Sinclair Ferguson

Mary was losing her son.

John was watching his best friend die.

The Roman centurion might have looked back on it as a turning point in his life, maybe, but we can't be sure.

Even the religious leaders who engineered our Lord's crucifixion had all kinds of anxieties about the day.

After all, they'd been trying to avoid Jesus being executed at the time of the Feast of the Passover.

But there was one man for whom the day started as the worst day in his life.

but ended not only as the last day, but as the best day.

In the morning, he had been dragged along with two others from his prison cell and forced to carry the instrument of his own crucifixion.

From around midday, he began to experience the agony of crucifixion, a torturous form of execution that actually led the great Roman orator Cicero to say the very word should be absent from the lips of a Roman citizen.

Sometimes it could take days for a man to die, ultimately by asphyxiation.

And maybe all this man could hope for was that since Passover was about to begin, the execution squad would have mercy and do something to hasten his end.

At first he had the strength to curse, to curse anything and everything.

He noticed that the crowd who had gathered seemed focused on the man who was hanging on the cross beside him.

They were mocking him.

What must have struck him was that the chief priests were there too.

That was strange.

Wasn't one of the most sacred days in the year about to begin?

What were they doing there?

And why were they mocking him?

And at first he joined in the shouts.