By Pastor Matt Parra

Then they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.  Mark 15:22

I don’t imagine that any of us would feel good about going to where Jesus was going. When my dad was dying with late-stage cancer, my mom asked him what the worst part of dying was, he looked over at her, and said, “everything”. Death is horrifying to say the least but imagine the death that Christ was dying. The combined guilt of an entire race. Being made sin for them. All their iniquitousness, sickness, wretchedness, disease, violence and guilt compounded together and placed on you. I’m sure that in his humanity Christ desired mercy. Interestingly, at public crucifixions it was common to offer the sufferers a numbing agent that might provide them with bit of relief. 

“They tried to give Him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it.” Mark 15:23

Why do you suppose He didn’t take it? The people were offering Him medicinal relief. God forbids the recreational use of alcohol but not it’s medicinal use. Proverbs 31:6, says, “Give strong drink to him who is perishing”. It’s not saying get people drunk before they die, it’s saying that it’s permissible to use alcohol to relieve the suffering person in their dying moments. It would have been no more a sin for Jesus to take the alcohol that was offered Him when He was dying on the cross, than it is for people to be placed under anaesthesia during a surgery. Consider dying relatives who receive pain killers, so they don’t have to feel the pain of a failing body, do you think that’s a sin? Of course it’s not. 

So why would Jesus, under such conditions refuse to take pain relieving medication in the form of alcohol? 

It’s because to accept the drink would be to accept mercy and Jesus was dying for our sins, so He couldn’t. He was drinking from the cup of wrath so that He could offer us the cup of mercy. He died for our sins and to die for sins is to die without mercy because sin is unmerciful and God is Just. 

A merciless death was the price He had to pay to be merciful to us.

That refusal to be relieved physically says a lot about God. It says a lot about what we mean to Him, every one of us. And it says a lot about how we should relate to each other, as well.  This Sabbath would you commit to spending a thoughtful hour meditating on His refusal of that merciful pain relief and the motivation behind It and let’s pray together that we all individually and corporately see that same spirit of love at work in our lives and in our relationships.