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<span style="font-weight: bold">Murder at Golgotha</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the centre.
—John 19:17–18</span>
the flogging administered by Pilate was merely the beginning of a long series of physical and emotional tortures that would finally culminate in the death of Jesus. It was accompanied by cruel mockery, which the pagan Roman soldiers apparently administered purely for their own amusement. Matthew describes the scene:
Then he released Barabbas to them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. (Matthew 27:26–30)
Despite the fact that these soldiers had no reason whatsoever to heap such scorn on Jesus, they evidently took great delight in doing so. These were men hardened by having witnessed numerous executions, so the pain of such torture no longer made any impact whatsoever on them. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was merely another religious fanatic with whom they were free to amuse themselves as cruelly as they pleased.
It seemed as if the whole world was against Jesus. Jews and Gentiles alike were now willfully, even gleefully, participating in His murder, determined to see Him die in the most agonizing way possible. A catalogue of the pains of crucifixion would fill an entire volume, but Scripture lays particular stress on several aspects of the tortures Christ endured.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Mockery</span>
The Roman soldiers had no idea whom they were tormenting. As far as they were concerned, they were simply crucifying another criminal under orders from Pilate, their commander-in-chief.
Pilate’s orders were to scourge and crucify Jesus, but the cruel mockery they heaped on Him reveals their own wickedness. As they led Jesus back to the Praetorium, they deliberately made a spectacle of Him for the amusement of the taunting crowd. The tumult drew the entire garrison of soldiers to watch.
A Roman cohort consisted of six hundred soldiers. These soldiers were stationed at the Antonio Fortress (which overlooked the temple mount from the north). They were an elite unit, assigned to serve the governor and to keep the peace that was so fragile in this most volatile region of the Roman empire. Rome conscripted soldiers from all the regions she conquered, but Jews were exempt from military service, so all these soldiers would have been Gentiles. They were probably Syrian troops, because Syrians spoke Aramaic, and this would have been essential in Jerusalem. Some of these same soldiers were undoubtedly part of the group who had arrested Jesus in Gethsemane the previous night. Still, they probably had little knowledge of who He was. As far as they were concerned, He was just one in a long line of religious zealots who had troubled the peace and made problems for Rome. They undoubtedly assumed that He deserved whatever ridicule and torment they could heap on Him. Condemned Roman prisoners were considered fair game for such abuse, as long as they were not killed before the sentence of crucifixion could be carried out. The soldiers’ abuse of Jesus was probably not motivated by any personal animosity toward Him, but it was nonetheless wicked in the extreme. The soldiers had become experts at such mockery, having overseen so many executions—but rarely did they have such enthusiastic crowds to play to. They evidently decided to make the most of it.
Jesus had already been slapped and beaten repeatedly, even before He was delivered to Pilate, so his face was undoubtedly swollen and bleeding already. After the scourging, His back would be a mass of bleeding wounds and quivering muscles, and the robe they fashioned for Him would only add to the pain of those wounds. They stripped Him of His own garments, which suggests He was quite literally naked apart from the robe they fashioned for Him. The robe was apparently made from an old tunic—probably an old garment that had been discarded by one of the soldiers. (The Greek expression is chlamus, signifying a military cloak; not the same “gorgeous robe”—esthes—used by Herod in Luke 23:11). Matthew says the robe was scarlet, but Mark and John call it “purple,” (Mark 15:17; John 19:2)—suggesting that it was a badly faded tunic. It was probably the nearest thing to purple (signifying royalty) the soldiers could find.
Their aim was clearly to make a complete mockery of His claim that He was a king. To that end, they fashioned a crown of thorns. Caesar wore a laurel wreath as a crown; thorns were a cruel corruption of that. These were no doubt the longest, sharpest thorns that could be found; many varieties of these grow in Jerusalem to this day—some with two-inch barbed quills that would penetrate deep into His head as the crown was pressed hard upon Him.
The reed in His hand was a further attempt to lampoon His royal claim. The reed represented a scepter—but was a weak, frail imitation of the scepter Caesar carried on festive state occasions.
Jesus’ silence may have convinced them that He was merely a madman, and they showed their utter contempt for Him by feigning the sort of veneration one would show to royalty, bowing at His feet, but saying “Hail, King of the Jews!” in jeering tones. Then, as the Jewish priests had done, they spat on Him, and one of them took the reed from his hand and used it to strike Him repeatedly on His head. The reed, though a flimsy scepter, would have been firm enough to inflict great pain on His already battered head. The apostle John records that they also struck Him with their hands (John 19:3)—probably slapping with open hands while taunting Him some more.
They were clearly playing to the crowd of onlookers. And the crowd was probably cheering them on. But the soldiers were utterly ignorant about who He really was. He is indeed King of kings, and one day He will quite literally rule the world. But His rightful scepter is no reed; it is a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9; Revelation 19:15). One day, according to Scripture, it will be God who mocks the wicked.
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.”
Psalm 2:4–6
If they had truly known who He was, there is no way they would have treated Him in such a fashion.
But Jesus held His silence. “When He was reviled, [He] did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). Jesus knew these things were part of God’s own plan for Him, so He suffered them all willingly, patiently, and unperturbedly.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Shame
</span>“<span style="font-style: italic">And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified” (Matthew 27:31). </span>
Victims of crucifixion were usually made to wear a placard around the neck on which was written the crime they were condemned for. It was part of the shame that was deliberately inflicted on victims of crucifixion (cf. Hebrews 12:2; 13:13).
They were led through the streets and made to walk in a public procession in order to maximize the humiliation of the spectacle.
They were also forced to carry their own cross to the place of execution. That practice was what Jesus referred to earlier in his ministry when He told the disciples, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). Some have suggested that Roman victims were made to carry only the lateral crossbeam (known as the patibulum), which was later attached to the top of a vertical beam, which was already planted firmly in the ground. But Scripture seems to indicate that Christ was bearing the entire cross. A Roman cross large enough to crucify a grown man might weigh as much as two hundred pounds—an extremely heavy load to bear in any circumstances. But for someone in Jesus’ already weakened condition it would be virtually impossible to drag such a load from the Praetorium to a place of crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem.
As a matter of fact, Matthew records that Jesus needed help bearing His cross: “Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross” (27:32). At least four soldiers—a quaternion—would accompany the victim to the execution site. The soldiers evidently grew impatient with Jesus’ agonizing pace, and they grabbed Simon along the way, conscripting him to carry the cross for Jesus.
Jesus’ exhaustion is completely understandable. Remember that the previous day had been so grueling that His disciples had been unable to stay awake while Jesus prayed in the garden. But that was only the beginning of extreme agony for Jesus. He literally sweated blood in His intense grief and sorrow while He prayed. Then He was arrested, beaten repeatedly, held without sleep all night, beaten some more, flogged by a Roman scourge, beaten and mocked again. After several hours of such sheer agony, combined with blood loss and shock, it is no wonder He was too weak to carry a two-hundred-pound cross to Calvary by Himself.
Even with Simon carrying His cross, Jesus apparently was too weak to walk unsupported. Mark 15:22 says, “they brought Him to the place Golgotha,” using a Greek expression for “brought” that suggests He was actually borne along to that place—probably walking with much difficulty, needing constant support from the soldiers along the way.
Simon the Cyrene was no idle spectator wishing to mock Jesus like the rest of the crowd. Mark 15:21 says, “He was coming out of the country and passing by.” As Jesus was leaving the city, Simon was apparently entering, and by divine appointment, he was at exactly the right place at the right moment to be of help to Jesus.
Cyrene was an African city on the Mediterranean coast—in what is Libya today. A large Jewish community lived there, and Simon was probably a Jewish pilgrim who had made the long journey from Cyrene to Jerusalem for the Passover. Mark identifies Simon as “the father of Alexander and Rufus” (v. 21). Mark was probably writing from Rome around a.d. 50, so Alexander and Rufus were probably believers known to the church there. (Paul sent greetings to “Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother” in Romans 16:13. If it is the same Rufus, his mother would have been Simon’s wife). The fact that Simon is named in all three synoptic gospels suggests that his later history was known to the gospel writers, and that undoubtedly means he later became a believer in Christ. Though he could not have been pleased about being conscripted to carry a condemned criminal’s cross, it became a doorway to eternal life for him.
Christ’s last public message was given on the road to Calvary. Luke describes it:
And a great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also mourned and lamented Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!’ Then they will begin ‘to say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” ’ For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?” (23:27–31)
Part of the message was a reference to Hosea 10:8 (“They shall say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ And to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’ ”). It was a dire warning of disaster to come. Since in that culture childbearing was understood to be the highest blessing God could give a woman, only the worst kind of plague or disaster could ever cause anyone to say “Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!”
The green tree represented a time of abundance and blessing, and the dry tree stood for bad times. Jesus was saying that if a tragedy like this could happen in good times, what would befall the nation in bad times? If the Romans crucified someone whom they admitted was guilty of no offense, what would they do to the Jewish nation when they rebelled? Christ was referring to events that would happen less than a generation later, in a.d. 70, when the Roman army would lay siege to Jerusalem, utterly destroy the temple, and slaughter thousands upon thousands of Jewish people—multitudes of them by crucifixion. Christ had spoken of the coming holocaust before (cf. Luke 19:41–44). His awareness of that approaching catastrophe—and the knowledge that some of these same people and their children would suffer in it—still weighed heavily on His mind as He made His way to the cross.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Curse</span>
In the Jewish mind crucifixion was a particularly execrable way to die. It was tantamount to the hanging on a tree Moses described in Deuteronomy 21:22–23: “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” The Mosaic law also required that all executions occur outside the city walls (Numbers 15:35; cf. Hebrews 13:12).
The Romans had a slightly different concept. They made sure that all crucifixions took place near major thoroughfares in order to make the condemned person a public example for all passersby. So Jesus’ crucifixion took place outside the city, but in a heavily trafficked location carefully selected to make Him a public spectacle.
The place where Jesus was crucified was called Calvary (a Latin adaptation of the Greek term that appears in the biblical text: kranion, “a skull”—Luke 23:33). The Aramaic name for it was Golgotha, also meaning, “a skull.” Nowhere in Scripture is it called a hill, but it is generally assumed that this spoke of a promontory, craggy knoll, or incline that had the appearance of a skull. There is such a place, known as Gordon’s Calvary, just north of Jerusalem’s city walls. It still can be seen today and still bears an uncanny resemblance to a human skull.
Matthew writes, “And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink” (Matthew 27:33–34). Apparently just before they nailed Him to the cross, the soldiers offered Him this bitter drink. “Sour wine” is vinegar. “Gall” is something that tastes bitter. Mark 15:23 says the bitter substance was myrrh, which acts as a mild narcotic. The soldiers may have offered it for its numbing effect just before they drove the nails through the flesh. When Jesus tasted what it was, He spat it out. He did not want His senses numbed. He had come to the cross to be a sin bearer, and He would feel the full effect of the sin He bore; He would endure the full measure of its pain. The Father had given Him a cup to drink more bitter than the gall of myrrh, but without the stupefying effect. His heart was still steadfastly set on doing the will of the Father, and He would not anesthetize His senses before He had accomplished all His work.
The vinegar and gall fulfilled a Messianic prophecy from Psalm 69:19–21:
You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken my heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Pain
</span>“Then they crucified Him” (Matthew 27:35).
Crucifixion was a form of execution that the Romans had learned from the Persians. It was also practiced in pre-Roman times in Phoenicia, Carthage, and Egypt. But it evidently originated in Persia. The Persians’ believed that earth, fire, and water were sacred elements, and all customary methods of execution defiled the sacred elements. So the Persians developed a method of crucifying victims by impaling them on a pole, thus raising them high above the earth, where they were left to die.
Later cultures developed different methods of crucifixion, and Rome employed several of them. By the time of Christ, crucifixion had become the favorite method of execution throughout the Roman empire, and especially in Judea, where it was regularly used to make a public example of rioters and insurrectionists. According to Josephus, after Herod the Great died, the Roman governor of Syria, Quinctilius Varus, crucified two thousand men in order to quell an uprising. Josephus also says that Titus crucified so many people when he sacked Jerusalem in a.d. 70 that there was no wood left for crosses and no place left to set them up. By the time of Christ alone, Rome had already crucified more than thirty thousand victims in and around Judea. So crosses with dead or dying men hanging on them were a common sight around Jerusalem, and a constant reminder of Roman brutality.
The exact process used in Jesus’ crucifixion is a matter of some conjecture. None of the gospel accounts gives a detailed description of the method used on Him. But we can glean quite a lot of information from the incidental details that are given. From Thomas’s remark to the other disciples after the crucifixion (“Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails … I will not believe”—John 20:25) we learn that Christ was nailed to the cross, rather than being lashed by leather thongs, as was sometimes done. From Matthew 27:37, which states that His indictment was posted “over His head,” we deduce that the form of cross He was nailed to was the familiar crux imissa, where the top of the upright protruded above the patibulum, rather than the often-used St. Anthony’s Cross, a T-shaped stake.
We also can glean from secular accounts of crucifixion in Jesus’ time some of the details about how crucifixion victims died. Christ would have been nailed to the cross as it lay flat on the ground. The nails used were long, tapered iron spikes, similar to modern railroad spikes, but much sharper. The nails had to be driven through the wrists (not the palms of the hands), because neither the tendons nor the bone structure in the hands could support the body’s weight. Nails in the palms would simply tear the flesh between the bones. Nails through the wrists would usually shatter carpal bones and tear the carpal ligaments, but the structure of the wrist was nonetheless strong enough to support the weight of the body. As the nail went into the wrist, it would usually cause severe damage to the sensorimotor median nerve, causing intense pain in both arms. Finally, a single nail would be driven through both feet, sometimes through the Achilles’ tendons. None of the nail wounds would be fatal, but they would all cause intense and increasing pain as the victim’s time on the cross dragged on.
After the victim was nailed in place, several soldiers would slowly elevate the top of the cross and carefully slide the foot into a deep posthole. The cross would drop with a jarring blow into the bottom of the hole, causing the full weight of the victim to be immediately borne by the nails in the wrists and feet. That would cause a bone-wrenching pain throughout the body, as major joints were suddenly twisted out of their natural position. That is probably what Christ referred to prophetically in Psalm 22, a psalm about the crucifixion: “I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint” (v. 14).
The Romans had perfected the art of crucifixion in order to maximize the pain—and they knew how to prolong the horror without permitting the victim to lapse into a state of unconsciousness that might relieve the pain. The victim of crucifixion would experience waves of nausea, fever, intense thirst, constant cramps, and incessant, throbbing pain from all parts of the body. Sleeplessness, hunger, dehydration, and worsening infection all took their toll on the victim’s body and spirit as the process of crucifixion dragged on—usually for three days or so. The feeling of utter hopelessness, the public shame, and the ever-increasing trauma to the body all intensified as the hours dragged on. One author wrote,
The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries—especially at the head and stomach—became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of burning and raging thirst; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety, which made the prospect of death itself—of death, the awful unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most—bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.1
The emperor Tiberius is said to have preferred crucifixion as a method of punishment, precisely because it prolonged the victim’s agony without granting relief by death. He believed death was an escape, so in his view execution was really no punishment, unless the victim had as much mortal agony inflicted as possible before death.
Death normally came from slow suffocation. The victim’s body would hang in such a way that the diaphragm was severely constricted. In order to exhale, he would have to push up with the feet so that the diaphragm would have room to move. Ultimately fatigue, intense pain, or muscle atrophy would render the victim unable to do this, and he would finally die from the lack of oxygen. Truman Davis, a medical doctor who studied the physical effects of crucifixion, described how this would have occurred in Jesus’ crucifixion:
As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen… .
Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber; then another agony begins. A deep crushing pain in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.
It is now almost over—the loss of tissue fluid has reached a critical level—the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues—the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain.2
Once strength or feeling in the legs was gone, the victim would be unable to push up in order to breathe, and death would occur quickly. That is why the Romans sometimes practiced crucifracture—the breaking of the legs below the knees—when they wanted to hasten the process (cf. John 19:31).
Dehydration, hypovolemic shock, and congestive heart failure sometimes hastened death as well. In Jesus’ case, it seems likely that acute exhaustion was probably another major contributing factor.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Humiliation</span>
Aside from the physical pain of crucifixion, the most notable feature of this type of execution was the stigma of disgrace that was attached to it. Victims were mercilessly taunted. They were usually hanged naked. They were deliberately made a spectacle of shame and reproach. Hebrews 12:2 refers to this when it says Christ “endured the cross, despising the shame.”
Scripture indicates that Christ was deliberately stripped of all clothing and dignity when He was crucified. In fact, the soldiers who kept guard over Him gambled for what remained of His clothing. Matthew writes, “Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there” (Matthew 27:35–36). The prophecy referred to is Psalm 22:18, which foretold the casting of lots for Jesus clothes. This, too, was part of God’s sovereign plan from the beginning.
There may have been as many as five pieces of clothing for the soldiers to divide among themselves: sandals, a robelike garment, a headpiece, a belt, and a tunic. That was the traditional clothing for a Jewish man in Jesus’ culture. Evidently the normal arrangement provided for the quaternion charged with guarding a victim to distribute his clothing equally among themselves. If each selected one garment, a fifth garment would remain. Thus according to John, “The soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece.
They said therefore among themselves, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be” (John 19:23–24). The tunic, a fine, woven outer garment, was undoubtedly the best of all the garments, and therefore it was the one they gambled for. Having divided His garments, they sat down to keep watch over Him.
Pilate added to the mockery by having a large placard erected over Jesus’ head with the only actual indictment that had been brought against Him. “And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS” (Matthew 27:37).
Each of the gospel writers mentions the sign, but each gives a slightly different variation of what it said. Luke 23:38 and John 19:20 both say that the inscription was written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so the variant readings are easily explained. Either they represent slightly different translations of the inscription, or (more likely) they are meant as elliptical restatements of the gist of the full inscription. All accounts agree that the inscription said THE KING OF THE JEWS (Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19). Luke adds “THIS IS” at the beginning, and Matthew started with “THIS IS JESUS.” John’s version begins, “JESUS OF NAZARETH.” Putting them all together, it appears the full inscription actually read, “THIS IS JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”
John says the Sanhedrin was unhappy with that wording, and they wanted the indictment to read, “He said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’“ (John 19:21, emphasis added). But by then, Pilate was tired of playing minion to them, and he told them, “What I have written, I have written” (v. 22).
Christ was crucified between two thieves, and even they joined in the mockery aimed at Him. Matthew writes,
Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and another on the left. And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him with the same thing. (Matthew 27:38–44)
The Greek term for “robbers” signifies that they were no petty thieves, but miscreants who lived as outlaws and brigands, leaving a path of destruction and human misery in their wake. They may well have been Barabbas’s accomplices, and in that case, the cross on which Christ was crucified would have originally been intended for their leader (which would also mean that these robbers had been accomplices to murder as well as thievery).
In any case, it is clear that they were the cruelest sort of fellows, because while they hung on their own crosses, each in the throes of his own death agonies, they used what little strength was available to them to taunt Christ, who had never done them harm. They mocked Him for the sheer sport of it, which speaks volumes about their true character.
Meanwhile, multitudes were passing by the cross, also hurling insults at the Savior and wagging their heads (vv. 39–40). This was another fulfillment of the array of crucifixion prophecies contained in Psalm 22, where David prophetically describes the cross from the Messiah’s own perspective:
I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
“He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
vv. 6–8
The mockers around the cross cited the same misunderstanding of Jesus’ words in John 2:19 that the false witnesses had used in the trial before Caiaphas. He had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But as John points out, “He was speaking of the temple of His body” (v. 21). Christ’s enemies did not know the prophecy was about to come true, but they persisted in putting a wrong interpretation on His words, and that became the focus of their mockery.
The Sanhedrin was present as well, no doubt inciting much of the mockery. They had come out to the crucifixion site in order to gloat and witness the culmination of their evil plot before they went home to the sanctimonious observance of their Passover meals.
Their mockery was a desperate attempt to convince themselves and all other witnesses that Jesus was not Israel’s Messiah. They believed the Messiah could not be conquered. The fact that Jesus hung there dying so helplessly was proof, as far as they were concerned, that He was not who He claimed to be. So they reveled in their triumph, strutting and swaggering among the crowd of observers, announcing to everyone, but to no one in particular, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him” (Matthew 27:42–43). If they had been the kind of spiritual leaders they were supposed to be, they should have noticed that their words were an almost verbatim fulfillment of the prophecy of Psalm 22:8.
They were the highest priests in Israel. They had everything to do with religion but nothing to do with God. They therefore bore the greatest guilt of all who participated in the humiliation of Christ. Although they pretended to sit in Moses’ seat (Matthew 23:2), they did not believe Moses (John 5:46). Although they claimed to be spokesmen for God, they were actually children of Satan (John 8:44).
As always, Jesus did not revile those who reviled Him. Rather, His only words about
His tormenters as He hung on the cross were a tender plea to God for mercy on their behalf (Luke 23:34). He had come to the cross willingly, knowingly, and in submissive obedience to God—to die for others’ sins. And though the abuse and torture men heaped on Him were agony beyond our ability to fathom—those were nothing compared to the wrath of God against the sin He bore.
11 <span style="font-weight: bold">The Seven Last Sayings of Christ</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay
down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.
—John 10:17–18</span>
because of the physical rigors of crucifixion, Christ spoke only with great difficulty during His final hours on the cross. Scripture records only seven brief sayings from the Savior on the cross, but every one of them reveals that Christ remained sovereignly in control, even as He died. And each of His sayings was rich with significance.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Plea for Forgiveness</span>
The first was a plea for mercy on behalf of His tormentors. Luke records that shortly after the cross was raised on Calvary—while the soldiers were still gambling for His clothing, He prayed to God for forgiveness on their behalf: “And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’“ (Luke 23:33–34).
J. C. Ryle wrote, “These words were probably spoken while our Lord was being nailed to the cross, or as soon as the cross was reared up on end. It is worthy of remark that as soon as the blood of the Great Sacrifice began to flow, the Great High Priest began to intercede.” While others were mocking Him—just as the taunting and jeering reached a fever pitch—Christ responded in precisely the opposite way most men would have. Instead of threatening, lashing back, or cursing His enemies, He prayed to God on their behalf.
As we have seen with so many of the details surrounding Jesus’ death, this priestly intercession on behalf of His own killers was done in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy: “He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12, emphasis added). The whole meaning of the cross is summed up in this one act of intercession. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). Certainly any mortal man would have desired only to curse or revile his killers under these circumstances. One might even think that God incarnate would wish to call down some thunderous blast of judgment against men acting so wickedly. But Christ was on a mission of mercy. He was dying to purchase forgiveness for sins. And even at the very height of His agony, compassion was what filled his heart.
The phrase “for they do not know what they do” does not suggest that they were unaware that they were sinning. Ignorance does not absolve anyone from sin. These people were behaving wickedly, and they knew it. Most were fully aware of the fact of their wrongdoing. Pilate himself had testified of Jesus’ innocence. The Sanhedrin was fully aware that no legitimate charges could be brought against Him. The soldiers and the crowd could easily see that a great injustice was being done, and yet they all gleefully participated. Many of the taunting spectators at Calvary had heard Christ teach and seen Him do miracles. They could not have really believed in their hearts that He deserved to die this way. Their ignorance itself was inexcusable, and it certainly did not absolve them of guilt for what they were doing.
But they were ignorant of the enormity of their crime. They were blinded to the full reality that they were crucifying God the Son. They were spiritually insensitive, because they loved darkness rather than light. Therefore they did not recognize that the One they were putting to death was the Light of the World. “Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8).
How was Jesus’ prayer answered? In innumerable ways. The first answer came with the conversion of one of the thieves on the cross next to Jesus (Luke 23:40–43). Another followed immediately, with the conversion of a centurion, one of the soldiers who had crucified Christ (v. 47). Other answers to the prayer came in the weeks and months that followed the crucifixion—particularly at Pentecost—as untold numbers of people in Jerusalem were converted to Christ. No doubt many of them were the same people who had clamored for Jesus’ death and railed at Him from the foot of the cross. We’re told in Acts 6:7, for example, that a great number of the temple priests later confessed Jesus as Lord.
It is important to understand that Jesus’ plea for his killers’ forgiveness did not guarantee the immediate and unconditional forgiveness of everyone who participated in the crucifixion. He was interceding on behalf of all who would repent and turn to Him as Lord and Savior. His prayer was that when they finally realized the enormity of what they had done and sought the heavenly Father’s forgiveness for their sin, He would not hold the murder of His beloved Son against them. Divine forgiveness is never granted to people who remain in unbelief and sin. Those who clung to their hatred of Jesus were by no means automatically absolved from their crime by Jesus’ prayer. But those who repented and sought forgiveness, like the centurion, or the thief on the cross, or the priests, or the people in the crowd—all who later embraced Him would find abundant mercy in answer to Christ’s petition on their behalf.
The prayer was a token of mercy offered to all who heard. He prayed aloud for their sakes (cf. John 11:42). Their sin was so unfathomably heinous that if witnesses had not actually heard Him pray for His killers’ forgiveness, most might have assumed they had committed an unpardonable offense.
The forgiveness Christ prayed for is freely offered to all (Revelation 22:17) In fact, God is eager to forgive repentant sinners. (The Prodigal Son’s father pictures God’s eagerness to forgive.) He pleads for every sinner to be reconciled to Him (2 Corinthians 5:20; Ezekiel 18:3–32; Acts 17:30). Those who do, He promises to lavish freely with forgiveness. And that offer was extended even to those who personally participated in the murder of Jesus.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Promise of Salvation</span>
Christ’s second utterance from the cross marks the first glorious fulfillment of His prayer for His killers’ forgiveness, and it shows how generously that forgiveness was bestowed, even on the most unlikely of recipients.
As the hours of agony passed on the cross, one of the two thieves who had mocked Christ earlier now had a change of heart. What prompted the change is not mentioned. Perhaps the thief heard and was touched by Jesus’ prayer for mercy, realizing that it applied to him. Whatever prompted his turnaround, it was a tremendous miracle.
The man was undoubtedly one of the most thoroughly degenerate people on the scene. He and his confederate were career criminals, men whose lives had been devoted to thievery and mayhem. The deep-down bad-to-the-bone wickedness of their character was shown by the fact that they used their dying strength to join in the taunting of Christ. They obviously knew of His innocence, because the repentant thief finally rebuked his cohort, saying, “This Man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Yet until one of them repented, they both were heaping ridicule and scorn on Him anyway.
But there came a point when one thief’s taunting turned to silence, and the silence turned to repentance, and the thief’s heart was utterly changed. As he studied Jesus, suffering all that abuse so patiently—never reviling or insulting His tormentors—the thief began to see that this Man on the center cross was indeed who He claimed to be. The proof of his repentance is seen in his immediate change of behavior, as his derisive insults turned to words of praise for Christ.
First he rebuked his partner in crime: “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong” (vv. 40–41). In saying that much, he confessed his own guilt, and he also acknowledged the justice of the penalty he had been given. He affirmed the innocence of Christ as well.
Then he turned to Jesus and confessed Him as Lord: “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (v. 42).
That confession of Jesus as Lord and King was immediately followed by the second of Jesus’ seven last sayings: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise’ ” (v. 43).
No sinner was ever given more explicit assurance of salvation. This most unlikely of saints was received immediately and unconditionally into the Savior’s kingdom. The incident is one of the greatest biblical illustrations of the truth of justification by faith.
This man had done nothing to merit salvation. Indeed, he was in no position to do anything meritorious. Already gasping in the throes of his own death agonies, he had no hope of ever earning Christ’s favor. But realizing that he was in an utterly hopeless situation, the thief sought only a modest token of mercy from Christ: “Remember me.”
His request was a final, desperate, end-of-his-rope plea for a small mercy he knew he did not deserve. It echoes the plaintive cry of the publican, who “would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ ” (Luke 18:13). For either man to be granted eternal life and received into the kingdom, it had to be on the merits of Another. And yet in both cases, Jesus gave full and immediate assurance of complete forgiveness and eternal life. Those are classic proofs that justification is by faith alone.
Jesus’ words to the dying thief conveyed to him an unqualified promise of full forgiveness, covering every evil deed he had ever done. He wasn’t expected to atone for his own sins, do penance, or perform any ritual. He wasn’t consigned to purgatory—though if there really were such a place, and if the doctrines that invariably accompany belief in purgatory were true, this man would have been assured a long stay there. But instead, his forgiveness was full, and free, and immediate: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That was all Christ said to him. But it was all the thief needed to hear. He was still suffering unspeakable physical torment, but the misery in his soul was now gone. For the first time in his life, he was free from the burden of his sin. The Savior, at his side, was bearing that sin for him. And the thief was now clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness. Soon they would be in Paradise together. The thief had Christ’s own word on it.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Provision for His Mother</span>
Jesus’ enemies were not the only spectators at the cross. As word got around Jerusalem that morning that Christ was under arrest and had been condemned to death by the Sanhedrin, some of His closest loved ones came to be near Him. John 19:25 describes the scene: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” Some interpreters believe John mentions only three women, and that “His mother’s sister” is the same person as “Mary the wife of Clopas.” But that would mean these two sisters were both named Mary, and that seems highly unlikely. Instead, it seems
John was saying there were three women named Mary present (Jesus’ mother, Mrs. Clopas, and Mary Magdalene), as well as a fourth woman (Mary’s sister) whose name is not given—but she might have been Salome, the mother of James and John. John also indicates in verse 26 that he himself was present, referring to himself the way he always did in his Gospel, as “the disciple whom [Jesus] loved” (cf. John 21:20–24).
The pain of watching Jesus die must have been agonizing for Jesus’ loved ones. But for no one was it more difficult than Mary, His earthly mother. Years before, at His birth, the elderly prophet Simeon had told her, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35, emphasis added). The sword Simeon spoke of was now piercing her heart, as she watched her firstborn Son die.
She had reared Him from childhood. She knew His utter perfection better than anyone. And yet as she watched, crowds of people poured contempt on her Son, cruelly mocking and abusing Him. His bleeding, emaciated form hung helplessly on the cross, and all she could do was watch His agony. The sorrow and pain such a sight would cause His mother is unfathomable. And yet instead of shrieking and crumpling in hysteria, turning and fleeing in terror, or falling into a faint at the horrible sight, she stood. She is the very model of courage.
Jesus saw her standing and grieving there, and His third saying from the cross reflects the tender love of a Son for His mother. “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26–27). When Jesus said, “Behold your son,” He was not referring to Himself. He probably nodded at John. He was making a gracious provision for Mary in the years to come. He was delegating to John the responsibility to care for Mary in her old age.
This was a beautiful gesture, and it says a lot about the personal nature of Jesus’ love. Although He was dying under the most excruciating kind of anguish, Jesus, the King of love, selflessly turned aside to care for the earthly needs of those who stood by His side. Although He was occupied with the most important event in the history of redemption, He remembered to make provision for the needs of one woman, His mother.
<span style="font-style: italic">He addresses her as “woman.” Nowhere in the Gospels does He ever call her “mother”; only “woman.” The expression conveys no disrespect. But it does underscore the fact that Christ was much more to Mary than a Son. He was her Savior, too (cf. Luke 1:47). Mary was no sinless co-redemptrix.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">She was as dependent on divine grace as the lowliest of sinners</span>, and after Christ reached adulthood, her relationship to Him was the same as that of any obedient believer to the Lord. She was a disciple; He was the Master.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Christ Himself rebuked those who wanted to elevate Mary to a place of extraordinary veneration</span>: “A certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!’ But He said, ‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’ ”(Luke 11:27–28). Mary was blessed because she was obedient to the Word of God—the same as any other believer. Her position as Christ’s mother did not carry with it any special titles such as comediatrix, queen of heaven, or any of the other forms of deification medieval superstition has attached to the popular concept of Mary.
Let’s be perfectly clear: It is a form of idolatry to bestow on Mary honor, titles, or attributes that in effect give her a coequal status in the redemptive work of her Son or elevate her as a special object of veneration.
Nonetheless, Christ loved and honored His mother as a mother. He fulfilled the fifth commandment as perfectly as He fulfilled them all. And part of the responsibility of honoring one’s parents is the duty to see that they are cared for in their old age. Christ did not neglect that duty.
It is perhaps significant that Jesus did not commit Mary to the care of His own half-brothers. Mary was evidently a widow by now. Nothing is said of Joseph after the gospel narratives about Jesus’ birth and childhood. Apparently he had died by the time Jesus began His public ministry. But Scripture suggests that after Jesus’ birth Mary and Joseph had a marital relationship that was in every sense normal (Matthew 1:25). Despite the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, Scripture does not allow us to believe Mary remained perpetually a virgin. On the contrary, the gospels clearly state that Jesus had brothers (Mark 3:31–35; John 2:12; Luke 8:19–21). Matthew even names them: “James, Joses, Simon, and Judas” (Matthew 13:55). They would have in fact been half-brothers, as the natural offspring of Mary and Joseph.
Why didn’t Jesus appoint one of His own brothers to look after Mary? Because, according to John 7:5, “His brothers did not believe in Him.” They became believers when Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore Acts 1:14 records that they were among the group meeting for prayer in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost: “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers” (emphasis added).
But they were evidently not believers yet when Jesus died. So as He was dying on the cross, He committed His mother to the care of His beloved disciple, John.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Petition to the Father
</span>Christ’s fourth saying from the cross is by far the richest with mystery and meaning. Matthew writes, “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ ” (Matthew 27:45–46).
It might seem at first glance that Christ was merely reciting the words of Psalm 22:1 (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?”). But given the fact that all of Psalm 22 is an extended prophecy about the crucifixion, it might be better to see the psalm as a prophetic anticipation of the cry of Jesus’ heart as He bore the sins of the world on the cross. It was no mere recitation.
Some commentators have gone to great lengths to explain why Jesus would utter such words. To them, it seems unthinkable that Jesus would actually feel abandoned on the cross—and even more unthinkable to surmise that God in any sense abandoned His beloved Son. And so they insist that Jesus was merely reciting Scripture, not expressing what He truly felt in His heart.
But that betrays a serious misunderstanding of what was taking place on the cross. As Christ hung there, He was bearing the sins of the world. He was dying as a substitute for others. To Him was imputed the guilt of their sins, and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. And the very essence of that punishment was the outpouring of God’s wrath against sinners. In some mysterious way during those awful hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against sin, and the recipient of that wrath was God’s own beloved Son!
In this lies the true meaning of the cross. Those who try to explain the atoning work of Christ in any other terms inevitably end up nullifying the truth of Christ’s atonement altogether. Christ was not merely providing an example for us to follow. He was no mere martyr being sacrificed to the wickedness of the men who crucified Him. He wasn’t merely making a public display so that people would see the awfulness of sin. He wasn’t offering a ransom price to Satan—or any of the other various explanations religious liberals, cultists, and pseudo-Christian religionists have tried to suggest over the years.
Here’s what was happening on the cross: God was punishing His own Son as if He had committed every wicked deed done by every sinner who would ever believe. And He did it so that He could forgive and treat those redeemed ones as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness.
Scripture teaches this explicitly: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5). “He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief … [in order to] make His soul an offering for sin” (vv. 9–10). “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26). “What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Galatians 3:13). “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh” (1 Peter 3:18). “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2).
That word propitiation speaks of an offering made to satisfy God. Christ’s death was a satisfaction rendered to God on behalf of those whom He redeemed. “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Isaiah 53:10, emphasis added). God the Father saw the travail of His Son’s soul, and He was satisfied (v. 11). Christ made propitiation by shedding His blood (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17).
It was God’s own wrath against sin, God’s own righteousness, and God’s own sense of justice that Christ satisfied on the cross. The shedding of His blood was a sin offering rendered to God. His death was not merely a satisfaction of public justice, nor was it a ransom paid to Satan. Neither Satan nor anyone else had any right to claim a ransom from God for sinners. But when Christ ransomed the elect from sin (1 Timothy 2:6), the ransom price was paid to God. Christ died in our place and in our stead—and He received the very same outpouring of divine wrath in all its fury that we deserved for our sin. It was a punishment so severe that a mortal man could spend all eternity in the torments of hell, and still he would not have begun to exhaust the divine wrath that was heaped on Christ at the cross.
This was the true measure of Christ’s sufferings on the cross. The physical pains of crucifixion—dreadful as they were—were nothing compared to the wrath of the Father against Him. The anticipation of this was what had caused Him to sweat blood in the garden. This was why He had looked ahead to the cross with such horror. We cannot begin to fathom all that was involved in paying the price of our sin. It’s sufficient to understand that all our worst fears about the horrors of hell—and more—were realized by Him as He received the due penalty of others’ wrongdoing.
And in that awful, sacred hour, it was as if the Father abandoned Him. Though there was surely no interruption in the Father’s love for Him as a Son, God nonetheless turned away from Him and forsook Him as our Substitute.
<span style="font-style: italic">The fact that Christ—suffering from exhaustion, blood loss, asphyxia, and all the physical anguish of the cross—nonetheless made this cry “with a loud voice” proves it was no mere recitation of a psalm. This was the outcry of His soul; it was the very thing the psalm foretold. And as we shall see in the chapter that follows, all nature groaned with Him.
</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Pleading for Relief
</span>“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst!’ ” (John 19:28). This was Christ’s fifth utterance from the cross. As the end neared, Christ uttered a final plea for physical relief. Earlier He had spat out the vinegar mixed with painkiller that had been offered Him. Now, when He asked for relief from the horrible thirst of dehydration, He was given only a sponge saturated with pure vinegar. John writes, “Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth” (v. 29).
In His thirst we see the true humanity of Christ. Although He was God incarnate, in His physical body, He experienced all the normal human limitations of real human flesh. And none was more vivid than this moment of agonizing thirst after hours of hanging on the cross. He suffered bodily to an extent few have ever suffered. And—again, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled—all He was given to salve His fiery thirst was vinegar. “They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 69:21).
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Proclamation of Victory</span>
John’s account of the crucifixion continues: “So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). In the Greek text, this sixth utterance of Jesus from the cross is a single word: Tetelestai! Luke 23:46 indicates He made this cry “with a loud voice.”
It was a triumphant outcry, full of rich meaning. He did not mean merely that His earthly life was over. He meant that the work the Father had given Him to do was now complete. As He hung there, looking every bit like a pathetic, wasted victim, He nonetheless celebrated the greatest triumph in the history of the universe. Christ’s atoning work was finished; redemption for sinners was complete; and He was triumphant.
Christ had fulfilled on behalf of sinners everything the law of God required of them. Full atonement had been made. Everything the ceremonial law foreshadowed had been accomplished. God’s justice was satisfied. The ransom for sin was paid in full. The wages of sin were settled forever. All that remained was for Christ to die so that He might rise again.
<span style="font-weight: bold">That is why nothing can be added to the work of Christ for salvation. No religious ritual—neither baptism, nor penance, nor any other human work—needs to be added to make His work effectual. No supplemental human works could ever augment or improve the atonement He purchased on the cross.</span> The sinner is required to contribute nothing to earn forgiveness or a right standing with God; the merit of Christ alone is sufficient for our full salvation. Tetelestai! His atoning work is done. All of it. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Prayer of Consummation</span>
Christ’s final saying from the cross, right after “It is finished!” was a prayer that expressed the unqualified submission that had been in His heart from the very beginning. Luke records those final words: “And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, “into Your hands I commit My spirit.” ’ Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).
Christ died as no other man has ever died. In one sense He was murdered by the hands of wicked men (Acts 2:23). In another sense it was the Father who sent Him to the cross and bruised Him there, putting Him to grief—and it pleased the Father to do so (Isaiah 53:10). Yet in still another sense, no one took Christ’s life. He gave it up willingly for those whom He loved (John 10:17–18).
<span style="font-weight: bold">When He finally expired on the cross, it was not with a wrenching struggle against His killers. He did not display any frenzied death throes. His final passage into death—like every other aspect of the crucifixion drama—was a deliberate act of His own sovereign will, showing that to the very end, He was sovereignly in control of all that was happening. John says, “Bowing His head, He gave up His spirit” (John 19:30). Quietly, submissively, He simply yielded up His life.
</span>
Everything had come to pass exactly as He said it would. Not only Jesus, but also His killers, and the mocking crowd, together with Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin—all had perfectly fulfilled the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God to the letter.
And thus Christ calmly and majestically displayed His utter sovereignty to the end. It seemed to all who loved Him—and even many who cared little for Him—like a supreme tragedy. But it was the greatest moment of victory in the history of redemption, and Christ would make that fact gloriously clear when He burst triumphantly from the grave just days later.
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MacArthur, John: The Murder of Jesus : A Study of How Jesus Died. Nashville, TN : Word Pub., 2000, S. 189
<span style="font-style: italic">And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the centre.
—John 19:17–18</span>
the flogging administered by Pilate was merely the beginning of a long series of physical and emotional tortures that would finally culminate in the death of Jesus. It was accompanied by cruel mockery, which the pagan Roman soldiers apparently administered purely for their own amusement. Matthew describes the scene:
Then he released Barabbas to them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. (Matthew 27:26–30)
Despite the fact that these soldiers had no reason whatsoever to heap such scorn on Jesus, they evidently took great delight in doing so. These were men hardened by having witnessed numerous executions, so the pain of such torture no longer made any impact whatsoever on them. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was merely another religious fanatic with whom they were free to amuse themselves as cruelly as they pleased.
It seemed as if the whole world was against Jesus. Jews and Gentiles alike were now willfully, even gleefully, participating in His murder, determined to see Him die in the most agonizing way possible. A catalogue of the pains of crucifixion would fill an entire volume, but Scripture lays particular stress on several aspects of the tortures Christ endured.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Mockery</span>
The Roman soldiers had no idea whom they were tormenting. As far as they were concerned, they were simply crucifying another criminal under orders from Pilate, their commander-in-chief.
Pilate’s orders were to scourge and crucify Jesus, but the cruel mockery they heaped on Him reveals their own wickedness. As they led Jesus back to the Praetorium, they deliberately made a spectacle of Him for the amusement of the taunting crowd. The tumult drew the entire garrison of soldiers to watch.
A Roman cohort consisted of six hundred soldiers. These soldiers were stationed at the Antonio Fortress (which overlooked the temple mount from the north). They were an elite unit, assigned to serve the governor and to keep the peace that was so fragile in this most volatile region of the Roman empire. Rome conscripted soldiers from all the regions she conquered, but Jews were exempt from military service, so all these soldiers would have been Gentiles. They were probably Syrian troops, because Syrians spoke Aramaic, and this would have been essential in Jerusalem. Some of these same soldiers were undoubtedly part of the group who had arrested Jesus in Gethsemane the previous night. Still, they probably had little knowledge of who He was. As far as they were concerned, He was just one in a long line of religious zealots who had troubled the peace and made problems for Rome. They undoubtedly assumed that He deserved whatever ridicule and torment they could heap on Him. Condemned Roman prisoners were considered fair game for such abuse, as long as they were not killed before the sentence of crucifixion could be carried out. The soldiers’ abuse of Jesus was probably not motivated by any personal animosity toward Him, but it was nonetheless wicked in the extreme. The soldiers had become experts at such mockery, having overseen so many executions—but rarely did they have such enthusiastic crowds to play to. They evidently decided to make the most of it.
Jesus had already been slapped and beaten repeatedly, even before He was delivered to Pilate, so his face was undoubtedly swollen and bleeding already. After the scourging, His back would be a mass of bleeding wounds and quivering muscles, and the robe they fashioned for Him would only add to the pain of those wounds. They stripped Him of His own garments, which suggests He was quite literally naked apart from the robe they fashioned for Him. The robe was apparently made from an old tunic—probably an old garment that had been discarded by one of the soldiers. (The Greek expression is chlamus, signifying a military cloak; not the same “gorgeous robe”—esthes—used by Herod in Luke 23:11). Matthew says the robe was scarlet, but Mark and John call it “purple,” (Mark 15:17; John 19:2)—suggesting that it was a badly faded tunic. It was probably the nearest thing to purple (signifying royalty) the soldiers could find.
Their aim was clearly to make a complete mockery of His claim that He was a king. To that end, they fashioned a crown of thorns. Caesar wore a laurel wreath as a crown; thorns were a cruel corruption of that. These were no doubt the longest, sharpest thorns that could be found; many varieties of these grow in Jerusalem to this day—some with two-inch barbed quills that would penetrate deep into His head as the crown was pressed hard upon Him.
The reed in His hand was a further attempt to lampoon His royal claim. The reed represented a scepter—but was a weak, frail imitation of the scepter Caesar carried on festive state occasions.
Jesus’ silence may have convinced them that He was merely a madman, and they showed their utter contempt for Him by feigning the sort of veneration one would show to royalty, bowing at His feet, but saying “Hail, King of the Jews!” in jeering tones. Then, as the Jewish priests had done, they spat on Him, and one of them took the reed from his hand and used it to strike Him repeatedly on His head. The reed, though a flimsy scepter, would have been firm enough to inflict great pain on His already battered head. The apostle John records that they also struck Him with their hands (John 19:3)—probably slapping with open hands while taunting Him some more.
They were clearly playing to the crowd of onlookers. And the crowd was probably cheering them on. But the soldiers were utterly ignorant about who He really was. He is indeed King of kings, and one day He will quite literally rule the world. But His rightful scepter is no reed; it is a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9; Revelation 19:15). One day, according to Scripture, it will be God who mocks the wicked.
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.”
Psalm 2:4–6
If they had truly known who He was, there is no way they would have treated Him in such a fashion.
But Jesus held His silence. “When He was reviled, [He] did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). Jesus knew these things were part of God’s own plan for Him, so He suffered them all willingly, patiently, and unperturbedly.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Shame
</span>“<span style="font-style: italic">And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified” (Matthew 27:31). </span>
Victims of crucifixion were usually made to wear a placard around the neck on which was written the crime they were condemned for. It was part of the shame that was deliberately inflicted on victims of crucifixion (cf. Hebrews 12:2; 13:13).
They were led through the streets and made to walk in a public procession in order to maximize the humiliation of the spectacle.
They were also forced to carry their own cross to the place of execution. That practice was what Jesus referred to earlier in his ministry when He told the disciples, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). Some have suggested that Roman victims were made to carry only the lateral crossbeam (known as the patibulum), which was later attached to the top of a vertical beam, which was already planted firmly in the ground. But Scripture seems to indicate that Christ was bearing the entire cross. A Roman cross large enough to crucify a grown man might weigh as much as two hundred pounds—an extremely heavy load to bear in any circumstances. But for someone in Jesus’ already weakened condition it would be virtually impossible to drag such a load from the Praetorium to a place of crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem.
As a matter of fact, Matthew records that Jesus needed help bearing His cross: “Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross” (27:32). At least four soldiers—a quaternion—would accompany the victim to the execution site. The soldiers evidently grew impatient with Jesus’ agonizing pace, and they grabbed Simon along the way, conscripting him to carry the cross for Jesus.
Jesus’ exhaustion is completely understandable. Remember that the previous day had been so grueling that His disciples had been unable to stay awake while Jesus prayed in the garden. But that was only the beginning of extreme agony for Jesus. He literally sweated blood in His intense grief and sorrow while He prayed. Then He was arrested, beaten repeatedly, held without sleep all night, beaten some more, flogged by a Roman scourge, beaten and mocked again. After several hours of such sheer agony, combined with blood loss and shock, it is no wonder He was too weak to carry a two-hundred-pound cross to Calvary by Himself.
Even with Simon carrying His cross, Jesus apparently was too weak to walk unsupported. Mark 15:22 says, “they brought Him to the place Golgotha,” using a Greek expression for “brought” that suggests He was actually borne along to that place—probably walking with much difficulty, needing constant support from the soldiers along the way.
Simon the Cyrene was no idle spectator wishing to mock Jesus like the rest of the crowd. Mark 15:21 says, “He was coming out of the country and passing by.” As Jesus was leaving the city, Simon was apparently entering, and by divine appointment, he was at exactly the right place at the right moment to be of help to Jesus.
Cyrene was an African city on the Mediterranean coast—in what is Libya today. A large Jewish community lived there, and Simon was probably a Jewish pilgrim who had made the long journey from Cyrene to Jerusalem for the Passover. Mark identifies Simon as “the father of Alexander and Rufus” (v. 21). Mark was probably writing from Rome around a.d. 50, so Alexander and Rufus were probably believers known to the church there. (Paul sent greetings to “Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother” in Romans 16:13. If it is the same Rufus, his mother would have been Simon’s wife). The fact that Simon is named in all three synoptic gospels suggests that his later history was known to the gospel writers, and that undoubtedly means he later became a believer in Christ. Though he could not have been pleased about being conscripted to carry a condemned criminal’s cross, it became a doorway to eternal life for him.
Christ’s last public message was given on the road to Calvary. Luke describes it:
And a great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also mourned and lamented Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!’ Then they will begin ‘to say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” ’ For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?” (23:27–31)
Part of the message was a reference to Hosea 10:8 (“They shall say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ And to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’ ”). It was a dire warning of disaster to come. Since in that culture childbearing was understood to be the highest blessing God could give a woman, only the worst kind of plague or disaster could ever cause anyone to say “Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!”
The green tree represented a time of abundance and blessing, and the dry tree stood for bad times. Jesus was saying that if a tragedy like this could happen in good times, what would befall the nation in bad times? If the Romans crucified someone whom they admitted was guilty of no offense, what would they do to the Jewish nation when they rebelled? Christ was referring to events that would happen less than a generation later, in a.d. 70, when the Roman army would lay siege to Jerusalem, utterly destroy the temple, and slaughter thousands upon thousands of Jewish people—multitudes of them by crucifixion. Christ had spoken of the coming holocaust before (cf. Luke 19:41–44). His awareness of that approaching catastrophe—and the knowledge that some of these same people and their children would suffer in it—still weighed heavily on His mind as He made His way to the cross.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Curse</span>
In the Jewish mind crucifixion was a particularly execrable way to die. It was tantamount to the hanging on a tree Moses described in Deuteronomy 21:22–23: “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” The Mosaic law also required that all executions occur outside the city walls (Numbers 15:35; cf. Hebrews 13:12).
The Romans had a slightly different concept. They made sure that all crucifixions took place near major thoroughfares in order to make the condemned person a public example for all passersby. So Jesus’ crucifixion took place outside the city, but in a heavily trafficked location carefully selected to make Him a public spectacle.
The place where Jesus was crucified was called Calvary (a Latin adaptation of the Greek term that appears in the biblical text: kranion, “a skull”—Luke 23:33). The Aramaic name for it was Golgotha, also meaning, “a skull.” Nowhere in Scripture is it called a hill, but it is generally assumed that this spoke of a promontory, craggy knoll, or incline that had the appearance of a skull. There is such a place, known as Gordon’s Calvary, just north of Jerusalem’s city walls. It still can be seen today and still bears an uncanny resemblance to a human skull.
Matthew writes, “And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink” (Matthew 27:33–34). Apparently just before they nailed Him to the cross, the soldiers offered Him this bitter drink. “Sour wine” is vinegar. “Gall” is something that tastes bitter. Mark 15:23 says the bitter substance was myrrh, which acts as a mild narcotic. The soldiers may have offered it for its numbing effect just before they drove the nails through the flesh. When Jesus tasted what it was, He spat it out. He did not want His senses numbed. He had come to the cross to be a sin bearer, and He would feel the full effect of the sin He bore; He would endure the full measure of its pain. The Father had given Him a cup to drink more bitter than the gall of myrrh, but without the stupefying effect. His heart was still steadfastly set on doing the will of the Father, and He would not anesthetize His senses before He had accomplished all His work.
The vinegar and gall fulfilled a Messianic prophecy from Psalm 69:19–21:
You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken my heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Pain
</span>“Then they crucified Him” (Matthew 27:35).
Crucifixion was a form of execution that the Romans had learned from the Persians. It was also practiced in pre-Roman times in Phoenicia, Carthage, and Egypt. But it evidently originated in Persia. The Persians’ believed that earth, fire, and water were sacred elements, and all customary methods of execution defiled the sacred elements. So the Persians developed a method of crucifying victims by impaling them on a pole, thus raising them high above the earth, where they were left to die.
Later cultures developed different methods of crucifixion, and Rome employed several of them. By the time of Christ, crucifixion had become the favorite method of execution throughout the Roman empire, and especially in Judea, where it was regularly used to make a public example of rioters and insurrectionists. According to Josephus, after Herod the Great died, the Roman governor of Syria, Quinctilius Varus, crucified two thousand men in order to quell an uprising. Josephus also says that Titus crucified so many people when he sacked Jerusalem in a.d. 70 that there was no wood left for crosses and no place left to set them up. By the time of Christ alone, Rome had already crucified more than thirty thousand victims in and around Judea. So crosses with dead or dying men hanging on them were a common sight around Jerusalem, and a constant reminder of Roman brutality.
The exact process used in Jesus’ crucifixion is a matter of some conjecture. None of the gospel accounts gives a detailed description of the method used on Him. But we can glean quite a lot of information from the incidental details that are given. From Thomas’s remark to the other disciples after the crucifixion (“Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails … I will not believe”—John 20:25) we learn that Christ was nailed to the cross, rather than being lashed by leather thongs, as was sometimes done. From Matthew 27:37, which states that His indictment was posted “over His head,” we deduce that the form of cross He was nailed to was the familiar crux imissa, where the top of the upright protruded above the patibulum, rather than the often-used St. Anthony’s Cross, a T-shaped stake.
We also can glean from secular accounts of crucifixion in Jesus’ time some of the details about how crucifixion victims died. Christ would have been nailed to the cross as it lay flat on the ground. The nails used were long, tapered iron spikes, similar to modern railroad spikes, but much sharper. The nails had to be driven through the wrists (not the palms of the hands), because neither the tendons nor the bone structure in the hands could support the body’s weight. Nails in the palms would simply tear the flesh between the bones. Nails through the wrists would usually shatter carpal bones and tear the carpal ligaments, but the structure of the wrist was nonetheless strong enough to support the weight of the body. As the nail went into the wrist, it would usually cause severe damage to the sensorimotor median nerve, causing intense pain in both arms. Finally, a single nail would be driven through both feet, sometimes through the Achilles’ tendons. None of the nail wounds would be fatal, but they would all cause intense and increasing pain as the victim’s time on the cross dragged on.
After the victim was nailed in place, several soldiers would slowly elevate the top of the cross and carefully slide the foot into a deep posthole. The cross would drop with a jarring blow into the bottom of the hole, causing the full weight of the victim to be immediately borne by the nails in the wrists and feet. That would cause a bone-wrenching pain throughout the body, as major joints were suddenly twisted out of their natural position. That is probably what Christ referred to prophetically in Psalm 22, a psalm about the crucifixion: “I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint” (v. 14).
The Romans had perfected the art of crucifixion in order to maximize the pain—and they knew how to prolong the horror without permitting the victim to lapse into a state of unconsciousness that might relieve the pain. The victim of crucifixion would experience waves of nausea, fever, intense thirst, constant cramps, and incessant, throbbing pain from all parts of the body. Sleeplessness, hunger, dehydration, and worsening infection all took their toll on the victim’s body and spirit as the process of crucifixion dragged on—usually for three days or so. The feeling of utter hopelessness, the public shame, and the ever-increasing trauma to the body all intensified as the hours dragged on. One author wrote,
The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries—especially at the head and stomach—became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of burning and raging thirst; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety, which made the prospect of death itself—of death, the awful unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most—bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.1
The emperor Tiberius is said to have preferred crucifixion as a method of punishment, precisely because it prolonged the victim’s agony without granting relief by death. He believed death was an escape, so in his view execution was really no punishment, unless the victim had as much mortal agony inflicted as possible before death.
Death normally came from slow suffocation. The victim’s body would hang in such a way that the diaphragm was severely constricted. In order to exhale, he would have to push up with the feet so that the diaphragm would have room to move. Ultimately fatigue, intense pain, or muscle atrophy would render the victim unable to do this, and he would finally die from the lack of oxygen. Truman Davis, a medical doctor who studied the physical effects of crucifixion, described how this would have occurred in Jesus’ crucifixion:
As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen… .
Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber; then another agony begins. A deep crushing pain in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.
It is now almost over—the loss of tissue fluid has reached a critical level—the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues—the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain.2
Once strength or feeling in the legs was gone, the victim would be unable to push up in order to breathe, and death would occur quickly. That is why the Romans sometimes practiced crucifracture—the breaking of the legs below the knees—when they wanted to hasten the process (cf. John 19:31).
Dehydration, hypovolemic shock, and congestive heart failure sometimes hastened death as well. In Jesus’ case, it seems likely that acute exhaustion was probably another major contributing factor.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Humiliation</span>
Aside from the physical pain of crucifixion, the most notable feature of this type of execution was the stigma of disgrace that was attached to it. Victims were mercilessly taunted. They were usually hanged naked. They were deliberately made a spectacle of shame and reproach. Hebrews 12:2 refers to this when it says Christ “endured the cross, despising the shame.”
Scripture indicates that Christ was deliberately stripped of all clothing and dignity when He was crucified. In fact, the soldiers who kept guard over Him gambled for what remained of His clothing. Matthew writes, “Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there” (Matthew 27:35–36). The prophecy referred to is Psalm 22:18, which foretold the casting of lots for Jesus clothes. This, too, was part of God’s sovereign plan from the beginning.
There may have been as many as five pieces of clothing for the soldiers to divide among themselves: sandals, a robelike garment, a headpiece, a belt, and a tunic. That was the traditional clothing for a Jewish man in Jesus’ culture. Evidently the normal arrangement provided for the quaternion charged with guarding a victim to distribute his clothing equally among themselves. If each selected one garment, a fifth garment would remain. Thus according to John, “The soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece.
They said therefore among themselves, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be” (John 19:23–24). The tunic, a fine, woven outer garment, was undoubtedly the best of all the garments, and therefore it was the one they gambled for. Having divided His garments, they sat down to keep watch over Him.
Pilate added to the mockery by having a large placard erected over Jesus’ head with the only actual indictment that had been brought against Him. “And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS” (Matthew 27:37).
Each of the gospel writers mentions the sign, but each gives a slightly different variation of what it said. Luke 23:38 and John 19:20 both say that the inscription was written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so the variant readings are easily explained. Either they represent slightly different translations of the inscription, or (more likely) they are meant as elliptical restatements of the gist of the full inscription. All accounts agree that the inscription said THE KING OF THE JEWS (Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19). Luke adds “THIS IS” at the beginning, and Matthew started with “THIS IS JESUS.” John’s version begins, “JESUS OF NAZARETH.” Putting them all together, it appears the full inscription actually read, “THIS IS JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”
John says the Sanhedrin was unhappy with that wording, and they wanted the indictment to read, “He said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’“ (John 19:21, emphasis added). But by then, Pilate was tired of playing minion to them, and he told them, “What I have written, I have written” (v. 22).
Christ was crucified between two thieves, and even they joined in the mockery aimed at Him. Matthew writes,
Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and another on the left. And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him with the same thing. (Matthew 27:38–44)
The Greek term for “robbers” signifies that they were no petty thieves, but miscreants who lived as outlaws and brigands, leaving a path of destruction and human misery in their wake. They may well have been Barabbas’s accomplices, and in that case, the cross on which Christ was crucified would have originally been intended for their leader (which would also mean that these robbers had been accomplices to murder as well as thievery).
In any case, it is clear that they were the cruelest sort of fellows, because while they hung on their own crosses, each in the throes of his own death agonies, they used what little strength was available to them to taunt Christ, who had never done them harm. They mocked Him for the sheer sport of it, which speaks volumes about their true character.
Meanwhile, multitudes were passing by the cross, also hurling insults at the Savior and wagging their heads (vv. 39–40). This was another fulfillment of the array of crucifixion prophecies contained in Psalm 22, where David prophetically describes the cross from the Messiah’s own perspective:
I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
“He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
vv. 6–8
The mockers around the cross cited the same misunderstanding of Jesus’ words in John 2:19 that the false witnesses had used in the trial before Caiaphas. He had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But as John points out, “He was speaking of the temple of His body” (v. 21). Christ’s enemies did not know the prophecy was about to come true, but they persisted in putting a wrong interpretation on His words, and that became the focus of their mockery.
The Sanhedrin was present as well, no doubt inciting much of the mockery. They had come out to the crucifixion site in order to gloat and witness the culmination of their evil plot before they went home to the sanctimonious observance of their Passover meals.
Their mockery was a desperate attempt to convince themselves and all other witnesses that Jesus was not Israel’s Messiah. They believed the Messiah could not be conquered. The fact that Jesus hung there dying so helplessly was proof, as far as they were concerned, that He was not who He claimed to be. So they reveled in their triumph, strutting and swaggering among the crowd of observers, announcing to everyone, but to no one in particular, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him” (Matthew 27:42–43). If they had been the kind of spiritual leaders they were supposed to be, they should have noticed that their words were an almost verbatim fulfillment of the prophecy of Psalm 22:8.
They were the highest priests in Israel. They had everything to do with religion but nothing to do with God. They therefore bore the greatest guilt of all who participated in the humiliation of Christ. Although they pretended to sit in Moses’ seat (Matthew 23:2), they did not believe Moses (John 5:46). Although they claimed to be spokesmen for God, they were actually children of Satan (John 8:44).
As always, Jesus did not revile those who reviled Him. Rather, His only words about
His tormenters as He hung on the cross were a tender plea to God for mercy on their behalf (Luke 23:34). He had come to the cross willingly, knowingly, and in submissive obedience to God—to die for others’ sins. And though the abuse and torture men heaped on Him were agony beyond our ability to fathom—those were nothing compared to the wrath of God against the sin He bore.
11 <span style="font-weight: bold">The Seven Last Sayings of Christ</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay
down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.
—John 10:17–18</span>
because of the physical rigors of crucifixion, Christ spoke only with great difficulty during His final hours on the cross. Scripture records only seven brief sayings from the Savior on the cross, but every one of them reveals that Christ remained sovereignly in control, even as He died. And each of His sayings was rich with significance.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Plea for Forgiveness</span>
The first was a plea for mercy on behalf of His tormentors. Luke records that shortly after the cross was raised on Calvary—while the soldiers were still gambling for His clothing, He prayed to God for forgiveness on their behalf: “And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’“ (Luke 23:33–34).
J. C. Ryle wrote, “These words were probably spoken while our Lord was being nailed to the cross, or as soon as the cross was reared up on end. It is worthy of remark that as soon as the blood of the Great Sacrifice began to flow, the Great High Priest began to intercede.” While others were mocking Him—just as the taunting and jeering reached a fever pitch—Christ responded in precisely the opposite way most men would have. Instead of threatening, lashing back, or cursing His enemies, He prayed to God on their behalf.
As we have seen with so many of the details surrounding Jesus’ death, this priestly intercession on behalf of His own killers was done in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy: “He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12, emphasis added). The whole meaning of the cross is summed up in this one act of intercession. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). Certainly any mortal man would have desired only to curse or revile his killers under these circumstances. One might even think that God incarnate would wish to call down some thunderous blast of judgment against men acting so wickedly. But Christ was on a mission of mercy. He was dying to purchase forgiveness for sins. And even at the very height of His agony, compassion was what filled his heart.
The phrase “for they do not know what they do” does not suggest that they were unaware that they were sinning. Ignorance does not absolve anyone from sin. These people were behaving wickedly, and they knew it. Most were fully aware of the fact of their wrongdoing. Pilate himself had testified of Jesus’ innocence. The Sanhedrin was fully aware that no legitimate charges could be brought against Him. The soldiers and the crowd could easily see that a great injustice was being done, and yet they all gleefully participated. Many of the taunting spectators at Calvary had heard Christ teach and seen Him do miracles. They could not have really believed in their hearts that He deserved to die this way. Their ignorance itself was inexcusable, and it certainly did not absolve them of guilt for what they were doing.
But they were ignorant of the enormity of their crime. They were blinded to the full reality that they were crucifying God the Son. They were spiritually insensitive, because they loved darkness rather than light. Therefore they did not recognize that the One they were putting to death was the Light of the World. “Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8).
How was Jesus’ prayer answered? In innumerable ways. The first answer came with the conversion of one of the thieves on the cross next to Jesus (Luke 23:40–43). Another followed immediately, with the conversion of a centurion, one of the soldiers who had crucified Christ (v. 47). Other answers to the prayer came in the weeks and months that followed the crucifixion—particularly at Pentecost—as untold numbers of people in Jerusalem were converted to Christ. No doubt many of them were the same people who had clamored for Jesus’ death and railed at Him from the foot of the cross. We’re told in Acts 6:7, for example, that a great number of the temple priests later confessed Jesus as Lord.
It is important to understand that Jesus’ plea for his killers’ forgiveness did not guarantee the immediate and unconditional forgiveness of everyone who participated in the crucifixion. He was interceding on behalf of all who would repent and turn to Him as Lord and Savior. His prayer was that when they finally realized the enormity of what they had done and sought the heavenly Father’s forgiveness for their sin, He would not hold the murder of His beloved Son against them. Divine forgiveness is never granted to people who remain in unbelief and sin. Those who clung to their hatred of Jesus were by no means automatically absolved from their crime by Jesus’ prayer. But those who repented and sought forgiveness, like the centurion, or the thief on the cross, or the priests, or the people in the crowd—all who later embraced Him would find abundant mercy in answer to Christ’s petition on their behalf.
The prayer was a token of mercy offered to all who heard. He prayed aloud for their sakes (cf. John 11:42). Their sin was so unfathomably heinous that if witnesses had not actually heard Him pray for His killers’ forgiveness, most might have assumed they had committed an unpardonable offense.
The forgiveness Christ prayed for is freely offered to all (Revelation 22:17) In fact, God is eager to forgive repentant sinners. (The Prodigal Son’s father pictures God’s eagerness to forgive.) He pleads for every sinner to be reconciled to Him (2 Corinthians 5:20; Ezekiel 18:3–32; Acts 17:30). Those who do, He promises to lavish freely with forgiveness. And that offer was extended even to those who personally participated in the murder of Jesus.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Promise of Salvation</span>
Christ’s second utterance from the cross marks the first glorious fulfillment of His prayer for His killers’ forgiveness, and it shows how generously that forgiveness was bestowed, even on the most unlikely of recipients.
As the hours of agony passed on the cross, one of the two thieves who had mocked Christ earlier now had a change of heart. What prompted the change is not mentioned. Perhaps the thief heard and was touched by Jesus’ prayer for mercy, realizing that it applied to him. Whatever prompted his turnaround, it was a tremendous miracle.
The man was undoubtedly one of the most thoroughly degenerate people on the scene. He and his confederate were career criminals, men whose lives had been devoted to thievery and mayhem. The deep-down bad-to-the-bone wickedness of their character was shown by the fact that they used their dying strength to join in the taunting of Christ. They obviously knew of His innocence, because the repentant thief finally rebuked his cohort, saying, “This Man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Yet until one of them repented, they both were heaping ridicule and scorn on Him anyway.
But there came a point when one thief’s taunting turned to silence, and the silence turned to repentance, and the thief’s heart was utterly changed. As he studied Jesus, suffering all that abuse so patiently—never reviling or insulting His tormentors—the thief began to see that this Man on the center cross was indeed who He claimed to be. The proof of his repentance is seen in his immediate change of behavior, as his derisive insults turned to words of praise for Christ.
First he rebuked his partner in crime: “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong” (vv. 40–41). In saying that much, he confessed his own guilt, and he also acknowledged the justice of the penalty he had been given. He affirmed the innocence of Christ as well.
Then he turned to Jesus and confessed Him as Lord: “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (v. 42).
That confession of Jesus as Lord and King was immediately followed by the second of Jesus’ seven last sayings: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise’ ” (v. 43).
No sinner was ever given more explicit assurance of salvation. This most unlikely of saints was received immediately and unconditionally into the Savior’s kingdom. The incident is one of the greatest biblical illustrations of the truth of justification by faith.
This man had done nothing to merit salvation. Indeed, he was in no position to do anything meritorious. Already gasping in the throes of his own death agonies, he had no hope of ever earning Christ’s favor. But realizing that he was in an utterly hopeless situation, the thief sought only a modest token of mercy from Christ: “Remember me.”
His request was a final, desperate, end-of-his-rope plea for a small mercy he knew he did not deserve. It echoes the plaintive cry of the publican, who “would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ ” (Luke 18:13). For either man to be granted eternal life and received into the kingdom, it had to be on the merits of Another. And yet in both cases, Jesus gave full and immediate assurance of complete forgiveness and eternal life. Those are classic proofs that justification is by faith alone.
Jesus’ words to the dying thief conveyed to him an unqualified promise of full forgiveness, covering every evil deed he had ever done. He wasn’t expected to atone for his own sins, do penance, or perform any ritual. He wasn’t consigned to purgatory—though if there really were such a place, and if the doctrines that invariably accompany belief in purgatory were true, this man would have been assured a long stay there. But instead, his forgiveness was full, and free, and immediate: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That was all Christ said to him. But it was all the thief needed to hear. He was still suffering unspeakable physical torment, but the misery in his soul was now gone. For the first time in his life, he was free from the burden of his sin. The Savior, at his side, was bearing that sin for him. And the thief was now clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness. Soon they would be in Paradise together. The thief had Christ’s own word on it.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Provision for His Mother</span>
Jesus’ enemies were not the only spectators at the cross. As word got around Jerusalem that morning that Christ was under arrest and had been condemned to death by the Sanhedrin, some of His closest loved ones came to be near Him. John 19:25 describes the scene: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” Some interpreters believe John mentions only three women, and that “His mother’s sister” is the same person as “Mary the wife of Clopas.” But that would mean these two sisters were both named Mary, and that seems highly unlikely. Instead, it seems
John was saying there were three women named Mary present (Jesus’ mother, Mrs. Clopas, and Mary Magdalene), as well as a fourth woman (Mary’s sister) whose name is not given—but she might have been Salome, the mother of James and John. John also indicates in verse 26 that he himself was present, referring to himself the way he always did in his Gospel, as “the disciple whom [Jesus] loved” (cf. John 21:20–24).
The pain of watching Jesus die must have been agonizing for Jesus’ loved ones. But for no one was it more difficult than Mary, His earthly mother. Years before, at His birth, the elderly prophet Simeon had told her, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35, emphasis added). The sword Simeon spoke of was now piercing her heart, as she watched her firstborn Son die.
She had reared Him from childhood. She knew His utter perfection better than anyone. And yet as she watched, crowds of people poured contempt on her Son, cruelly mocking and abusing Him. His bleeding, emaciated form hung helplessly on the cross, and all she could do was watch His agony. The sorrow and pain such a sight would cause His mother is unfathomable. And yet instead of shrieking and crumpling in hysteria, turning and fleeing in terror, or falling into a faint at the horrible sight, she stood. She is the very model of courage.
Jesus saw her standing and grieving there, and His third saying from the cross reflects the tender love of a Son for His mother. “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26–27). When Jesus said, “Behold your son,” He was not referring to Himself. He probably nodded at John. He was making a gracious provision for Mary in the years to come. He was delegating to John the responsibility to care for Mary in her old age.
This was a beautiful gesture, and it says a lot about the personal nature of Jesus’ love. Although He was dying under the most excruciating kind of anguish, Jesus, the King of love, selflessly turned aside to care for the earthly needs of those who stood by His side. Although He was occupied with the most important event in the history of redemption, He remembered to make provision for the needs of one woman, His mother.
<span style="font-style: italic">He addresses her as “woman.” Nowhere in the Gospels does He ever call her “mother”; only “woman.” The expression conveys no disrespect. But it does underscore the fact that Christ was much more to Mary than a Son. He was her Savior, too (cf. Luke 1:47). Mary was no sinless co-redemptrix.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">She was as dependent on divine grace as the lowliest of sinners</span>, and after Christ reached adulthood, her relationship to Him was the same as that of any obedient believer to the Lord. She was a disciple; He was the Master.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Christ Himself rebuked those who wanted to elevate Mary to a place of extraordinary veneration</span>: “A certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!’ But He said, ‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’ ”(Luke 11:27–28). Mary was blessed because she was obedient to the Word of God—the same as any other believer. Her position as Christ’s mother did not carry with it any special titles such as comediatrix, queen of heaven, or any of the other forms of deification medieval superstition has attached to the popular concept of Mary.
Let’s be perfectly clear: It is a form of idolatry to bestow on Mary honor, titles, or attributes that in effect give her a coequal status in the redemptive work of her Son or elevate her as a special object of veneration.
Nonetheless, Christ loved and honored His mother as a mother. He fulfilled the fifth commandment as perfectly as He fulfilled them all. And part of the responsibility of honoring one’s parents is the duty to see that they are cared for in their old age. Christ did not neglect that duty.
It is perhaps significant that Jesus did not commit Mary to the care of His own half-brothers. Mary was evidently a widow by now. Nothing is said of Joseph after the gospel narratives about Jesus’ birth and childhood. Apparently he had died by the time Jesus began His public ministry. But Scripture suggests that after Jesus’ birth Mary and Joseph had a marital relationship that was in every sense normal (Matthew 1:25). Despite the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, Scripture does not allow us to believe Mary remained perpetually a virgin. On the contrary, the gospels clearly state that Jesus had brothers (Mark 3:31–35; John 2:12; Luke 8:19–21). Matthew even names them: “James, Joses, Simon, and Judas” (Matthew 13:55). They would have in fact been half-brothers, as the natural offspring of Mary and Joseph.
Why didn’t Jesus appoint one of His own brothers to look after Mary? Because, according to John 7:5, “His brothers did not believe in Him.” They became believers when Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore Acts 1:14 records that they were among the group meeting for prayer in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost: “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers” (emphasis added).
But they were evidently not believers yet when Jesus died. So as He was dying on the cross, He committed His mother to the care of His beloved disciple, John.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Petition to the Father
</span>Christ’s fourth saying from the cross is by far the richest with mystery and meaning. Matthew writes, “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ ” (Matthew 27:45–46).
It might seem at first glance that Christ was merely reciting the words of Psalm 22:1 (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?”). But given the fact that all of Psalm 22 is an extended prophecy about the crucifixion, it might be better to see the psalm as a prophetic anticipation of the cry of Jesus’ heart as He bore the sins of the world on the cross. It was no mere recitation.
Some commentators have gone to great lengths to explain why Jesus would utter such words. To them, it seems unthinkable that Jesus would actually feel abandoned on the cross—and even more unthinkable to surmise that God in any sense abandoned His beloved Son. And so they insist that Jesus was merely reciting Scripture, not expressing what He truly felt in His heart.
But that betrays a serious misunderstanding of what was taking place on the cross. As Christ hung there, He was bearing the sins of the world. He was dying as a substitute for others. To Him was imputed the guilt of their sins, and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. And the very essence of that punishment was the outpouring of God’s wrath against sinners. In some mysterious way during those awful hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against sin, and the recipient of that wrath was God’s own beloved Son!
In this lies the true meaning of the cross. Those who try to explain the atoning work of Christ in any other terms inevitably end up nullifying the truth of Christ’s atonement altogether. Christ was not merely providing an example for us to follow. He was no mere martyr being sacrificed to the wickedness of the men who crucified Him. He wasn’t merely making a public display so that people would see the awfulness of sin. He wasn’t offering a ransom price to Satan—or any of the other various explanations religious liberals, cultists, and pseudo-Christian religionists have tried to suggest over the years.
Here’s what was happening on the cross: God was punishing His own Son as if He had committed every wicked deed done by every sinner who would ever believe. And He did it so that He could forgive and treat those redeemed ones as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness.
Scripture teaches this explicitly: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5). “He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief … [in order to] make His soul an offering for sin” (vv. 9–10). “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26). “What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Galatians 3:13). “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh” (1 Peter 3:18). “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2).
That word propitiation speaks of an offering made to satisfy God. Christ’s death was a satisfaction rendered to God on behalf of those whom He redeemed. “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Isaiah 53:10, emphasis added). God the Father saw the travail of His Son’s soul, and He was satisfied (v. 11). Christ made propitiation by shedding His blood (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17).
It was God’s own wrath against sin, God’s own righteousness, and God’s own sense of justice that Christ satisfied on the cross. The shedding of His blood was a sin offering rendered to God. His death was not merely a satisfaction of public justice, nor was it a ransom paid to Satan. Neither Satan nor anyone else had any right to claim a ransom from God for sinners. But when Christ ransomed the elect from sin (1 Timothy 2:6), the ransom price was paid to God. Christ died in our place and in our stead—and He received the very same outpouring of divine wrath in all its fury that we deserved for our sin. It was a punishment so severe that a mortal man could spend all eternity in the torments of hell, and still he would not have begun to exhaust the divine wrath that was heaped on Christ at the cross.
This was the true measure of Christ’s sufferings on the cross. The physical pains of crucifixion—dreadful as they were—were nothing compared to the wrath of the Father against Him. The anticipation of this was what had caused Him to sweat blood in the garden. This was why He had looked ahead to the cross with such horror. We cannot begin to fathom all that was involved in paying the price of our sin. It’s sufficient to understand that all our worst fears about the horrors of hell—and more—were realized by Him as He received the due penalty of others’ wrongdoing.
And in that awful, sacred hour, it was as if the Father abandoned Him. Though there was surely no interruption in the Father’s love for Him as a Son, God nonetheless turned away from Him and forsook Him as our Substitute.
<span style="font-style: italic">The fact that Christ—suffering from exhaustion, blood loss, asphyxia, and all the physical anguish of the cross—nonetheless made this cry “with a loud voice” proves it was no mere recitation of a psalm. This was the outcry of His soul; it was the very thing the psalm foretold. And as we shall see in the chapter that follows, all nature groaned with Him.
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<span style="font-weight: bold">A Pleading for Relief
</span>“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst!’ ” (John 19:28). This was Christ’s fifth utterance from the cross. As the end neared, Christ uttered a final plea for physical relief. Earlier He had spat out the vinegar mixed with painkiller that had been offered Him. Now, when He asked for relief from the horrible thirst of dehydration, He was given only a sponge saturated with pure vinegar. John writes, “Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth” (v. 29).
In His thirst we see the true humanity of Christ. Although He was God incarnate, in His physical body, He experienced all the normal human limitations of real human flesh. And none was more vivid than this moment of agonizing thirst after hours of hanging on the cross. He suffered bodily to an extent few have ever suffered. And—again, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled—all He was given to salve His fiery thirst was vinegar. “They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 69:21).
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Proclamation of Victory</span>
John’s account of the crucifixion continues: “So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). In the Greek text, this sixth utterance of Jesus from the cross is a single word: Tetelestai! Luke 23:46 indicates He made this cry “with a loud voice.”
It was a triumphant outcry, full of rich meaning. He did not mean merely that His earthly life was over. He meant that the work the Father had given Him to do was now complete. As He hung there, looking every bit like a pathetic, wasted victim, He nonetheless celebrated the greatest triumph in the history of the universe. Christ’s atoning work was finished; redemption for sinners was complete; and He was triumphant.
Christ had fulfilled on behalf of sinners everything the law of God required of them. Full atonement had been made. Everything the ceremonial law foreshadowed had been accomplished. God’s justice was satisfied. The ransom for sin was paid in full. The wages of sin were settled forever. All that remained was for Christ to die so that He might rise again.
<span style="font-weight: bold">That is why nothing can be added to the work of Christ for salvation. No religious ritual—neither baptism, nor penance, nor any other human work—needs to be added to make His work effectual. No supplemental human works could ever augment or improve the atonement He purchased on the cross.</span> The sinner is required to contribute nothing to earn forgiveness or a right standing with God; the merit of Christ alone is sufficient for our full salvation. Tetelestai! His atoning work is done. All of it. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
<span style="font-weight: bold">A Prayer of Consummation</span>
Christ’s final saying from the cross, right after “It is finished!” was a prayer that expressed the unqualified submission that had been in His heart from the very beginning. Luke records those final words: “And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, “into Your hands I commit My spirit.” ’ Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).
Christ died as no other man has ever died. In one sense He was murdered by the hands of wicked men (Acts 2:23). In another sense it was the Father who sent Him to the cross and bruised Him there, putting Him to grief—and it pleased the Father to do so (Isaiah 53:10). Yet in still another sense, no one took Christ’s life. He gave it up willingly for those whom He loved (John 10:17–18).
<span style="font-weight: bold">When He finally expired on the cross, it was not with a wrenching struggle against His killers. He did not display any frenzied death throes. His final passage into death—like every other aspect of the crucifixion drama—was a deliberate act of His own sovereign will, showing that to the very end, He was sovereignly in control of all that was happening. John says, “Bowing His head, He gave up His spirit” (John 19:30). Quietly, submissively, He simply yielded up His life.
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Everything had come to pass exactly as He said it would. Not only Jesus, but also His killers, and the mocking crowd, together with Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin—all had perfectly fulfilled the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God to the letter.
And thus Christ calmly and majestically displayed His utter sovereignty to the end. It seemed to all who loved Him—and even many who cared little for Him—like a supreme tragedy. But it was the greatest moment of victory in the history of redemption, and Christ would make that fact gloriously clear when He burst triumphantly from the grave just days later.
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MacArthur, John: The Murder of Jesus : A Study of How Jesus Died. Nashville, TN : Word Pub., 2000, S. 189
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