Not One of His Bones Shall Be Broken
John 19:31-42
Immediately following Jesus’s last breath, John makes a point to highlight the Jews and Roman soldiers and how they considered this death. As it was the Passover, the sunset would incite the beginning of the Sabbath. Looking for this to be a particularly ‘special’ sabbath, the Jews could not tolerate having the bodies hang on the crosses. Typically, the Romans would allow the bodies to remain on the crosses, letting the rot and animals consume their corpses for all to see. The Jews saw the result of their actions as being too unclean and egregious to look upon while attempting to remain ‘clean’ in their own world of standards.
Let alone ruthlessly executing the savior of the world, their hypocrisy is appeased by Pilate, who commands the Roman soldiers to take down the bodies. Including what is mentioned above, Enduring Word comments extensively on the historical perspective of this moment in John 19. Breaking the legs of the crucified people was the only way to catalyze the process of asphyxiation and their eventual death. Furthermore, David Guzik suggests, “After doing so to the first two victims, it was entirely normal for this soldier to do the same to Jesus – he was even presumably ordered to do it. Yet he did not; instead, he pierced His side with a spear and unwittingly fulfilled several prophecies” (John 19 -Jesus Crucified, 2018). Yes, Jesus couldn’t have incited such things to be fulfilled. Rather, John assures us the validity of this moment to continually point back to God’s hand being sovereign over the situation still. Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12, and Psalm 34:20 are all being fulfilled in this single moment by a secular soldier who suddenly swerves from the status quo. And some had internalized this aspect of Jesus’s life and ministry.
After the test of Jesus’ death, we see Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two men who were prominent men among the Jews. Having been members of the council and Pharisee parties, they had statuses to maintain and reputations to uphold. Their own people voted to crucify this man, and yet they chose to retrieve His body from Pilate. In the same commentary mentioned above, these men had enough power to hire servants' hands to do the dirty work of claiming a bloodied mess of a body it was. Yet, they chose to go themselves and give Jesus a ceremonial burial according to their customs. Any Jewish man would have gone out of the way to ensure proper burial for his friend and fellow countrymen, yet Joseph and Nicodemus risked more than a long night's work. They saw how ruthless the Jews were to Jesus, stopping at nothing to execute him; what guarantee did they have that they wouldn’t do this to His followers, too? After all, the rest of the disciples had fled at this point. But Nicodemus’s curiosity in John 3 was transformative, and Joseph’s hunger for the kingdom of God found its resolve in Christ. Their interactions and knowledge of Christ were so profound as to despise the hatred and brutal capabilities of the opposition and set up what would become the greatest moment in history so far. The cloth they wrapped Him in would be left behind, along with the tomb where He was laid.
The crazy thing about Nicodemus and Joseph is that aside from John 3, there aren’t any length stories about their devotion to Christ outside of this moment. There are no big moments of confession or proclamation. For them and the rest of the disciples, there was no ‘Christian’ social label to hide under. They were the first people to even consider Jesus as possibly being who He says He is: the Christ. Yet it's hard to consider these men not to be examples of the faith because of their display of what they believed and the risk they accepted as they went forward. And it's all because they simply interacted with Jesus and, clearly, were forever changed by that interaction. If we were to consider our own devotion to Jesus, is it our interaction with Him and truly gazing upon the beauty of our perfect sacrifice that fuels change in our lives? Or are we like the Pharisees who aimlessly complete religious tasks, forgetting the much larger picture?
We long for the Kingdom of God, and Jesus has brought us so much closer than we could imagine. If you have felt yourself simply striving to be good instead of transformed, go to Jesus, and gaze upon the beauty of His sacrifice.
