Punishment: Satiating the Mob's Lust For Suffering

It's disconcerting how Jesus' punishment comes about during the passion experience.

Pilate sees the truth of Jesus' innocence but also wants to satiate the bloodthirsty mob (and perhaps the Roman soldiers too). 

By punishing Jesus, Pilate tries to thread the appeasement needle.

"Appeasement is a strategem to forestall but not vitiate the reckoning we fear... the tragedy of appeasement is that in the end, it always fails. Indeed, it serves to strengthen our resentment towards the judge." - Paul Zahl, Who Will Deliver Us?

The Romans mastered how to bring about the most shameful suffering to a man without killing him, through flogging and crucifixion. These were ways Romans used to shut down rebellion and insurrection.

"...you've never witnessed a man being flogged to the point to where he wants to die, but can't because the soldier inflicting the pain knows exactly when to stop, not out of mercy, but because the goal was to inflict as much pain as possible. Death would be merciful. But out of a desire to cause as much suffering as possible, they would stop." - Andy Stanley

The Romans mastered the art of fear and punishment. They knew enough about the humans to bring it to the brink of death and maximize the pain along the way. Crucifixion was normally no quick death, but an elongated and excruciating torture.

Recognizing our potential for tormenting others is worth a moment of reflection at this point of the story.

To recognize our agency amidst society and the universe is to recognize our choice and ability to act outside the circumstances of which we are inside. And, it is also to recognize that we are also the possible agent of creating hell, for ourselves and others. 

As we mature, we know how to love people at a higher level but we also know how to harm them more profoundly too. A more mature nefarious adult can do leaps and bound more horrors than that of an utterly rebellious elementary school girl.

For God to solve the root human problem of sin, he had to go through this punishing man-made hell.

The Intersection

How do fear, punishment, and judgment intersect?

Paul Zahl effectively clarifies this answer and dynamic.

“...the principal cause of fear is punishment. "Fear has to do with punishment" (1 John 4:18). For the Jews, to use Saint Paul's frame of reference, fear has to do with God's judgment of a person's or people's failure to live up to the standards of the Law, symbolized and summarized in the Ten Commandments. “ Paul Zahl, Who Will Deliver Us?

No one likes punishment, even when it's deserved. We'd all rather skirt the consequences of our actions. We want to receive mercy. No one wants to invite punishment on themselves, only it’s for our enemies. 

“As civilized people, we are secure. We can predict the behaviors of others (if they share our stories); furthermore, we can control our environments well enough to ensure that our subjection to threat and punishment remains at a minimum." - Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning, pg 57

Rome was the master at doling out punishment. It was not about to be punished.

In Dungeons and Dragons, a class of characters is known as monks from the Way of the Long Death. Here's how they're described.

“The Way of the Long Death Monks spend their days learning to understand the meaning of death and how it works so they can use it against their enemies.”

Sounds like the Romans.

As we continue to explore and reflect on Jesus' journey to the cross, we’ll discover the sin that he bore and the punishment we deserve for which he endured. 

And by extension, we’ll see how the sin in our life today, adds to his punishment. We add to the suffering of Christ. And yet, when we know this, we still sin, and Jesus forgives us anyway.

In this context, our moral failures are transformed when we let God, through this revelation, transform our hearts and minds.

“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” - Job 3:25 KJV

Punishing the Good Guy

Punishment for doing wrong deeds is one thing. But, no one wants to be punished for doing the right thing, yet here we see Jesus loving and forgiving, and the wrath of man is strewn upon Him.

Hatred bubbles over, but it is overwhelmed by Jesus' love.

"Holiness and mission are two sides of the same coin. Both involve bringing the reign of Jesus to bear in places where up to now the powers have had held sway. The powers will not give in without a fight."

"The insight at the heart of Jesus' own vocation was that suffering would not simply be the dark tunnel through which Israel would pass to God's future. It would somehow be the means by which that future would be achieved." - NT Wright, the Day the Revolution Began, p406

The light is found on the other side of the darkness. But the darkness is tragic.

Our potential for bringing about tragedy is horrifying. Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor who sought to understand his persecutors wrote the following insight.

“It would never again be able to be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short potentially able to construct an infinite enormity of pain; and that pain is the only force that is created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.” - Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

Horrifying.

Rome, through Pilate, would thrust the flogging and crucifixion upon Jesus. None of it was a surprise.

God would use it to save us all.

“And so it is that what Pilate meant as the ultimate humiliation is, in fact, our only hope.” - Bradley Gray, The Beautiful Irony of the Cross

The beauty of the cross is that Christ's mission through it is fueled by love. And that from that act, we no longer have to fear punishment.

“Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” - 1 John 4:18

It's amazing that while Pilate punished Jesus to satiate the demanding mob, God uses that same punishment to liberate us from the need for that satiation.

Freedom for us on the flogged back of Jesus.