He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss.
"Fly, you fools!" he cried, and was gone.

The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein

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Thirty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee

Number 20

Point to the physical suffering of the Cross without explaining the spiritual agony of the Savior.

Stoic calm in the face of suffering and death have been quite common in the chronicles of human history.

How many men and women have looked steadily into the eyes of an oncoming army or a grim executioner, when their lives were about to be taken for the sake of family or country or faith or even for an ignoble or dark cause.

Yes, many have broken and been undone at such crucibles - but many also have not.

Which offers a mystery worth investigating in the story of our Savior.

The opening scene of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ seeks, with a flood of raw emotion, to press upon us a glimpse of the fiercest and deepest grief felt or expressed in either time or eternity.

The setting is the garden of Gethsemane. Effectively, though - inevitably - incompletely, a skilled actor attempts to portray the paralyzing physical and emotional trauma of the Redeemer's anticipation of an incomprehensible destination. A defensive lover of Christ could be tempted to object to this undignified portrayal of human weakness, anxiety, and spiritual wrestling, in our holy Lord - if it were not for the Gospel's unflinching account of this devastating night.

Jesus collapses, weeps, pours out sweat - like dripping blood - and, with unbridled desperation, cries out for any alternative to drinking the cup He is about to drain to the bottom.

With admirable intent, the film draws us with excruciating imagery, wound by wound, in flesh-ripping clarity, through the hours of the execution of the Son of God. As I watched, I sensed the strain of a sincerely-motivated filmmaker laboring to display an unthinkable Golgotha torture - worthy of Gethsemane's agony.

Mr. Gibson, with true respect for his skillful craftsmanship and grim artistry, could not do it.

He fell short because nails, whips, spittle, thorns, and suffocation were - I believe - minor, or even missing completely, in the anticipation of the Savior's garden anguish.

Many have been tortured and killed (even on crosses), but God's beloved Son knew that on His cross He had one unimaginable cup to drink. He was willingly nailed there that He might be the singular target of the unmixed wrath of a righteous Creator against the unthinkable rebellion of an entire world.

The sinless One became sin for us, so that we might wear His righteousness as our own. To this end, the eternal communion of glad adoration between God the Father and His Beloved Son would be shattered; so that the Savior, cut off from the Father's fellowship, might receive the full and appropriate assault of a holy King against our vast and hideous crime.

The anticipation of the application of God's justice - not the execution of Roman cruelty - broke the Son's soul, in Gethsemane. Yet, in incomprehensible grace, this did not even bend the Savior's resolve to serve His Father's will and to save His beloved people.

"Not my will, but Thine be done."

If we tell our children only of the physical misery of a rugged cross, without turning their eyes toward the staggering, righteous cost of our redemption, then their view of grace will shrink as they grow up and learn of other (possibly more stoic) examples of heroic, human death.

You see - noble figures, staring with fearless calm into the face of physical agony and death are scattered across history's stories. If we are not careful and true, the incomparable sacrifice of Jesus will be diminished as our children have opportunity to reflect upon the freedom-defending boys who ran on to the the beach at Normandy or to admire the valiant end of William Wallace in Braveheart or to marvel at the victorious Christian martyrs, singing as they burned. The wonder of the Cross will fade and the grace of the Christ will appear less amazing.

If we are shy, with our children, to unveil the ugliness of our sin against God and the ferocity of God upon our Savior, we must prepare for them to be unimpressed by the agony of Christ in Gethsemane or the offer of mercy in the Gospel.

Do not mistake me; the bodily sacrifice of the Cross, like the full humanity of the Christ, is essential to our salvation. God's law and covenant require blood atonement. The author of Hebrews simply declares, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." The prophet Isaiah records that the Servant-Redeemer, literally, was "wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed."

Yes, the nails profoundly mattered; but they were also primarily meant to point beyond physical death to the face of God. That final day, when we appear before our Maker, what God did to Jesus on the Cross will be what we are then spared. The Savior's heavenly Father, full of grace, will embrace us - blameless before Him in the Son's righteousness, because His Son was bludgeoned by Him for our sin.

The distinction, between the seen and unseen suffering of Christ, is neither small nor inconsequential. I will even risk appearing to belittle the significance of what could be seen on Calvary, to magnify what was being accomplished eternally. Let me say it plainly. To the Savior, the whips were nothing compared to the weight of God's judgment; and He hardly noticed the mocking of men as the full measure of the Father's wrath fell upon Him.

And if there is no hell - as many now claim - the fury He bore that day is either a devilish lie or a devastating and inexcusable waste.

Our estimation of the glory of grace, and our children's, will be as full and captivating as our comprehension of the Savior's sacrifice. Pharisees cannot easily grow where the depths and realities of the Cross even begin to be known.

It is like standing over the mangled body of a butchered soldier, and saying, "Look what they've done to his uniform! Those stains will never come out!" - to behold the torn body of our Lord, without exploring the inexplicable grace of the terrible justice to which those wounds are pointing.

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