19:17 thru 19:37 (Mar 30)

Jesus is crucified with 2 others. The people who wanted Jesus dead do not want the bodies left on the crosses during their special holy day, so they ask the Romans to bring them down early. The soldiers break the legs of the first 2 men, but not Jesus. Instead, one of the soldiers pierces Jesus' heart with a sword. John tells us, "The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe."

Obviously, it is very important to John that the reader understand that Jesus was dead. He was not taken down from the cross and mistaken for dead, allowing him to slip off into the night. He was really dead. His dead body was brutally pierced and this act was witnessed and testified to. Why is this emphasized so much by John? Because it is critical to the Christian faith. If Jesus was not really dead, then he was not really raised from the dead by God the Father. And if he was not really raised from the dead by God the Father, then Jesus was not who he claimed to be and did not tell the truth. As it says in 1 Corinthians 15:14-15: "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead."

No, he was in fact the King of the Jews. And he was in fact dead. And he was in fact raised again. And he was in fact who he claimed to be. He was in fact "him who is, and who was, and who is to come, ... the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth." (Rev 1:5).