"And they crucified him."

I had found this (or someone sent it to me), but I never wrote down the original source.  I am also too lazy to Google it.  Nevertheless, here is a description of what happens to the victim who is crucified.

     What is crucifixion?  A medical doctor provides a physical description: 

     The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood.  The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist.  He drives a heavy, square wrought iron nail through the wrist deep into the wood.  Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement.  The cross is then lifted into place.  The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed.  The victim is now crucified.

     As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain - the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the edian nerves.  As he pushes himself upward to avoid this trenching torment, he places his full weight on the nail through his feet.  Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet.

     As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep, relentless, and throbbing pain.  With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe.  Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled.  He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath.

     Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided.  Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.  Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber.

     Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.  It is now almost over.  The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level.  The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues.  The tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air.  He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.  Finally, he allows his body to die.

     All of this the Bible records with the simple words, "and they crucified Him." (Mark 15: 24)

But so what?  Many people were executed with this method.  Whom did they save?  No one.  The greatest agony Jesus endured on the cross was not the pain and agony of crucifixion.  It was heard in these words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.”  Jesus was God-forsaken.  Jesus went through hell on the cross--not just pain, but actual hell, paying the wages of sin, receiving the punishment due every sinner.  Hell is worse than any crucifixion.  And this he endured for us so that we would never be God-forsaken, so that we would have heaven.  What wondrous love is this!