'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a
skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified
Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the
midst. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the
writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then
read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh
to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then
said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of
the Jews; but that He said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered,
What I have written I have written. Then the soldiers, when they had
crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every
soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven
from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us
not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the
scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted My raiment among
them, and for My vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the
soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and his
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When
Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He
loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold Thy Son! Then saith He
to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple
took her unto his own home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things
were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I
thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a
spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth.
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished:
and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.'--JOHN xix. 17-30.
In great and small matters John's account adds much to the narrative of
the crucifixion. He alone tells of the attempt to have the title on the
Cross altered, of the tender entrusting of the Virgin to his care, and
of the two 'words' 'I thirst' and 'It is finished.' He gives details
which had been burned into his memory, such as Christ's position 'in
the midst' of the two robbers, and the jar of 'vinegar' standing by the
crosses. He says little about the act of fixing Jesus to the Cross, but
enlarges what the other Evangelists tell as to the soldiers 'casting
lots.' He had heard what they said to one another. He alone distinctly
tells that when He went forth, Jesus was bearing the Cross which
afterwards Simon of Cyrene had to carry, probably because our Lord's
strength failed.
Who appointed the two robbers to be crucified at the same time? Not the
rulers, who had no such power but probably Pilate, as one more shaft of
sarcasm which was all the sharper both because it seemed to put Jesus
in the same class as they, and because they were of the same class as
the man of the Jews' choice, Barabbas, and possibly were two of his
gang. Jesus was 'in the midst,' where He always is, completely
identified with the transgressors, but central to all things and all
men. As He was in the midst on the Cross, with a penitent on one hand
and a rejecter on the other, He is still in the midst of humanity, and
His judgment-seat will be as central as His Cross was.
All the Evangelists give the title written over the Cross, but John
alone tells that it was Pilate's malicious invention. He thought that
he was having a final fling at the priests, and little knew how truly
his title, which was meant as a bitter jest, was a fact. He had it put
into the three tongues in use--'Hebrew,' the national tongue; 'Greek,'
the common medium of intercourse between varying nationalities; and
'Latin' the official language. He did not know that he was proclaiming
the universal dominion of Jesus, and prophesying that wisdom as
represented by Greece, law and imperial power as represented by Rome,
and all previous revelation as represented by Israel, would yet bow
before the Crucified, and recognise that His Cross was His throne.
The 'high-priests' winced, and would fain have had the title altered.
Their wish once more denied Jesus, and added to their condemnation, but
it did not move Pilate. It would have been well for him if he had been
as firm in carrying out his convictions of justice as in abiding by his
bitter jest. He was obstinate in the wrong place, partly because he was
angry with the rulers, and partly to recover his self-respect, which
had been damaged by his vacillation. But his stiff-necked speech had a
more tragic meaning than he knew, for 'what he had written' on his own
life-page on that day could never be erased, and will confront him. We
are all writing an imperishable record, and we shall have to read it
out hereafter, and acknowledge our handwriting.
John next sets in strong contrast the two groups round the Cross--the
stolid soldiers and the sad friends. The four legionaries went through
their work as a very ordinary piece of military duty. They were well
accustomed to crucify rebel Jews, and saw no difference between these
three and former prisoners. They watched the pangs without a touch of
pity, and only wished that death might come soon, and let them get back
to their barracks. How blind men may be to what they are gazing at! If
knowledge measures guilt, how slight the culpability of the soldiers!
They were scarcely more guilty than the mallet and nails which they
used. The Sufferer's clothes were their perquisite, and their division
was conducted on cool business principles, and with utter disregard of
the solemn nearness of death. Could callous indifference go further
than to cast lots for the robe at the very foot of the Cross?
But the thing that most concerns us here is that Jesus submitted to
that extremity of shame and humiliation, and hung there naked for all
these hours, gazed on, while the light lasted, by a mocking crowd. He
had set the perfect Pattern of lowly self-abnegation when, amid the
disciples in the upper room, He had 'laid aside His garments,' but now
He humbles Himself yet more, being clothed only 'with shame.' Therefore
should we clothe Him with hearts' love. Therefore God has clothed Him
with the robes of imperial majesty.
Another point emphasised by John is the fulfilment of prophecy in this
act. The seamless robe, probably woven by loving hands, perhaps by some
of the weeping women who stood there, was too valuable to divide, and
it would be a moment's pastime to cast lots for it. John saw, in the
expedient naturally suggested to four rough men, who all wanted the
robe but did not want to quarrel over it, a fulfilment of the cry of
the ancient sufferer, who had lamented that his enemies made so sure of
his death that they divided his garments and cast lots for his vesture.
But he was 'wiser than he knew,' and, while his words were to his own
apprehension but a vivid metaphor expressing his desperate condition,
'the Spirit which was in' him 'did signify' by them 'the sufferings of
Christ.' Theories of prophecy or sacrifice which deny the correctness
of John's interpretation have the New Testament against them, and
assume to know more about the workings of inspiration than is either
modest or scientific.
What a contrast the other group presents! John's enumeration of the
women may be read so as to mention four or three, according as 'His
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas,' is taken to mean one woman
or two. The latter is the more probable supposition, and it is also
probable that the unnamed sister of our Lord's mother was no other than
Salome, John's own mother. If so, entrusting Mary to John's care would
be the more natural. Tender care, joined with consciousness that
henceforth the relation of son and mother was to be supplanted, not
merely by Death's separating fingers, but by faith's uniting bond,
breathed through the word, so loving yet so removing, 'Woman, behold
thy son!' Dying trust in the humble friend, which would go far to make
the friend worthy of it, breathed in the charge, to which no form of
address corresponding to 'Woman' is prefixed. Jesus had nothing else to
give as a parting gift, but He gave these two to each other, and
enriched both. He showed His own loving heart, and implied His faithful
discharge of all filial duties hitherto. And He taught us the lesson,
which many of us have proved to be true, that losses are best made up
when we hear Him pointing us by them to new offices of help to others,
and that, if we will let Him, He will point us too to what will fill
empty places in our hearts and homes.
The second of the words on the Cross which we owe to John is that
pathetic expression, 'I thirst.' Most significant is the insight into
our Lord's consciousness which John, here as elsewhere, ventures to
give. Not till He knew 'that all things were accomplished' did He give
heed to the pangs of thirst, which made so terrible a part of the
torture of crucifixion. The strong will kept back the bodily cravings
so long as any unfulfilled duty remained. Now Jesus had nothing to do
but to die, and before He died He let flesh have one little
alleviation. He had refused the stupefying draught which would have
lessened suffering by dulling consciousness, but He asked for the
draught which would momentarily slake the agony of parched lips and
burning throat.
The words of verse 28 are not to be taken as meaning that Jesus said 'I
thirst' with the mere intention of fulfilling the Scripture. His
utterance was the plaint of a real need, not a performance to fill a
part. But it is John who sees in that wholly natural cry the fulfilment
of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 21). All Christ's bodily sufferings may be said
to be summed up in this one word, the only one in which they found
utterance. The same lips that said, 'If any man thirst, let him come
unto Me, and drink,' said this. Infinitely pathetic in itself, that cry
becomes almost awful in its appeal to us when we remember who uttered
it, and why He bore these pangs. The very 'Fountain of living water'
knew the pang of thirst that every one that thirsteth might come to the
waters, and might drink, not water only, but 'wine and milk, without
money or price.'
John's last contribution to our knowledge of our Lord's words on the
Cross is that triumphant 'It is finished,' wherein there spoke, not
only the common dying consciousness of life being ended, but the
certitude, which He alone of all who have died, or will die, had the
right to feel and utter, that every task was completed, that all God's
will was accomplished, all Messiah's work done, all prophecy fulfilled,
redemption secured, God and man reconciled. He looked back over all His
life and saw no failure, no falling below the demands of the occasion,
nothing that could have been bettered, nothing that should not have
been there. He looked upwards, and even at that moment He heard in His
soul the voice of the Father saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased!'
Christ's work is finished. It needs no supplement. It can never be
repeated or imitated while the world lasts, and will not lose its power
through the ages. Let us trust to it as complete for all our needs, and
not seek to strengthen 'the sure foundation' which it has laid by any
shifting, uncertain additions of our own. But we may remember, too,
that while Christ's work is, in one aspect, finished, when He bowed His
head, and by His own will 'gave up the ghost,' in another aspect His
work is not finished, nor will be, until the whole benefits of His
incarnation and death are diffused through, and appropriated by, the
world. He is working to-day, and long ages have yet to pass, in all
probability, before the voice of Him that sitteth on the throne shall
say 'It is done!'