A Crown of Thorns
“When they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!” (Matthew 27:29).
Jesus suffered many pains and indignities when he bore the penalty for Adam and his race. With the crown of thorns, both pain and indignity were involved. However, there is symbolic meaning in this experience. The word “thorns” was used respecting the penalty imposed on Adam. “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; (19) In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:18, 19). Jesus died to relieve us from all of the curse. Receiving a crown of thorns symbolized Jesus bearing our penalty.
This was represented also in the experience of Abraham offering Isaac, in Genesis 22. God asked Abraham to offer the only child of Abraham’s proper wife Sarah. Isaac, of course, represented our Lord Jesus, offered by God as a ransom for mankind.
Abraham had waited 25 years after entering Canaan, for the birth of his promised child, and decades more until his son was grown. Then God asked Abraham to make an offering of the most precious thing Abraham had, his child of promise. It was a token of God offering the most precious thing He had, his “only begotten son,” Jesus (John 3:16).
Abraham, Isaac, an intervening angel, and a ram in a thicket
Jesus would die on a prominence near Jerusalem, thus one of the hills of the area of Moriah, as for example the temple at Jerusalem was constructed on mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). In picture of this, God told Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Genesis 22:2). Thus the location was specific, and meaningful.
Notice also the kind of offering mentioned, a burnt offering. Years, later, under the Mosaic Law, a burnt offering, unlike all other kinds of offerings, was specifically directed to be put upon the wood directly. “The burnt offering … the priests … shall lay … in order upon the wood” (Leviticus 1:6-8). This reminds us that Jesus died on a wooden cross, or, as Peter expresses it, Jesus “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The wood of a tree is meaningful, for the sin of Adam which Jesus bore was occasioned by eating of forbidden tree.
When Jesus walked up Calvary’s hill, “he bearing his cross went forth” (John 19:17). Likewise Isaac, in picture of this, carried the wood for the burnt offering up the hill of Moriah where he was to be offered. “Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son” (Genesis 22:6).
As Abraham prepared to offer Isaac per God’s direction, when it was apparent that Abraham was ready to obey, God intervened by sending an angel to stay the hand of Abraham (Genesis 22:10-12). But when the time came for actual atonement in Christ, God “spared not his own Son” (Romans 8:32).
As Abraham climbed the hill with his son, Isaac asked “where is the lamb for a burnt offering?,” to which Abraham replied, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:7, 8). That lamb was Isaac, and God accepted the offering as though it had been accomplished. In the antitype, Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
After Isaac was removed from the altar, another animal was found caught in a thicket, which was offered. It was not a lamb, for Isaac was the lamb. It was a ram, a grown male with horns. Those horns had become caught in a nearby thicket. “Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:13).
The “thicket” reminds us of the curse respecting “thorns and thistles.” That the ram’s horns were caught, tells us that this thicket engaged the head of the ram in particular. This reminds us of the crown of thorns place on the head of Jesus, reflecting that part of the curse of Adam. The ram was then offered for a burnt offering on the wood, just as Jesus died on the cross.
Thus Jesus redeems mankind both from the curse of death, and from the continuing “sweat of thy face” by which mankind has for millennia toiled for their sustenance. In the Kingdom of Christ, mankind will not only be offered everlasting life, but freedom from degrading toil. Instead, their lot will be everlasting joy. “The ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10).
— From fellowship with a sister in Alabama