The Crown of Thorns He Wore for Me

A little gem coming to you from Women's Bible study this morning.  

I've just joined in the last few weeks (since I'm now available during the day!), and wow, these women are wise.  We're going through the book of John and landed in chapter 19 today where Jesus is sentenced to be crucified:

^"1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. ² The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe ³ and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face."  John 19:1-3

Very little of Jesus' suffering and death makes sense outside of understanding God's plan to redeem mankind.  Amidst all the questions one might ask, have you ever thought, "Why a crown of thorns?"

To mock him?  Yes.

To cause him even more pain and suffering?  Yes.

But check this out.  Straight from the Garden of Eden comes God's first words announcing the curse brought about by man's sin:

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

¹⁹  By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:17-19

Did you catch that?  Because of man's sin, the ground now produces thorns.  And those thorns that represent the curse- and the prickly, hurtful, ugliness of our sin- were the crown that Jesus wore the day he laid down his life.  He was crowned with our sin.  And He defeated it.

It's the week after Easter.  My leftovers are officially gone.  My green Easter grass is being thrown in the trash today.  But does the cross ever get old?