Part 20 (1/2)
III. ”_To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise._”--We cannot explore all the causes which brought about so great a change in this man, and produced so lofty an ideal of his Fellow-sufferer. We have to deal rather with the response of Jesus. Lost by the first Adam, Paradise was being regained by the last; and it is now not far away. A dying man may see the sun leave the zenith, but ere it set in the western wave he may be in the land of Paradise. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. There is no State of unconsciousness between the two.
We close our eyes on the dimming spectacles of this world at one moment, to behold the King in His beauty the next.
Men may strip Jesus of everything, but they cannot touch His power to save. In a moment of His greatest weakness He was able to rescue a man from the very brink of perdition, and take him as a trophy of His power to Heaven. What will He not be able to do now that the mortal weakness is pa.s.sed, and that He is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour!
IV. ”_My G.o.d, My G.o.d, why hast Thou forsaken Me?_”--It would be between eleven o'clock and noon that these incidents took place; but from noon till three in the afternoon a pall of darkness hung over the cross and city. We know not how it came, but it appears to have silenced all the uproar which had surged around the cross, and to have filled the minds of all with awe. Men might have gazed rudely on His dying agony; Nature refused to behold it. Men had stripped Him, but an unseen hand drew drapery about Him. For three hours it lasted, and was a befitting emblem of the darkness that enveloped His soul, when He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, ”that we might be made the righteousness of G.o.d in Him.”
Do you wonder that He felt thus, and question how such a forsaking had been possible at such an hour? There is but one explanation. This was not a normal human experience. Only once in the history of the race has all iniquity been laid on one head; only once has the curse of the sin of the world been borne by one heart; only once has it been possible, in drinking the cup of death, to taste death for every man.
”He who knew no sin was made sin for us. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.” On no other hypothesis than that Jesus was the Lamb of G.o.d, bearing away the sin of the world, can you account for the darkness of that midday midnight which obscured His soul. I cannot tell what transpired; I have no philosophy of the Atonement to offer; I only believe that the whole nature of G.o.d was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself; and that, in virtue of what was done there, we may apply for forgiveness to the faithfulness and justice of G.o.d.
V. ”_I thirst._”--During the hours of spiritual anguish, our Lord was largely oblivious to His physical needs; now, as the long hours pa.s.sed, these latter began to a.s.sert themselves. Inflammation, spreading from hands and feet, had resulted in a fever of thirst. He had refused the medicated drink offered at the beginning of His sufferings, because He had no desire to avoid one throb of anguish which lay in His path; but there was no reason why He should not drink of the sour wine which stood hard by the cross, now that He had drunk the cup which G.o.d had placed to His lips.
As He looked through the long line of predictions that bore on His pa.s.sion. He could see that they had all been fulfilled save one; and, that this Scripture might be fulfilled, He said, ”I thirst.” Some, who stood near the cross, and, in the growing light, began to regain their confidence, tried to make ridicule of this plaintive e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n; but one who noticed His pale and parched lips was touched with pity, and took a stalk of hyssop, which was just long enough to reach the mouth of the Sufferer, and elevating a sponge dipped in vinegar, fulfilled thus unwittingly the ancient prediction, ”They gave Me also gall for My meat, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.”
VI. ”_It is finished._”--As we compare the Gospels, we find that these words were spoken with a loud voice. It was, in fact, the shout of a conqueror. Finished the long list of prophecies, which closed, like gates, behind Him. Finished the types and shadows of the Jewish ritual. Finished the work which the Father had given Him to do.
Finished the matchless beauty of a perfect life. Finished the work of man's redemption. Through the eternal Spirit, He had offered Himself without spot to G.o.d; and by that one sacrifice for sin, once for all and forever. He had perfected them that are being sanctified. He had done all that was required to reconcile the world unto G.o.d, and to make an end of sin.
Finished! Let the words roll in volumes of melody through all the spheres! There is nothing now left for man to do but enter on the results of Christ's finished work. As the Creator finished on the evening of the sixth day all the work which He had made, so did the Redeemer cease on the sixth day from the work of Atonement, and, lo! it was very good.
VII. ”_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit._”--The words were quoted from the Book of Psalms, which He so dearly loved. He only prefixed the name of Father; for the cloud which had extorted the cry, _My G.o.d, My G.o.d_, had broken, and under a blue heaven of conscious fellows.h.i.+p He exchanged it for _Father_.
If the words, ”It is finished,” be taken as our Lord's farewell to the world He was leaving, these words are surely His greeting to that on whose confines He was standing. It seems as though the spirit of Christ were poising itself before it departed to the Father, and it saw before no dismal abyss, no gulf of darkness, no footless chaos, but hands, even the hands of the Father, and to these He committed Himself.
The first martyr, who died after Christ, pa.s.sed away with words of the same import upon his lips, with a significant alteration, ”_Lord Jesus_, receive My spirit.” We may use them as they have been used by countless thousands in all ages; and we know Him whom we have believed, and are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him.
And when Jesus had said these words, He bowed His head upon His breast, and breathed out His spirit. No one took His life from Him: He laid it down of Himself: He had power to lay it down.
So ended that marvellous scene. The expectation of all the ages was more than realized. If it be true that on that day a tidal wave of immense volume swept around the world, and rose high up in all rivers and estuaries, this may be taken as an emblem of the much more abounding grace, which on that day rose high above the mighty obstacles of human sin, and is destined to lift the entire universe nearer G.o.d.
For by it G.o.d will reconcile all things to Himself, whether in heaven or on earth.
Three items remain to be noticed.
At the moment that Jesus died there was a great earthquake, which made the earth tremble and the rocks rend, so that the ancient graves were opened, preparatory to the rising of the bodies of the saints on the Resurrection morning, following the Lord from the power of Death. And when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, charged to see the sentence executed, saw the earthquake and the things that were done, they feared exceedingly, saying, ”Truly this was the Son of G.o.d.”
The vail of the Temple, also, was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, at the moment that the Great High Priest Jesus was entering the Temple not made with hands, with the blood of His propitiation. Is it to be wondered at that afterward many priests, who had been in close contiguity to that marvellous type, became obedient to the faith?
Finally, from the pierced side of Christ came out blood and water, as John solemnly attests. ”He knoweth that he saith true.” This was a symptom that there had been heart-rupture, and that the Lord had literally died of a broken heart. But it was also a symbol of ”the double cure” which Jesus has effected. Blood to atone; water to cleanse. ”This is He that came by water and blood, not with the water only.”
x.x.xII
Christ's Burial
”Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.”--JOHN xix. 40.
”Against the day of My burying hath she kept this!” so had Jesus spoken when Mary anointed His feet with the very precious spikenard. I do not suppose that any in the room save herself and her Lord understood His reference; not one of them believed that He would really die, and His body be carried to the tomb; but Mary knew better. She had sat at His feet, and drunk in His very spirit. In the glow of the evening twilight, when Martha was busy in the house, and Lazarus was away in the field, they two had sat together, and Jesus, in words similar to those He had so often used to His apostles, had told her of what was coming upon Him. Mary believed it all. She knew that she would not be present at that scene. She did not think that any would be able to perform the last loving rites for that beloved form. She feared that it might be utterly dishonored; but she did what she could, she came beforehand to anoint the Lord's body for His burying.
It was a beautiful act of tender foresight. But in the sense of being absolutely necessary, as the only act of care and love bestowed on the Lord's dead body, it was not required; for He who at birth had prepared the body for His Son, took care that in death it should receive due honor. When Jesus expired, Luke tells us that many of His acquaintances, and the women that had followed Him from Galilee were standing afar off, beholding all that was done; John too was there, and others who had loved Him and were the grateful monuments of His healing power: they must have wondered greatly what would be done with that loved form. Yet what could they do?--they were poor and unimportant; they had no influence with the capricious and terrible Pilate; they seemed helpless to do more than wait with choking sobs until some possible chance should allow them to intervene.
Meanwhile G.o.d was preparing a solution of the difficulty. Amongst the crowd around the cross there stood a very wealthy man named Joseph. He was a native of the little town of Arimathea, that lay among the fruitful hills of Ephraim; but was resident in Jerusalem, where he had considerable property. Some of this lay in the close neighborhood of the highway by which the cross of our Lord had been erected. He was also a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, but it is expressly stated that he had not consented to the counsel or deed of them; if indeed he was summoned to that secret midnight meeting in the palace of Caiaphas, he certainly did not go; he was therefore innocent of any complicity in our Lord's condemnation and death. He was a good man and a just; and like Nathanael, and Simeon, and many more, he waited for the kingdom of G.o.d. More than this, he was a disciple of Jesus, though secretly.