
tasted: “Death for every man”; and “through death He might destroy him who had the power of
death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:9, 14).
Paul also declared: “Christ died for the ungodly…. For God demonstrates His
love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is truly amazing, for “When we were enemies
[of God], we were reconciled to God by the death of
His Son” (Rom 5:6, 8). Just think of it, Jesus died for us: while we
were His enemies, while we were in total rebellion against Him and His holy
righteous laws, while we were still in the depths of our sins. In other words,
while we were in a sinful state of rebellion against Him, rejecting
Most of us rejected the
voice of God’s Spirit when it spoke to us of God’s love, which is
CHAPTER 3
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE LORD
JESUS CHRIST
Jesus’ Sufferings in His
Childhood
Almighty God, with eternal
premeditation, before the world began chose to go through every heartache and
temptation that is known to man. Just so, He could prove His love for us, and
identify with us in every aspect of lives. One thing is for certain our
Redeemer could have been born in a royal palace. However, God deliberately
ordained that His Humanity should be born in a stable. God could have chosen
His Human Nature to be born in royal family, with glory, riches, and splendor,
but God instead purposely chose to be born in poverty, in a family that had no
prominence.
Our Lord fulfilled every scripture
that dealt with His Sonship or His Humanity. Isaiah is the only writer and
prophet who gave us a physical description of our Savior. He says: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing
in His appearance that we should desire Him” (Isa 53:2, NIV). Therefore,
according to this verse, there is nothing about our Lord’s physical appearance
that would attract us to Him; in fact, it seems to imply He was not handsome.
Knowing how Lucifer works,
there can be no doubt that Satan and his demonic spirits moved on innocent
children and teenagers, which our Lord grew up with, and used them to tease and
insult Him concerning His physical appearance. This must have hurt our Lord’s
loving and sensitive heart as a child and as a teenager. I presume that our
Lord was ugly, so He could experience this type of sorrow in life.
The prophet Isaiah described
the hardships that our Savior would experience in His childhood this way: “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root
out of dry ground” (Isa 53:2, NIV). Anyone, who knows anything about
farming, knows you cannot grow anything in hot parched ground, especially if
you are growing a plant that is delicate. Therefore, dry or parched ground must
be referring to the tragedies our sweet Lord’s must have experience in His
life; and the tender plant must be referring to our Kinsman Redeemer loving and
sensitive Spirit.
This can only mean our sweet
Lord, as a child, must have suffered every hardship known to man as He was
growing up; as the devil used everyone he could to mock, slander, downgrade,
and hurt Him in any way he could. No wonder why Isaiah also declared: “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief [choliy - sickness or disease]…. He has borne our griefs [choliy - sickness or
disease] and carried our sorrows” (verses
3-4).
The Jewish Publication
Society in their OT 1917 translation translated these verses like this: “He was despised, and forsaken of men, a man of pains, and
AQUAINTED with DISEASE, and as one from whom men hide their face: he was
despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely our diseases he did bear, and our
pains he carried; whereas we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.”
The apostle Matthew said it
this way: Jesus “Healed all who were sick, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘He Himself
took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses’ ” (Mt 8:16-17). It was
these hardships He experienced, which no doubt produced humility, hope, faith,
patience, perseverance, and the fruit of the Spirit in His life; in other
words, it was His sufferings in life that God used to developed our Kinsman
Redeemer’s character. These things made Him a man of great compassion and love.
All Children of God, who
have experienced God’s molding hand on their life, knows that suffering will
either make them more loving and compassionate or it will make them bitter
toward God, whereby they blame God for all their problems. In other words,
their hardships in life will either motivate them to put on God’s love and
character, or it will turn them away from God, whereby they become more
self-centered.
Paul told all of God’s
Children, who agape love Him: “We also glory in
tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance,
character; and character, hope” (Rom 5:3-4). James taught this truth
when he wrote: “My brethren, count it all joy when
you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces
patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and
complete, lacking nothing” (Ja 1:2-4).
Even as a child, our Lord
knew who He was. The Scripture declared, when He was “Twelve
years old,” He was “in the temple sitting in
the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all
that heard Him in the temple were astonished at His understanding and answers”
(Lk 2:42, 46). When Joseph and Mary found Him in the temple, they asked Him why
He departed from their traveling group. Jesus told them, did you not know: “I must be about My Father’s business” (vs 49).
Therefore, at twelve-year-old, He knew the Word of God, and knew that God was
His Father!
As we examine our Lord
childhood, He must have grown up in poverty, as most Jews did in that day. The
Bible does not mention Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather, after He was twelve years
old. Some say Joseph died a few years after this time. When Joseph died our
Savior, being the oldest son of Mary, had to work as a carpenter to support His
mother, His brothers James, Joses, Judas, Simon, and His sisters (Mt 12:46-47,
13:55-56, Mk 6:3, Jn 2:12). This meant He was responsible for providing the
necessities of life for His family. Therefore, in one sense, He experienced
some of the duties and responsibilities of a father, even though He was never
married or had any children of His own.
Jesus’ Foreknowledge of His
Sufferings and Death
Let us now look at the
suffering our Kinsman Redeemer experienced, in His manhood, as He prepared
Himself for this one special moment in time. Our holy Lord, as a man, was
obviously not materialistic or worldly-minded; for He spoke about the poverty
His humanity suffered with these words: “Foxes have
holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
His head” (Lk 9:58).
The agonizing death that our
Kinsman Redeemer would die at
Our Lord without doubt knew what
the prophet Isaiah prophesied about His death; for Isaiah declared that Messiah
would be: “Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was
wounded for our transgressions…. The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us
all…. For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of
My people He was stricken…. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His
mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him, He has put Him to grief…. He was
numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors” (Isa 53:4-12).
Jesus’ Sufferings in the
As we examine our Kinsman
Redeemer’s sufferings in the garden and at
Oil press and it is the name
of an olive orchard on the
The “oil press” is a fitting
name for this place; for it is here where Satan and his demons put our Savior’s
flesh under a horrific emotional and physical pressure. Now, all of our Lord’s
life was spent in preparation for this one moment in time, and now it had come.
Our Kinsman Redeemer knew, in a few hours, He was going to face the greatest trial
of His earthly life. Therefore, as out Lord entered into the garden with all of
his apostles: “He began to be very despondent and to
feel depressed” (Mk 14:33, Morris
Literal Translation by Dr. Stanley Morris). The word “depressed” is the
Greek verb “ademoneo.” Dr. Bauer defined “ademoneo” as:
Be in ANXIETY, be
distressed, troubled… (Hippocr. et al.; Pla., X.; Test Abr A 7… Jos., Ant 15…
Job 18:20… Ps 60:3… Mt 26:37… Mk 14:33… Phil 2:26.[5]
Our Redeemer, as a man, was
in a state of depression before He started praying. He knew that the sufferings
and shame He would experience would be unbearable. Thus being a Man of God, He
did what all godly men do, especially in times of great suffering, He prayed!
Therefore, after our Savior reached the place where he would pray in the
garden: He “Fell on His face and prayed”
saying, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to
death…. And He said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this
cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will” (Mt
26:38-44, also Mk 14:32-36).
If it was not the anxiety of
Calvary that the devil used to oppress and depress our Kinsman Redeemer’s mind
and emotions, to such an intense degree that He actually felt like He was going
to die, then please tell me what crisis, problem, or worry did the devil use to
accomplished this? Because of our Lord’s Human Nature, He dreaded the horrors
of
Thus, our Kinsman Redeemer
stayed in prayer until He conquered the devil, his demonic host, and the will
of His own flesh! It is very evident to me that our Redeemer’s flesh did not
want to suffer the excruciating pain it would experience at
Godly fear or reverence,
reverent regard, awe.[6]
Even though our Savior was
Almighty God (Isa 9:6,
The hounds of hell, no
doubt, brought tremendous pressure against our Lord, trying to get Him to sin
against His God by running from
It is often used, from
Demosthenes… down, of severe mental struggles and emotions, agony, anguish:
Luke 22:44.[7]
Therefore, there can be no
doubt that our Savior was actually “engaged in spiritual combat, which
definitely resulted in a physical problem, as He took on the devil and his
entire demonic host.” This wrestling match was so intense that our Lord
actually felt like He was going to die as He prayed. But being a real Man of
God, He stayed on His knees until He was able to completely submit His Human
Will to God’s will! O’ praise God, Jesus is our perfect example of what a
Christian should be like.
Doctor Luke is the only
gospel writer, who mentions our sweet Kinsman Redeemer’s “bloody sweat condition.”
According to medical science, this is a very rare disorder, which is known as
“haematidrosis.” “Haemat” means: “blood,” and “idrosis” means: “sweat,”
consequently we get the term “bloody sweat.” Dr Graham Dark, in the “On-line Medical Dictionary,” defined
“haematidrosis” as:
A very rare disorder in
which the patient sweats blood and/or blood pigments. ‘Haematidrosis’ is the
British form of the word ‘haematidrosis.’
This “bloody sweat”
condition is probably what Paul meant when he declared that our Kinsman
Redeemer: “Resisted unto blood, wrestling against
sin” (Heb 12:4, DBY). The word “wrestling” is the Greek verbal
participle “antagonizomai,” and it is only used once in the New Testament.
According to Louw-Nida Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament by Drs. J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida this Greek
word means:
To engage in an intense
struggle against something or someone…. ‘In your struggle against sin you have
not yet resisted to the point of being killed’ He 12.4.[8]
In other words, our sweet
Savior was in a real war with the devil and his demons, as they placed almost
unbearable pressure on His flesh and His emotions, to sin by running for His
life and escape the horrors of
“Jesus
therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward and said
to them, ‘Whom are you seeking?’ They answered Him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus
said to them, ‘I Am (He)….’ Now when He said to them, ‘I Am’ they drew back and
fell to the ground. Then He asked them again, ‘Whom are you seeking?’ And they
said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus answered, ‘I have told you that I Am (He).
Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way,’ that the saying might be
fulfilled which He spoke, ‘Of those whom You gave Me I have lost none. Then
Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and
cut off his right ear…. So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into the
sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me” (Jn
18:4-11)?
Jesus’ Sufferings at the
Hands of the High Priest,
Members of the Sanhedrin,
and
A student of the Word of
God, who compares the gospels, will discover that the order of events that took
place in Jesus’ life, from the time He was taken from the garden to the time He
was crucified, were as following: He was first taken to Annas’ house, then to
Caiaphas’ house. After this, He was taken to stand before the
Jesus Sufferings at
Annas’ House:
After our Lord displayed the power of His Divinity, by knocking all of the
temple soldiers down to the ground, when He identified Himself as the “I Am,” of the Old Testament (Exo 3:6 & Jn
8:24), the soldiers: “and the captain and the
officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound Him. And they led Him away to
Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that
year” (Jn 18:12-13). Annas question our Lord about His doctrine, but
Jesus gave him only evasive answers. Then one of the temple “officers which
stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, ‘Do You answer the High Priest like that” (vs 22)?
Jesus Sufferings at
the
Again the High
Priest asked Him, saying to Him, ‘Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’
Jesus said, ‘I am…. Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, ‘What
further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you
think?’ And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death. Then some [of the
members of the
This is a good example of
men having a religion without God in it. Therefore, these religious bigots
mocked Him, spat in His face, and beat Him, which no doubt cut and mangled His
face. As a result, our Redeemer was probably bleeding from His face. Only after
this vile treatment was He taken to Pilate.
Jesus’ Sufferings at the
Hands of King Herod Antipas and His Soldiers
Now Pilate resided at the
Praetorium of the Fortress of Antonia. Pontius Pilate was the Roman Governor or
Procurator of Judea. He no doubt was a very competent judge. After Pilate looked
upon our Kinsman Redeemer’s mangled face, he proceeded to question Him. Pilate,
after a methodical and comprehensive examination, was convinced of His
innocence. Consequently, he could find no just reason to flog or crucify Him.
So, as soon as Pilate knew that our Savior “Belonged
unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent Him to Herod, who himself also was at
After our holy innocent Lamb
of God was brought to Herod, this King “Questioned Him
with many words, but He answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes
stood and vehemently accused Him. Herod, with his men of war, treated Him with
contempt and mocked Him, arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him back to
Pilate” (Lk 23:7, 9-11). Therefore, Herod Antipas the Tetrarch of Judea,
like Pilate, could not find any faults with the sinless Lamb of God.
Pilate knowing that our
sweet Savior was innocent and did not deserve flogging, or crucifixion, offered
to release a prisoner to Jews, which was a common Roman custom at the time of
the Passover Feast. Pilate intentionally gave the Jews a choice between a
murderer by the name of Barabbas and our Savior. He evidently figured that
these Jews hated Barabbas more than they hated our Redeemer. Therefore, Pilate
cried out to the
“Do
you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?’ For he knew that the chief
priests had handed Him over because of envy. But the chief priests stirred up
the crowd, so that he should rather release Barabbas to them. Pilate answered
and said to them again, ‘What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call
the King of the Jews?’ So they cried out again, ‘Crucify Him” (Mk
15:9-14); and “Pilate, therefore, wishing to release
Jesus, again called out to them. But they shouted, saying, ‘Crucify Him,
crucify Him!’ Then he said to them the third time, ‘Why, what evil has He done?
I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him and let
Him go” (Lk 23:20-22).
Jesus’ Sufferings at the
Whipping Post
Pilate ordered our Lord to
be “scourged” after he saw that a riot was
about to break out (Mk 15:15). Pilate probably thought that the scourging of
our Kinsman Redeemer would be enough to satisfy this mob’s desire for His
blood. The word “scourged is the Greek verbal participle “phragelloo,” which
according to Dr. Thayer is an equivalent of the Latin flagellum. Our English
word “flagellate” is derived from this Latin word and it means: “to whip or
scourge.” The whip, which was used to scourge our Savior, was therefore called
a “flagrum.”
The Roman flagrum was not
any ordinary whip. It had several braided leather cords, each being about two
feet in length. Small metal balls probably iron or lead, and small sharp pieces
of sheep bone, was interwoven into it at intervals.[11]
This was done in order to make the scourging as painful as possible. Because
this repulsive whip was heavy, it usually took two Roman legionnaires to
administer the punishment. Roman flogging was a very severe punishment.
Flogging was fatal for some; only the strong could endure the brutality of this
form of chastisement.
The Roman soldiers then
brought our innocent Kinsman Redeemer to the whipping post and there stripped
Him of His clothes. They tied His hands to the post and then began to whip Him.
No one knows how many lashes these soldiers gave our Redeemer with this
revolting whip. The Roman Centurions usually had their soldiers beat a man
until he was at the point of death. Jewish law required forty lashes (Deu
25:2-3), but later it was changed to thirty-nine. These legionnaires took turns
flogging our sweet gentle Lord, repeatedly striking His back and maybe His
buttock and legs with this hideous whip; using all the force they had in their
arms.
Our dear Savior’s sufferings
are indescribable. If my dear readers could somehow receive a vision, of the
tremendous amount pain He experienced, they would never be the same. As the
legionnaires swung the flagrum, the small metal balls came crashing down on our
Lord’s back, which caused deep contusions or bruising. The sheep bones cut into
His skin, which caused the capillaries and veins of His skin to bleed. His body
quake and quiver each time this hideous whip came crashing down on His back.
As this brutal whipping
continued, the lacerations or cuts on our Kinsman Redeemer’s back tore open, as
the balls and sharp sheep bones penetrated deeper into His back, until it went
into His underlying skeletal muscles. This resulted in arterial bleeding as our
Savior’s blood began to spurt out from His mangled flesh. His entire back was
nothing but an unrecognizable mass of torn bleeding tissue, which looked like
long shredded ribbons.[12]
This is why the Scripture stated: “His appearance was so DISFIGURED, beyond that of any man, and His form MARRED beyond human likeness” (Isa 52:14, NIV).
This grotesque flogging, of
our holy, innocent Lamb of God, no doubt caused Him to lose a considerable
amount of blood. When one stops to think about our Redeemer’s blood loss in the
garden, His face being mangled and torn by the hands of the high priest,
elders, and temple guards, and then His body being viciously beaten and torn
open at whipping post, all one can say is that it had to be miracle that He
even survived to go to Calvary. Our Lord must have had a very strong man to
endure all this pain and suffering. Since our Savior loss a substantial amount
of blood, His body no doubt began to go into “hypovolemic shock,” either during
of after His flogging.[13]
Dr. Graham Dark in His “On-line Medical
Dictionary,” defined “hypovolemic shock” as:
A medical condition where
there are abnormally low levels of blood plasma in the body, such that the body
is unable to properly maintain blood pressure, cardiac output of blood, and
normal amounts of fluid in the tissues. This results in a state of DEEP
PHYSICAL DEPRESSION.
This means that our Kinsman
Redeemer’s DEPRESSION that began in the garden, developed into a DEEPER
DEPRESSION at the whipping post, and it intensified as He hung on
According to the Bible, this
horrific, painful beating was foreordained by God before creation to take
place. God ordained that the precious sinless blood of our Kinsman Redeemer,
which was shed at the whipping post, would be the full payment He required to
miraculous heal the bodies of His Children of all sicknesses, diseases, and
injuries. It certainly was no accident that our Healer was flogged, for Isaiah
speaking of this 700 years before it happened wrote:
“With
His stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5); and the apostle Peter quoting
Isaiah wrote: “By whose stripes you were healed”
(1Pe 2:24). Therefore, by faith in our Healer’s sinless blood, you and I can be
healed from every sickness, disease, and injury known to man! Our Physician
paid a great price, so we do not have to be sick, or remain sick. Friend let us
remember God’s promise: “If you can believe, all
things are possible to him who believes” (Mk 9:23).
Praise God, the holy sinless
blood, which our Kinsman Redeemer shed at the whipping post is part of the New
Covenant, which almighty God has made with His Children. Friend, God’s promise
to heal our bodies is just as much part of the New Covenant, as His promise to
pardon our sins. Our master Physician’s sinless blood removed the curses that
Adam’s sin brought upon the human race, which was not only death, but sickness
as well. For before Adam sinned, there was no such thing as sickness or death.
O’ praise our great and Divine Healer forever! O’ praise our God for He cares
about our entire being, and just our soul only!
Jesus’ Sufferings at the
Hands of the Roman Soldiers at the Praetorium
After our Lord was flogged,
He was then taken into the Praetorium of the palace. There the two soldiers who
flogged Him “gathered the whole garrison around Him.
And they stripped Him and put a scarlet [purple] robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on
His head.” To make their travesty complete they placed: “A reed in His right hand [for a King’s scepter]. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying,
‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck
Him on the head” (Mt 27:27-30). When the apostle John recorded this same
event, he added that these soldiers also struck our Savior with their hands (Jn
19:2-3).
According to Matthew, a
garrison of soldiers hit our Redeemer in His face, and beat Him on His head
with a wooden reed. This no doubt drove the long, sharp thorns of His crown
deeper and deeper into His brow and scalp, which caused Him to bleed profusely
from the blood vessels in His scalp.[14]
It was probably at this time when these heartless Roman legionnaires pulled the
hairs of our Lord’s beard out of His face. Our Redeemer prophetically spoke of
this, when He spoke through the prophet Isaiah and said: “I offered My back
to those who beat Me, My cheeks to those who pulled out My beard; I did not hide My face from mocking and spitting” (Isa 50:6, NIV).
Because of our Savior’s
“haematidrosis condition,” the horrendous flogging of His back, the severe
beatings to His face, and the ripping of His beard out of His cheeks and chin,
must have cause Him a tremendous amount of unbearable pain. Because of these
inhumane tortures, especially a great loss of blood, this put our gentle Lord
in a seriously weakened physical and emotional condition, before His
crucifixion. According to apostle John, after these soldiers were finished
amusing themselves with our Redeemer, they brought Him to Pilate.
I believe Pilate was hoping
that the flogging and beatings would appease this mob’s thirst for blood,
whereby He would be able to free our Lord. Therefore, “Pilate then went out
again, and said to them: ‘Behold, I am bringing Him
out to you that you may know that I find no fault in Him. Then Jesus came out
wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them,
‘Behold the Man” (Jn 19:4-5). I believe Pilate wanted this bloodthirsty
mob to take a good look at this man called Jesus. He wanted them to take notice
of how much He had suffered at the hands of his Roman legionnaires.
In other words, he wanted
them to take a good look at His blood soaked body, which was swollen and ripped
apart. He wanted then to see His bloody lacerated mangled face that the
soldiers pulverized with their fist, before they ripped out His beard. Pilate
probably thought to himself, surely their cry for His blood had been appeased.
Therefore, when he was about to let our Savior go, to his amazement, this
Jewish mob began to out again saying: “Crucify Him,
crucify Him.”
Pilate then: “Said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief
priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:6, 15-16); so, “When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but
rather that a tumult [meaning a riot] was
rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ‘I am
innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see (to it).’ And all the people
answered and said, ‘His blood be on us and on our children” (Mt
27:24-25).
The Roman legionnaires then
took our Savior back into the Praetorium of the palace and snatched the purple
kingly robe from His back, which was stuck to the dry clots of blood of His
scourging wounds. This would have reopened these wounds and caused fresh
bleeding. They then: “Put His own clothes on Him,
and led Him away to be crucified” (Mt 27:31). O’ if you and I had a
million tongues to sing His praises that would never be enough to give Him the
thanks He so justly deserves.
The Procession Down the Path
of the Via Dolorosa
As the procession to
To take up with the hand… to
take up in order to carry.[15]
Our Redeemer evidently fell to
the ground several times under the heavy load of His cross. Because of His
weakened condition from the scourging, and all the beatings He received, He was
not able to carry His cross the entire way. The distance from the Praetorium of
the palace at the Fortress Antonia to
Jesus’ Physical Sufferings
at
When they reached the place
of the skull (Aramaic - Golgotha, Latin -
The reason why our great and
holy Kinsman Redeemer refused to take any kind of sedative, to reduce His pain,
is because He knew that He was going to bear in His own body all of the
punishment of God’s wrath against the sins of the entire human race. He
therefore wanted to be in His right mind, so He could pay the full price of
man’s redemption. He refused this sedative knowing that the agonizing pain He
had already experienced would continue and increase as crucifixion began.
After refusing to drink this
drug, our sweet Lamb of God had His clothes ripped from His back again, which
reopened His scourging wounds. He was then thrown backward onto the cross, with
His back pressed against the rough coarse wood. As a result, the open wounds in
our Lord’s back probably became contaminated with wood splinters and dirt. Two
of the legionnaires then grabbed one of our Lord’s hands, as two other soldiers
grabbed our Savior’s other hand; they then pressed it to the crossbar.
These legionnaires expected
the usual struggle but found none, for our Redeemer meekly submitted His body
to their control. Another legionnaire began to fell for the depression that was
located in our Lord’s wrist, which at that time was considered as part of the
hand.[16]
When each legionnaire found that hollow place, he pounded a large, wrought iron
nail through our Savior’s wrist into the wood. Our dear Kinsman Redeemer’s
wrists were then impaled to the cross, with His arms slightly bent at the
elbow.
The excruciating pain our
innocent Lamb of God must have felt as they nailed His wrists to the cross must
have been unbearable. In fact, the word “excruciating” comes from a Latin word
“excruciatus,” which is a compound word: “ex” meaning “from or out of,” and
“cruciate” meaning “cross.” This Latin word literally means: “out of the
cross.” Therefore, the word excruciating, as it applies to our Lord, refers to
the “torment our Savior experienced on the cross.”
The Roman legionnaires
hammered the nails through our Savior’s wrist, because the ligaments and bones
of our Lord’s wrists could support the weight of His body hanging down, whereas
the palms of His hands could not. The nails was probably placed just below the
two rows of carpal bones that ran across each of our Redeemer’s wrists, and in
the center of the two radius bones of His forearms, in the place where they
were connected to our Savior’s carpal bones.[17]
There are four bones in each row of the carpal bones.[18]
The nails were pounded
through the large median nerve, evidently without injury to any of our Lord’s
arteries or breaking any of His bones.[19]
The median nerve was a major network of nerves, which ran through the center of
each of our Lord’s wrists. This nerve originated in our Savior’s lower neck and
upper thoracic spinal cord. This nerve supplied sensory and motor functions to
parts of our Redeemer’s forearms, wrists, and hands.[20]
The spike also went through the transverse carpal ligaments, and the membrane
of fibrous connective tissues, which surrounded our Lord’s carpal bones. These
ligament and membranes enabled our Redeemer to bend His wrist. This and the
piercing of His median nerve would have resulted in paralyzing a portion of His
hands.[21]
Any of the above injuries
our Kinsman Redeemer experience would have sent an agonizing bolt of fiery pain
throughout His hands, wrists, and arms. Since the median nerve controlled our
Savior’s movements and feelings of sensation in His hands, wrists, and arms,
just the slightest movement of any of these parts of our Lord’s body, no doubt
sent unimaginable pain throughout those parts! O’ if you and I had a million
tongues to sing His praises that would never be enough to give Him the thanks
He so justly deserves.
After these legionnaires
impaled our Lord’s wrists to the cross, they then grabbed His feet and pushed
them upward on the cross, so that His legs were bent at His knees. Our Savior’s
right foot was then taken and pressed backward against His left foot, with both
feet extended and the toes pointed downward. A large iron spike was then
pounded through the center of each foot, just before or below the arch of the
foot. As the nail went through our Lord’s feet, probably through the first or
second intermetatarsal spaces, just before the tarsometatarsal joints, it
probably damaged the deep peroneal nerve and branches of the medial and lateral
plantar nerves.[22]
The peroneal nerve is the
lateral branch of the sciatic nerve; it controlled the sensory and motor
functions of our Redeemer’s legs and feet. The plantar nerves ran alone the
soles of His feet.[23]
Since the peroneal nerve controlled our Lord’s feelings of sensation and motor
functions in His feet and legs, this can only mean that our Savior must have
experienced inconceivable pain every time He moved His legs even slightly. O’
if you and I had a million tongues to sing His praises that would never be
enough to give Him the thanks He so justly deserves.
Our Redeemer’s legs were transfixed
to the cross in a bent position, so that He could use the muscles in His legs
to raise His body upward. This was done so that He could breathe, for
crucifixion usually resulted in death by asphyxiation, which is the lack of
oxygen to the lungs. With every breathe our Savior took, as He moved up and
down on the old rugged cross, His agonizing scourging wounds on His back would
scrape against the wood of His cross, thereby reopening these wounds again. As
a result, He continued to lose blood the entire time of His crucifixion.
Can you imagine how our
sweet innocent Lamb of God must have felt, as He laid with His back on the
cross watching a Roman legionnaire drive those large iron spikes through His
wrists and feet? Instead of struggling against these men, or cursing, and
spitting on them, He meekly submitted His body to their brutal control. For the
prophet Isaiah declared: “He was led as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not
His mouth” (Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32). This is a beautiful picture of our
Lord’s courage and power over His flesh. When flesh wanted to cry out and
strike back, His Spirit Being keep it under submission, for His flesh was
totally under His control until the moment His Soul and Holy Spirit departed
and He died.
I wonder what those
legionnaires were thinking. When God’s sinless Lamb did not try to resist them,
as they were crucifying Him? I am sure these men were totally amazed by our
Redeemer’s meek attitude. This was something they had never seen or experienced
before. I wonder what these men felt in their hearts, when they heard our
Savior ask His Father to forgive, not only them, but also all those who hated
Him.
These soldiers did not take
our Lord’s life. For our Kinsman Redeemer, in His role as our High Priest and
the sacrificial Lamb, gave up His life for us. Our Savior said: “No one takes it [My life] from
Me but I lay it down of Myself” (Jn 10:18). He could have spoken one
word and the entire Roman Army, and all of His enemies around His cross, would
have fallen over dead. His humanity could have prayed to His God, and God would
have provided Him “With more than twelve legions of
angels” (Mt 26:53).
Dear friend, the Romans and
Jews did not kill our Savior, for it was your and my sins that nailed Him to
the Cross. In addition, it was not the nails that kept Him on the Cross, for it
was our sins that kept Him on the Cross. Jesus being the almighty God in flesh,
the Creator of the universe, had the power to come down from the Cross at any
time. However, praise God, His humanity did not use that power. Our Lord as the
obedient Lamb of God, lovingly, willingly, and purposely gave up His life for
us; for
After the legionnaires had
crucified the sweet Lamb of God, they nailed the “titulus” to His cross just
above His head, which was a sign that announced His crime. This was done with
all those the Romans crucified. What was our Lord’s crime? Did His sign
proclaim Him to be a murder, robber, adulterer, or a fornicator? No! No!! A
thousand time No!!! Our Savior’s sign declared: “JESUS
OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” This “was
written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin” (Jn 19:19-20). Therefore, according
to Pilate and the Romans, Jesus only crime was that He was the King of the
Jews; and I might add, He is the King and God of the entire universe as well!
After the Romans
legionnaires fasten our Lord’s body to the Cross, they lifted it up towards
heaven, pressing the bottom part of the Cross against the top part of the hole
they dug for it. They then dropped it into the hole. Our Savior’s body then
forcefully pulled downward, as the entire weight of His body suddenly hung on
the carpal bones in His wrists. The horrendous pain He felt in His head, His
face, and His back, now was felt in His chest, arms, wrists, hands, fingers,
legs, and feet. In other words, there was not a place on our Kinsman Redeemer’s
body, where He did not feel excruciating pain.
The weight of our Savior’s
body, as it pulled down on His outstretched arms and shoulders, would
eventually cause His muscles to knot as they became fatigued. This brought on
great waves of cramping and throbbing pain in those parts of His body.[24]
In a short time the nails, which were in our Lord’s wrists, placed a tremendous
amount of pressure on His carpal bones, and immeasurable strain on His median
and other nerves in His wrists and arms. All of His nerves, which were in his
arms and shoulders, were being stretched to their limits and beyond.
At the same time, our dear
Savior also had great difficulty breathing, for He could inhale but not exhale.
As our Savior hung on the carpal bones in His wrist, His intercostal muscles,
located between His ribs, remained in an inhalation state. Therefore, His chest
cavity could expand and take in air, but it could not let it out adequately.[25]
In other words, as our Redeemer hung on the cross with His arms stretched in an
upward position, His pectoral and His intercostal muscles became stretched in a
fix position. This caused our Lord’s respiratory muscles to become partially
paralyzed, because the movements of these muscles were opposed by the weight of
His body.
Consequently, our Redeemer’s
respiratory muscles were not able to work properly, being held in a fix
stretched condition.[26]
For this reason, it was exceedingly difficult for our Lord to exhale
adequately, and making it almost impossible to take in a full breath. He was
able to exhale a little with very quick short breaths. Since our Redeemer could
not adequately exhale, carbon dioxide slowly started building up in His blood
stream and tissues of His body.[27]
As our sweet Savior’s
breathing became more difficult, and the pain in wrists, arms, and shoulders
became unbearable, our Redeemer was forced to transfer the weight of His body
to His feet. To do this, He used the muscles in His legs to press the tarsal
bones of His feet solidly against the large iron nail that was in His feet. He
then had to use His leg muscles to push His body upward, as He allowed His
elbows to bend and His shoulders to move outward. He pushed Himself up until He
was in the right position, to balance the entire weight of His body on the nail
in His feet.[28]
By this movement, our
sinless Lamb of God would raise His body up just enough, whereby the carpal
bones could clear the nail that were in His wrists. This then would relieve
some of the excruciating pain He felt in His wrist, arms, shoulders, and chest.
Some of the pain, our Lord felt in these areas of His body, was caused by
muscle cramps and spasmodic contractions, which were produced by fatigue, loss
of blood, lack of oxygen, and hypercarbia. The longer these cramps continued
the weaker our Lord’s body became, and the harder it became for our Redeemer to
push Himself upward to exhale.[29]
Therefore, this upward
thrust of His body relieved, to some degree, the horrendous pain He felt from
His strain and damaged nerves in these areas of His body. This movement made
respiration much easier; for now His pectoral chest and intercostal muscles
began to relax enough, whereby His lungs could adequately expel the carbon
dioxide in them. It also gave Him the ability to inhale oxygen much more
efficiently. All the words Jesus spoke from the cross, that is, the “seven
sayings of our Lord,” were always spoken when He was in this upward position.[30]
O’ if you and I had a million tongues to sing His praises that would never be
enough to give Him the thanks He so justly deserves.
This upward movement also
resulted in our Savior experiencing a greater amount of pain in His feet, for
He had to push the bones and nerves of His feet solidly against the nail.
Therefore, His feet quickly became inflamed with a sizzling, burning, intense
pain. Furthermore, the bending of His elbows caused a rotation of His wrists
about the iron nails in them, which caused another quick fiery pain along His
damaged median nerves.[31]
Moreover, the pain in His leg muscles intensified as they constricted and went
into cramping spasms. In addition to all this, lifting up His body caused Him
to scrape His mangled back against the rough wood of the Cross. This reopened
His wounds and caused His blood to flow yet again.
Our sweet Lamb of God stayed
in this upward position until the pain in His feet and legs became so
unbearable, the muscles in His legs could no longer hold Him up. Then the weight
of His body would again pull Him down so that He hung on the carpal bones in
His wrists. The entire time our Savior was on the Cross, He alternated between
lifting His body up, so that He could breathe, and then collapsing down again.
Because of this horrifying cycle that was forced upon our Redeemer, every bone
in His body eventually became dislocated. Our Savior prophetically speaking of
this and His great loss of blood said: “I am poured
out like water, and all My bones are out of joint” (Psa 22:14).
Our dear Lord’s mind, no
doubt, was filled with messages from every nerve and muscle in His body, which
cried out for relief! His brain probably felt like it would explode from the
excruciating pain it felt! After a few hours, the sharp, throbbing, intolerable
pain that our Redeemer felt in the upper part of His body, caused His pectoral
muscles in His chest to slowly becoming paralyzed; for His pectoral, shoulder,
and arm muscles were becoming fatigued from damage stretched nerves and the
knotting of spasms they experienced. As a result, His breathing became heavy
and labored, whereby He had to fight for every breath. Because of His body’s
inability to exhale properly, carbon dioxide filled our Savior’s lungs, blood
stream, and tissues of His body.[32]
For six long agonizing
hours, or from 9 AM – 3 PM, the sinless Lamb of God experienced excruciating
and immeasurable pain. As His body went through alternating partial
asphyxiation, cycles of twisting as He stretched His nerves beyond limits,
joint wrenching cramps from His bones being dislocated, muscle spasms, and His
skin being torn from His mangled, lacerated back as He moved up and down
against the coarse wood of that old rugged Cross.[33]
Our sweet Lord went through this until His strength was completely gone, and
the tissues in His body became extremely dehydrated, insomuch that His own
breath brought pain to His throat. Our Savior prophetically speaking of this
said: “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and
My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death”
(Psa 22:15).
It would have been so much
easier for our holy, innocent Lamb of God to just hang on the cross, and die a
quick death of asphyxiation. But our holy Kinsman Redeemer was determined to
suffer as long as possible, so He could bear in His body the full wrath of God
for your and my sins. As our Savior hung on the Cross between 12 AM and 3 PM,
the sun was to embarrass to show its face, so there was darkness for three
hours. Is it not a disgrace that nature could recognize the injustice that
mankind was inflicting upon their Creator, but man with all of His intelligence
could not?
Because of the tremendous
pressure that had built up in our Lord’s body and His great loss of blood, He
experienced a very intense pain in His chest as the pericardial sac, in which
His heart was enclosed, filled with fluid and began to press against His heart.
Death was now only moments away. His loss of body fluids had now reached a
dangerous state.[34]
His compressed heart was now struggling to pump thick, sluggish blood into the
cells and tissues of His body. His tortured lungs were making a desperate
effort to take in small gulps of air.
Because our Lord’s heart was
severely compressed by the fluid in the pericardial sac, it finally stopped
beating, and the Soul and the Holy Spirit of Christ departed and His body died.[35]
According to the Word of God after Jesus died: “One
of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water
came out” (Jn 19:34). Because of the incredible amount of internal
pressure, which had built up in our Redeemer’s heart, His heart exploded when
the spear went into it. This would explain the scripture that stated: “My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My
bowels” (Psa 22:14). Dr. Davis in his Internet article “A Physician
Analyzes the Crucifixion” described the spear thrust to our Redeemer’s heart
this way:
The legionnaire drove his
lance between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart….
Thus there was an escape of watery fluid
from the sac surrounding the heart and the blood of the interior of the heart.
This is rather conclusive post-mortem
evidence that Jesus died, NOT the usual crucifixion death by suffocation,
but of HEART FAILURE due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the
pericardium.
Drs. Edwards, Gabel, and
Hosmer of Mayo Clinic, in their Internet article “On The Physical Death of
Jesus Christ,” gave this explanation of the cause of our Lord’s death. They
stated that His death:
May have been hastened
simply by his state of exhaustion and by the severity of the Scourging, with
its resultant blood loss and preshock state. The fact that he could not carry
his patibulum supports this interpretation. The actual cause of Jesus’ death,
like that of other crucified victims, may have been multifactorial and related
primarily to hypovolemic shock, exhaustion, asphyxia, and perhaps acute HEART FAILURE, a fatal CARDIAC ARRHYMIA may have
accounted for the apparent catastrophic terminal
event.
My dear readers, let us take
a minute and worship the Lamb of God, and tell Him how deeply we love and
appreciate His great sacrifice for us: “O’ praise my Savior forever and
forever; for He is worthy to receive all glory, honor, and praise in heaven and
on earth! Lord Jesus I love you for Your are: my Savior, my Deliverer, my High
Priest, my one and only Mediator, my Counselor, my Provider, my Healer, my
Righteousness, my God, my Lord, my best Friend, my Peace, my Joy, my Happiness,
and my Life. I will praise your holy name forever and ever. I will love and
serve you throughout eternity. O’ let everything that has breath love and
praise our Lord forever and ever. Amend!”
Jesus’ Emotional Sufferings
at
Overview: To fully appreciate our
Savior’s emotional sufferings, we must believe in and comprehend the dual
nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sweet Lord was not like any man that
existed before Him, or even after Him; for as I stated before: “our Jesus had
two distinct and separate natures. He was ALL GOD and He was ALL MAN, and both
natures dwelt in one undivided and unique person.” In His nature as God, He was
the Creator, King, and Judge of the universe; in His nature as man, He was the
Son of Mary, the Savior of the world. Jesus in His Human Soul Nature had a
mind, will, and emotions. Most of what our Redeemer spoke, taught, and thought
came from His Human Soul Nature, but sometimes these things came from His
Spirit Nature as Almighty God. The Bible definitely reveals that Jesus had
Human Emotions. Let us always remember, it is impossible for Jesus to enter
into a state of depression in His Spirit Nature as God, but in His Human Soul
Nature, He became greatly depressed.
Our Lord Himself, as His
Holy Spirit spoke through the prophet David, gave us a beautiful prophetic
picture of His emotional sufferings on the Cross in the twenty-second Psalm.
This Psalm was written a thousand years before our blessed Kinsman Redeemer
went to
Psalm 22:1-18 in the JPS
Holy Scriptures: “My God, My God, why hast Thou FORSAKEN Me, and art far from My help at
the words of My cry [TRAVAIL]? O my God, I call
[PRAY] by day, but Thou answerest not; and at
night, and there is NO surcease [i.e.
END of praying] for Me. Yet Thou art HOLY, O Thou
that art enthroned upon the PRAISES of
Be not far from
Me; for trouble is near; for there is NONE to help. Many bulls have encompassed
Me; strong bulls of
Summary: Verses 1-2: Because of the deep depression Jesus was in at this
time, the Humanity of Christ monetarily felt forsaken of Deity, and that His
prayers were not being heard even though He continued in prayer all night and
into the daytime hours without stopping! Verses 3-5: Jesus’ Human Nature
overcame His EMOTIONS of depression
by worshipping His God and clinging to the promises of His Word. Verses 6-8: Jesus in His Human EMOTIONS began
to feel worthless, that is, like a worm; because of all the hate the people
around His cross pour out on Him. Verses 9-10: As the devil used these people
to mock our Lord, especially concerning His relationship to God, Jesus’ mind
then went back to His HUMAN BIRTH! Verses 11-13: Jesus compared the viciousness
of the religious leaders around His Cross to bulls and lions. Verses 14-18: The
excruciating sufferings Jesus experience on the Cross.
Psalm 22:1: “My God, My God, why have You FORSAKEN Me? Why are You so far from helping
Me, And from the words of My groaning
[TRAVAIL]?” Did the Holy Spirit of God depart
from our gentle Lord, while He was suffering on the Cross? Many preachers say
it did and some say it did not. I personally believe that God’s Holy Spirit
Nature was in our Deliverer the entire time He suffered; for the Scripture
stated: our Redeemer “Through [dia] the Eternal Spirit offered [prosphero] Himself [i.e. His Humanity] without spot to God” (Heb 9:14).
Now the Greek preposition
“dia” means: “by means of or through the medium of”, and the word “offered” is
the Greek verb “prosphero,” which is in the aorist tense, indicative mood, and
active voice. In other words, the sinless Lamb of God was able to accomplish
the complete or finish work of
The Soul and the Holy Spirit
of Jesus did NOT leave His Body until the moment of His death; for Jesus’ Body,
like any other human body, could not die until this happened (Gen 35:18; Ja
2:26). Now according to the Bible, after Jesus’ Body died, His Soul and the
Holy Spirit immediately went into Hades, and dwelt there for three day, as His
Body dwelt in the tomb on the earth. The apostle Peter and Dr. Luke stated this
truth this way: Christ “being put to death in the
flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by Whom also He went and preached to the
spirits in prison” (1Pe 3:18-19); and “His
Soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption” (Acts
2:31).
Consequently, according to
all the above passages of Scripture, the Holy Spirit was in the Soul of Jesus
the entire time He was on the Cross, and even when it dwelt in Hades.
Therefore, this is conclusive proof that the Eternal Spirit of God did not
forsake our Lord, when He was suffering on the Cross! Preachers, who believe
that the Holy Spirit of God deserted our Savior at
Now, according to the Bible,
the sins of the whole world were laid on the flesh of the sinless Lamb of God,
and God’s entire wrath was poured out on His fleshly body (Ga 3:13). For it was
His fleshly body that was being spat upon, beaten, whipped, ripped apart, and
nailed to the Cross; while His Spirit Being remained pure, holy, and undefiled
by sin during the entire time. This is why our Lord at the last Passover supper
called the “bread and wine” His “body and blood,” which was given as God’s
sacrifice for sins (Mt 26:26-28)!
Now, if the Holy Spirit of
God was in Christ during the entire time of His sufferings, as the above
passages of Scripture declare, then why did our Lord say: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We know
our Lord could not tell a lie, even if He wanted to, for He is “the Truth” (Jn 14:6). Let us examine Mark recording
of this passage in Psalms: “Now it was the third
hour, and they crucified Him…. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a
loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My
God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” (Mk 15:25, 33-34)?
To completely understand
what our Savior meant by these words, let us review the background of this
Passage. As my dear readers and I examine this passage, let us quickly review
the events that took place just before our Savior uttered these words. In the
Through all of our Lord’s
beatings, especially at the whipping post, His blood loss became very
significant, which resulted in His body going
into “hypovolemic shock.” This resulted in our
Savior going into a state of “deep emotional
depression.” Then on Calvary cross, as our sinless Lamb of God’s
physical sufferings increased, and His blood loss became even greater, and His
body became feverish, His depression reached a peak, in which His misery and
grief became overwhelming.
Now according to Mark, our
sinless Lamb of God had been on the Cross in agony for six long hours before He
uttered these words. Therefore, because His body was burning with fever, and
His mind was constantly occupied with thoughts of pain that filled His body,
our great Savior could not feel the beautiful presence of the Holy Spirit that
was in Him. As a result, His Human Emotional Nature for a short time felt as
though God had deserted Him, and therefore, He spoke out His feelings. This can
also be seen in the context of the verses following this one.
Psalm 22:2: “O
my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou answerest not; And in the night season,
and am not silent.” Our Saviors’ mind, during this time of great
depression, evidently went back to the
Now, even though our holy
Savior knew that it was the will of God
for Him to go to
To me, with all my human
frailties, this is very inspiring; just to know that our Savior, in His
Humanity, could even become depressed is truly amazing; and not only this, but
He could pray a prayer that His Human Nature knew was contrary to His own
Divine Will (Lk 18:31-33)! This verse no doubt proves that our Kinsman Redeemer
had a very real physical and emotional Human Nature. All I can say is: thank
God He did! Because out sweet, loving Kinsman Redeemer had a real Humanity that
experienced all the hardships and sufferings of life, Paul could declared: “We have not a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet
without sin” (Heb 4:15, RSV).
Psalm 22:3-5: “You
are HOLY, enthroned in the PRAISES of
Let my dear readers take
note to the words “holy” and “trusted” in the above verses. The word “holy” is a word that is use in worship to describe one of God’s attributes.
Therefore, our Savior through the act of
worship, which was probably mental and not spoken, affirmed to Himself and
to the devil that His God was “holy or without sin and
could do no wrong or injustice”. Therefore, our Lord acknowledged in His
heart that His God was just; and the Wrath of God that His Human Body was
experiencing for the sins of the entire human race was a just punishment!
Our Kinsman Redeemer also
expressed total faith and trust in God’s Word. He knew that God promised to be
with His Children at all times, especially in all the hardships of life. He no
doubt believed and held on to God’s promise to His Children, when God told
them: “Be strong and of good courage, do not fear
nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you.
He will NOT LEAVE YOU nor FORSAKE YOU” (Deu 31:6). Our Lord, in His
Human Nature, overcame the world, the devil, and His own flesh as He worshipped
God and got a Pit Bull grip on God’s promises.
Therefore, our Kinsman
Redeemer overcame His brief Human emotional fears by faith. Our Savior
obviously did not live by His feelings, but because He was a Man of Faith, He
knew in His Spirit: “The just shall live by his
faith” (Hab 2:4). The Lord as a Man practiced what He preached! He did
not allow His Human emotions to continue to rule Him, but He ruled them!! After
our Lord overcame His emotional fears, He was again sure that God did not
desert Him and that He still loved Him!!!
Therefore, our Lord’s faith
prevailed over His physical brain, which was receiving hundreds of messages
every second from every nerve in His body, which told Him God had forsaken Him
and did not love Him. Not only did our Lord fight this battle of faith, but he
also had to fight the Devil and His demonic host who were working through those
around the Cross; for Lucifer used the hatred of those around the Cross to try
to convince our Savior that God had forsaken Him. Lucifer foolishly hoped that
he could deceive our Redeemer’s Human Nature to believe these lies; he hoped
that our Lord’s Humanity would become angry and bitter towards God. If our Lord
was not capable of having these emotions, then He could not have had the nature
of man and He could not have been tempted in “all
points” as we are (Heb 4:15).
Psalm 22:6: “I
am a WORM, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people.”
When the devil saw that he could not destroy our Lord’s faith in God through
physical suffering, which greatly increased His depression, he attacked our
Savior’s heart. He used the Jewish people to break our Redeemer’s heart and
make Him feel totally unloved and worthless in His Human Nature. To make things
worst, these people were not gentile, who did not know or have a relationship
with God, but Jews, who had a covenant with God through Abraham and the Mosaic
Law. These people were the Children of God, whom our sweet Savior loved very
deeply and tried to save (Lk 13:6-9; Mt 15:24; 23:34; Lk 19:41).
Why did our sinless Kinsman
Redeemer, in His emotions, fell like a WORM instead of a human being? If you
and I could somehow visualize Him hanging on the old rugged Cross, with His
mind filled with intense physical pain, and with His heart broken from the
rejection and hatred of those He greatly loved, we might understand a little of
His feelings of worthlessness. If we could have seen these backslidden Children of God, as they passed by our gentle and
loving Savior’s Cross, laughing at Him, mocking Him, cursing Him, and verbally
poured out all their vile demonic insults on Him, we then might understand a
little, why He felt like a WORM and not a man.
The hearts of God’s Children
were evidently so harden from sin that they could not feel any compassion for
our Lord’s sufferings, but only a demonic hatred, which actually rejoiced at
His sufferings. How would you feel, if someone you deeply loved hated you the
way these Jews hated our Savior? It would be enough to break your heart.
Therefore, because of this demonic hatred, these Children of God had for our
sweet and gentle Lord, He in His Human Nature, felt like the lowest and most
insignificance creature that they knew of at that time, which was a worm. A worm was something they could crush under their feet and feel no
remorse. Evidently, in their eyes, our Redeemer was not worthy of their
compassion. As a result, they made Him feel like a WORM instead of a man!
Dear readers, let us
remember there was no one around the Cross that day, who was on their knees
singing and shouting His praises. No one to raise their hands in praise, and
tell Him they loved Him and deeply appreciated His loving sacrifice. There was
no one, who even gave Him any encouragement. Sure, His mother and John the
beloved were there, but they never spoke a word. They just stood there watching
His suffering, as their heart was breaking into a million pieces. The only ones
who were around the Cross that day, who spoke a word, were those who hated Him,
laughed at Him, and mocked Him. The only thing our gentle Savior could feel
around His Cross was hate, hate, and more hate! Surely, Christ in His Nature as
God spoke the truth when He said through the prophet Isaiah: “I have trodden the winepress alone…. I looked, but there
was no one to help…. Therefore My OWN ARM [i.e. My Humanity] brought salvation for Me” (Isa 63:3, 5, cp with
53:1 & 2-10).
Psalm 22:7-8: “All
those who see Me ridicule Me; they
shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, ‘He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue
Him; let Him deliver Him, since He
delights in Him.” Matthew recorded these verses this way: “And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their
heads and saying… ‘IF You are the Son of
God, come down from the Cross.’ Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders
said… ‘IF He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the Cross, and
we will believe Him. He trusted in
God; let Him deliver Him now if He
will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son
of God” (Mt 27:39-43).
Let my dears readers take
note; the devil used this very same tactic on our Savior in the wilderness,
when He was in a weaken state from fasting for forty days, in which He had no
food or water. At that time, Lucifer told our Lord: “IF
You are the Son of God, command that
these stones to become bread…. IF You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down” from this temple (Mt 4:3,
6). In other words: “If you are the Son of God, let me see your power!” Lucifer
was now tempting the Fleshly Nature of Jesus to use His Divine Nature to prove
His Sonship.
Evidently, Lucifer and His
multitude of demons did not let up their attacks on our Savior for one minute.
For just as Lucifer tempted our Redeemer to sin in the wilderness, he again
tempted our Savior to sin, but this time when He was in an extremely weaken
physical and emotional condition. This time Lucifer mockingly used the backslidden Children of God to try to
get our Redeemer to sin and use His Deity to prove His Sonship.
Let us never forget that this
temptation came when our sweet Lord’s entire body was filled with excruciating
pain, and His heart was breaking from the rejection and hatred of those He
deeply loved. The message Lucifer and his demonic host were communicating to
our great Savior was really this: “IF You are the Son of God, then God would love You; He
would have removed the cup of
Lucifer and His demonic multitude
hoped that our Savior would become angry with these backsliders, as they poured
out their hateful and tormenting mockery upon Him, and come down from the Cross
and destroy them. If the devil could have provoked the Human Nature of our
Savior, to use His powers as God, to come down from the Cross, he would have
won not only this battle but also the entire war, and all of mankind would have
been lost forever.
If Jesus had come down from
His Cross, then He would not have died, and this would have negated God’s plan
of salvation, which required a sinless Kinsman Redeemer to die for the sins of
the entire world! All I can say from the depths of my heart is: Thank God Jesus
stayed on the Cross; for I would have been lost and without hope in this world;
and I would have been doomed to be tormented in the
Psalm 22:9-10: “You
[Father] are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts. I was CAST upon You from BIRTH.
From My mother’s womb You have been
My God” (Psa 22:9-10). As the old serpent attacked our Redeemer’s heart,
through the backslidden Children of God, as they mocked His claim as: the “Son of God,” our Lord’s mind evidently went back to
His natural birth. In fact, according
to the above verses, His mind when back even before His birth, to a time when
He was still in the womb of His mother Mary.
Therefore, the Word of God
indisputably declared that God was the Father of this humanity, even when our Lord was still in His mother’s womb. This
is one, of many scriptures, which prove that our Savior in His Humanity was
like no other man, for no Child of God could ever claim that God was his or her
Father from the time he or she was in the womb of his or her mother! What does
the Scripture mean when it stated that Jesus was “CAST”
upon God from His “BIRTH”? It simple means
that Jesus was taken to the temple in Jerusalem on the “eighth day” after His birth and became God’s Child through God’s
Covenant of “Circumcision” (Lk 2: 25-28; cp with 1:59-60). Therefore, God was His
Father while He was in the womb of Mary and when He became circumcised!
All of the above scriptures
absolutely prove that our sweet Savior, as a man, had Human emotions. For in
His depression in the Garden, He felt like God did not hear and answer His
prayer; and in His deep depression on the Cross, He briefly felt like God had
forsaken Him; and He also felt like a WORM, or in other words, He felt
worthless and unloved. If these emotions do not qualify our Kinsman Redeemer to
have a real Human Nature, like you and I, then I do not what will! Therefore,
for anyone to say or teach that the Lord Jesus Christ did not have Human
Emotions would be a lie of Satan.
Psalm 22:11-13: “Be not far from Me, For trouble is near;
For there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded Me; Strong bulls
of
Psalm 22:14-18: “I am poured out like water, and all My bones
are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me. My strength is
dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me
to the dust of DEATH. For dogs [i.e.
gentiles – Roman soldiers] have surrounded Me; the
congregation of the wicked has
enclosed Me. They pierced My hands
and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing
they cast lots” (cp with Mt 27:35). Since
we have already examined the physical sufferings of Jesus in the section before
this one, there is no need to do it again.
Conclusion: After meditating on all the
sufferings of my loving Savior, all I can honestly say is, most of us mortals
do not know the first thing about true love for God. We know how to love things
with phileo love, people with eros love, and our family with storge love, which
are the three Greek words use for love in the Classical Greek, but to love God
with agape love is very hard for us to do. Yet, this is the only kind of love
God wants from us. It is also the only kind of love for God, which will give us
the desire and power we need to surrender our entire being to the lover of our
souls.
Agapao is the word that is
used in Koine or Biblical Greek to express God’s love for His Children, and
their love for Him! Therefore, let all of God’s Children make up their minds to
love their God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, with this kind of love; that
is: “To LOVE [AGAPAO] Him with ALL the heart, with ALL the understanding, with ALL the soul,
and with ALL the strength”! Do not allow anyone or
anything or any form of suffering and hardship to stand in your way from loving
and serving your God.
Jesus Forgave All His
Enemies at
Just before our Savior died,
He uttered a few words that some will not want to hear, and especially to
practice. In the presence of all of His enemies, who hated and insulted Him,
who scorned and laughed at His sufferings, He said: “Father
forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:44, 34). Why did
our Savior say these men did not know what they were doing? Many of these men
were very intelligent; they were doctors, lawyers, scribes, priests, and the
high priest.
Our Kinsman Redeemer knew
that His battle that day was against evil spirits! This is why the apostle Paul
told God Children: “We do not wrestle [pale] against flesh and blood, but against principalities [arche
i.e. demonic princes over cities], against powers
[exousia i.e. demonic princes over states], against
the [world] rulers [kosmokrator i.e.
demonic princes over a country] of the darkness of
this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,”
that is, Satan’s angelic princes station in the heavens (Eph 6:12, ASV). This
passage of scripture describes Lucifer’s organizational structure of his angels
and demons, which are under his control.
The fallen angels that fell
with Lucifer are not demons. I believe
demons are the WICKED unsaved spirits of dead human beings. I might also add,
not all unsaved human spirits of the dead are demons, but since they are not
saved, they cannot dwell in heaven! Therefore, they are on the earth until the
last resurrection, whereby they will be reunited with their soul and body and
stand before God at the White Throne Judgment. Dr. Thayer defined the above
Greek words as:
[pale (pal'-ay)] Wrestling (a
contest between two in which each endeavors to throw the other, and which is
decided when the victor… hold him [his enemy] down with his hand upon his neck.[37]
[arche (ar-khay] The person
or thing that commences [i.e. initiates an action], the first person or thing
in a series, the leader: Col. 1:18; Rev.
1:8 Rev.; 21:6; 22:13; (Deut. 21:17; Job 40:14(19), etc.).[38]
[exousia (ex-oo-see'-ah)]
The power of rule or government (the power of him whose will and commands must
be submitted to by others and obeyed (generally translated authority); a.
universally: Matt. 28:18; Jude 1:25;
Rev. 12:10; 17:13…. I am under authority, Matt. 8:9… used also of demons: in the plural, Eph. 6:12; Col. 2:1.[39]
Dr. Bauer, in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
and Other Early Christian Literature, defined the Greek word “kosmokrator
(kos-mok-fat'-ore)” as:
World-ruler (used of
world-ruling gods… generally of spirit beings, who have parts of the cosmos under
their control…. the world-rulers of this darkness i.e. the rulers of this
sinful world Eph 6:12.[40]
Therefore, when our dear
Lord prayed for His enemies that day, He knew the entire demonic realm of
unclean spirits were moving on some of these men, and were actually in others.
The battle has always been between God and Lucifer, Children of God and demonic
controlled children of the Devil, truth and lies, good and evil, light and
darkness. How can anyone claim Jesus to be their God and Savior, when they
cannot forgive those who hurt them? Instead of detesting sin and evil spirits,
which are on or in their enemies, friends, relatives, or even immediate family,
they want to hate the flesh these spirits are using. Instead of praying and
asking God to forgive those who have hurt them, and seek for opportunities to
do good to them, they instead cry out for vengeance, and usually wait for an
opportunity to take it.
Permanent Deliverance from
Bitterness and Hate in Two Months
The following story of my
own experience with the satanic iron chains of resentment, bitterness, and hate
is a true story; even though it is embarrassing to expose my private life, that
is, my personal problems to the public, I definitely believe God has lead me to
do this; for I believe, God will use this to help many to receive deliverance
from the horrible binding sins of resentment, bitterness, and hate.
My Story: My wife and I were
married on June 1, 1969, and we were married for 26 years. My wife has
always been a very moral woman, for which I have always thanked My God; she was
also a loving and good mother to our four boys! The only real problem in our
marriage was that she did not love me. On March 16, 1971, God in His great love
reached out and touched my spirit, and drew me by His mercy and grace to the
Cross of my sweet Savior, whom forgave me for all my filthy sins of the past.
He then brought me into His New Covenant through His New Birth. From that very
moment, I was totally changed, and the spirit of alcohol, which held me in it
iron grip, was broken and I was totally delivered. O’ I will praise my
Deliverer forever for this great deliverance in my life!
It was shortly after this
great and thrilling experience with God, that my wife’s lack of love for me
began to manifest itself, which resulted in her becoming very cold and distant.
Therefore, our physical intimacy stopped. Now up to this time, I thought she
loved me, but I soon discovered that she did not. It was at that time that I
discovered that she could not forgive me for something I did to her before our
marriage and shortly after I was saved.
Now, because of my
immaturity at the time, I blamed her for her unloving ways; but later I came to
the full realization that it was entirely my fault. It appears to me, and I
could be wrong, that as long as I was a filthy sinner in her eyes, she could
live with me in semi-intimate relationship; but when I found the Lord, she
evidently could not believe that God could forgive me, for she obviously could
not. After a few months of experiencing her icy coldness, I became very
resentful, after another few months, I became very bitter, and after a year, I
hate her, but being a Christian I would not admit that to
myself.
My First and
Second Steps towards Deliverance: Thank God in 1972, as I was in prayer, my sweet
Deliverer spoke to my heart in such a personal way that I could not doubt that
it was Him, who was speaking to me. Now, the very first thing my great
Deliverer did, to set me free from these horrible demonic chains, was to get me
OUT of my state of DENIAL, and FACE my HURTS. He did this by speaking to my
heart; He sweetly said to me: “Harry, you hate your wife!” It was so real that
I actually looked all around to see who was speaking to me. When I saw no one,
I immediately realized that it was the Lord.
Therefore, I verbally
responded by saying: “No Lord, I don’t.” My Deliverer then spoke to me the
second time and said: “Harry, you hate your wife!” I verbally responded again
and said: “No Lord, I don’t.” My Deliverer spoke to me the third time and said:
“Harry, I said, you hate your wife.” At that very moment I broke into
tears and cried out: “Lord, I don’t know if I hate her or not. All that I do
know is that every time I look at her, or think of her, there is an awful
feeling in my gut, as though someone had their fist in my gut and twisting it
into a knot. If you say, I hate my wife then I must hate her. Lord, I cannot
help myself. I do not want to hate her, so what can I do about it?”
The reason why I did not
believe that I hated her is because for the past year, when any evil thought of
vengeance came into my mind, I forcefully turn my mind away from it to other
thoughts; for I knew that the Holy Spirit of Christ declared: “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that
exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2Co 10:5, KJV). This was
a battle I had to fight ever day; for I knew my wife did not love me, and this
was tearing my heart into pieces. She was obviously very unhappy with me, for
she was always asking for a divorce.
My Third and
Fourth Steps towards Deliverance: After my Deliverer made me face hurts, and acknowledge
my sin, and confess it to Him, He then called me to REPENT and obey Matthew
5:44. He said to me: “Harry, I want you to start PRAYING for your wife,
and ASK Me to FORGIVE her for not loving you, and not being a wife to
you.” In other words, God wanted me to NAME each SIN she committed against me
and ask Him to FORGIVE her for them. After my Deliverer spoke His message to my
heart, I knew I had to obey it. Now, God did not speak to me in an audible
voice; but He spoke to me through His Holy Spirit that was in me. I knew
without Him telling me, if I did not obey the voice of His Holy Spirit, He
would no longer hear my prayers, for I definitely knew that this was a Divine
call from God Himself! Even though God did not quote to me this verse, I knew
this verse, but like so many others I did not obey it.
My Fifth and
Sixth Steps towards Deliverance: I had no idea of the great delivering power that
was in this verse. All I knew was that my loving Heavenly Father personally
called me to start praying for my wife. For the first three weeks, as
I VERBALLY PRAYED asking God to forgive her for her cold and unloving ways, the
awful twisting knot that was in my gut seemed to increase in strength. It was as if something in me did not
want to give up my hate. However, I keep forcing myself to pray for
her everyday, in fact three times a day. There was no problem for me to
VERBALLY PRAY from my HEART, or with GREAT EMOTION; for doing that year, I was
always crying out to God in prayer with tears and loud lamenting cries not to allow me to fall into immorality, but
to give me grace to be faithful to Him. Therefore, this type of emotional
praying became a fix part of my life.
I am a shame to say that I
did not pray for my wife during that year, for I was waiting for God to take my
vengeance, which He never did, thank God. I know for a fact that when a
person’s heart is breaking, they will allow their emotions to override their
head. Even though I did not take physical vengeance against my wife, I did take
verbal vengeance. I said some things to her in the spirit of anger to hurt her,
which I regret to this day and I guess I will always regret. My poor wife could
remember some of the things I said, word for word, long after I had forgotten
them, in fact ten years after I foolishly said them. Truly Solomon was right
when he said: “A wholesome tongue is a
tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks [wounds] the spirit;” and “Death and life are in
the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Pro
15:4; 18:21).
I hope my beloved readers will
never follow my miserable example, for I greatly sinned against my wife, and I
still pray even to this day that God will put it in her heart to forgive me,
not only for these things, but also the things I rottenly did to her before our
marriage! Even though we are now divorced, I still love my wife and I guess I
always will. Therefore, I am asking my beloved readers, who are sincere
Christians, to pray that our sweet loving Lord will bless her in every way and
give her happiness, whereby she can love and trust Him with all of her heart.
After one month of praying
for my wife, to my utter amazement, the twisting knot in my gut, which was a
physical manifestation of the rotten spirit of anger that was in me, totally
disappeared. In fact, praise God, it has never come back! God completely broke
my heavy iron chains of resentment, bitterness, and hate, which had me bound,
in the prison I created. He set my human spirit free, and I have been free
ever since! O’ that I had a million tongues to praise Him for all the wonderful
things He has done for me, especially for revealing His love to me at
I can remember during that
first year, Satan and his demons came to me just about every day and told me
that Jesus did not love me; for if He did He would fix my marriage problems; He
would give me a better job so I could provide for my family, and so on. I can
remember crying out to Jesus many times and saying: “Jesus do You really love
me? Jesus do You really love me?” I did this for about 14 months. It was at
this time, or about 1 month after He healed my broken heart, that I cried out
to God and said: “Jesus You have blessed me many times with Your beautiful
presence, and I have shouted for joy and dance in Your Spirit, but Lord I need
something from your Word that will keep my emotions during every trial of life,
so I can remain faithful to You.”
It was at that moment, I
randomly opened my Bible to Psalms 22, and as I read it, God opened my
understanding to the Human Emotional nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I
saw how He was rejected and hated by those He love, I close my Bible and prayed
this prayer: “Lord Jesus thank You for loving me and dying for me at Calvary;
and from this moment on, the devil will never, ever, make me doubt your love
for me again. Lord, if You never answer another prayer of mine, and I know You
will, and if you never do another thing for me, and I know you will, the devil
will never, ever, make me doubt that you truly love me. He will never deceive
me again by getting me to judge Your love for me by the things that happen to
me in this life; for You have proved Your love for me once and for all time at
Praise God from that time to
this, I have never again doubted my Savior’s great love for me. And now when
Satan comes to me and tries to get me to judge God’s love for me by the
disappointments, heartaches, and trials of life, I immediately verbally tell
him: “Devil, go take a good long look at Calvary, and then come back and tell
me my Jesus does not love me!” Praise Jesus forever and ever! Once a Christian
gets a Pit Bull grip on
Now, as I stated before at
the end of the fourth week of praying for my wife, my
wonderful Deliverer healed my broken heart; and at the end of
the sixth week as I CONTINUED in PRAY, my great and mighty Deliverer
RESTORE MY LOVE for my wife, and filled my heart full of compassion for her.
Yes beloved, our God knows how to heal the brokenhearted and place His love and
forgiveness inside. Beloved, is it not time for you to obey Matthew 5:44, and
allow God to break your heavy iron chains, which are robbing you of your peace
of mind and happiness? It was only after my deliverance that I was able to
prayerfully ask God to help me to understand my wife’s hurts, and what I could
do to help her. One of the biggest mistakes I made, which took me years to
understand, is the fact that I did not help my wife enough in taking care of
our boys when they were babies; for was on of the things I did that deepen her
resentment for me, which brought back some bad memories and bitter experiences
she had in her teens.
Beloved, when will you stop
making excuses as to why you cannot serve God with a perfect heart? It is not
because of anyone who has hurt you, or any circumstance and problem in life, or
anything else you want to blame it on; your real problem is you do
not agape love your sweet Savior: “with ALL your
heart, with ALL your soul, with ALL your mind, and
with ALL your strength” (Mk 12:30). Your heart is divided and
filled with to many other things in life. Jesus is not your life, but only a
part of your life! Therefore, He receives only a small part of your time,
energy, and thoughts.
What we all need to do is to
read about Calvary once a week, until
Calvary totally captures our hearts; for it is only agape love for Jesus that
will give us the grace and power to overcome the world, flesh, and the devil!
Do not let Calvary become a historical event that you know happen in the past,
but let it be alive in your heart every day, whereby everything you do and say,
or the life you now live, is motivated by your love for your Savior! Yes
beloved, our walk with God began at Calvary, and it ends there also; for when
we depart from
Brother Jack's
Story: Permit
me to give you another personal example of true deliverance by obeying God’s
Infallible Word. I had a man in the church I pastored, who had very strong
emotional problems. Let us call him Brother Jack, which is not his name.
After meeting Jack, I gave him several home Bible studies, which resulted in
baptizing him and his wife in the holy and sin cleansing name of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
About six months later, I
was teaching and preaching on holiness and separation from the world, that is,
the doctrine of sanctification. As soon as I finished my message that Sunday
morning, Jack came rushing to the front, dragging his wife behind him. He came
up to me and said: “Brother Peyton, if you ever try to tell me or my wife how
to live, I will come back here and blow your brain out!” Well, needless to say,
this shocked me. After he said this, he stormed out of the church.
Now, I knew without any
doubt that Jack had the Holy Spirit of Christ dwelling in him. Therefore, I
prayed and fasted and asked God for guidance, and went to visit him Monday
night. I told him: “Brother Jack, I cannot apologized for preaching God’s
truth, but maybe I miss God’s timing in bringing forth this message, and if I
did, please forgive me. It is very evident to me that you are not ready to hear
this kind of message.”
Jack then began to weep as
he said: “Brother Peyton, it is not you who needs to apologize but
I. I hate it when anyone tells me what to do. Something in me explodes and I
become very angry. I keep a 38 revolver under the seat of my car, and I have
come close to blowing people away in a fit of rage. I scare myself sometimes
because of my violent temper.” I told him: “Brother Jack, you have a serious
problem, we need to pray and go on a seven-day fast, and ask our Lord to show
us what is causing it.”
On the seventh day of the
fast, God spoke to my heart or spirit and told me: “Tell Jack that he was
continually molested in his childhood.” Even though I was fearful to tell Jack
this, I believed this message came from God, so I decided to go to him and
declared what I believed God spoke into my heart. After I told him, Jack began
to weep as he said: “Brother Peyton, you heard from God because that is exactly
what happen to me.” After he told me the story of his life, I told him:
“Brother Jack, I know what your problem is, and it is not your anger, for this
is only a manifestation of your root problem. Your real problem is that you
have not forgiven your father for taking you from your mother as a baby, and
putting you in a garbage can and leaving you there. You have not forgiven your
stepfather for molesting you, and you have not forgiven you mother.”
Brother Jack then told me
that he had forgiven his parents when he became a Christian two years before. I
then told him: “Brother Jack, you have forgiven your parents with your SOUL
MIND but your SPIRIT MIND is still deeply wounded, and it has not forgiven
them.” Jack told me that he knew he had forgiven them and he was not going to
follow my instructions. After about a month of prodding him, God finally showed
me how to approach him.
Therefore, I went to him and
said: “Brother Jack, let us assume that you have truly forgiven your parents.
Permit me to ask you, what will you lose by PRAYING FIVE TIMES A DAY and ask
God to help you to forgive them, if you have not already forgiven them? It is
very evident to me that this unforgiveness in your spirit has destroyed your
past happiness, and your present happiness, and if you allow it to stay in you,
it will destroy all your future happiness. So, what have you to lose by NAMING
the SINS they committed against you, and ASK God to FORGIVE them and also HELP
YOU to FORGIVE them. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Jack then told me: “Brother
Peyton, the last time I thought about these things, as a teenager, I lost my
mind; I had a nervous breakdown and they put me in a hospital and gave me shock
treatment to bring me back to reality. You are telling me to lose my mind
again. I cannot do it.” I told him: “Brother Jack, you are not a teenager any
longer. God has placed His Holy Spirit inside of you, I know this, and you know
it also. God does not want you to burry your problems in the back of your mind
and hide from them. God has already given you the power to FACE them, and through His grace to overcome
them. God will deliver you, if you have the courage to FACE your PROBLEMS!”
Jack then agreed with me in
prayer that he would CONSISTENTLY PRAY for his parents each day, until his spirit was set free, and the
LOVE of Christ filled his heart for his
parents. In about six weeks, Jack’s Deliverer set his spirit free from
hate, and about the eighth week, God’s
love filled his heart for his parents. Praise Jesus, from that time on,
Jack’s demonic unforgiving spirit and temper problem was gone! Jack temper
problem was probably caused by the repressed anger that had built up in his
spirit over the years.
Beloved, God method of
deliverance really works. Now beloved a minister can pray for you to be
delivered, and God can give you strength through his prayers, but you are the
one who must obey God’s holy and infallible Word, if you expect to be set free
from the horrible demonic chain of unforgiveness. Our Deliverer said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free” (Jn 8:32). Therefore, beloved, you need to obey Matthew 5:44, and
act upon Jesus’ instructions today. Your Savior who loves you, who died a
horrible death on the cross for you, wants to set your spirit and soul free.
Will you let Him do it?
Six Steps on How Forgiveness
Takes Place in the Heart
Christians, who have
an unforgiving spirit, which will manifest itself in the demonic spirits
of resentment, bitterness, and hate, usually cover up their true
feelings and thereby deceive themselves! Sometimes they tell themselves
and others: “I am not bitter,” or “I do not hate so and so.” As a result, both
the Christians and the unsaved
usually burry their hurts deep in their subconscious
mind and try to forget them and not think about them; especially, if they
were hurt by someone they deeply loved, such as a parent, child, spouse,
relative, close friend, etc. The reason why they burry their hurts is because
it is too painful to think about it! Therefore, these hurts in their heart will
be manifested in some evil way in wrong behaviors or
sinful habits or both.
Now, if they are Christians,
they mistakenly waiting for God to take their vengeance for them, while God is
patiently waiting for them to forgive! If they are not Christians, which means
their human spirit and soul has not been regenerated, they will seek for an
opportunity to take their vengeance. Oh, when will we ever become like the
one we love, and learn to forgive? I am not speaking from theory, or by some
psychologist’s ideas, but from experience. For I know what it means to be a
Christian and have hate in my heart. Here are some steps God has taught and led
me through, to receive my deliverance from this horrible, binding, and
miserable spirit, which for a short time destroyed some of my peace and
happiness in life. Therefore, if you have resentment, bitterness, or hate in
your heart toward anyone, here is how you can obtain deliverance and receive a
forgiving spirit.
FIRST STEP: You must pray and ask
God to forgive those who have deeply wounded you. Jesus, our master
Psychologist and great Deliverer, commanded us to: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse
you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who
spitefully use you and persecute [or hurt] you” (Mt 5:44). Beloved, there is no way you
can consistently verbally pray with
your heart and ask God to forgive those who have deeply wounded you, and not
receive deliverance from unforgiveness. You should also pray and ask God to
help you to forgive, and seek every opportunity to bless and do good to them.
In fact, if you had obeyed
your God’s command in the above verse, at the times you were being hurt, you
would have not received a wounded spirit in the first place! What spiritual
lesson do you think our sweet Deliverer was teaching when He said: “And whoever compels [or forces] you to go one mile, go with him two” (Mt 5:41).
Under Roman Law if Roman soldiers were passing through a town, each one of them
could force one of the citizens of that town to carry his pack for one mile.
Therefore, what our great Deliverer was telling His Children, who have eyes to
see and a will to obey, was how to stop from becoming bitter.
In other words, when someone
does evil to you, do something good to him or her. Paul stated the same truth
this way: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he
is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on
his head. Do not be overcome by evil [that is, become bitter and
full of hate], but overcome evil with good”
(Rom 12:21-22). Because God does not want His Children to become bitter or be
full of hate in this life, He warned us to guard our heart from these sinful
and destructive emotions. God speaking through Paul said it this way: “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness,
without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall
short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing
up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled [miaino]” (Heb 12:14-15). Drs. Friberg
defined “miaino (me-ah'-ee-no)” as:
(1) Of cultic and ceremonial
impurity defile, make unclean, cause to be unacceptable (JN 18.28);
(2) of religious and moral impurity defile, deprave, corrupt (HE
12.15).[41]
In other words, what God was
tells us that if we do not verbally pray
for those who hurt us deeply and seek opportunity to do good unto them, we
would probably lose our salvation. Our Deliverer stated the above truth, when
He spoke of the stones of resentment, bitterness, hate, and so on, which
can be in a believer’s heart. He said: “Some
fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately
sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were
scorched, and because they had no root [in their heart] they withered away.”
Interpretation of Parable: “When anyone hears the Word of the kingdom, and does not
understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away
what was sown in his heart.
This is he who received seed [i.e.
the Word of God] by the wayside. But he who received
the seed on STONY PLACES [i.e.
a heart filled with wrong emotions], this is he who
hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but
endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises
because of the word, immediately he stumbles [skandalizo]” (Mt
13:5-6, 19-21). Drs. Friberg defined “skandalizo (skan-dal-id'-zo)” as:
Cause to stumble… cause to
do wrong or sin (MT 5.29)…. In an absolute sense fall away, give up
believing (MT 13.21).[42]
A good example of this truth
can be found in the following true analogy: One of the most severe penalties
for murder, under Roman Law, was to take the murdered victim and chain him or
her to the back of the murderer. Then let the murderer carry that rotting corpse
around their prison cell, unto the murderer died from the stench and decay of
that corpse. This is exactly what our compassionate Deliverer taught us, when
He told the apostle Peter of the servant who would not forgive his fellow
servant.
Peter asked our
Deliverer: “Lord, how often shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus
said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy
times seven [meaning always]. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a
certain King who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And
when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed
him ten thousand talents [1 talent = 193 British pounds or 6000 denarii]. But as he
was not able to pay, his Master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and
children and all that he had, and that payment be made.
The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have
patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the Master of that servant
was moved with compassion, released
him, and forgave him the debt.
But
that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed
him a hundred denarii [4 denarius, 1 denarius or 25 denarii = a day’s
wages]; and he laid hands on him and took him
by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down
at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you
all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay
the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very
grieved, and came and told their Master all that had been done.
Then
his Master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you
begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just
as I had pity on you?’ And his Master was angry, and delivered him to the TORTURERS until he should pay all that was due
to him. So My heavenly Father also
will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his
trespasses”
(Mt 18:21-35). Dr. Thayer defined “basanistes (bas-an-is-tace)” as:
One who elicits the truth by
the use of the rack, an inquisitor, torturer…. A jailer… doubtless because
the business of torturing was also assigned to him.[43]
Our Lord surely knew what He
was talking about, because an unforgiving
spirit is one of the greatest tormenting spirits there is!
When you rebel against your Deliverer’s command to forgive, this will
immediately open your spirit to the iron chain of resentment to come into you,
which will later develop into bitterness, and after a time it will devour your
will with an all-consuming spirit of hate. Once you wrap your spirit up in the
heavy depressive iron chain of unforgivingness, it will destroy your present
happiness, your future happiness, not to mention all the happiness you could
have had in your past, that is, before it came into your heart or spirit.
When you do not forgive, the
person that hurt you, that person is with you at all times for you have him or
her chained up in your mind and heart. Therefore, when you wake up in the
morning, and do your business throughout the day, as well as when you go to bed
at night, guess who is there with you? You guessed it, the person you hate!
Even if that person lives thousands of miles away, or is in their grave, the
heavy iron demonic chains of resentment, bitterness, and hate has a
death grip on you and it refuses to let you go. It is destroying your
freedom and happiness!
Beloved, if Satan came to
you with a beautiful gold iron chain, which was very heavy and very long, and
says to you: “Would you please take this chain and wrap yourself in it, until
it robs you of your peace of mind, happiness in life, and freedom in Christ,”
would you take it? You would no doubt rebuke Satan and command him to leave!
But beloved, when Satan causes someone to deeply hurt you, and you do not pray
for that person and forgive him or her, but allow the long and depressive
demonic iron chains of resentment, bitterness, and hate to dwell in your heart,
are you not wrapping your own self in these chains.
You are the one who is
creating all your unhappiness, by your willful disobedience to your Deliverer,
Who greatly desires to set you free. The reason why you have a very difficult
time forgiving, with your whole heart, is because your spirit has been wounded.
God spoke of this through king Solomon when He said: “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a
wounded [nake’] spirit who can
bear” (Pro 18:14)? Dr. Harris, in his Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, defined the Hebrew
word “nake’ (naw-kay)” as:
Strike… smitten… in
certain contexts, is translated ‘wound.’ It is so used of King Ahab’s death.
When the king was fatally struck by an arrow, the Hebrew historian
graphically states, ‘the blood ran out of the wound into
the midst of the chariot’ (1Ki 22:35)…. The prophets often use
‘wound’ symbolically, describing that condition of God’s people usually
brought about by the ‘blow’ of an enemy.[44]
Beloved has someone shot in
arrow into your heart and mortally wounded your spirit? There is a tremendous
difference in forgiving with our heart and forgiving with our mind. Since our
mind or soul mainly operates by
logic, it is not hard to forgive someone with our soul mind, if we are Christians, because we know it is the right
thing to do. However, since mankind also has a spirit mind, which has a tendency to be more emotional than the
soul, it has a very difficult time forgiving, when it has been deeply wounded.
This is why the Word of God admonishes us to control our human spirit. Solomon
said it this way: “Whoever [i.e. the soul who] has NO RULE over HIS OWN SPIRIT [ruwach] is like a city broken down, without walls” (Pro
25:28); and “He who is slow to
anger is better than the mighty, and he [i.e. the
soul] who RULES HIS SPIRIT [ruwach] than he who takes a city” (Pro 16:32).
SECOND STEP: You must
be willing to FACE and DEAL WITH any deep hurts or
wounds in your heart or spirit. The reason why you do not deal with the deep
wounds in your heart is because it hurts to think about it. What usually
happens is that you will start reliving the incident or incidents that caused
the hurt or hurts. I will speak more of this later. Therefore, you want to run
from your hurts or bury them in the back of your mind, so that you do not think
about them. If you do not face and deal with your wounded spirit, you will
never truly forgive the one who wounded you.
Remember, God told you
through His holy infallible Word, if you do not forgive with your soul and spirit, you will be lost, and the demonic tormentors will come and
make their abode with you. Jesus also said: “For if you forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if
YOU do NOT FORGIVE men their trespasses, NEITHER will your Father
FORGIVE YOUR TRESPASSES” (Mt 6:14-15). Therefore, if you want
God to forgive you of your sins, you must forgive others of their
sins against you! Beloved, please do not allow the demonic tormentors, which
came to you when you did not pray and forgive those who hurt you, make your
life miserable any longer!
THIRD STEP: You must VERBALLY
ACKNOWLEDGE and CONFESS your
sin of unforgivingness to God in
prayer, and you need to VERBALLY PRAY for those who have wounded you?
The worst thing you can do is to justify your sin of unforgiveness, or make
excuses for it. For example, it is his or her fault I am this way, or it is
because of this or that circumstance, situation, accident, and so on, I am this
way! Anyone who justifies or making excuses for this damnable sin is driving
away from himself or herself God’s Spirit of Grace. I firmly believe that God
immediately gives us the Spirit of Grace to forgive, when someone hurts us, if
we do not let our pride or emotions get in the way.
Did not the apostle Paul
tell us: we should not “fall short of
the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing
up” in our heart or spirit (Heb 12:14-15). James said it this way:
“God resists the proud, but gives grace to
the humble” (Ja 4:6; 1Pe 5:5). Wherefore, God’s Spirit of Grace
will help you get your heart clean and free from the horrible demonic
chains of resentment, bitterness, and hate, if you use it. There is only one
thing you can do with sin, and that is REPENT, CONFESS it to God, and FORSAKE
IT! Solomon said it this way: “He COVERS his SINS
will not prosper, but whoever CONFESSES and FORSAKES them will have mercy”
(Pro 28:13); and John gladly declared: “If
we CONFESS our sins, He is
faithful and just to FORGIVE us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn 1:9; also see Psa
32:5-6).
Now the reason why you need
to verbally pray for those who have
wounded you is because VERBAL PRAY is how God places forgiveness into your
spirit. For example, Jesus said about your human spirit: “Out of the ABUNDANCE of the heart [meaning
your spirit] the mouth speaks” (Mt
12:34). This means your human spirit will verbally speak through your
soul mind, when you are talking or praying about something, you
have strong emotions towards; or in other words,
your heart is filled with that emotion.
Therefore, you should pray
with all the sincerity and emotion that you can. You should
use our Lord’s Prayer in the garden, for deliverance from death, as your
example. Paul spoke of it this way: “During the
days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions
with LOUD CRIES and TEARS to the One who could save Him
from death” (Heb 5:7). The more sincere and emotional your prayer
is the faster your deliverance will come.
Since this horrible sin is
strong in your spirit, which usually came by someone rejecting your
love or doing something to hurt you deeply, it is your spirit
and not just your soul that must pray (1Co 14:14-15). According to the Bible,
you and I have TWO MINDS: a soul or logical mind, which is usually in control
of us and does most of the talking, and a spirit or emotional mind. In the
original languages that the Bible was written in, the mind is a symbolic
expression for the soul nature of man and the heart represents the spirit
nature of man.
A good example of the two
minds, wills, or natures of man can be found it Romans 7:18-20. Here are a few
scriptures that teach that man has both a spirit mind and a soul mind. Our Lord
commanded us to: “Love the LORD your God with all
your heart [kardia - spirit], with
all your soul [psuche], with all
your mind [dianoia – physical brain],
and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment”
(Mk 12:30). In this verse, Jesus reveals that man has three minds.
Man’s Spirit Has
Intelligence: David
said: “I communed with my own heart [spirit], and my spirit made diligent search” (Psa 77:6).
Solomon said: “A fool uttereth all his mind [ruwach
spirit]: but a wise man keepeth it in till
afterwards” (Pro 29:11, KJV). Solomon told us that the soul of a foolish
man does not control his spirit mind, but allows it speak all of its thoughts.
A wise man's soul mind rules its spirit mind and keeps it under control. Man’s
spirit mind can be changed: “Then his mind [ruwach
- spirit] changes, and he transgresses”
(Hab 1:11). The prophet Malachi told
Man’s Soul Has
Intelligence: Solomon
declared: as a man “Thinks in his heart [nephesh
- soul], so is he” (Pro 23:7). God speaking
to
The above are an excerpt
from my book on the three minds of man.
If my beloved readers would like to know what the Bible and science has to say
about the three minds of man, I
invite them to read my book entitled: The
Mysteries of the Spirit and Soul of Man Revealed (What Are They? Does
Each Nature of Man Have Mind, Will, and Emotions)? This book may be obtained by
going to my website: (http://www.DoctrinesOfChrist.com).
FOURTH STEP: You must VERBALLY
NAME the SIN or SINS that someone has committed against
you. Now this is very hard to do because your spirit mind, and probably your
soul mind, will start hurting or reliving the pain all over again.
Nevertheless, this is the most important step of all, and usually victory or
defeat will occur at this step! The very reason why you should name the sins
that were committed against you, which produced in you a wounded spirit, is so
you can face them and overcome them. You will never defeat an enemy by showing
them your backside, as you run from them. This is why you need to face your
hurts and fears and through the grace of God overcome them!
The best way to face your
hurts is by asking God, in prayer, to reveal to you the sin or sins someone has
committed against you, which has deeply wounded your spirit. You may
know some of the hurts already, but you do not know all of them. This is why
you should pray and ask God to show them to you, and after He does
write it or them down! Only write down the sin or sins that
have deeply affected your emotions. If you can meditate on some
of the hurtful details of this sin or sins, for about five minutes,
and feel no pain, then it probably did not affect your spirit very deeply,
or you may have already forgiven the offending party.
Naming the sins that wounded
your spirit, and asking God to forgive that individual or individuals
for each sin, is the hardest part of prayer, for usually your heart will
start hurting again. Remember, in the human body pain is a sign that
something is wrong and needs to be fixed or repaired. The same principle is
true concerning your spirit! In fact, a sure sign that God has healed your
heart is when you can meditate on the details of the hurts and feel no pain!
Praise God that is a wonderful feeling when your heart stops hurting, and
believe you me, it is something you will never forget as long as you live!
A Word of Warning: Because
some want to hide from their hurts, and not
sincerely face and deal with them, they either stop praying
before deliverance comes, or deceive themselves by praying a general prayer,
whereby they do not name the sins committed against them; for example: “Lord
forgive so and so, Amend.” This kind of prayer will not bring deliverance.
You must name the sins even if it hurts your heart!
Remember, God is with you,
and He is in the process of delivering you, and healing your broken heart! So,
you need to work with the Holy Spirit and not against it! Burying your hurts in
your subconscious mind will not bring you any happiness, peace of mind, or
deliverance; for this hurt or hurts will manifest itself in your life in some
way, that is, in the form of anger or temper, or the inability to love or
trust, or in a habit such as alcohol or drugs, and so on. When you refuse to
face and deal with your problems, you literally tie God’s hands, and He cannot
help or deliver you!
FIFTH STEP: You should pray the
following prayer with all your spirit and soul at least 5 TIMES A DAY.
Your verbal prayer should be something like this: “Lord Jesus please forgive
(so and so) for (name the sin or sins), and please give me
the grace to forgive (so and so) for (this sin or these sins). I ask
these things in the precious and holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now it
should not take more than 5 minutes to pray this prayer each time you pray,
that is, if you have made a written list of the people who have offended you
and the sin or sins that they committed against you. Therefore, it only takes
about 25 minutes a day in prayer to receive your
deliverance!
Now each time you pray this
prayer, you should try to be in a place where you can pray
uninterrupted and with all the emotion you can. The
best way to pray with emotion, which is the hardest way, is by taking a few
minutes and think about the hurt or hurts that
caused you to have a wounded spirit. Now only a mature person, or one who truly
wants to get rid of their unforgiving spirit, can do this. Always remember
that pain is good for you because it will intensify your
desire to be delivered.
SIXTH STEP: You need to pray until the HURT is GONGE, and Jesus’ LOVE or compassion fills your heart for the one or ones who sinned against you.
You will not receive deliverance if you do not CONSISTENTLY PRAY
every day for the one who hurt
you. Deliverance will come to you somewhere in the first or second month,
depending how deep your resentment, bitterness, or hate is. I personally have
not seen anyone go two months. It took me 4 weeks for God to heal my broken
heart, where all the pain and anger that was in my heart totally and completely
disappeared. After God delivered me from this rotten unforgiving spirit, 2
weeks later, God filled my heart with His compassion and love. Believe you me,
when compassion and love came into my heart, it literally blew my mind apart,
because I could not understand how I could feel this way!
Friend, God’s method of
praying and doing good to your enemies really works. I am not telling you
something I think will work, but something I know will work! I believe my and
Brother Jack’s story will help everyone, who sincerely desires their God to
help him or her to forgive, to earnestly apply the above steps to his or her
life so that God can deliver him or her! If one follows each of the above
six steps religiously, consistently, EVERY DAY without wavering, regardless how
much emotional pain they may feel when they are praying for those who have deeply
hurt them, I promise you that God’s will totally deliver you and heal your
heart (spirit) in two months.
Anyone Who Rejects
Because of mankind’s
sinfulness and lost condition, as well as their helpless condition to save
themselves, God provided a way for mankind to become saved; this way, which is
the only way, is the atoning sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Only the sinless blood of Jesus can appease God’s holiness and other
attributes, which demands wrath and punishment against all who have sinned.
Therefore, anyone who rejects the gospel of Christ, that is, Jesus’ death,
burial, and resurrection, will be lost (2Co 4:3; Jn 10:7-11; 1Ti 2:5; Heb
9:14-15)!
How can a holy God, who
hates sin, reconcile and justify lost man without violating His Holy
attributes. For God’s attribute of Holiness cries out for the death penalty to
be given to all sinful beings: “For the wages of sin
is [eternal] death” (Rom 6:23). God’s
attribute of Sovereignty, as King of the universe, also cries out for the death
penalty to be given, for it reminds Him: “Not one
jot or tittle will by no means pass from the law” (Matt 5:18), until all
of His promises and judgments are fulfilled. It also reminds Him that He
pronounced curses on anyone who would add to, diminish from, alter or change
His Laws; for that reason, He Himself cannot change them (Deut 4:2; Rev 22:18).
God’s attributes of
Righteousness and Justice reminds Him that all sinners must face retribution on
the Day of Judgment, for He promised to repay all injustices with “vengeance” (Heb 10:30-31). They also remind Him
that He promised to punish everyone justly according to his or her own sins
(Rev 20:13), and that He cannot be a
“respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34, KJV).
God’s attributes of Perfection, Immutability, and Truth also cry out for
punishment and death to be given to sinners, for it is “impossible for” God “to lie”
(Heb 6:18). Therefore, He must fulfill every promise of retribution He made.
God’s attribute of
Omniscience knows that the entire world is guilty of sin, for there are “none” who are “righteous,
no not one,” for “all have sinned” and
deserve punishment and eternal death (Rom 3:10, 23). God’s attributes of Mercy
and Grace cry out for forgiveness, but in the Day of Judgment, when mercy and
grace are past, the loud overpowering cries of God’s other attributes for
retribution will drown out the cries of mercy and grace, if one dies lost.
Since, God punished the
angels who “kept not their first estate,” He
must “execute judgment upon all” sinners, who
have committed ungodly deeds “against Him”
and their fellow man, or He would have to apologize to the angels He punished
(Jude 1: 6, 15). Let us remember that these angels were fallen Children of God. Since God punished His heavenly Children
with such severity, what will He do to us if we die lost or turn our backs on
Him?
Therefore, if anyone rejects
the precious blood of our Savior’s atonement, they will die lost and be cast
into Hell; for the Bible stated: “For the wrath of
God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”
(Rom 1:18); and “Anyone not found written in the
Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire” (Rev 20:15). Beloved, the
holy, innocent, sinless Lamb of God bore on
My dear readers, who are
beloved of God, I have written this book under the direction of the Holy
Spirit, in order that those who have spiritual eyes may see the truth, and
those who hunger and thirst for truth may be fed, and those who have been
deceived concerning the New Birth may know the truth, and be set free from
Satan’s lies. Today is the day of salvation! Today is the day to believe and
obey Acts two thirty-eight, thereby receiving the New Birth and entering into
Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection!
I beg you, please do not be
one of those who were deceived by False Prophets concerning Christ’s New Birth
message, which is the FOUNDATION God’s Church is built upon, whereby they will
tell our Lord on the Day of Judgment: “Lord, Lord,
have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done
many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never
[at any time] knew you; depart from Me” (Mt
7:22-23)!
Beloved just take a few
minutes to think about God’s love for you, and the awesome price He paid to
redeem you from sin. The Almighty God, the Creator of the universe, the King and
Judge of all mankind, loved you and me enough to become our Kinsman Redeemer.
Oh, if I had a million tongues, they would never be enough to praise our Savior
for
Books Written by the Author and Given Away on
His Website:
A Biblical, Medical, and Psychological
Account of the Sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ
The Heresy of the Nicolaitans
Biblical Creationism vs Pantheistic
Theories of Evolution (Nature Worship)
A Prophetic History of God’s
(The Seven Prophetic Periods
of the Church Age)
The Mysteries of Prophecy Revealed
What Do You Mean I Must Be Born Again?
Preacher, What Must I Do to Inherit
Eternal Life?
A Historical Record of Speaking in Tongues
The Mysteries of the Godhead Revealed
A History of Oneness Throughout the Centuries
(Baptism in Jesus’ Name, the
Godhead in Christ)
What Happens to Man’s Spirit, Soul, and
Body Immediately after Death?
What Is Lost Man’s Eternal Destiny? (Immediate
Annihilation, Eternal Torment,
Torment for a Time and Then
Universal Salvation, or Torment for a Time and Then Annihilation)
The Mysteries of the Spirit and Soul of
Man Revealed
(What Are They?
Does Each Nature of Man Have Mind, Will, and Emotions?)
Holiness: God’s
What Is God’s Rest for the Believer:
the Sabbath Day or God’s Sabbath Spirit
The Infallibility of the Bible and How to Study It
A Calendar of Biblical and Historical
Dates and Events Beginning with the Creation of Adam
The Heresies of the Pharisaical Jewish Ebionites
William Marion Branham: His Life,
Teachings, and Demonic Spirit-Guide
Nutrition and Nutritional Charts
Law vs Grace or Works vs Faith
Water Baptism: the Essentiality, the Mode, and the
Formula
Glossolalia: Ten Steps of Faith to
Receiving the Baptism of the Holy Ghost
Christ’s Loving Servant,
Harry A. Peyton
148 Little
Email Address: DoctrinesOfChrist@hotmail.com
Website: www.DoctrinesOfChrist.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Greek-English Lexicon of
the New Testament, 1889, Joseph Henry Thayer: (being C. G. Grimm - 1861-1868;
1879 and C. L. W. Wilke – 1851 Clavis Novi Testamenti, tr., revised and
enlarged by J. H. Thayer, D.D., Hon. Litt.D., Professor of New Testament,
Divinity School of Harvard University: (found in BibleWorks For Windows).
Analytical Greek New
Testament, Timothy & Barbara Friberg: (Greek NT Grammatical Analysis
Database, Version 2, Copyright 1994: (found in BibleWorks For Windows).
BibleWorks for Windows™, 95/NT
Release V 3.5 Copyright 1996, Michael S. Bushell, Hermeneutika Computer Bible
Research Software:
Greek-English Lexicon of the
New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 1957, Walter Bauer: tr
William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich & Danker: The University Of Chicago
Press:
The Theological Workbook of
the Old Testament, 1980, R. Laid Harris, Gleason L. Archer, & Bruce K.
Waltke: Moody Press:
The Kingdom Interlinear
Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1969, Watchtower Bible & Tract
Society:
ENDNOTES
Since the medical articles
dealing with the Sufferings Of Christ were taken off of the Internet, the
author regretfully has to inform his readers that he cannot give page numbers
for the information used. Therefore, he gives the following websites whereby
these articles can be obtain:
Drs. William D. Edwards, MD;
Wesley J. Gabel, MD; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS AMI Clinic (On The Physical Death Of
Jesus Christ), a Study by the doctors at Mayo Clinic may be found at:
www.frugalsites.net/jesus/
Dr. C. Truman Davis (A
Physician Analyzes the Crucifixion) may be found at:
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/3670/crucif.html
Dr. D. Terasaka, M.D.
(Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ) may be found at:
www.khouse.org/blueletter/Comm/terasaka/crucify.html
Dr Graham Dark (On-line
Medical Dictionary) may be found at: omd@cancerweb.org.uk
All Lexical definitions from
Lexicons, Dictionaries, and Translations of the Bible are from BibleWorks
software program, that is: BibleWorks, LLC, P.O. box 6158, Norfolk, VA 23508:
Lexicons: 1) Analytical Lexicon to the New Testament, by Timothy & Barbara
Friberg; 2) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, by Henry J. Thayer;
3) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (unabridged coded to Strong’s
numbers), by Henry J. Thayer; 4) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and
Other Early Christian Literature, by Walter Bauer, edited by Frederick W.
Danker; 5) The Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, by R. Laid Harris,
Gleason L. Archer, & Bruce K. Waltke.