No one enjoys being humiliated. People go to great lengths – even to murder – to avoid exposure and humiliation.
Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) was interred in a Nazi concentration camp during World War 2. She was there with her Christian parents and sister for hiding Jews during the Holocaust. In her biography, The Hiding Place, she wrote of being humiliated by the German guards. Every Friday, the skin and bone prisoners, starved, unwashed, and sickly, were stripped naked and forced to parade before the soldiers. She wrote:
I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus’ arrest – how soldiers had slapped Him, laughed at Him, flogged Him. Now such happenings had faces and voices…. He hung naked on the cross…. The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at the least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh – at the time itself, on that other Friday morning – there had been no reverence. Now more than I saw in the faces around us now. I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood out sharp and think beneath her blue-mottled skin…. “Betsie, they took His clothes too.” Ahead of me I heard a little gasp. “Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him.” (pp 178-179).
The Bible says Jesus was stripped naked and beaten. His raw flesh ripped so that the bones of His back were visible, was then covered with a gorgeous robe from King Herod (Luke 23:11). Judged guilty and condemned to death, Jesus was paraded down the streets of Jerusalem to taunting Roman soldiers, Jewish leaders, and gawking citizens. His garments had been gambled away by the Roman soldiers (Luke 23:34).
His hands were nailed to a cross. He ankles placed side-to-side and nailed as well. The King of Glory came into the world as a naked Baby, but wrapped in swaddling clothes and protected by a loving mother. Now He was leaving this world, naked and humiliated.
As He hung dying, He prayed: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34).
The Apostle Paul commands you and me: Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you (Ephesians 4:32). Jesus forgave those who humiliated and killed Him. God the Father forgave us for every sin we’ve committed. Why do we hesitate to forgive?
Where Living Begins 
Reblogged this on LIVING BY FAITH and commented:
Powerful post!
Thank you, and pray you are mending up well.
Thank you.
Our being stood naked before God but He clothed us with Salvation. I feel great sorrow at what He indured but Joy that He chose to make our souls free. TY.
His pain is our joy. What a bittersweet truth.
The love of Christ in its sweetness, its fulness, its greatness, its faithfulness, passeth all human comprehension.
Where shall language be found which shall describe his matchless, his unparalleled love towards the children of men? It is so vast and boundless that, as the swallow but skimmeth the water, and diveth not into its depths, so all descriptive words but touch the surface, while depths immeasurable lie beneath. Well might the poet say,
“O love, thou fathomless abyss!”
for this love of Christ is indeed measureless and fathomless; none can attain unto it.
Before we can have any right idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand his previous glory in its height of majesty, and his incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. But who can tell us the majesty of Christ? When he was enthroned in the highest heavens he was very God of very God; by him were the heavens made, and all the hosts thereof. His own almighty arm upheld the spheres; the praises of cherubim and seraphim perpetually surrounded him; the full chorus of the hallelujahs of the universe unceasingly flowed to the foot of his throne: he reigned supreme above all his creatures, God over all, blessed for ever. Who can tell his height of glory then?
And who, on the other hand, can tell how low he descended? To be a man was something, to be a man of sorrows was far more; to bleed, and die, and suffer, these were much for him who was the Son of God; but to suffer such unparalleled agony-to endure a death of shame and desertion by his Father, this is a depth of condescending love which the most inspired mind must utterly fail to fathom. Herein is love! and truly it is love that “passeth knowledge.”
O let this love fill our hearts with adoring gratitude, and lead us to practical manifestations of its power.
The above is a meditation by C.H. Spurgeon.
Thank you, Michael. You always have just the right word.
Powerful!
😭
Reblogged this on I ONCE WAS LOST and commented:
😭
Bitter-sweet truth, isn’t it?
Oh yes!! 😔😢😭