John 19:31-33, Jesus' Legs Not Broken

31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

With the death of Jesus the Jewish leaders return, the highly religious men of their day, committed to keeping the law. They want Jesus’ body removed from the cross because the Sabbath will begin in a few hours at sundown. They probably also have Deuteronomy 21:22-23 in mind: “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.” Keep the law; kill the Messiah. Richard Niebuhr has great insight regarding religious people: “Religion is not, as is frequently supposed, a fundamentally virtuous human quest for God; it is rather the final battle ground in the struggle between God and human self-esteem.”

The soldiers come to break the legs of the three crucified men with an iron mallet. Unable to push up on their legs, the men will die quickly by suffocation unable to get any air in their lungs. After smashing the other men’s legs, the soldiers come to Jesus and find him dead. Unbeknownst to them, he did not die so much from the physical effects of his flogging and crucifixion, as horrific as they were, but from the spiritual anguish of having the sins of the world laid on him and being forsaken by God. Later Peter would explain what happened to Jesus (1 Peter 2:24): “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” And Paul wrote (2 Cor 5:21), “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

O Jesus! we devoutly embrace that honored cross, where thou didst love us even unto death. In thy death is all our hope. Henceforth let us live only unto thee, so that whether we live or die we may be thine. Amen.

Treasury of Devotion, 1869