'And when they were come to the place which is called
Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the malefactors,
one on the right hand, and the other on the left.
34. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do. And they parted His raiment,
and cast lots. 35. And the people stood beholding. And
the rulers also with them derided Him, saying, He saved
others; let Him save Himself, if He be Christ, the
chosen of God. 36. And the soldiers also mocked Him,
coming to Him and offering Him vinegar. 37. And saying,
if Thou be the king of the Jews, save Thyself. 38. And
a superscription also was written over Him in letters
of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF
THE JEWS. 39. And one of the malefactors which were
hanged railed on Him, saying, If Thou be Christ, save
Thyself and us. 40. But the other answering rebuked
him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art
in the same condemnation? 41. And we indeed justly;
for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this
Man hath done nothing amiss. 42. And he said unto
Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy
kingdom. 43. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say
unto thee, To-day shall thou be with Me in paradise.
44. And it was about the sixth hour, and there was
darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
45. And the sun was darkened, and the vail of the
temple was rent in the midst. 46. And when Jesus had
cried with a loud voice, He said, Father, into Thy
hands I commend My spirit: and having said thus, He
gave up the ghost.'--LUKE xxiii. 33-46.
The calm tone of all the narratives of the Crucifixion is very
remarkable. Each Evangelist limits himself to the bare recording of
facts, without a trace of emotion. They felt too deeply to show
feeling. It was fitting that the story which, till the end of time,
was to move hearts to a passion of love and devotion, should be told
without any colouring. Let us beware of reading it coldly! This
passage is more adapted to be pondered in solitude, with the
thought, 'All this was borne for me,' than to be commented on. But a
reverent word or two is permissible.
Luke's account is noticeably independent of the other three. The
three sayings of Christ's, round which his narrative is grouped, are
preserved by him alone. We shall best grasp the dominant impression
which the Evangelist unconsciously had himself received, and sought
to convey, by gathering the whole round these three words from the
Cross.
I. The first word sets Jesus forth as the all-merciful Intercessor
and patient friend of sinners. It is very significantly set in the
centre of the paragraph (vs. 33-38) which recounts the heartless
cruelty and mockery of soldiers and rulers. Surrounded by that
whirlwind of abuse, contempt and ferocious glee at His sufferings,
He gave back no taunt, nor uttered any cry of pain, nor was moved to
the faintest anger, but let His heart go out in pity for all who
took part in that wicked tragedy; and, while 'He opened not His
mouth' in complaint or reviling, He did open it in intercession. But
the wonderful prayer smote no heart with compunction, and, after it,
the storm of mocking and savage triumph hurtled on as before.
Luke gathers all the details together in summary fashion, and piles
them on one another without enlarging on any. The effect produced is
like that of a succession of breakers beating on some lonely rock,
or of blows struck by a battering-ram on a fortress.
'They crucified Him,'--there is no need to say who 'they' were.
Others than the soldiers, who did the work, did the deed. Contempt
gave Him two malefactors for companions and hung the King of the
Jews in the place of honour in the midst. Did John remember what his
brother and he had asked? Matter-of-fact indifference as to a piece
of military duty, and shameless greed, impelled the legionaries to
cast lots for the clothes stripped from a living man. What did the
crucifying of another Jew or two matter to them? Gaping curiosity,
and the strange love of the horrible, so strong in the vulgar mind,
led the people, who had been shouting Hosanna! less than a week ago,
to stand gazing on the sight without pity but in a few hearts.
The bitter hatred of the rulers, and their inhuman glee at getting
rid of a heretic, gave them bad preeminence in sin. Their scoff
acknowledged that He had 'saved others,' and their hate had so
blinded their eyes that they could not see how manifestly His
refusal to use His power to save Himself proved Him the Son of God.
He could not save Himself, just because He would save these scoffing
Rabbis and all the world. The rough soldiers knew little about Him,
but they followed suit, and thought it an excellent jest to bring
the 'vinegar,' provided in kindness, to Jesus with a mockery of
reverence as to a king. The gibe was double-barrelled, like the
inscription over the Cross; for it was meant to hit both this
Pretender to royalty and His alleged subjects.
And to all this Christ's sole answer was the ever-memorable prayer.
One of the women who bravely stood at the Cross must have caught the
perhaps low-voiced supplication, and it breathed so much of the
aspect of Christ's character in which Luke especially delights that
he could not leave it out. It opens many large questions which
cannot be dealt with here. All sin has in it an element of
ignorance, but it is not wholly ignorance as some modern teachers
affirm. If the ignorance were complete, the sin would be
nonexistent. The persons covered by the ample folds of this prayer
were ignorant in very different degrees, and had had very different
opportunities of changing ignorance for knowledge. The soldiers and
the rulers were in different positions in that respect. But none
were so entirely blind that they had no sin, and none were so
entirely seeing that they were beyond the reach of Christ's pity or
the power of His intercession. In that prayer we learn, not only His
infinite forgivingness for insults and unbelief levelled at Himself,
but His exaltation as the Intercessor, whom the Father heareth
always. The dying Christ prayed for His enemies; the glorified
Christ lives to make intercession for us.
II. In the second saying Christ is revealed as having the keys of
Hades, the invisible world of the dead. How differently the same
circumstances work on different natures! In the one malefactor,
physical agony and despair found momentary relief in taunts, flung
from lips dry with torture, at the fellow-sufferer whose very
innocence provoked hatred from the guilty heart. The other had been
led by his punishment to recognise in it the due reward of his
deeds, and thus softened, had been moved by Christ's prayer, and by
his knowledge of Christ's innocence, to hope that the same mercy
which had been lavished on the inflicters of His sufferings, might
stretch to enfold the partakers in it.
At that moment the dying thief had clearer faith in Christ's coming
in His kingdom than any of the disciples had. Their hopes were
crumbling as they watched Him hanging unresisting and gradually
dying. But this man looked beyond the death so near for both Jesus
and himself, and believed that, after it, He would come to reign. We
may call him the only disciple that Christ then had.
How pathetic is that petition, 'Remember me'! It builds the hope of
sharing in Christ's royalty on the fact of having shared in His
Cross. 'Thou wilt not forget Thy companion in that black hour, which
will then lie behind us.' Such trust and clinging, joined with such
penitence and submission, could not go unrewarded.
From His Cross Jesus speaks in royal style, as monarch of that dim
world. His promise is sealed with His own sign-manual, 'Verily, I
say.' It claims to have not only the clear vision of, but the
authority to determine, the future. It declares the unbroken
continuance of personal existence, and the reality of a state of
conscious blessedness, in which men are aware of their union with
Him, the Lord of the realm and the Life of its inhabitants. It
graciously accepts the penitent's petition, and assures him that
the companionship, begun on the Cross, will be continued there.
'With Me' makes 'Paradise' wherever a soul is.
III. The third word from the Cross, as recorded by Luke, reveals
Jesus as, in the act of dying, the Master of death, and its
Transformer for all who trust Him into a peaceful surrender of
themselves into the Father's hands. The circumstances grouped round
the act of His death bring out various aspects of its significance.
The darkness preceding had passed before He died, and it bore rather
on His sense of desertion, expressed in the unfathomably profound
and awful cry, 'Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' The rent veil is
generally taken to symbolise the unrestricted access into the
presence of God, which we have through Christ's death; but it is
worth considering whether it does not rather indicate the divine
leaving of the desecrated shrine, and so is the beginning of the
fulfilment of the deep word, 'Destroy this Temple.'
But the centre-point of the section is the last cry which, in its
loudness, indicated physical strength quite incompatible with the
exhaustion to which death by crucifixion was generally due. It thus
confirms the view which sees, both in the words of Jesus and in the
Evangelist's expression for His death, clear indications that He
died, not because His physical powers were unable to live longer,
but by the exercise of His own volition. He died because He chose,
and He chose because He loved and would save. As St. Bernard says,
'Who is He who thus easily falls asleep when He wills? To die is
indeed great weakness, but to die thus is immeasurable power. Truly
the weakness of God is stronger than men.'
Nor let us forget that, in thus dying, Jesus gave us an imitable
example, as well as revealed inimitable power. For, if we trust
ourselves, living and dying, to Him, we shall not be dragged
reluctantly, by an overmastering grasp against which we vainly
struggle, out of a world where we would fain stay, but we may
yield ourselves willingly, as to a Father's hand, which draws His
children gently to His own side, and blesses them, when there, with
His fuller presence.