GOD’S PERFECT TIMING IN JESUS’ DEATH
Vicky Moots
Psalm 22 is a prophetic messianic Psalm referring to Jesus, and is descriptive of death by crucifixion, especially verse 16 which states, “…they pierced my hands and my feet.” Crucifixion did not ever exist at the time that this Psalm was written.
Jesus had to be born at a time in history when crucifixion was used for execution in order that He would be crucified and “hanged on a tree,” signifying that He was cursed and became sin for us. Paul tells us in Gal. 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”
Not only was the time of Jesus birth planned, but so was the time of His death. Jesus came into the world for the purpose of dying for our sins. The amount of time that He spent on this earth, up to and including the day and time of His death.
It had been planned by God that Jesus would die at the time of Passover and become the final Passover Lamb. He told His disciples as they ate the Passover supper that He was going to be betrayed and die, and that the wine and the bread represented His own blood and body. He knew that it was His time to die. After praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas came and betrayed Him with a kiss, and they arrested Him and then crucified Him according to God’s time table.
He died on the cross at the time appointed by God, before evening, so that the soldiers would not have to break His legs. The Passover lamb was not allowed to have any of its bones broken, and so the Scripture was fulfilled regarding Jesus, who was the Lamb of God. We find this recorded in John 19:33-34, 36-37: “But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs, But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side…For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.”
Now I would like to discuss things from a medical standpoint. The cause of death from crucifixion is from asphyxiation (lack of oxygen), not from blood loss. So that means that Jesus did not shed His blood simply from the act of crucifixion.
A person being crucified eventually becomes so weak that he cannot hold himself up long enough with his legs to take a breath, and so he died from lack of oxygen to the brain. The soldiers would sometimes have to break the legs of the criminals to cause them to die sooner so that their bodies could be taken down off the cross in a timely manner.
How, then, did Jesus shed His blood if He died by suffocation? Jesus needed to be able to shed His blood in order to atone for our sins, as we read in Heb. 9:22: “and without shedding of blood is no remission [of sin].”
When a person dies, the heart stops beating, and the blood vessel’s collapse, causing the blood to back up into the heart and pool there. As a coroner I have had to obtain blood samples for postmortem toxicology, but since people don’t bleed after they die, how was that possible for me to do that? I would do that by inserting a long needle through the bottom part of the chest up into the main cavity of the heart, the left ventricle, and drawing out some of the blood that was there. So, God planned for the soldier to pierce Jesus’ heart with a spear, allowing all of His pooled blood to flow out. All of this was possible and happened because He died at the exact time that He did, according to God’s time clock, and did not need to have His legs broken. Thus, redemption was accomplished according to God’s purpose and according to His time.
