It was the great day of the feast. The capital was crowded. The streets overflowed with Jews and proselytes, gathered from far and near. For days the city had been surging with excitement. The tide of party passion had been rising like a flood. The rulers of the people had fanned into flame the popular excitement; for they were bent on the rejection of the Nazarene. At last they had obtained their desire amidst the plaudits of the populace; a verdict that was no justice at all. For they were determined on His death, and had compassed His conviction, even when He had been pronounced innocent by the Roman Governor. Now at last was come the day of their vindictive revenge.
Close by the public highway to the north was the place chosen where this “troubler of the people” should expiate His supposed crime. It was to be “outside the city walls,” on Golgotha, the place of a skull. By His Father’s own provision, He could not suffer inside the city; for it was ordained that “the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also…suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:11-12).
Yet note the sequel, “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” Many today might refrain from remembering this conclusion of the argument; it is unpalatable and unpopular. Yet we shall never outgrow the reproach of the cross till the glory that shall be revealed when He shall come.
Golgotha then, “without the gate,” was chosen as the world’s high altar. It was a fitting place. Past it ran the king’s highway. The hill itself was commanding. Set against the sky, it was plainly visible to the multitudes on the clustered housetops of Jerusalem.
See then the attendant multitude that burst out of the city gate that fateful morning, and overflowed the road on its way to the appointed place. There was the central figure of the Saviour, as slowly He bore the cross. Round Him was the escort of the Romans; and round Him, too, the bitter escort of His enemies, the scribes and Pharisees. These, with the multitude, crowded along the road to Calvary.
There now emerges into view one Simon. Not, indeed, that Simon who had promised to follow his Master to the death, for he of the boasting courage had fled. Shivering and ashamed, crouching before the courtyard fire, his heart had failed him. No, this Simon was a stranger to the city, come from across the sea. Little he dreamed of the unexpected honor that awaited him in the crowded capital. “Him they compelled to carry the cross after Jesus.” What a wealth of meaning in a single sentence! What a blessed bond between the Saviour and the Cyrenian! What happy compulsion!
Many a burden the Saviour had borne for His disciples. He had comforted and constrained, He had fed and refreshed, those dozen wayward men who formed His earthly retinue. Yes, for three long years He had borne with them, slow of heart as they were to believe. Yet here, in the last extremity of His earthly pilgrimage, the Sin-bearer of the world on the way to His sacrifice, not only did they fail to die with Him, they even failed a helping hand with the cross He bore. So the high honor that might have been theirs was given to the Cyrenian stranger.
How like today! How many who are bidden to do His service are not ready, not willing. Yet remember, friends in the homelands, with all your knowledge and skill and talents, that, failing you, He still has “other sheep” whom He may choose, and honor, and enrich, when those for whom these honors were designed disdain His service. He still singles out the strangers, the aliens and the outcasts; while the favored ones who many a time have heard His voice and walked His way, yet have scorned His service, these are the passed-by.
We in the foreign field see many a despised and once degraded heathen drawing near to “the place that is called Calvary,” there to fall under the sweet compulsion of the cross, there to be linked by its blessed bond to the Redeemer, and so to spend this little span of life in His service. That great day will see many a strange reversal in positions. He shall “put down the mighty from their seats,” and shall “exalt them of low degree.” Yet it is not too late to qualify for promotion. Commissions are still being given to the rank and file.
Napoleon said once, with a flash of genius, that every common soldier carried a field marshal’s baton in his knapsack. More truly, every recruit from the cross so carries undreamed-of possibilities in his heart. Commissions, and converts, and crowns of glory, all may be his. Yet surpassing all other honors, there is the King’s “Well done!” and of bringing joy to Him.
And now, as the multitude nears the crest of Calvary, think for a moment of the climax that was at last approaching. God’s peculiar people had been set apart that they might be a witness to the nations around, and that they might prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. But though there were a faithful few who looked for the consolation of Israel, the bulk of the people had left the faith of their fathers, so that when Emmanuel appeared, they knew Him not. Hiding their faces from Him, in place of the welcome of a crown, they rejected Him on a cross.
Now it must be remembered that the cross was the fate of the felon; the death that was the bitterest brand of shame. Indeed, “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” Such a death, devised with the utmost cruelty by the Romans to torture the body and stain the soul of the crucified, was the fate reserved for the beloved Son of God. Yet with ineffable majesty, with regal disregard for the stigma and the stain, God the Almighty changed defeat into victory when He lifted the cross from infamy to fame, from shame to shining glory. In place of being the most ignoble of deaths, it is today the most sacred symbol the world has known. Indeed, the cross is the sign of Christ’s unending Kingdom.
Surely this is but a prediction of what He can do for the sinner, of what He can do for you and for me. He alone knows the corruption that attaches to the human heart. We indeed know this in part, but only in part. The Saviour made Himself of no reputation and took upon Himself the death and curse of the cross that He might transfigure it to be the symbol of purity and pardon. Even so He is able to take the vilest sinner, the most feeble believer, and impart new qualities of heart that will cause them to be a convincing testimony to the world of His power to save to the uttermost.
And now the cross was erected, and on it was transfixed the suffering Saviour. No human words are worthy to describe the scene that followed. None but His own. “Father, forgive them,” He cried in agony, as the nails tore deep; “Father, forgive them; for they know rot what they do.” What a wealth of unutterable woe the words betray! Deep calling unto deep, “all thy waves and thy billows are gone over Me.” None can ever know a tithe of what it cost the Lord’s Christ, or of what it meant to the world. Yet even here and now we may know in part, as we become conformed to His image, and as through the fellowship of His sufferings we are “made conformable unto His death.”
“These things therefore the soldiers did,” in unconscious fulfillment of an ancient prophecy (Ps. 22:18). For, that the scripture might be fulfilled, His bodyguard of four, that soon had only His body to guard, “parted His garments, casting lots for them.” What had He to leave them, this crucified Messiah ? No lands, or jewels, riches or estates. Only His frail and broken body, some simple clothes, a seamless robe; and that was all, al1 that the soldiers got. Truly for our sakes He did become poor! Then, callous of heart, “sitting down, they watched Him there.” How many millions have done, and do, the same. They make no move. They bend no knee. They give no glory to the Son of God. They sit, and watch, unmoved, until they die and pass away; all unconcerned until too late.
In startling contrast to the soldiers, turn now to the dying thief. As is usual there are two sides to the story: the side of the thief, and the side—the streaming side—of the Crucified.
The dying thief was a miracle of faith. For we cannot but marvel at the sublime daring of this malefactor. “Lord,” he cries, “remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” What folly! No! what faith!
Bernard, an ancient writer, addresses the penitent like this: “Whence didst thou know that that same Person that died in thy company, and passed for a malefactor like thyself, how didst thou know that He was thy Lord and Saviour?” And he makes him answer like this: “Oh,” says he, “I could discern it by the very testimony of His enemies. Those words which they flung upon Him in reproach, ‘He saved others…Himself He cannot save’; this looks so like a Saviour, to save others by giving up Himself!”
The dying Saviour was a miracle of grace. Do you sometimes think He is too great a Personage to be occupied with your puny appeal? Here is your answer: He is not “an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Here, too, is His answer: if at any time or place He might have been preoccupied with His pain and passion, it was upon the cross. Bowed down with the world’s woe, smitten with the sense of His Father’s averted face, distracted with His own distress, even then He must be about His Father’s business; even then He yearned for the lost, whom He was even now dying to find. With what deep joy He must have made rejoinder to the penitent. “Today,” He says, “today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”
It was the age of triumphs—the age when conquerors, returning from victory, led their captives in chains behind their chariots. And whom did they so lead? The slaves and the serfs, the debased and debauched? No; but kings and princes, the mighty and the noble. Who then led the triumphal progress of the King of kings? Who headed the long line of captives redeemed and freed, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation? Who was to be the first trophy bought by the Saviour’s triumph? Who but a thief, a malefactor! With what pomp did the Saviour make entry into the heavenlies, with this outcast of earth, who had become an heir to heaven! What mind of man could have imagined such a culmination to the crucifixion? This is none other than the hand of God!
There the Creator hung upon the cross, exposed to the taunts of the tormentors. But the blaze of that brilliant noonday failed to illuminate their blinded hearts. For the chief priests with the elders and the scribes stood and mocked Him in their folly: “He saved others; Himself He cannot save!” Thus unwittingly they testified to the profoundest truth; a truth that is the secret of the world’s salvation. In the light of history, in the clearer light of faith, we now know that He could save others only because Himself He would not save.
“Let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe on Him!” they challenged. But that was the one thing that the Son of God would not do; for had He come down from the cross, there would be nothing to believe. He must have left behind His best loved name of Jesus, and we must have reversed the order and said: “He hath saved Himself, therefore He cannot save us.”
About the sixth hour darkness fell—merciful darkness. Before such suffering even the sun veiled his face. Thus at midday came the midnight of the world’s history; surely the darkest hour before the dawn. Before this omen of God’s displeasure, the tumult and the shouting died. The silence of fear fell on the beholders. At last through the stillness rang the Saviour’s triumphant cry, “It is finished!” “And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”
So, by the grace of God, Christ died that we might live. This is indeed the apex of all epochs, wherein the Jewish Messiah was rejected, the faith of the faithful was redeemed, and the Creator of the world became both its unresisting Victim and its irresistible Victor.
Then out of the quaking fear of the darkness, broke the centurion’s hoarse cry of worship: “Truly this was the Son of God!”
So “He bowed His head,” and “dismissed His spirit.” Then the crucifixion gave way to a coronation; for,
“The Head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now.”
Before Him the angels veil their faces. All wreaths of Empire meet upon His brow, even as all knees shall bow before Him, and all tongues shall confess Him.
Meanwhile, from the eminence of the altar inside the temple walls, abandoned and left “desolate” by Christ, the smoke from the sacrifice of the sin offering rose slowly and forlorn to heaven. It rose in vain, for even then “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” There was no longer need for the blood of bulls and of goats, for the work was complete. The deed was done. God’s design was accomplished. The earthly altar was abolished “For where remission…is, there is no more offering for sin.”
Then, the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom by the hand of God. Henceforward there was no barrier to His Presence; no need of priest as Mediator; no exclusion of His saints from the holiest. Now we have the right of entry, not as “the high priest, alone, once every year, not without blood”; but “we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way…that is to say, His flesh.” Let us then “draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.”
And in heaven they fell down before the Lamb, and “they sung a new song, saying: Thou art worthy…for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
Written by Northcote Deck