Our Savior Crowned with Thorns

The Lord tells Ezekiel not to mind being surrounded by thorns and briers during his ministry, which brings to mind how our Savior was persecuted with a crown of thorns at His crucifixion.

How cruel were the Roman soldiers who pressed those awful thorns upon the Lord's head.

Those thorns were a sign and judgment of the fall announced by God in the Garden of Eden. Because Adam sinned, God promised that his labor would be hampered by the ground bringing forth thorns and thistles instead of grain.

Since then, working the ground has involved being stuck by the thorns, which often draw the blood of their victims. They bring to our labor sorrow and pain. They are a part of the judgment for our sin, and a reminder of how we have marred the creation by our sin.

Because the Lord Jesus had to be judged for our sin in our place, it was necessary that He should suffer all the judgments for sin in His own body. Our sin was laid upon Him at Calvary, and He exhausted all the judgment for it for everyone who trusts in Him.

Thus, He suffered the judgment of death for our sin. He suffered the shame of nakedness which descended upon Adam when he sinned.

And Jesus suffered the very thorns that God cursed the ground with for Adam's sin.

Our Lord Jesus became completely entangled in our judgment and our curse on the cross, and the intensity of the crown of thorns pressed upon His brow no doubt encapsulated an entire lifetime's worth of normal suffering from those cursed things!

All our judgment rained down on Him all at once, in concentrated form, including the thorns that are normally a small part of our punishment.

He is our Lamb caught up in the thicket for us!