'And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha,
that is to say, a place of a skull, 34. They gave Him
vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when He had
tasted thereof, He would not drink. 35. And they
crucified Him, and parted His garments, casting lots:
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet, They parted My garments among them, and upon
My vesture did they cast lots. 36. And sitting down
they watched Him there; 37. And set up over His head
His accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE
JEWS. 38. Then were there two thieves crucified with
Him, one on the right hand, and another on the left
39. And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their
heads, 40. And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple,
and buildest it in three days, save Thyself. If Thou be
the Son of God, come down from the cross. 41. Likewise
also the chief priests mocking Him, with the scribes
and elders, said, 42. He saved others; Himself He
cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now
come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.
43. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He
will have Him: for He said, I am the Son of God.
44. The thieves also, which were crucified with Him,
cast the same in His teeth. 45. Now from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth
hour. 46. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a
loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that
is to say, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
47. Some of them that stood there, when they heard
that, said. This Man calleth for Elias. 48. And
straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and
filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave
Him to drink. 49. The rest said, Let be, let us see
whether Elias will come to save Him. 50. Jesus, when He
had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.'
--MATT. xxvii. 33-50.
The characteristic of Matthew's account of the crucifixion is its
representation of Jesus as perfectly passive and silent. His refusal
of the drugged wine, His cry of desolation, and His other cry at
death, are all His recorded acts. The impression of the whole is 'as
a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.'
We are bid to look on the grim details of the infliction of the
terrible death, and to listen to the mockeries of people and
priests; but reverent awe forbids description of Him who hung there
in His long, silent agony. Would that like reticence had checked the
ill-timed eloquence of preachers and teachers of later days!
I. We have the ghastly details of the crucifixion.--Conder's
suggestion of the site of Calvary as a little knoll outside the
city, seems possible. It is now a low, bare hillock, with a scanty
skin of vegetation over the rock, and in its rounded shape and bony
rockiness explains why it was called 'skull.' It stands close to the
main Damascus road, so that there would be many 'passers by' on that
feast day. Its top commands a view over the walls into the temple
enclosure, where, at the very hour of the death of Jesus, the
Passover lamb was perhaps being slain. Arrived at the place, the
executioners go about their task with stolid precision. What was the
crucifying of another Jew or two to them? Before they lift the cross
or fasten their prisoner to it, a little touch of pity, or perhaps
only the observance of the usual custom, leads them to offer a
draught of wine, in which some anodyne had been mixed, to deaden
agony. But the cup which He had to drink needed that He should be in
full possession of all His sensibilities to pain, and of all His
unclouded firmness of resolve; and so His patient lips closed
against the offered mercy. He would not drink because He would
suffer, and He would suffer because He would redeem. His last act
before He was nailed to the cross was an act of voluntary refusal of
an opened door of escape from some portion of His pains.
What a gap there is between verses 34 and 35! The unconcerned
soldiers went on to the next step in their ordinary routine on such
an occasion,--the fixing of the cross and fastening of the victim to
it. To them it was only what they had often done before; to Matthew,
it was too sacred to be narrated, He cannot bring his pen to write
it. As it were, he bids us turn away our eyes for a moment; and when
next we look, the deed is done, and there stands the cross, and the
Lord hanging, dumb and unresisting, on it. We see not Him, but the
soldiers, busy at their next task. So little were they touched by
compassion or awe, that they paid no heed to Him, and suspended
their work to make sure of their perquisites,--the poor robes which
they stripped from His body. Thus gently Matthew hints at the
ignominy of exposure attendant on crucifixion, and gives the measure
of the hard stolidity of the guards. Gain had been their first
thought, comfort was their second. They were a little tired with
their march and their work, and they had to stop there on guard for
an indefinite time, with nothing to do but two more prisoners to
crucify: so they take a rest, and idly keep watch over Him till He
shall die. How possible it is to look at Christ's sufferings and see
nothing! These rude legionaries gazed for hours on what has touched
the world ever since, and what angels desired to look into, and saw
nothing but a dying Jew. They thought about the worth of the
clothes, or about how long they would have to stay there, and in the
presence of the most stupendous fact in the world's history were all
unmoved. We too may gaze on the cross and see nothing. We too may
look at it without emotion, because without faith, or any
consciousness of what it may mean for us. Only they who see there
the sacrifice for their sins and the world's, see what is there.
Others are as blind as, and less excusable than, these soldiers who
watched all day by the Cross, seeing nothing, and tramped back at
night to their barrack utterly ignorant of what they had been doing.
But their work was not quite done. There was still a piece of grim
mockery to be performed, which they would much enjoy. The 'cause,'
as Matthew calls it, had to be nailed to the upper part of the
cross. It was tri-lingual, as John tells us,--in Hebrew, the
language of revelation; in Greek, the tongue of philosophy and art;
in Latin, the speech of law and power. The three chief forces of the
human spirit gave unconscious witness to the King; the three chief
languages of the western world proclaimed His universal monarchy,
even while they seemed to limit it to one nation. It was meant as a
gibe at Him and at the nation, and as Pilate's statement of the
reason for his sentence; but it meant more than Pilate meant by it,
and it was fitting that His royal title should hang above His head;
for the cross is His throne, and He is the King of men because He
has died for them all. One more piece of work the soldiers had still
to do. The crucifixion of the two robbers (perhaps of Barabbas'
gang, though less fortunate than he) by Christ's side was intended
to associate Him in the public mind with them and their crimes, and
was the last stroke of malice, as if saying, 'Here is your King, and
here are two of His subjects and ministers.' Matthew says nothing of
the triumph of Christ's love, which won the poor robber for a
disciple even at that hour of ignominy. His one purpose seems to be
to accumulate the tokens of suffering and shame, and so to emphasise
the silent endurance of the meek Lamb of God. Therefore, without a
word about any of our Lord's acts or utterances, he passes on to the
next group of incidents.
II. The mockeries of people and priests. There would be many coming
and going on the adjoining road, most of them too busy about their
own affairs to delay long; for crucifixion was a slow process, and,
when once the cross has been lifted, there would be little to see.
But they were not too busy to spit venom at Him as they passed. How
many of these scoffers, to whom death cast no shield round the
object of their poor taunts, had shouted themselves hoarse on the
Monday, and waved palm branches that were not withered yet! What had
made the change? There was no change. They were running with the
stream in both their hosannas and their jeers, and the one were
worth as much as the other. They had been tutored to cry, 'Blessed
is He that cometh!' and now they were tutored to repeat what had
been said at the trial about destroying the temple. The worshippers
of success are true to themselves when they mock at failure. They
who shout round Jesus, when other people are doing it, are only
consistent when they join in the roar of execration. Let us take
care that our worship of Him is rooted in our own personal
experience, and independent of what rulers or influential minds today
say of Him.
A common passion levels all distinctions of culture and rank. The
reverend dignitaries echoed the ferocious ridicule of the mob, whom
they despised so much. The poorest criminal would have been left to
die in peace; but brutal laughter surged round the silent sufferer,
and showers of barbed sarcasms were flung at Him. The throwers
fancied them exquisite jests, and demonstrations of the absurdity of
Christ's claims; but they were really witnesses to His claims, and
explanations of His sufferings. Look at them in turn, with this
thought in our minds. 'He saved others; Himself He cannot save,' was
launched as a sarcasm which confuted His alleged miracles by His
present helplessness. How much it admits, even while it denies!
Then, He did work miracles; and they were all for others, never for
His own ends; and they were all for saving, never for destroying.
Then, too, by this very taunt His claim to be the 'Saviour' is
presupposed. And so, 'Physician, heal Thyself,' seemed to them an
unanswerable missile to fling. If they had only known what made the
'cannot,' and seen that it was a 'will not,' they would have stood
full in front of the great miracle of love which was before them
unsuspected, and would have learned that the not saving Himself,
which they thought blew to atoms His pretensions to save others, was
really the condition of His saving a world. If He is to save others
He cannot save Himself. That is the law for all mutual help. The
lamp burns out in giving light, but the necessity for the death of
Him who is the life of the world is founded on a deeper 'must.' His
only way of delivering us from the burden of sin is His taking it on
Himself. He has to 'bear our griefs and carry our sorrows,' if He is
to bear away the sin of the world. But the 'cannot' derives all its
power from His own loving will. The rulers' taunt was a venomous
lie, as they meant it. If for 'cannot' we read 'will not,' it is the
central truth of the Gospel.
Nor did they succeed better with their second gibe, which made mirth
of such a throne, and promised allegiance if He would come down. O
blind leaders of the blind! That death which seemed to them to
shatter His royalty really established it. His Cross is His throne
of saving power, by which He sways hearts and wills, and because of
it He receives from the Father universal dominion, and every knee
shall bow to Him. It is just because He did not come down from it
that we believe on Him. On His head are many crowns; but, however
many they be, they all grow out of the crown of thorns. The true
kingship is absolute command over willingly submitted spirits; and
it is His death which bows us before Him in raptures of glad love
which counts submission, liberty, and sacrifice blessed. He has the
right to command because He has given Himself for us, and His death
wakes all-surrendering and all-expecting faith.
Nor was the third taunt more fortunate. These very religious men had
read their Bibles so badly that they might never have heard of Job,
nor of the latter half of Isaiah. They had been poring over the
letter all their lives, and had never seen, with their microscopes,
the great figure of the Innocent Sufferer, so plain there. So they
thought that the Cross demonstrated the hollowness of Jesus' trust
in God, and the rejection of Him by God. Surely religious teachers
should have been slow to scoff at religious trust, and surely they
might have known that failure and disaster even to death were no
signs of God's displeasure. But, in one aspect, they were right. It
is a mystery that such a life should end thus; and the mystery is
none the less because many another less holy life has also ended in
suffering. But the mystery is solved when we know that God did not
deliver Him, just because He 'would have Him,' and that the Father's
delight in the Son reached its very highest point when He became
obedient until death, and offered Himself 'a sacrifice acceptable,
well pleasing unto God.'
III. We pass on to the darkness, desolation, and death. Matthew
represents these three long hours from noon till what answers to our
3 P.M. as passed in utter silence by Christ. What went on beneath
that dread veil, we are not meant to know. Nor do we need to ask its
physical cause or extent. It wrapped the agony from cruel eyes; it
symbolised the blackness of desolation in His spirit, and by it God
draped the heavens in mourning for man's sin. What were the
onlookers doing then? Did they cease their mocking, and feel some
touch of awe creeping over them?
'His brow was chill with dying,
And His soul was faint with loss.'
The cry that broke the awful silence, and came out of the darkness,
was more awful still. The fewer our words the better; only we may
mark how, even in His agony, Jesus has recourse to prophetic words,
and finds in a lesser sufferer's cry voice for His desolation.
Further, we may reverently note the marvellous blending of trust and
sense of desertion. He feels that God has left Him, and yet he holds
on to God. His faith, as a man, reached its climax in that supreme
hour when, loaded with the mysterious burden of God's abandonment,
He yet cried in His agony, 'My God!' and that with reduplicated
appeal. Separation from God is the true death, the 'wages of sin';
and in that dread hour He bore in His own consciousness the
uttermost of its penalty. The physical fact of Christ's death, if it
could have taken place without this desolation from the
consciousness of separation from God, would not have been the
bearing of all the consequences of man's sins. The two must never be
parted in our grateful contemplations; and, while we reverently
abjure the attempt to pierce into that which God hid from us by the
darkness, we must reverently ponder what Christ revealed to us by
the cry that cleft it, witnessing that He then was indeed bearing
the whole weight of a world's sin. By the side of such thoughts, and
in the presence of such sorrow, the clumsy jest of the bystanders,
which caught at the half-heard words, and pretended to think that
Jesus was a crazy fanatic calling for Elijah with his fiery chariot
to come and rescue Him, may well be passed by. One little touch of
sympathy moistened His dying lips, not without opposition from the
heartless crew who wanted to have their jest out. Then came the end.
The loud cry of the dying Christ is worthy of record; for
crucifixion ordinarily killed by exhaustion, and this cry was
evidence of abundant remaining vitality. In accordance therewith,
the fact of death is expressed by a phrase, which, though used for
ordinary deaths, does yet naturally express the voluntariness of
Christ. 'He sent away His spirit,' as if He had bid it depart, and
it obeyed. Whether the expression may be fairly pressed so far or
no, the fact is the same, that Jesus died, not because He was
crucified, but because He chose. He was the Lord and Master of
Death; and when He bid His armour-bearer strike, the slave struck,
and the King died, not like Saul on the field of his defeat, but a
victor in and by and over death.