<p>27:34 <em>They gave him wine to drink mingled with gall. And when he had tasted it, he would not drink it- </em>To give strong drink to those ready to perish was a well-known custom at crucifixion. The fact victims survived two or three days was only because they were given drink. The Lord didn't simply refuse the pain killer. He took it, tasted it, and then refused it. Why did He first taste it? Surely He knew the custom, and He knew what it was. Various alternatives arise in the mind, each a source of devotional inspiration:</p><p>- Was it that His eyesight was damaged by the punches and He didn't see what it was until He tasted it? &quot;When Jesus therefore saw his mother...&quot; may suggest that He didn't initially recognize her. The Messianic Scriptures mention the affliction of eyesight in Messiah's final suffering. Early crucifixion art shows the Lord with His right eye damaged (as does the Turin shroud). The mucous membrane (the thin slippery tissues which lubricate the human body) would have dried so that &ldquo;they rip layers of tissues from the eyes every time the pupil is moved or blinked&quot; (C.M. Ward). <br />- Maybe He realized as He had the cup on His lips that they were giving this to Him in the spirit of Jer. 23:15: to show that He was a false prophet. In this case, for the sake of His respect for the implications of Holy Scripture, He endured a far higher degree of pain.<br />- Another explanation is that He wanted to speak out loud, saying (several times?) &quot;Father, forgive them&quot;, and to perhaps recite Psalm 22. He was so parched from thirst (He had lost body fluid in Gethsemane) that He knew He couldn't speak out loud without some liquid. The dehydration would have made His tongue thicken so that speech was eventually almost impossible. But He only drank enough to moisten His throat, not to deaden any pain. This shows the majestic self-mastery within the Lord; He knew just when to stop, even though it must have been so tempting to keep on drinking.<br />- Taking the pain killer would not have been a sin, neither would it have theologically damaged the atonement. Perhaps the Lord took it, as doubtless the others did, and then had the self-control to think better of it and give it back. Such was His devotion to the absolute height of identity with us. It makes His action all the more poignant if He first tasted and then refused, rather than just refusing outright.</p><p>He was <em>repeatedly</em> offered the pain killer, the tense implies. Men offering Him myrrh in (mock) homage would have sent His mind back to the story dear Mary had told Him about the wise men bringing myrrh. And inevitably her tortured mind would have gone back there too. But I have another suggestion. When we read that &ldquo;someone&quot; offered him a sponge with wine mixed with myrrh (Mk. 15:36; Mt. 27:48), we recall the use of myrrh in preparing bodies for burial (Mk. 14:3; Lk. 23:56; Jn. 12:3; 19:39). Pliny (<em>Natural History</em> 14.15.92,107) records: &ldquo;The finest wine in early days was that spiced with the scent of myrrh&hellip; I also find that aromatic wine is constantly made from almost the same ingredient as perfumes, from myrrh&quot;. This alerts me to the real possibility that the unnamed bystander who did this was Mary Magdalene. Earlier she had anointed the Lord&rsquo;s body with myrrh &ldquo;to the burial&quot;. And now she has prepared the most expensive form of wine as some sort of pain killer. Perhaps the Lord was so touched by this that He accepted it, but didn&rsquo;t drink it. His doing this is otherwise very hard to understand. Her love was on one hand inappropriate, and yet the Lord still accepted it, even though He couldn&rsquo;t use it. He could have felt angry with her for tempting Him to the easier way. But He didn&rsquo;t. And in so doing He showed her that the essence of the cross is that there is no easy way. The principles of all this are to be reflected in our cross carrying.</p><p>Another alternative presents itself from the Hebrew text of Ps. 69:21: &ldquo;They gave me also gall&quot;. The Hebrew can stand the translation &lsquo;poison&rsquo; (see RSV). Given the extended, agitated torture of crucifixion, there was a custom for close friends to get close enough to the cross to lift up a poisonous substance which the crucified would lick, and thereby die quickly. It is just possible that a friend (or even his mother?) or a sympathetic soldier did this. Again, in this case it would seem that the Lord chose the highest level; our salvation would surely have been theologically achievable if He had taken it. But He chose to attain for us not only salvation, but &ldquo;such <em>great </em>salvation&quot; (Heb. 2:3) by always taking the highest level. He became obedient not only to death, but &ldquo;even the death of the cross&quot;.</p><p>One feels that Christ would have been justified in accepting the pain killer that was offered Him in His final agony; but He refused it, it seems to me, in order to achieve the <em>greatest </em>salvation for us. He never once used what I have called the principle of Jephthah's vow. In the same spirit, some faithful men of old refused legitimate deliverance from torture so that they might obtain &quot;a better resurrection&quot; (Heb. 11:35). The record of the cross is full of examples of where the Lord in physical terms rejected legitimate comforts in His final hours. Yet throughout His life, He was ever ready to concede to the weakness of those who would genuinely follow Him. The way He spoke about demons without giving His hearers a lecture about the folly of such belief is proof of this. He could have insisted, as we do, on the rejection of such superstitions. But this was not His way. I am not suggesting that <em>we</em> have the right to make such concessions in our preaching and baptizing. But He did.&nbsp;</p>