March 31, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"With His stripes we are healed." — Isaiah 53:5 · KJV

Pilate delivered our Lord to the soldiers to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, with sharp bones twisted in here and there among the sinews, so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration and tore the flesh from the bone. The Savior was, no doubt, bound to the column and thus beaten. He had been struck before, but this scourging by the Roman soldiers was probably the most severe of His floggings. My soul, stand here and weep over His poor stricken body. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze on Him without tears, as He stands before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing His stripes have worked in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If we have ever loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our breast. See how the patient Jesus stands, insulted in His lowest case: sinners have bound the Almighty's hands and spit in their Creator's face; His temples, gored and gashed with thorns, send streams of blood from every part; His back is lashed with knotted scourges, but sharper scourges tear His heart. We would gladly go to our rooms and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of His bleeding self on the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with Him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost Him so dear.