The Scourging at the Pillar

Secular presentation

The second sorrowful mystery

The arches in the background are Roman arches,  The soldier in armour is a Roman soldier, as are the men with the barbed whips flailing around before striking the innocent man.  They've all been put up to doing this.  The one in uniform does his duty and directs events.  The one with his hand raised, goes about things in a business like way.  The one with his back to us, goades Jesus, deriving some perverse pleasure from his work.

But they aren't the villains of the piece.  They've been put up to this by the leaders of Jesus' own fellow Jews.  But the leaders who fixed this up, aren't the villains of the piece either.  All these people have a share in what's going on of course, but the real villain here is not someone but something: something called 'sin'.  Sin can be both doing something 'wrong', and not doing something 'vital and good'.  And everyone can sin.

Jesus went through with this to break the grip that sin had on the world.  How He does that is hard to get from a picture, and you have to understand that the picture is meant for Christian people who already understand that to start with.  But it might help if I say, that we Christians understand God is just, and He has to deliver justice.  Jesus is both God and man, in both natures He is innocent, and in both natures He is paying the price here: not for what He did wrong - for He did not do anything wrong.  Rather He is trying to pay the price for everything that anyone else ever did wrong, and didn't pay the full price for themselves.