What
surely must have seemed a horribly conclusive defeat—death by Roman crucifixion, quickly
transformed into absolute triumph just three days later—victory over the grave.
As we enter into Holy Week, here are two short excerpts from In The Flesh – My Story that depict
these two powerful moments, all from the perspective of Jesus Himself. The
first is that agonizing moment the first nail pierced His sacred flesh for our sins.
The second is that glorious instant He resurrected from the dead to establish
everlasting life in His name.

Crucified:

With
preparations fully complete, they could now crucify me. A soldier pulled my
hand to the waiting hole and clutched it firmly in place by my wrist. Two others
held me down by my opposite arm. Another retrieved a mallet and a long iron
spike. My chest heaved in dreadful anticipation of his obvious task. And
although I held perfectly still, it was neither exhaustion nor the weight of
the soldiers that kept me in place.
Love.
Love
steadied me. My greatest expression of love for the world. Why would I resist?
This was not surrender. God’s commitment to humanity culminated now in this
ultimate act of self-giving.
I
felt the stinging stab of the nail gouging my sacred flesh as the soldier
pressed it into the very base of my palm, centered where hand met wrist. His
mallet raised. It seemed to hang in the air forever before rushing downward and
connecting with the large nail head. This single hammer smash propelled the
spike through my hand—driving through nerves, cartilage, carpal bones and into
the wood of the crossbeam. The iron sliced my wrist’s median nerve, roaring
pain up my entire arm, exploding into my brain. I choked on the air that gasped
and groaned from my lips. Three more pounds of the mallet shot waves of torment
through my whole body.

Resurrected:

There is
that moment at dawn when the sky burns vermilion, increasingly brighter,
awaiting the first stab of true light to fire over the horizon and across the
sky—that very instant when dawn becomes sunrise in a flash of vivid rays—day
breaking, conquering night.
At this
precise moment on Sunday morning, the greatest of all Sunday mornings, a light
far brighter than the awakening sun over the Mount of Olives radiated from
within my cave. As day broke across Jerusalem, a dazzling burst of brilliance
exploded from innumerable filamentary beams, shooting forth from every particle
of my lifeless body. For less than the blink of an eye, this pitch-black tomb
flashed brighter than the sun itself, eternal life rushing into my cadaver.
My eyes
opened to nothing but the burial cloth covering my face. My ears awoke to only
two sounds, one from this world and one from another. I heard the coarse
scraping of the stone opening the tomb’s entrance, as well as the grating
screech of Satan screaming in defeat.
I had
returned.

Read more at www.InTheFleshBook.com