The Crown of Thorns

The crown of thorns was the symbol of the cursed ground out of which man was taken. When Adam rebelled, he rejected God’s reign and crowned himself king. God pronounced the curse over the very place that had formerly been the source of blessing and goodness. Because the ground rebelled against its maker, the ground would no longer easily yield its fruit for man. In order to reverse the curse, God humbled himself and became the last Adam to become a curse for us. He wore the symbol of man’s rebellion when he hung on the cross to remove the curse. “Jesus had, therefore, to wear the thorns which man’s sin had developed, in order that man might enjoy the peaceful fruits of righteousness which Christ’s atonement had produced” (Hugh Macmillan). The King humbled himself and stood in the place of rebels in order to establish His righteous reign in their hearts and lives again. He came to make His blessing flow “far as the curse is found.” Matthew Henry summed it it so well when he wrote: “Thorns came in with sin, and were part of the curse that was the product of sin, Genesis 3:18; therefore Christ, being made a curse for us, and dying to remove the curse from us, felt the pain and smart of those thorns…and binds them as a crown to him (Job. 31:36); for his sufferings for us were his glory.”