Of all the brutalities and humiliations Christ experienced on this Earth, at least He never broke a bone. This may seem like a random detail as we read about the final moments of His life, but it goes far beyond Him being fortunate. When we see the significance of broken bones in the Old Testament, we see another way that Christ was our perfect sacrifice for sin.
Christ in the Old Testament
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: … It is to be eaten in a single house; you are not to bring any of the meat outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. (Exodus 12:43a, 46)
He protects all his bones, not one of them is broken. (Psalm 34:20)
The lamb used during the yearly Passover was incredibly important to Israel. Although they still made regular sacrifices throughout the year, this particular sacrifice reminded them of God passing over the homes that made a proper sacrifice, sparing their firstborn sons from death. There were many requirements about the purity of this lamb, and one of them was that its bones could never be broken. For any of these requirements to be violated would mean that the sacrifice wasn’t acceptable to God.
Fulfilled in the New Testament
but after they came to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. Yet one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe. For these things took place so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.” (John 19:33-36)
Christ was our perfect sacrifice for sin. Like the lamb of the Passover, our Savior was completely without blemish. The sinless obedience of Christ’s life meant that He had no sin of His own to pay for, and thus could take the wrath of God in our place. And like the Passover that Israel celebrated, we can celebrate that our perfect lamb allows God to pass over our sins and spare us from His judgment.
Christ fulfilled all the requirements of a sacrifice for sin, all the way down to His bones never being broken. Although it seems insignificant, we realize how much we can rejoice at the perfection of our Messiah. We see that Israel’s regular sacrifices were never meant to fully pay for sin, but were instead always pointing at the one, final lamb who was coming.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
We all deserve the wrath of God. We all need to pay the penalty of our sins. If we have turned to Christ for salvation, we can trust that our debt has been paid in full by the perfect, spotless, unbroken lamb of God.
