There are several occasions in the Gospel records when the enemies of our Lord uttered truths, the deep significance of which was lost upon them. “Perceive ye,” they said, “how ye prevail nothing. Behold the world is gone after Him” (Jn. 12:19). Their world was very small, very circumscribed. It could scarcely have gone beyond the limits of their own little country. They scarcely knew how the world, the whole length and breadth of it, the whole sanctified art and learning of it, for two thousand years, would go after Him. The best in music, the best in literature, the best in art, would find its inspiration and direction from the Man of Nazareth, the Lord of Glory. We rejoice today to be in the company of those who are still going after Him.
Again, “Never man spake like this Man” (Jn. 7:46). These words were uttered by officers sent to arrest Jesus, but they were arrested themselves and forgot their mission in the charm and challenge of His words. And ever since that Prophet spoke, books that cannot be numbered have been written to elucidate the meaning and gather the strength from the sayings of Jesus.
Caiaphas, we feel sure, did not recognize the full meaning of his own words which, in the eyes of the inspired Apostle John became a prophecy of Christ’s death, not only for Israel, but for other nations (Jn. 11:49-52). Caiaphas’ words end with verse 50, and the expediency that he saw in the death of Jesus for them was, we judge, a political one and not spiritual. But John saw a significance and an opportunity to declare the scope and unifying power of that death.
“This Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them” (Lk. 15:2). The words were uttered in scorn, but they have become the very glory of the evangel of Christ committed to men. Wherever men have opened the doors of their hearts and homes He has come in to sup with them and they with Him. But here is the greatest example of unwitting homage to our Lord, and in the supreme hour of His trial. God thus made the wrath of men to praise Him. “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He be 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.”
It is our sober conviction that the enemies of Jesus our Lord said the words tauntingly of themselves, temptingly of the devil, truthfully for God, triumphantly for the Church, and thankfully for us.
1. Tauntingly of themselves. They did not know they were fulfilling the prophetic word: “. . . a reproach of men and despised of the people. All they that see Me laugh Me to scorn, they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him, let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him” (Ps. 22:6-8). The words would have frozen upon many of their lips had they known. They were hurrying One away to death who had been an annoyance to them, who was spoiling their lucrative trade in the temple, and their prestige with the people–One who exposed their hypocrisy and challenged their cherished traditions. They were anxious to wipe their hands of His blood and go and celebrate the passover with unleavened bread, indicating the blamelessness of their lives. So they mocked and jeered and taunted the Sufferer on the middle cross.
2. Temptingly of Satan. We believe if ever all the hosts of hell were marshalled together in one place, it was that day at the place called Calvary. Satan was personally heading them, for it was he who entered into Judas and who doubtless hounded him to death after he had betrayed his master. He was behind the voices of the chief priests and scribes and elders, behind the mockery of the soldiers, the thieves, and all that passed by. In the same way the enemies of Nehemiah sent him a message four times to come down from his building of the wall. His reply, in the light of the Cross, deserves mention here. “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease, while I leave it, and come down to you?” (Neh. 6:2-4).
The voices of the passers-by, the chief priests and scribes, the thieves and the soldiers, were the subtle temptations of Satan shouted through the lungs of men. “Come down from the cross. You cannot! You cannot!” How Satan shouted it through the lips of those custodians of religion! And if Jesus had come down, He would have triumphed in the eyes of the short-sighted onlookers, but the whole scheme of redemption would have failed, and prophets and priests and kings would have wept at the collapse of the fabric they had built up in preparation for the Cross, and the doors of heaven would forever be closed against the sons of men. Satan had spoken through the voice of Peter to turn our Lord from the Cross; now the serpent’s voice is heard again tempting Him to come down.
3. Truthfully for God. “He saved others.” The Father’s heart had delighted in that. Heaven had rejoiced over sinners repenting under the preaching of His holy Son. He had saved Nicodemus who came to Him in the night of his need, who stood for Him in the rising twilight of testimony for Christ, and who came out in the daylight of true consecration with his hands filled with fragrance for the body of Jesus. Even in death our Lord’s garments would smell of myrrh (Ps. 45:8).
He saved the woman at the well, who had met six men, but found nothing to satisfy her heart. She met a seventh, God’s perfect Man, the Saviour of the world, and she thirsted no more.
He saved the woman, a five-hundred-pence debtor, when she got behind the divine creditor and wept. She went away with salvation and peace, and without saying a word. Aye, He saved others–saved them physically from blindness, deafness, dumbness, disease and death; saved them morally from despair and grief; saved them spiritually from demons and damnation.
“Himself He cannot save.” None knew that better than God. He came to do a work, and like Boaz, “would not be in rest until He had finished the thing that day” (Ruth 3:18). Foxes might rest in their holes and birds of the air in their nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head. But that day, after He said, “It is finished,” He would rest His head upon His own breast and die. If He is to finish the work which demanded the shedding of blood for the remission of sins, He cannot save Himself.
Himself He could not save,
He on the Cross must die–
Or mercy cannot come
To ruined sinners nigh.
Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed
That sinners might from sin be freed.
He cannot save Himself the stroke if His people are to be shielded. He cannot save Himself the distance if they are to be near to God forever. He cannot save Himself the darkness if they are to dwell in the light. He cannot save Himself the utter forsakenness of God, if they are to enjoy the welcome of the Father’s house. Oh, what a glorious witness, however unintentional, was raised for God that day in Jerusalem.
4. Triumphantly for the Church. How it has exulted in the truth! Christ saved the enquiring eunuch, the persecuting Saul, the pious Cornelius, the hardened jailor, the thieving Onesimus, the eloquent Apollos, the profligate Augustine, the sagacious Alfred, the deceived Luther, the scholarly Faraday, the enslaved John Newton, and a multitude no man can number. Blessed truth! He saved others.
“Himself He cannot save.” In the words of Major Andre whose testimony was written on paper found with his effects during the Revolutionary War:
On Him Almighty vengeance fell
That must have sunk a world to hell–
He bore it for a sinful race
And thus became their hiding place.
5. Thankfully for me. I have often passed in thought by the place called Calvary. Saul, recently anointed king of Israel, was bidden by Samuel to go home by way of Rachel’s tomb. Standing there, that stalwart son of Benjamin would remember that Rachel died in giving birth to the father of his tribe. His life meant her death. So at Calvary we stand and gaze at that wondrous cross. He saved me; Himself He could not save. None of us can stand there unaffected.
The verse must be true of us who have thus stood thankfully at the Cross. We, too, must save others, and can only do it as we do not save ourselves. We may save others by preaching, by practice, by prayer, by provocation, and by pity. Yes, we can save ourselves and them that hear us (1 Tim. 4:16). Let us look a little more closely at these aspects of salvation for others.
i. Salvation by Preaching. “I am become all things to all men that I may by all means save some” (See 1 Cor. 9:18-23; 1 Cor. 1:18). We save others when, as sowers, we scatter the precious seed of the Gospel by which people are saved (Lk. 8:12). Paul’s preaching was not a profession; it was a passion. He was prepared to surrender personal liberties to bring others into liberty. He was all things to all men that he might by all means save some. His sanctified mobility was because of a consecrated motive.
ii. Salvation by Practice. “For how knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O husband, whether thou shalt save thy wife?” (1 Cor. 7:16). “If any obey not the Word, they may without the word be won by the behavior of the wives” (1 Pet. 3:1-2). In the Corinthian passage, the conversion of one parent was not to disrupt the family ties (see in contrast Ezra 10:18, 19, 44; Neh. 13:23-30). Instead, a Christian conversion sanctifies the relationship. Children were not to be put away as unclean. If Christian practice was as it should be, the normal expectancy would be that God who instituted families, would extend His grace in salvation to the other members. The light which He had brought was to shine to all that were in the house (Mt. 5:15).
iii. Salvation by Prayer. “For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer” (Phil. 1:19). Ardent servants of God, pressing into dangerous places, need salvation by our prayers. Paul was sure the prayers of the Philippians would result in his salvation from Roman bonds and in a joyous reunion with the saints. In this regard, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”
iv. Salvation by Provocation (Rom. 11:11-14). “. . . if by any means I might provoke to jealousy them that are my flesh, and might save some of them.” Paul would provoke, if he could, his brethren the Jews to jealousy, by showing that if their rejection by God could bring such blessing to the Gentiles, what could not their reception bring, not only to Gentiles, but to themselves. Prophets had foretold their future national blessing and dipped their brushes in all the colors of the rainbow when portraying it. Paul would woo them to the banner of Christ even now. And we today can make our Christianity such a radiant thing, such an infectious thing, that people will desire it more than silver or gold.
v. Salvation by Pity (Jude 22-23). “And of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” (see also Jas. 5:19-20). Backsliding brethren need to be saved. Lot needed to be saved by Abram, although he was reaping what he sowed and had not been generous to his uncle. But when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he had compassion and rescued him. We often need, like Barnabas, to go looking for a Saul, when there is a danger that he might be shunted off onto a siding in Christian service, when there is a job to be done.
Thus we save others in these holy exercises of the soul. Ourselves we cannot save, for he that loveth his life shall lose it. We cannot save ourselves that expenditure if others are to be rich, that toil if others are to rest for ever, that weakness if others are to be made strong; those tears if others are to have them wiped away and laugh in pure joy.