Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

 ³  and they began to come up to Him and say, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and to give Him slaps in the face.

 ⁴  Pilate came out again and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.”

 ⁵  Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them, “Behold, the Man!”

 ⁶  So when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out saying, “Crucify, crucify!”  Pilate said to them, “Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him.”  John 19:1-6.

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The prophet Isaiah prophesied this scourging and what it accomplished.  “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities;  The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.”  Isaiah 53:5.

The apostle Peter likewise stated that the scourging accomplished our healing.  “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness;  for by His wounds you were healed.”  1 Peter 2:4. 

The Heidelberg Catechism helps us understand this Scripture for today, what was accomplished by the scourging as part of Christ’s suffering even though Christ was innocent, and the following words “He suffered” which are in The Apostles’ Creed:

“Question 37.  What dost thou understand by the words, “He suffered”?

Answer.  That he, all the time that he lived on earth, but especially at the end of his life, sustained in body and soul, the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind:  that so by his passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice, he might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation, and obtain for us the favor of God, righteousness and eternal life.

Question 38.  Why did he suffer under Pontius Pilate, as judge?

Answer.  That he, being innocent, and yet condemned by a temporal judge, might thereby free us from the severe judgment of God to which we were exposed.”