What a chapter Luke 23 is! The Lord is closing the old creation. The Sabbath of the old celebrated its perfection; the death of Jesus celebrated its close. The old creation was doomed from the beginning, and if we have not a place in the new creation, touching God, we have nothing.
When the Lord was before the Jews, they brought a charge of making Himself the Son of God. Before the Roman governor, they brought a charge of making Himself a King. He had a right to both of these titles. Both these claims were brought and challenged in a human court. Thus everything [concerning the Lord] was declared untrue, and [in that coming day] everything will be vindicated. We see Him standing as challenged before men; by and by we will find Him vindicated before God.
He avowed Himself a King [in answer to Pilate’s question], but He constantly hid that glory. The Lord Jesus was consciously a vessel of glory, but morally under the necessity of hiding it [before the world].
Before Herod, the Lord Jesus says not a word, for Herod was unmixedly wicked. It is a terrible thing for God to be silent. It is better that he should be speaking to us by chastenings. “Be not silent to me: lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit” (Psa. 28:1).
We are now entering on a moral moment of great solemnity. Why must Pilate “release one” at the Passover? Why, I believe it was just because the Jews would claim from the Roman governor a sign of the dignity that attached to this feast. It was a feast of that time when the Lord of heaven and earth made a great deliverance for them, and in order to keep up the memorial of it, they demanded that one should be delivered unto them.
The question arises then, Will they choose the murderer Barabbas or the Prince of Life? Here we have the deep, full sifting of the heart of man. It tells that his heart in Luke 23 is exactly what it was in Genesis 3. There man preferred the lie of the serpent to the truth of God, while here he prefers a murderer to the Prince of Life. God, the God of life and glory, is given up for a serpent—he who was a “murderer from the beginning.”
Pilate, though still struggling with his conscience, finally succumbs to the Jews’ pressure and condemns the guiltless One.
We pass on to the cross. What do you say about the “spirit” (Luke 23:46)? Have you learned the calm conclusiveness that if the believer’s spirit is now delivered from the body, it is with Jesus? In His own Person the Lord was the first to recognize the spirit’s going to the Father. He was the “firstborn among many brethren”—the firstborn among many spirits.
J. G. Bellett (adapted from Notes on the Gospel of Luke)