“These things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, ‘Not one of His bones shall be broken.’ And again another Scripture says, ‘They shall look on Him whom they pierced’” (John 19:36,37).
Often, when Caroline and I watch a BBC mystery she’ll ask—because she wants to be one step ahead of the detective—“I wonder why he did that?” I usually stifle the obvious answer: “Because it’s in the script.”
The Apostle John had something of that in mind when he, reflecting on the historical fact that "not one of [Jesus’] legs were broken." wrote that his side was “pierced" instead.
The first quotation is an allusion to the Passover lamb, whose bones were not to be broken (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12). The second quotation is from Zechariah 12:10, and drawn from a passage that refers to Israel’s future longing for her Messiah.
When Jesus’ executioners came to Jesus, they saw no need to break his legs to hasten his death for he had already offered up his life. They pierced his side instead. (John, in another place, used the fact that “blood and water” flowed from Jesus’ side to prove that His body was human and not spectral, as the Gnostics claimed [1 John 5:8;Cp., John 19:35]).
The fact that Jesus’ sufferings were so precisely foreshadowed by the prophets indicates that Jesus’ crucifixion took place according to a pre-arranged plan. Nothing surrounding that event happened by caprice or chance. Everything was “in the script.”
And why does John call our attention to this detail? Because we must know that God has a plan for every earthly catastrophe, to turn it into the highest good—a eucatastrophe, to use Tolkien’s term: A deliriously happy ending to an otherwise tragic tale.
David Roper
3.31.21
