O Sacred Head Now Wounded, With grief and shame weighed down.
Now scornfully surrounded, with thorns thine only crown. With thorns thine only crown.
Mark’s gospel tells us that, “they put a purple robe on Jesus, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.”
In the Greco-Roman culture of the 1st Century, crowns were placed on kings as a sign of majesty and honor. Crowns were given to people of superior rank. A crown was given to the victorious Roman conqueror when he brought peace through battle. In the Greco-Roman world, the awarding of a crown often signified appreciation for exceptional contributions to society. Crowns were given to those who served the Roman state at their own expense.
But now the Roman soldiers place a crown of thorns on Jesus. This crown is not meant for honor, but dishonor. It’s not meant to show rank but ridicule. They gave him this crown, not to celebrate his peace and victory, but to accentuate his devastation and defeat. They could not see in him exceptional contribution, but only an instigator of revolution. So they placed a crown of thorns on his head.
They didn’t just mean to show mockery, they meant to increase his agony. If they simply wanted to mock him, they could have used straw or tree branches to fashion this crown. But they wanted to increase his pain — so they placed a crown of thorns on his head.
However, in making this crown of thorns, they didn’t realize that what they were intending for mockery and agony, God was using to reveal His Son’s majesty and authority — to lead us to the very purpose and promise of King Jesus. The whole story of God is about the crown and the thorns.
At the very beginning of the story, God was known as the king and his favorite creation; Adam and Eve received him as their King. But when they believed the lie of the serpent, they rejected their King and decided to crown themselves. And haven’t we all done this? Haven’t we all tried to crown ourselves? Haven’t we all made ourselves out to be authoritative? Haven’t we all treated people as pawns in our schemes, using them for the glory of our own little kingdoms? Haven’t we all, at one time or another, crowned ourselves and rejected our King?
In our pride, we crown ourselves and reject our King.
In our lust, we crown ourselves and reject our King.
In our self-glorification, we crown ourselves and reject our King.
In our ethnocentrism, we crown ourselves and reject our King.
In the plotting and planning of our lives, in our ladder-climbing and career building, we crown ourselves and reject our King.
God’s word of judgment to Adam is this: Because you have crowned yourself and rejected me as King, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…” The result of Adam’s sin was the curse, yielding pain and thorns. The first Adam made a mockery of God’s kingship and God laid upon him, upon all of the creation, upon you and me, the agony of the curse. But before God told Adam of the devastating results that his sin had brought into the world, the Lord said that he was going to do something to deal with the sin, to deal with the curse, to deal with the thorns.
According to God’s plan through the ages, this first gospel in Genesis 3:15 became the full gospel of our passion narrative. In this passion narrative, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, shows his majesty and authority by absorbing the mockery and the agony introduced by the first Adam. The story of God is all about the Crown and the thorns. God’s story is all about the King coming in and the curse going out.
But before the king arrived, we were given insight into the ruin that the curse brought upon the world. The prophet Isaiah looked out over the broken people of God and said, “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no health in it.”
The prophet Jeremiah looked out over the wayward people of God and said, “Behold, the storm of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked.”
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SOURCE: The Front Porch
Russ Whitfield
