Good Friday Isaiah said it, possibly 550 years before Jesus was born: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." Is this why the people who executed Jesus had to torture him so much before they killed him? I think not! There is a mean and cruel streak in many of us when we are faced with love and forgiveness. Sometimes it seems we have to humiliate and hurt those who have come to help us before we can accept their healing and care. God knows it, Isaiah discovered it, Jesus experienced it, and the world lives by it!

The soldiers were under orders to kill Jesus in the standard style of execution Rome used for public criminals: agonizing death on a crude Cross driven into the grou…