The Crucifixion

Luke 23: 33.

“And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.”

When Pilate had yielded to the tumultuous demands of the populace, and given up our blessed Lord Jesus to be scourged and mocked, the infuriated multitude led him away to be crucified. Taking from his lacerated body the royal purple which they had thrown over him in ridicule of his kingship, they clothed him in his own humble raiment and seamless coat. At the same time, and to add ignominy, they conducted two malefactors, destined to the same death. While this sad procession wjis leaving the eastern part of the city, we have reason to believe that Judas Iscariot was lying a ghastly corpse, having been driven to suicide by his despair. The street leading through the city and beyond the wall of that day has been well called the Way of Sorrows. It conducted them to a spot, never called a hill in the Scriptures, and still less a mount, named the place of Skulls, Golgotha, or in Latin Calvary. On the way to suffering it was the inhuman custom to lay the instrument of death as a burden on the prisoner. In this case there had been such an accumulation of enfeebling causes, in Gethsemane, the courts, and the place of bloody scourging, that our Lord sank under the weight. Even the transverse beam, supposing this to have been the burden, was too much for his sinking humanity. They therefore dragged into their service an African, of Gyrene, who was just then returning from the fields. The name of this man and his sons have thus found a place within the sacred record. We may conjecture that he was suspected of some sympathy or connexion; and it was his honour to follow Jesus, sustaining at least the end of the cross. The way was swoln with a pressing multitude, and among them were many women, friends of the Lord, unshaken by the sudden fanaticism, and pouring out cries of Lamentation. Jesus heard these wailings and turned upon them his sorrowing and benignant eyes, saying. Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; that is, your grief though kindly and pious is not founded on a full comprehension of this event; for I suffer that which I came into the world to endure, willingly offering this sacrifice. But weep for yourselves and for your children, that is. Your city and land must shortly suffer the vengeance of Almighty God for this and other crimes.

On arriving at the fatal spot, they hurried the preparations for a shameful and lingering death. And here we may pause a little to inquire what is meant by crucifixion. It is above all necessary that we discharre from our minds all those modern and sentimental decorations which men have hung about the cross; making it the symbol of salvation, borrowing its shape for majestic cathedrals, setting it up in gold and gems, and painting it on banners and armorial shields. These are associations posterior to the great oblation. Not such was the rugged tree wMcli was now to be let down into its rocky socket; and whick was viewed by tkat glaring crowd, as similar assemblages in our day regard tke scaffold, tke kalter and tke gallows.

Crucifixion was preeminently an ignominious and most excruciating mode of deatk; common among tke Komans (till tke reign of Constantine,) and from tkem transferred to Judea as a Roman province. It appears from numerous Latin works tkat it was inflicted ckiefly on slaves, and suck gross offenders as kigkway-robbers and pirates. Upon one tkus suspended on a rack by transfixed bands and feet, deatk came on by frigktful tortures. Ancient writers tell us tkat it was commonly a suffering for twelve kours, tkougk in rare cases extended to more tkan twice tkat lengtk of time. Tke description of wkat learned men give us as tke series of mortal symptoms would karrow tke feelings witkout edification of keart.

Suck was tke puniskment decreed to our meek and innocent Redeemer. Among tke customs prevailing wkere tkis barbarous penalty was known, it was usual to mingle for the criminal a cup of strong wine with drugs. The officials gave our Lord vinegar mingled with gall, which he tasted hut put away from him. The soothing potion of wine and my.Th, by whomsoever offered, he absolutely rejected. At the third hour, or nine o’clock of the day which we name Friday, Jesus was nailed to the cross, between the malefactors. “No doubt this wa studiously intended to exhibit him as the chief of sinners. And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, “And he was numbered with the transgressors.” Above his head was the title or inscription, in the three languages most known, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Thus lifted up, in pangs which we cannot understand, and amidst inward sorrows communicable to no creature, our Lord opened his sacred lips with this utterance, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

But about the very time when the forgiving Lamb of God was uttering this prayer for his murderers, the soldiers at the foot of the cross were dividing his garments as so much booty, and even gambling for that peculiar vestment which being woven in one piece could not <be divided. This also had been predicted by David, when he said in the name of the Messiah Ps. 22:18 “They divided my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture.” The place of execution was filled with such crowds as always gather at scenes of blood, swelled in this instance by the paschal solemnity. The populace as they pressed forward and gazed, and the multitudes who passed by in a living stream, made a jest of these agonies, reviled our Lord, and nodded their heads in derision, crying. Ah “thou that destroyest the temple and bulkiest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Men of higher rank, in church and state, encouraged this scoffing, and said “He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be Messiah, God’s Elect One, King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe.” But O my brethren, if he had given this proof of his power, which was easy, he had left our salvation incomplete! The Gentile guards united in the insults, and also exclaimed “If thou be the King of tte Jews, save thyself!” One of the crucified malefactors, as if iDhrensied with anguish and depravity, took up the railing, and said, “If thou be the Messiah, save thyself and us.” It seemed indeed as if the mission and work of Christ were utterly frustrated. But it was in this moment of desolation that our Redeemer asserted his sovereign power by absolving the repentant thief, and declaring “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!”

The mind is somewhat relieved from the sight of malignant scoffers, by contemplating a little group around the cross, of those fi’iends who had not been scattered by the panic of unbelief. It was Mary the mother of Jesus, another Mary her sister (the wife) of Cleopas, and a thiid Mary surnamed Magdalene. The beloved disciple, a man never terrified by dangers, a son of thunder, and one whose fiery zeal sometimes had needed the Master’s rebuke, was likewise present. The eyes of Jesus bent towards this company, which stood fascinates! by grief and love, as he said, “Woman, behold thy son!” — and to John, “Behold thy Mother!”

Three hours of torture had now elapsed, and it was noon; an interval which measured by pain and the succession of thought might be reckoned an age. From this moment heaven gave signs of awful sympathy with its incarnate Creator, and there was darkness over all the land for three hours, or till three o’clock of our time. About the close of this supernatural darkness, Jesus uttered a lamenting cry in the words of the 22d Psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” Nothing could so express the depth of woe into which our Lord plunged for our sake. Say not that it conflicts with his divinity. The difficulty here is only one of a number of difficulties, in an event which has no parallel, and which baffles all human sj)eculation; since we cannot comprehend even when we adoringly believe, how a Divine Person could suffer penalty, or be abandoned of God. Permanently abandoned he was not; sinfully abandoned he was not; yet so far as the reception of heavenly consolation is concerned, Christ was then and there forsaken. Separated from the godhead he was not; displeasing to God, he was not; but he was “made a curse for us,” bore our imputed guilt, and as our substitute drank the cup of indignation. Let us not analyze what is infinitely beyond our reach, but bow the head and believe and love! The words Eli, Eli, being misapprehended by some present, led them to think it a cry for Elijah the prophet, who was predicted as his forerunner, who had appeared at the Transfiguration, and who the people thought was now summoned from paradise. But the atoning work was well nigh complete, and the Lord, knowing that all things were accomplished, gave vent to the burning demands of the human nature, and said, “I thirst.” So also, in the Psalm twice quoted already, the ancient prophet says, “My tongue cleaveth to my jaws,” and Ps. 69, “for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” One immediately ran to the vessel of vinegar which stood near, took a sponge, filled it with vinegar, and by means of a stalk of hyssop or a long reei or both, reached it upward, to moisten the fevered lips of the dying Lamb of God: who when he had received it said, in a single emphatic word, “It is finished /” Then, crying with a loud voice, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit!” he bowed his head, and expired. It was a voluntary breathing out of life; as he had said before “No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself.” The term of agony as we observe was shorter than that of the malefactors beside him. This was the great climacteric of man’s history. Since earth was formed, no event had been like this, that he who made it should die upon it. The moment was marked by portentous signs. The vail which secluded the Holy of Holies, a sacred tapestry never entered but by the High Priest, and by him once only in the year, was rent in sunder, from the top to the bottom. And this at the very hour of evening sacrifice, when the High Priest must have been standing at the golden altar. The old dispensation is no more. The old priesthood is sup(irseded. The old sacrifices have lost their value, and are absorbed In the one great sacrifice for sin. There was an earthquake, and rocks were rent. As a consequence of this disturbance given to the sepulchral cemeteries, “many bodies of the saints which slept arose,” and after the I’esurrection of Christ came out of their graves, entered the holy city, perhaps in undeniable glory as patriarchs and prophets may have been of the number, and as part of the rising Saviour’s retinue appeared to many disci pies.

But returning to our simple narrative. The Roman centurion, commanding the military guard, observing the words of Jesus in the article of death, looking on that countenance, in that instant of faith, consecration and divine love, and awed by the tokens in heaven and earth, ’ glorified God,’ saying “Certainly this was a righteous man” — nay — “Truly this man was the Son of God;” as he uniformly declared himself to be. And his soldiers assented, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” And all the peoj)le that came together at that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned. And all his acquaintance, and many women, who, in Galilee had believed and followed and served him, including those before named, with Salome and the mother of James and John, the mother of James the Less and Joses, were witnesses of this event, from a suitable distance.

In long preparation of the Hebrew Church during many ages for this redeeming act, in which the Redeemer was to take on himself the penalty, the ignominy and curse, God here taught his peculiar nation to look on this mode of death as an abhorrence. Deut. 21, 22, 23. It was in the Law, ordained respecting one hanged on a tree, ‘’ His body shall not remain all night upon the tree — (for he that is hanged is accursed of God) — that thy land be not defiled.” The Jews therefore, although they had brought the blood and wrath of the greater crime on their heads, were unwilling to incur the less. The next day was to be not merely their Sabbath, but a sabbath of peculiar sanctity, as succeeding their greatest feast, the Passover. The two malefactors were still lingering on their crosses, and seemed likely to survive the sunset, at which the Sabbath would bein. By Pilate’s leave they therefore closed the sufFerino:s of the robbei’^. But when the executioners, breaking the limbs of their victims, came to Jesus, they found it needless thus to rend his sacred body. His blessed spirit had already fled to paradise. And this was an intended coincidence with an Old Testament emblem. For concerning the lamb of passover, which age after age foreshadowed the Lamb of God, it was a solemn resfulation Num. 11: 12 “]N“ot a bone of it shall be broken.” Yet an inhuman soldier, with his spear, pierced that sacred side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. Great anatomists have written many learned treatises on this event, which may be profitably read; agreeing m this, that it was an infalh])Ie proof of death, and that our Lord could not have survived such a wound even if life had not been extinct. “And he that saw it (says the Apostle John, of himself) bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” It further accomplished those words spoken by Zechariah, concerning the conversion of Israel in the last days, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.”

I have accomplished my purpose, of giving a simple narrative of our Loi’d’s death upon the Cross; being that particular event, which of all others he selected to be commemorated by a sacramental ordinance, by all disciples, through all ages; until lie shall come again the second time without sin, unto salvation. (1.) You have before your minds, that event which is set forth in the Eucharist. The rite may have other bearings, but this is its primary intent, which cannot be neglected or overshadowed without doing a violence to the sacrament. Looking forward to this, a few hours before, on the evening of the paschal Thursday, he said as he gave the broken bread, “This do in remembrance of me; and as he gave the wine, This is my blood of the New Covenant shed for many, for the remission of sins.” Put the two things together, and you perceive, that we approach this table aright, when we remember our Lord — when we remember him as shedding his blood for remission — that Is when we remember him as an expiatory oblation. The broken bread, aids the remembrance; it is Christ’s broken body. The fruit of the vine, the cup of blessing which we bless, aids the remembrance — it is the new testament in his blood. “This do ye, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” Mere bread and wine, however consecrated, do not make a sacrament. There must be an eye of faith to look through and beyond the emblem and see Jesus Christ, visibly set forth, crucified among us. It is possible even to eat of this bread and drink of this cup ‘unworthily.’ Ihe Corinthians were guilty of this very sin, “not discerning the Lord’s body,” not penetrating to somewhat beyond the common nutriment and refreshment of a repast, not seeing that all the virtue lay in the atoning death of the Son of God, exhibited ind sealed to faith in this ordinance. All jvhich brings us again to the important ;ruth, that in partaking, we must bend all uhe perceptions of the soul on a single point, Christ on the Cross — Christ broken by the nighty arm of divine justice for

6^
i;’,() THE CRUCIFIXION.

our sins — Christ pouring forth his blood as the basis of that new covenant Avhicli gives to many remission of sins. To this centre or focal point of all theology, I invite your regards this day. The ^’oice of Jesus from the accursed tree, calls to you in bewailing but gracious accents, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth.” Look then. Come hither with me, beloved disciples — for the world without cares for none of these things — come hither, and draw more closely around the Cross. Say with Moses, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight.” Lift up your eyes, and fix them on the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. Read in those benign eyes, swimming in death, a profound, a divinity of love, compassion and saving grace, which death could not quench. Catch those utterances of pity and forgiveness, which mingled with his personal lamentations. “Father forgive them” — “This day shalt thou be with me” — “It is finished” — “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” — Hearest thou? hearest thou? O sinful soul? Hearest thou the Gospel of salvation fi’om the lips of dying love and omnipotence? Can such expiation be unavailing — such prayers unanswered — such welcomes insincere? Need you any further demonstration of Christ’s present readiness? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Can you doubt God’s love? “God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Dare you hesitate as to who are intended by this saving work? You are intended; unless you are one who has never sinned; and the message of the cross is a message to you, and offered to universal acceptance, to your present acceptance. “For this is a faithful saying, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Look steadily at this cross, and you will own its attractive Hirtue according to that word, “And I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me.” Kemember, remember Christ dying for your sins.

2. The view which we are to take of a dying Christ is not natural sympathy with his human sufferinsrs. These were indeed great, unparalleled and unutterable. But it is observable that the bodily pangs of our Lord are not made prominent in the Scripture narrative; and tMs may account for the simplicity of the recital already given in the former part of this discourse. There are individuals, if we should not rather say churches, in which this merely natural apprehension of Jesus Christ and him crucified has been almost the whole of religion. Imagination has been called in to melt the affections, and poetry, eloquence, painting and sculpture have lent their aid. But piety of this sort may attain any height and yet be no cjuality of holiness. There is little devotion in a naked and passive sensibility. A sacrament, or a sermon, like a mighty work of art, may dissolve a hearer in tears, and yet leave him no better. Otherwise, the most susceptible temperament would be the criterion of the greatest saint; when we know on the contrary that persevering hatred of sin and devotion to God’s service exist in many who are little given to gusts of natural passion. Our Lord plainly dissuades us from this simply human and com- 23assionate view of his death, by the words which he turned and spake to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem. Those pictures and gra[)liic crucifixes therefore, not to speak of waxen mockeries and trasical sta2;e representations, which have been common in Romish churches during their Passion week, are observed to leave the very crowds that weep and smite the breast ready next day to go about deeds of violence or license. And the same princiile would apply to verbal painting, artful rhetoric, and such eloquence as should bring before the mind’s eye the dying Saviour as if bleeding in our very presence. Heated imagination, in cases of enthusiasm and rapture, has still more vividly called u]) the apparition of Christ upon the cross; and this has been taken by some as the crowning evidence of their conversion. All in vain; if the matter goes no further. For can any art of pencil, of music, or of style attain to the reality there before the eyes of those who stood around our Saviour’s Cross? And yet, some of these very persons “crucified the Lord of glory!” In the very presence of that divine countenance, and listening to the very tones of that heavenly voice, they drove the nails and urged the spear to the seat of life. Nor are we hastily to conclude that all who burst into tears at beholding the innocent bloodshedding of the Lord, were renewed in the spirit of their minds. Such emotions are certainly not wrong; it is admitted that they are natural. But we are in need of something that is beyond nature. Tender sympathies and gushing pity may even aid our religious affections; but they must not be rested in. And it is utterly vain and deceptive to make our thoughts terminate in the sufferings of Christ, however deeply we may sink under them, unless we pass through them all, to the mysterious intent and efficacy of his agony.

3. The death of Christ, exhibited in the sacrament, is to be viewed by Faith. Here we pass from the region of nature to the region of grace. The faculty which looks through the elements of bread and wine, and through all outward pains of a holy being, is faith. It is faith, that beholds this spotless Lamb, laid on the altar of divine Justice. It is faith, that sees the penalty here exacted of the blessed Substitute. It is faith, that hears the invitation extended to every sinner in the gospel. It is faith, that perceives the salvation as comylete, suitable, available, present, made over, and held out for the acceptance of the individual soul. It is faith, that actually accepts it, laying the hand of ajDjDroyriation on the head of the unblemished victim that palpitates beneath the sacrificial sword. And it is faith, that renews these very acts of reception, surrender, and adhesion, with equal or increasing readiness, again and aofain, throu’h all the Christian life. — In other words Faith ‘discerns the Lord’s body;’ faith receives it; faith feeds upon it. The lively emblems of this holy table are helps to faith. We believe the more promptly and strongly, when we look on a rite, instituted by the very hands which were presently to be pierced for our sake, and transmitted from that upper chamber to this day, through every vicissitude of persecution, division and error. And we believe the more tenderly, and cling to our faith the more earnestly, when we discover in these symbols, not a sign merely, but a seal, of divdne appointment, pledging unto us, and to each of us, who so eats and so drinks, all the loving kindness and covenant grace purchased by the death of Christ. 4. Lastly; The true disciple is disposed to part with his sins at the Cross. That is to say, he exercises not only faith but repentance. There is no true repentance which does not spring from faith. Some people think they will repent first, and then come to Christ. Vain thought! As if one should forsake darkness first, and then come to the light. Conviction there may be, prior to believing, or remorse, comyunction, fear, legal sorrow, but true repentance is “a tear that glistens in the eye of faith.” And, as we learned long ago, Kepentance unto life includes not only a true sense of sin, but an ‘^ apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.” For which cause many go all their life long without any tenderness of repentance, because they will not come to Christ; who is exalted a prince and Saviour “to give repentance and remission of sins.” — The head becomes often as waters, and the eyes a fountain of tears, at the foot of the Cross; or (what most nearly resembles it) at the table of this sacrament. If you behold Jesus ‘’bruised for your iniquities’’ you have a reason for hating and forsaking sin, more powerful than the lightnings of Sinai. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? “* The system which we professed at our initiation was founded in that event. “Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” There is a sense in which we were put to death with Christ on the cross. The nails which fastened him there passed through us also. “For if one died for all, then all died.” 2 Cor. 5: 14.f Therefore Paul exclaims, “Henceforth let no man trouble me” — let none hinder me in the race of holy service — “for I bear in my body the marks, stig- 7)iata of the Lord Jesus.” “I am crucified with Christ — nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” J Mark how

* Rom. 6:3. t See original. J Gal. 2: 20.

1y8 THE CEUCIFIXION.

he comes back to Ohrist’s giving himself lip to death. The cause of Christ’s death and of all his sufferings was our sins. This is brought palpably before us in the Lord’s Supper. We may therefore very properly partake of this our New Testament passover, with ‘’ bitter herbs;” mourning over our sins, as the true murderers of our blessed Lord. And the sense of pardon derived from believing apprehensions of his dying love will be so far from hindering this divorce between us and our sins, that it will drive us with new impulsion to effect it. The grace is infinite; but it is the grace not only of justification but of sanctification. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? ““” Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The very profession of faith, which we make at the Lord’s Table, implies our turning the back forever upon the world, the flesh, and the devil. To look with eyes of love on the Lord Jesus, symbolically broken in this loaf and bleed-THE CRUCIFIXIOIf. 139

ing in this cup — to gaze into the recesses and deep meanings of those eyes of divine pity and eternal love — is at one and the same time to swear allegiance, and yield yourself in espousals never to be broken. You cannot help it! If you hesitate, if you draw back, if you linger, if there is aught you love better — how is it possible that you can believe! Oh no! Faith will take no denial. She is a queenly Grace. She will bring you to Jesus. She will knit your hand to his. She will join you in a covenant never to be forgotten. By eveiy pang that pierced his heart upon the cross, she will argue with you and constrain you to come out of the land of his enemies, and live forever under his rule. We take our stand as a family of brothers this day on this profession. By this Cross we are crucified unto the world, and the world is crucified unto us. This ordinance erects the Cross in the midst of our assembly. On this one point all eyes are fastened. Not only so, on this tree of death all of us are in a certain sense suspended. We are no more of the world, but of the cross, (jod forbid that we should glory save in the

Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! This is to be made conformable to his death and to have fellowship with his sufferings. The vast atoning wonder, which eclipsed the day and cleft ‘mountains and evoked the bodies of ancient saints from their sepulchres,’ has meanings and virtues which Eternity holds in reserve. As the cherubim of glory stooped over the golden coronet of the Ark, so these “things Angels desire to look into.”

“Angels that hymn the Great I Am Fall down and veil before the Lamb,”

Think you that heaven forgets the redemj)tion of Golgotha! Hark! What voice is that which the beloved disciple hears, as he falls like one dead? “I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold I live for evermore. Amen!” What vision is this which catches his eye in the midst of the throne and the cherubic beings? It is “a Lamb as it had been slain.” What anthem echoes from the elders, when they come with harps and odors? “Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kingdom and tongue and ])eople and nation, and hast made us to our God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth.” And what ocean of harmonious song is this which surges in waves of adoration from the surround ino* multitudinous circles, of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands? “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive Power, and Riches, and Wisdom, and Strength, and Honour, and Glory and Blessing!” Amen and Amen.