'... The chief priests mocking Him ... 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.'
--MATT. xxvii. 41-43.
It is an old saying that the corruption of the best is the worst.
What is more merciful and pitiful than true religion? What is more
merciless and malicious than hatred which calls itself 'religious'?
These priests, like many a persecutor for religion since, came to
feast their eyes on the long-drawn-out agonies of their Victim, and
their rank tongues blossomed into foul speech. Characteristically
enough, though they shared in the mockeries of the mob, they kept
themselves separate. The crowd pressed near enough to the cross to
speak their gibes _to_ Jesus; the dignified movers of the
ignorant crowd stood superciliously apart, and talked scoffingly
_about_ Him. Whilst the populace yelled, 'Thou that destroyest
the Temple and buildest it in three days, come down,' the chief
priests, with the scribes, looked at each other with a smile, and
said, '_He_ saved others; Himself _He_ cannot save.' Now,
these brutal taunts have lessons for us. They witness to the popular
impression of Christ, and what His claims were. He asserted Himself
to be a worker of miracles, the Messiah-King of Israel, the Son of God,
therefore He died. And they witness to the misconception which ruled
in the minds of these priests as to the relation of His claims to the
Cross. They thought that it had finally burst the bubble, and disposed
once for all of these absurd and blasphemous pretensions. Was it
credible that a man who possessed miraculous power should not, in
this supreme moment, use it to deliver Himself? Did not 'Physician,
heal Thyself,' come in properly there? Would any of the most besotted
followers of this pretender retain a rag of belief in His Messiahship
if He was crucified? Could it be possible that, if there was a God at
all, He should leave a man that really trusted in Him, not to say
who was really His Son, to die thus? A cracked mirror gives a distorted
image. The facts were seen, but their relation was twisted. If we will
take the guidance of these gibes, and see what is the real explanation
to the anomaly that they suggest, then we shall find that the taunts
turn to Him for a testimony, and that 'out of the mouths of mockers
there is 'perfected praise.' The stones flung at the Master turn to
roses strewed in His path.
I. So, then, first the Cross shows us the Saviour who could not save
Himself.
The priests did not believe in Christ's miracles, and they thought
that this final token of his impotence, as they took it to be, was
clear proof that the miracles were either tricks or mistakes. They
saw the two things, they fatally misunderstood the relation between
them. Let us put the two things together.
Here, on the one hand, is a Man who has exercised absolute authority
in all the realms of the universe, who has spoken to dead matter,
and it has obeyed; who by His word has calmed the storm, and hushed
the winds by His word, has multiplied bread, has transmuted pale water
into ruddy wine; who has moved omnipotent amongst the disturbed minds
and diseased bodies of men, who has cast His sovereign word into the
depth and darkness of the grave, and brought out the dead, stumbling
and entangled in the grave-clothes. All these are facts on the one
side. And on the other there is this--that there, passive, and, to
superficial eyes, impotent, He hangs the helpless Victim of Roman
soldiers and of Jewish priests. The short and easy vulgar way to
solve the apparent contradiction was to deny the reality of the one
of its members; to say 'Miracles? Absurd! He never worked one, or He
would have been working one now.'
But let their error lead us into truth, and let us grasp the
relation of the two apparently contradictory facts. 'He saved
others,' that is certain. He did not 'save Himself,' that is
as certain. Was the explanation 'cannot'? The priests by 'cannot'
meant physical impossibility, defect of power, and they were
wrong. But there is a profound sense in which the word 'cannot'
is absolutely true. For this is in all time, and in all human
relations, the law of service--sacrifice; and no man can truly
help humanity, or an individual, unless he is prepared to
surrender himself in the service. The lamp burns away in giving
light. The fire consumes in warming the hearth, and no brotherly
sympathy or help has ever yet been rendered, or ever will be,
except at the price of self-surrender. Now, some people think
that this is the whole explanation of our Lord's history, both
in His life and in His death. I do not believe that it is the
whole explanation, but I do believe it carries us some way
towards the central sanctuary, where the explanation lies. And
yet it is not complete or adequate, because, to parallel Christ's
work with the work of any of the rest of us to our brethren,
however beautiful, disinterested, self-oblivious, and self-consuming
it may be, seems to me--I say it with deference, though I must here
remember considerations of brevity and be merely assertive--entirely
to ignore the unique special characteristic of the work of Jesus
Christ--viz., that it was the atonement for the sins of the world.
He could not bear away our sins, unless the burden of them was laid
on His own back, and He carried our griefs, our sorrows, our diseases,
and our transgressions. 'He saved others, Himself He cannot save.' But
the impossibility was purely the result of His own willing and obedient
love; or, if I put it in more epigrammatic form, the priests' 'cannot'
was partially true, but if they had said '_would not_' they would
have hit the mark, and come to full truth. The reason for His death
becomes clear, and each of the contrasted facts is enhanced, when we
set side by side the opulence and ease of His manifold miracles and
the apparent impotence and resourcelessness of the passive Victim on
the cross.
That 'cannot' did not come from defect of power, but from plenitude
of love, and it was a 'will not' in its deepest depths. For you will
find scattered throughout Scripture, especially these Gospels,
indications from our Lord's own lips, and by His own acts, that, in
the truest and fullest sense, His sufferings were voluntary. 'No man
taketh it from me'--He says about His life--'I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again.' And once He did choose to
flash out for a moment the always present power, that we might learn
that when it did not appear, it was not because he could not, but
because he would not. When the soldiers came to lay their hands upon
Him, He presented Himself before them, saving them all the trouble
of search, and when He asked a question, and received the answer
that it was He of whom they were in search, there came one sudden
apocalypse of His majesty, and they fell to the ground, and lay
there prone before Him. They could have had no power at all against
Him, except He had willed to surrender Himself to them. Again,
though it is hypercritical perhaps to attach importance to what may
only be natural idiomatic forms of speech, yet in this connection it
is not to be overlooked that the language of all the Evangelists, in
describing the supreme moment of Christ's death, is congruous with
the idea that He died neither from the exhaustion of crucifixion,
nor from the thrust of the soldier's spear, but because He would.
For they all have expressions equivalent to that of one of them, 'He
gave up His spirit.' Be that as it may, the 'cannot' was a 'will
not'; and it was neither nails that fastened Him to the tree, nor
violence that slew Him, but He was fixed there by His own steadfast
will, and He died because He would. So if we rightly understand the
'cannot' we may take up with thankfulness the taunt which, as I say,
is tuned to a testimony, and reiterate adoringly, 'He saved others,
Himself He cannot save.'