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1 FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO (Luke 23:34) The first word from the Cross is a prayer and shows the Lord Jesus making beauty out of a thing of shame. He prayed for his murderers and this was a new way of dying. Death as such is not redemptive, but he made it redemptive both by the perfection of his character and by the way he accepted and transformed it. The men who nailed Jesus to the Cross were doing their duty, carrying out a routine job. So the Lord Jesus gives them the benefit of the doubt, making generous allowance for excusable ignorance. We know that they were under orders and were paid hands putting into effect the evil plans of other men's minds. Jesus anticipated that in the future they would actually come to recognize his full identity and believe on him as the Lord and Saviour unto salvation. Then these words would ring in their ears and echo in their hearts and they would be able to forgive themselves for what they did. Jesus not only could foresee he also fore-acted. He prays for their forgiveness before they are repentant of their sin. What was a prayer for the soldiers is also a prayer for us. It is the petition of the great high priest as he offers the one complete sacrifice of himself as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world.
TODAY THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE (Luke 23:43) The second word of the Lord Jesus from the Cross is a promise in the form of a personal assurance. The presence of the Third Man, the Lord Jesus, between the two criminals on Mount Calvary exposed the inner core of each of them. One was abusive. "Save thyself and us" he mockingly cried. The other found himself deeply touched by the Man in the center and he simply asks to be remembered, "Lord, remember me." [which request we may extend to mean, "Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses; for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to thy loving kindness remember thou me, for thy goodness' sake, O Lord", Psalm 25:6,7.] And what a response he got. "Today" - not at some future distant point; "thou shalt be with me" - in the presence of the King in the kingdom of God the Father; and it will be "in Paradise", not in some shadowy realm of the dead but in God's pleasure garden, the new Eden, the foot-hills of heaven. We recall and rejoice "That we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood" is the possibility opened up to all by the Cross! And we recognize this word as the charter for death-bed conversions! Any of us can ask for mercy as we approach death and know we shall be heard. But how better to ask for mercy in the midst of life.
WOMAN, BEHOLD THY SON! BEHOLD, THY MOTHER! (John 19:26-27) In his third word from the Cross, the Lord Jesus creates new family ties and new boundaries of responsibility. In terms of human feeling, perhaps the two who felt the Crucifixion the deepest were Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the beloved disciple. By his Cross Jesus has a transforming effect on human relations. In the kingdom of God they are lifted to a new level and caught up in a higher order. John found a new mother and Mary found a new son. Here at the foot of the Cross God's new family, the household and family of God the Father, is being created. The Church proceeds from the sacrifice of the Son of God; and the union of the Beloved Disciple and the Mother of the Lord Jesus prefigures and foreshadows the charity/love of the Ecclesia [church] of God. It has long been said that Mary becomes here the mother of the faithful (Revelation 12:5ff.) and that John represents the ideal Christian convert. While the unity of the Church is symbolized by the seamless robe (John 19:23-4), the nature of the unity is declared in the new family relation of Mary and John. "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister and mother" (Mark 3:35).
4 MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME? (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46) At the birth of the Incarnate Son of God there was brightness at midnight as the angels celebrated in holy song (Luke 1-2); at the death of the Incarnate Son of God, there was darkness at noon. A great darkness descended and covered Calvary for three hours. At the end of this period, people heard the anguished cry of Jesus, the Messiah, the agonising prayer of the Son of Man to his Father in heaven. The physical darkness of that time pointed to the evil darkness that Jesus had been facing since his arrest - "This is your hour and the power of darkness" (Luke 22:53) he had said to those who would destroy him. On the Cross the conflict between God and evil, between God and sin, between God and the devil and his hosts, between God and death, and between God and darkness was fought out in the body and soul of the new Adam, the Messiah, the Son of God Incarnate. And it had to reach a conclusion. There could be no draw, no treaty, no compromise, no co-existence and no cessation until it ended. One side had to win and the other had to be annihilated. We can imagine Jesus as the God-Man feeling, in his divine nature, the horror and repulsion that the Holy One always knows in the presence of sin and evil, and we can imagine him, in his human nature as the Suffering Servant of God, feeling the divine wrath and displeasure that the sinful one must always know in the presence of the Holy One. Here is the heart of the Cross where the righteous Man, the new Adam, is crucified and dies on behalf of the unrighteous, sinful race of Adam, and in suffering and dying he bears the weight and guilt of that sin and unrighteousness in his own pure soul and body. Thus, as the Messiah, as the Representative, Substitute and Suffering Servant, experiencing the weight of sin, he cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1)
Because he who wins the battle is truly the God-Man [and thus has double agony], that which he has achieved in his human nature is given eternal and infinite value by the union with his divine nature; and so anyone, anywhere, at any time can call upon the name of the Lord and be saved -- saved that is by the precious blood of this one Person, made known in two natures, divine and human.
I THIRST (John 19:28) When Jesus is sure that the work he had come to do is accomplished, and that the will of the Father for the salvation of the world is done, he utters a cry, " I thirst." Naturally the soldiers took this as the cry of a suffering man with a parched throat and hastened to give him liquid! But Jesus was thirsty in a deeper way than in the physical sense. He was deeply immersed in the devotion of the true Israelite and was praying in words made familiar to us by the Psalms - e.g., "My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God" (42:2); "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after thee" (43:1). Jesus longed for the fullness of communion with his Father. He thirsted for God the living God. Yet even in the action of the soldiers in offering to him vinegar [rather than water] for his physical thirst there is symbolic truth declared. The reed/twig of hyssop used by them was used in Hebrew ritual cleansing (Leviticus 14:4,6; Numbers 19:18; Psalm 51:7) and it had been used to sprinkle the doors of the Jewish homes during the first Passover in Egypt. Since Jesus is both the Lamb of God and the Door (John 10:7) the action of the soldiers reminds the reader that the redemption of the Passover is fulfilled with this sacrifice on Calvary of the true Paschal Lamb by whom people enter into the kingdom of God through his precious shed blood. And even as the Incarnate Son of God thirsted for communion with the living God, his Father, so ought his disciples to do likewise.
6 IT IS FINISHED (John 19:30) Jesus did not die with the groans of a murdered man, nor with the resignation of a martyr. He died with the shout of a conqueror. He died knowing that he had completed the work that his Father had given him to do. His mission was now complete. (Note that Psalm 22 from which Jesus took his cry of dereliction (verse 1) "My God, My God..", actually has a theme of ultimate triumph of God's cause and ends with a note of victory for God's cause. Perhaps Jesus had this in mind when uttering this cry.) From the Cross itself the Lord Jesus shouts his victory. Of course to every other eye a dying man on a cross looked like and was defeat. But God's ways are not our ways and here on the Cross God had not only the world but also the devil fooled! We need to be clear that the victory of Jesus Christ was won on the Cross itself. What had been the instrument of his execution he made the symbol of his triumphant reign. On the Cross of Calvary, before sundown on Good Friday and before the actual dying of Jesus, the victory was complete. He had done all that the Father required for the reconciliation of the world to himself, for the redemption and salvation of mankind, for the forgiveness and remission of sins, for abundant life in the kingdom of heaven of the age to come and for communion and friendship with the Father through the Son and by the Holy Ghost. Therefore Easter is the glorious sign and announcement that the victory has been won. And the church preaches the message of the Risen Lord Jesus who is also "Christ crucified."
FATHER, INTO THY HANDS I COMMEND MY SPIRIT (Luke 23:46) The first and last words from the Cross were addressed to the Father, to the "my Father" of the Lord Jesus. The first was a prayer for pardon and this is a prayer for peace. The drama of Calvary's cross begins with the making of forgiveness real and certain and it ends with a victory that is complete and a peace that is indestructible. In this last word and prayer the Lord Jesus turned to the Psalms and used for himself the verse that millions of believers would use in the office of Compline (Psalm 31:5 - into thy hands I commend my spirit). We may even suggest that this was the going to sleep prayer he had learned on Mary's knees. But of course he adds to it the most important word, "Father" for he is the only Son of the Father. And this prayer points to the act of Jesus, the voluntary act of Jesus, whereby he hands over his spirit to the Father. On the Cross in his final moment he declares that he is the Lord of life and the Lord of death who nevertheless is obedient to his Father as the Incarnate Son.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon |
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