Luke 22:63-65 – Enduring sheer hostility

Luke 22:63-65 describe Jesus in the custody of the guards. He became the subject of a mob cruelty. When acting alone, a person tends to be less cruel, but when acting with a mob, the intensity usually increases. This is certainly the situation that the Lord was facing. He became the victim of a bunch of guards who were probably bored and looking for fun. So they made Him the object of their fun. They blindfolded Jesus and hit Him. Then they asked Him to prophesy and tell them who it was that had beaten Him. What irony! Didn't Jesus' prophetic words about Peter's denial just happened?

In Luke 18:32-33, He had prophetically said that He would be "... handed over to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon, and after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him..." The other Gospels tell us that He was spat upon and continually punched or slapped. They even used a rod to beat Him. He was also subjected to all kinds of verbal abuse. They must have used the vilest and all the stinking, vulgar words of their vocabulary to insult Him. The Creator was mocked and abused and blasphemed. Everything happened as He had foretold beforehand.

Everyone associated with Him had fled for safety and no one was with Him, only the Father in heaven. Condemned, bound and blindfolded, His captors jeered at Him the whole night long. And He was allowed no sleep. He didn't retaliate nor say a word, exactly as foretold by Isaiah. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth (Isaiah 53:7).

It must be said that it was within Jesus' power to free Himself from the insane behaviour of the guards. But He chose to remain and subject Himself to all the mockery and insults of those ignorant guards. Up till today, His name is still often used as a curse or swear word. Think of the extreme cruelty our Lord went through. None of us can say that we have been through such a situation. We may have been insulted before but they all pale in significance compared to what the Lord had gone through. So how should we respond the next time we are insulted? Let's allow Christ's nature to shine through us in our most difficult moment. We must seek to emulate Him, for His sole objective on earth was to fulfil the will of the Father above. Do we?