Day By Day On The Cross Part 2

The Mockery, the Cross, and the Nails

As we continue reflecting during Holy Week, I pray this deeper look into what Jesus endured touches your heart the same way it has mine. It wasn’t just the physical pain—it was the mockery, the humiliation, and the loneliness that compounded His suffering. Every part of it was for you. Every lash, every insult, every nail.

Let’s keep going.

The Purple Robe and the Mocking

Scripture says, “Marvel not if the world hates you, for it hated Me first.”

I can’t imagine the shame and humiliation Jesus bore as they paraded Him around after His beating. His body was bruised, bleeding, and torn open. Then they threw a purple robe over Him, right on top of His wounds. Blood glued the fabric to His skin as it dried.

They weren’t dressing Him with honor—they were mocking Him. Jeering. Spitting. Laughing.

“Hail, King of the Jews!” they shouted, pretending to bow.

This was the same crowd who had sung “Hosanna in the highest!” just a week earlier. Now they were cheering for His execution.

Can you imagine the betrayal?

Jesus, fully human, felt every ounce of it. He had emotions like us, but unlike us, He never lost sight of His mission: to reconcile us to the Father. To pay a debt He didn’t owe.

Think about it this way. Imagine you’re told someone across the country took out a loan in your name. You didn’t sign for it. You don’t even know them. But if you don’t pay it off, they’ll garnish your wages, take you to court, repossess everything you own—and you’ll still be in debt.

That’s what Jesus took on. A debt He didn’t incur, but one He chose to pay—for us.

And then came the robe again.

After the mockery, after His blood dried into the fabric, a soldier came and ripped the robe off. Ripped it right from His open wounds. Flesh and scabs tore off with it, reopening the cuts, exposing His body again to infection and pain.

Carrying the Cross

After all of that, He was forced to carry the instrument of His own execution.

The crossbeam—rough, splintered, not like the smooth polished ones we see today—was laid across His torn-up back. Historians say it weighed 150 to 180 pounds.

It was likely covered in dried blood and remnants from other crucifixions.

Jesus fell—more than once—and the weight of the beam smashed down on His back each time. Eventually, the soldiers grabbed a man named Simon to help carry it up the hill.

They reached Golgotha—the place of the skull.

And there, they laid Him down.

The Nails

Jesus was thrown down onto the beam, and His arms were pulled outward until His shoulders dislocated. Then the soldiers took large, square spikes—not thin, sharp nails like we imagine—and drove them into His wrists, just above the hand where two bones meet.

Why the wrists? Scripture says “not a bone was broken,” and there are too many small bones in the hand for a nail to go through without breaking something.

The spot they used? It’s what we now call the carpal tunnel, home to the medial nerve—one of the most sensitive nerves in your body. Doctors say even the slightest touch to that nerve can cause pain strong enough to make someone pass out.

Now imagine a thick, blunt spike slammed into that nerve.

The pain must’ve been indescribable.

And that’s just the beginning.

They hoisted the crossbeam up into place and dropped it onto the post, jarring His entire body. His weight now hung on those nailed wrists, tearing at the joints and nerves every time He moved.

Then came the feet.

We often picture the nails going through the tops of His feet, but again—that would have broken bones. Instead, they twisted His legs, stacked one over the other, and drove the spike just above the ankles where the tibia and fibula meet. That’s where the bones could handle it without breaking, but the pain? Unimaginable.

Now His knees were bent, His back was shredded, and His whole body was twisted at the hips.

Every breath required Him to push up on the nail-pierced feet. But with His arms stretched out, it constricted His lungs and diaphragm. Breathing wasn’t automatic—it was torture.

“By His wounds we are healed.”

And He Was Exposed

One more thing we often forget—He was naked.

Completely exposed. Stripped of dignity. Hung up for the world to see.

Just like our sins—nothing hidden. Nothing covered.

Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us. He became the very thing He was dying to destroy. The sacrifice. The scapegoat.

And as He hung there, body broken, spirit grieved, and heart full of love, He bore everything. Every shame, every sin, every disease, every failure.

All for you. All for me.

We’ll continue in Part 3 with a deeper look into the emotional and psychological suffering Jesus endured—something many of us have never fully considered.

Until then, reflect on this:

“He endured the cross, despising the shame… for the joy set before Him.”
And that joy?
Was you.