THE FOURTH WORD FROM THE CROSS[1]
The Seven Words from the Cross may be divided into two groups. In the
first three--namely, the prayer for His crucifiers, the word to the
penitent thief, and the directions about His mother--our Lord was
dealing with the interests of others; in the last four, to which we now
pass, He was absorbed in His own concerns. This division is natural.
Many a dying man, after arranging his affairs and saying his farewells,
turns his face to the wall, to encounter death and be alone with God.
It was highly characteristic of Jesus, however, before turning to His
own things, first to mind the things of others.
Between these two groups of sayings there seems to have elapsed a long
interval. From the sixth hour to the ninth Jesus was silent. And
during this interval there was darkness over all the land. Of what
precise nature this atmospheric effect may have been it is impossible
at this distance to say. But the Evangelists, three of whom mention
it, evidently consider it to have indicated in some sense the sympathy
of nature with her Lord. It was as if the sun refused to look on such
a deed of shame. It may be supposed that by this weird phenomenon the
noises round the cross were in some degree hushed. At length the
silence was broken by Christ Himself, who, in a loud voice, gave
utterance to the Fourth Word from the cross. This was a word of
astonishment and agony, yet also of victory.
I.
Of what nature had been the meditations of our Lord during the three
hours of silence? Had He been in an ecstasy of communion with His
heavenly Father? Not infrequently has this been vouchsafed to dying
saints. And it has sometimes enabled them completely to overcome
physical suffering. Martyrs have occasionally been so exalted at the
last as to be able even to sing in the flames. It is with awe and
astonishment we learn that the very opposite of this was the state of
mind of Jesus. The word with which He burst out of the trance of
silence may be taken as the index of what was going on in His mind
during the preceding hours; and it is a cry out of the lowest depths of
despair. Indeed, it is the most appalling sound that ever pierced the
atmosphere of this earth. Familiar as it is to us, it cannot be heard
by a sensitive ear even at this day without causing a cold shudder of
terror. In the entire Bible there is no other sentence so difficult to
explain. The first thought of a preacher, on coming to it, is to find
some excuse for passing it by; and, after doing his utmost to expound
it, he must still confess that it is quite beyond him. Yet there is a
great reward in grappling with such difficult passages; for never does
the truth impress us so profoundly as when we are made to feel that all
the length which we are able to go is only into the shallows of the
shore, while beyond our reach lies the great ocean.
Even in Christ's own mind the uppermost thought, when He uttered this
cry, was one of astonishment. In Gethsemane, we are told, "He was sore
amazed." And this is obviously the tone of this utterance also. We
almost detect an accentuation of the "Thou" like that in the word with
which the murdered Caesar fell. All His life Jesus had been accustomed
to find Himself forsaken. The members of His own household early
rejected Him. So did His fellow-townsmen in Nazareth. Ultimately the
nation at large followed the same course. The multitudes that at one
time followed Him wherever He went and hung upon His lips eventually
took offence and went away. At last, in the crisis of His fate, one of
His nearest followers betrayed Him and the rest forsook Him and fled.
But in these disappointments, though He felt them keenly, He had always
had one resource: He was always able, when rejected of men, to turn
away from them and cast Himself with confidence on the breast of God.
Disappointed of human love, He drank the more deeply of the love
divine. He always knew that what He was doing or suffering was in
accord with the will of God; His feelings kept constant time with the
Divine heart; God's thoughts were His thoughts; He could clearly
discern the divine intention leading through all the contradictions of
His career to a sublime result. Therefore He could calmly say, even at
the Last Supper, with reference to the impending desertion of the
Twelve, "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone; and yet I am
not alone, because the Father is with Me." Now, however, the hour had
come; and was this expectation fulfilled? They were scattered, as He
had predicted, and He was left alone; but was He not alone? was the
Father still with Him? His own words supply the answer: "My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
II.
Although the state of mind of our Lord on this occasion was so
different from what we know to have been His habitual mood, yet it does
not stand absolutely isolated in His history. We know of at least two
experiences somewhat resembling it, and these may in some degree help
us to its explanation. The first overtook Him on the occasion of the
visit of certain Greeks at the beginning of the last week of His life.
They had desired to see Him; but, when they were introduced by Andrew
and Philip, Jesus, instead of being exhilarated, as might have been
expected, was overcome with a spasm of pain, and groaned, "Now is My
soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour."
The sight of these visitors from the outside world made Him feel how
grand and how congenial to Himself would have been a worldwide mission
to the heathen, such as He might have undertaken had His life been
prolonged; but this was impossible, because in the flower of His age He
was to die. The other occasion was the Agony of Gethsemane. A careful
and reverent study will reveal that this incident was the effort by
which the will of Christ rose into unity with the will of His Father.
It belongs to the very essence of human nature that it must grow from
stage to stage; and the perfection of our Lord, just because it was
human, had to realise itself on every step of a ladder of development.
He was always both perfect on the stage which He had reached, and at
the same time rising to a higher stage of perfection. Sometimes the
step might be more easy, at other times more difficult; the step which
He had to take in Gethsemane was supremely difficult; hence the effort
and the pain which it cost. It seemed, however, in Gethsemane as if He
had finally conquered, and it might have been expected that the mood of
weakness and darkness could not come back. Yet it was to be permitted
to return once more; and on the cross the attack was far more violent
and prolonged than on either of the preceding occasions. Keeping in
mind the light which these two previous accesses of the same mood may
cast on this one, let us draw near reverently and see how far we may be
able to penetrate into the mystery.
There can be little doubt that there was a physical element in it. He
had now been a considerable time on the cross; and every minute the
agony was increasing. The wounds in His hands and feet, exposed to the
atmosphere and the sun, grew barked and hardened; the blood, impeded in
its circulation, swelled in heart and brain, till these organs were
like to burst; and the slightest attempt to move the body from the one
intolerable posture caused pains to shoot along the quivering nerves.
Bodily suffering clouds the brain and distorts the images formed on the
mirror of the mind. Even the face of God, reflected there, may be
turned to a shape of terror by the fumes of physical trouble.
The horror of mortal suffering may have been greater to Jesus than to
other men, because of the fineness and sensitiveness of His physical
organization. His body had never been coarsened with sin, and
therefore death was utterly alien to it. The stream of physical life,
which is one of the precious gifts of God, had poured through His frame
in abundant and sunny tides. But now it was being withdrawn, and the
counterflow had set in. The unity of a perfect nature was being
violently torn asunder; and He felt Himself drifting away from the
living world, which to Him had been so full of God's presence and
goodness, into the pale, cold regions of inanity.[2] He did not belong
to death; yet He was falling into death's grasp. No angel came to
rescue Him; God interposed with no miracle to arrest the issue; He was
abandoned to His fate.
There was more, however, it is easy to see, in the agony which prompted
this cry than the merely physical. If in Gethsemane we have the effort
of the will of Jesus, as it raised itself into unity with the will of
the Father, we here see the effort of His mind as, amidst the confusion
and contradictions of the cross, it finally rose into unity with the
mind of God. This intellectual character of His pain is indicated by
the word "Why." It is always painful when the creature has to say Why
to the Creator. We believe that He is Sovereign of the world and Guide
of our destiny, and that He urges forward the course of things in the
reins of infinite wisdom and love. But, while this is the habitual and
healthy sense of the human mind, especially when it is truly religious,
there are crises, both in the great and in the little world, when faith
fails. The world is out of joint; everything appears to have gone
wrong; the reins seem to have slipped out of the hands of God and the
chariot to be plunging forward uncontrolled; the course of things seems
no more to be presided over by reason, but by a blind, if not a cruel
fate. It is then that the poor human mind cries out Why. The entire
book of Job is such a cry. Jeremiah cried Why to God in terms of
startling boldness. In mortal pain, in bewildering disappointments, in
bereavements which empty the heart and empty the world, millions have
thus cried Why in every age. It seems an irreligious word. When
Jeremiah says, "O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived," or
when Job demands, "Why did I not from the womb? why did I not give up
the ghost when I came out of the belly?" it sounds like the voice of a
blasphemer. But indeed it is into the most earnest and delicate souls
that this despair is likeliest to slip. The ignorant, the frivolous
and the time-serving are safe from it; for they are well enough
satisfied with things as they are. Callous minds learn to be content
without explanations. But the more deeply pious a mind is, the more
jealous must it be for justice and the glory of God; the appearance of
unwisdom in the government of the world shocks it; to be able to trace
the footsteps of God's care is a necessity of its existence. Hence its
pain when these evidences disappear. Now, all the contradictions and
confusions of the world were focussed on Golgotha. Injustice was
triumphant; innocence was scorned and crushed; everything was exactly
the reverse of what it ought to have been. And all the millions of
Whys which have risen from agonized souls, jealous for the honour of
God but perplexed by His providence, were concentrated in the Why of
Christ.
How near to us He is! Never perhaps in His whole life did He so
completely identify Himself with His poor brethren of mankind. For
here He comes down to stand by our side not only when we have to
encounter pain and misfortune, bereavement and death, but when we are
enduring that pain which is beyond all pains, that horror in whose
presence the brain reels, and faith and love, the eyes of life, are put
out--the horror of a universe without God, a universe which is one
hideous, tumbling, crashing mass of confusion, with no reason to guide
and no love to sustain it.
Can we advance a step farther into the mystery? The deepest question
of all is whether the desertion of Jesus was subjective or
objective--that is, whether He had only, on account of bodily weakness
and a temporary obscuration of the inward vision, a sense of being
abandoned, or whether, in any real sense, God had actually forsaken
Him. Of course we are certain that God was infinitely well pleased
with Him--never more so, surely, than when He was sacrificing Himself
to the uttermost on behalf of others. But was there, at the same time,
any outflashing against Him of the reverse side of the Divine
nature--the lightning of the Divine wrath? Calvary was an awful
revelation of the human heart, whose enmity was directed straight
against the perfect revelation of the love of God in Christ. There the
sin of man reached its climax and did its worst. What was done there
against Christ, and against God in Him, was a kind of embodiment and
quintessence of the sin of the whole world. And undoubtedly it was
this which was pressing on Jesus; this was "the travail of His soul."
He was looking close at sin's utmost hideousness; He was sickened with
its contact; He was crushed with its brutality--crushed to death. Yet
this human nature was His own; He was identified with it--bone of its
bone, flesh of its flesh; and, as in a reprobate family an exquisitely
delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and
shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness
and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the
scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old
dispensation, He went out into the land of forsakenness.
Thus far we may proceed, feeling that we have solid ground beneath our
feet. But many have ventured farther. Even Luther and Calvin allowed
themselves to say that in the hours which preceded this cry our Lord
endured the torments of the damned. And Rambach, whose _Meditations on
the Sufferings of Christ_ have fed the piety of Germany for a hundred
years, says: "God was now dealing with Him not as a loving and merciful
father with his child, but as an offended and righteous judge with an
evildoer. The heavenly Father now regards His Son as the greatest
sinner to be found beneath the sun, and discharges on Him the whole
weight of His wrath." But, if we were to make use of such language, we
should be venturing beyond our depth. Much to be preferred is the
modest comment of the holy and learned Bengel on our text: "In this
fourth word from the cross our Saviour not only says that He has been
delivered up into the hands of men, but that He has suffered at the
hands of God something unutterable." Certainly there is here something
unutterable. We have ventured into the mystery as far as we are able;
but we know that we are yet only in the shallows near the shore; the
unplumbed ocean lies beyond.
III.
It may appear an affectation to speak of this as in any sense a cry of
victory. Yet, if what has just been said be true, this, which was the
extreme moment of suffering, was also the supreme moment of
achievement. As the flower, by being crushed, yields up its fragrant
essence, so He, by taking into His heart the sin of the world, brought
salvation to the world.
In point of fact, all history since has shown that it was in this very
hour that Christ conquered the heart of mankind. Long before He had
said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."
And the correctness of this anticipation is matter of history. Christ
on the cross has ever since then been the most fascinating object in
the eyes of mankind. The mind and heart of humanity have been
irresistibly attracted to Him, never weary of studying Him. And the
utterance of this cry is the culminating moment to which the inquiring
mind specially turns. Theology has its centre in the cross.
Sometimes, indeed, it has been shy of it, and has divagated from it in
wide circles; but, as soon as it becomes profound and humble again, it
always returns.
Yes, when it becomes humble! Penitent souls are drawn to the cross,
and the deeper their penitence the more are they at home. They stand
beside the dying Saviour and say, This is what we ought to have
suffered; our life was forfeited by our guilt; thus our blood deserved
to flow; we might justly have been banished forever into the desert of
forsakenness. But, as they thus make confession, their forfeited life
is given back to them for Christ's sake, the peace of God is shed
abroad in their hearts, and the new life of love and service begins.
The supreme Christian rite brings us to this very spot and to this very
moment: "This is My blood of the New Testament, shed for many for the
remission of sins."
It was not, however, merely in this profound sense that this fourth
word of the dying Saviour was a cry of victory. It was so, also,
because it liberated Him from His depression. It has been said that
when, at His encounter with the Greeks, He groaned, "Father, save Me
from this hour," He immediately checked Himself with "Father, glorify
Thy name"; likewise that in Gethsemane, when He prayed, "If it be
possible, let this cup pass from Me," He hastened to add,
"Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done"; but that on this
occasion the cry of despair was followed by no word of resignation.
This, however, is a mistake. The cry itself, though an utterance of
despair, yet involved the strongest faith. See how He lays hold of the
Eternal with both hands: "My God, My God!" It is a prayer: a thousand
times He had turned to this resource In days of trial; and He does so
in this supreme trouble. To do so cures despair. No one is forsaken
who can pray, "My God." As one in deep water, feeling no bottom, makes
a despairing plunge forward and lands on solid ground, so Jesus, in the
very act of uttering His despair, overcame it. Feeling forsaken of
God, He rushed into the arms of God; and these arms closed round Him in
loving protection. Accordingly, as the darkness, which had brooded
over all the land, disappeared at the ninth hour, so His mind emerged
from eclipse; and, as we shall see, His last words were uttered in His
usual mood of serenity.
[1] "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
[2] Some of the Fathers thought of the separation of the divine from
the human nature as taking place now.