John 19:25-42.
THE loved Evangelist has displayed in this chapter hitherto the morally divine perfection of the Victim. He will now insist upon the solemn facts and glorious efficacy of His death and burial. The importance is made to lie in these facts, and the blessed person of Jesus. Not as in Matthew and Mark is He mocked as Son of God, suffering from man high and low, passersby, priests, and dying felons, and from God when forsaken on the cross; nor, as in Luke, sneered at as the Christ, though one of the dying malefactors confesses Him upon the tree. John passes unnoticed all the agony of that moment, and the three hours of darkness, but shows that Jesus fulfils the Scriptures and His own word and finishes His work.
The closing moments are alone related, since they especially declare the peculiar glory of His person. Very man, His service being accomplished, He thinks of her who gave Him birth ― who stood towards Him in the blessed but human relationship of mother. Departing from this world, He would leave her need supplied with all that a son could furnish and be to her. To her, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to the disciple whom He loved, “Behold thy mother”; told of that perfect and personal humanity which was His, and of the truth of His natural affections which pertained to it.
This completed all He had to do, there remaining only the expression of His own personal need. Hitherto His thought had ever been of the need of others. (To the woman of Samaria He did not say, “I thirst.”) Now, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled He says, “I thirst.” Vinegar was there, and, filling a sponge, they put it to His mouth. In Matthew and Mark this is connected with the cry, “Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani.” Luke does not record it. John gives it in proof of His suffering humanity, and Fulfillment of Scripture, and coupled with it, the exercise of His divine prerogative. For with the words, “It is finished,” He bows His head and delivers up His Spirit. Luke tells us simply, He expired― the mere statement of death, and both Matthew and Mark have similar expressions. But here it is an act of sovereign power, the laying down of His life which none could take from Him, done however in obedience to His Father.
But was it really death in the full sense as men die? The Jews in their religious scrupulousness give occasion to the public and irrefragable testimony of it. So that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath then drawing on, the Jews begged of Pilate that their legs might be broken and they taken away.
Accordingly the soldiers break the legs of the two thieves; but coming to Jesus, they find Him already dead, and instead of breaking His legs one of the soldiers pierces His side with a spear, and immediately there pours forth blood and water.
This was not the cause of death, else it would not have been the offering of Himself according to His free competency to do so. He had already delivered up His Spirit, but the blood and water were the public testimony of death before God and man. John was divinely commissioned to bear witness to it, speaking as it does of the divinely righteous ground, and the way of acceptable approach to God, as well as of the spiritual cleansing of the soul which is ours through the death of Christ.
The blood and water flowing from the side of a dead Christ are descriptive of peculiarly Christian blessing. Whereas Old Testament Scripture had precisely declared that not a bone of Him should be broken; and again, that they shall look on Him whom they pierced. The first refers to the Passover lamb, and has specially in view the simple but divinely important fact of redemption from the judgment of God. This is common to every saved soul irrespective of dispensation, and is the necessary and divine foundation of every true blessing, by reason of which God can deliver His people. It is the basis and introduction of blessing. On the other hand, the looking on Him whom they pierced, marks the close of the present day of faith, and introduces the kingdom, and the millennial blessing in power. The present interval of faith and grace lies therefore between these two points, and consists in a more simply divine and eternal order of things, constituting the Christian revelation.
But the Spirit now presents to us another fact of weightiest moment, giving to Christian truth a peculiar character of its own. This is the fact of burial. Christ not only died, but was buried. In this Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus are especially concerned. The other Gospels do not mention Nicodemus, though all make careful reference to Joseph of Arimathæa. John most deeply penetrates into Joseph’s state of soul and declares that through fear of the Jews he was but a secret disciple. Doubtless he was officially known to Nicodemus, who, like himself, appears to have been one of the rulers (7:48-50), or of the council (Luke 24:50, 51). He was nevertheless good and just, and had not consented to their counsel and deed, even as Nicodemus himself. This moral similarity had, it appears, drawn these men together, and, in spite of his evident position in the world, for Joseph was both rich and honorable, he emboldens himself to request of Pilate permission to take the body of Jesus. His desire was granted, and, together with Nicodemus, who had brought a hundred pounds weight of myrrh and aloes, he binds up the body of Jesus with the spices for burial.
The importance of the fact of burial is emphasized in John’s Gospel by its being established on the testimony of two distinguished men of irreproachable character; and, moreover, that the tomb was in a garden, near to the place of crucifixion. Without premeditation, and, it would appear, without other aid, they laid Jesus there, because the tomb was near, and the Jews’ day of preparation was at hand. It was a new tomb hitherto unused.
All these points are of distinct importance. The burial of Jesus was not to be confounded with that of any other. The nearness of the tomb to the cross left no room for doubt that Jesus was laid there; for no corpse could be carried far, on account of the Jews’ preparation. He was not buried with the robbers, but in a tomb, and that a new one. When, therefore, it was empty on the resurrection morn, it was clear presumptive proof that He was risen; for He had been laid there, as Joseph and Nicodemus could testify, and now no trace of death was found, and no corruption.
In the Synoptic Gospels it is the women who are the witnesses, with Joseph, of burial. In John, it is the two men, Joseph and Nicodemus; the women are passed over. In Matthew, we are told the tomb was Joseph’s.
Thus two immense truths as to the person of Jesus were to be substantiated in His burial. First, not only that He died, but that He was brought into the dust of death that is, the grave. His death was as complete and real as that of mere mortal man. Secondly, that He saw no corruption. Of this the new but now empty tomb was proof, in which no one but He had ever been laid. John combines these two points― that the tomb was new and hitherto untenanted, but omits what the Synoptic Gospels all relate, that it was hewn in the rock ― his object being to insist in the fullest way upon the reality and character of Jesus’ death and burial.
W. T. W.