Contemplating the cross

I was thinking about the cross.. what it means to us.. I think we often think about it but dont contemplate it. We dont realize the fullness of all that happened there.. all that the cross means. We need to stop and focus and truely grasp the meaning. The Lord brought this to my mind a few years back and it has been a passion of mine.. the realization of what the cross really means. With the Easter season and all.. thinking about His birth.. why He was born, Who He is, my thoughts have again wandered to the cross.

Matthew 27:27 Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.Matthew 27:28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him,Matthew 27:29 and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said.

The guards mocked Jesus by dressing him as a king.His head was pierced by long, sharp thorns.
I envision the blood running down his face.

Matthew 27:30 They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.
They spit upon HimThat was the deepest form of insult in the Jewish culture
They hit him.

Matthew 27:32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

Jesus was so weak from his earlier 39 lashes with a cat-`o-nine-tails ( strips of leather with pieces of stone and glass embedded in them) that he could not carry his own cross.

Matthew 27:34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.He refused to drink the wine mixed with gall (vinegar) because it was given to numb his senses.
He was unwilling to numb the pain of dying

Matthew 27:35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Large spikes were driven through both wrists and feet and hammered deep into the wood of the cross.
Christ's whole body received a painful jolt as the cross fell violently into its hole.
The cross wasn't just eased up in place.. No, it was lifted up and then dropped down into a hole.
With the body stretched out on the cross, the person would usually die of suffocation.
Some would last for days on the cross, suffering a terrible death.

The cross was brutal.
What actually put Christ up there?It wasn't the Romans or the Jews, it was us.
We deserve death for our sins.We should have been put up there, not Christ.
But He willingly took our place.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Christ loves us so much that he chose to take the punishment for our sins so we could have eternal life with Him.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
When you think of the cross, and may you always think of it...may you truely grasp the depth of His love for you.