Turning from the Old Testament to the New to investigate the subject of sacrifice, we turn from types to the antitype, from the shadows to the substance, from the laws ‘about the sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats, to the history of the shedding of the blood of Christ, God’s own Son, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. In the Old Testament we have traced out God’s gracious provision for fallen man-a sacrifice, in the New we learn what man really is, as God saw him from the earliest days of his disobedience and estrangement of heart. In the cross is. displayed God’s great love, and how far it could go on the sinner’s behalf; and at that same cross was brought out, in a manner never before manifested, what man is, as his treatment of God’s Son is set forth by the inspired historians.
That the heathen, who were without God, should persecute in ignorance God’s Son, might not have surprised any of us. But to learn that He appeared on earth among His own people according to the flesh, and found that His bitterest enemies and ‘most determined opponents were the chief priests and Pharisees, affords proof of the utter corruption of man’s heart (however richly he may be blessed on earth, or highly favored with a Divine revelation), which could not otherwise have been credited. Knowledge even of the word of God, unless the Holy Spirit applies it to the soul, cannot impress his heart, nor temporal blessings, however’ great, subdue his enmity to what is of God. The rulers of the Jews knew Messiah would come; in Christ, too, they saw One who did good to all who were in want of it, as no man had ever before done; yet many a time did they attempt His life, and at last succeeded in their design. Had Pilate hearkened to the entreaties of his wife, or acted in accordance with the dictates of his conscience, he would have saved the Lord from death; for the chief priests it was and the elders who “persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.” (ver. 20). It was in obedience to the popular cry, reiterated when Pilate had remonstrated, and to show his fidelity to the Roman Emperor, that, though conscious it was from envy the Jews had delivered Jesus unto him, he handed Him to the soldiers for immediate execution.
Crucified between two thieves, but recently scourged, and unable to bear His cross to the place of execution, surely it might have been supposed that, at the sight of His sufferings, man’s enmity would have been changed into pity, and his bitterness have given way to compassion. Three people were crucified together, but to One only do we read that reviling’s and taunts were addressed, and that One was the Lord Himself. Had they taunted the thieves it would not have been surprising, for they had offended against society; but He had only “gone about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” Had they reviled them all indiscriminately, it might have been set down to popular ignorance. But the Lord Jesus alone was thus treated, and none of the chief priests who witnessed what took place, interfered, that we read of, to check the malice of the people, or to lift up a voice in His behalf. Man, there unrestrained by God’s hand, skewed of what he was capable.
The passers-by “reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Power manifested would in their eyes be proof of His Divine Sonship. To their taunt He vouchsafed no reply; but because He was God’s Son, He remained on the cross. They associated power with Sonship. He owned that obedience was involved in the relationship, and showed His perfect obedience to the will of His Father by staying on that cross. They knew not the value of their words as they thus reviled Him. How could the Son have acted in contravention of the Father’s will? Their words spoke of relationship, which, if real, implied subjection to the Father. Their use of them at such a time proved how little subjection to the Father was in their thoughts. “Save thyself.” Such language revealed the current of their thoughts, that self, not the Father’s will should be the guiding principle for man’s conduct. Unconsciously surely by this they justified the sin of Adam and Eve, and proved their descent from them, begotten in Adam’s likeness.
Another class of the people of Israel witnessed Him, who was the sacrifice, offering up Himself, and as they witnessed His sufferings, they mocked Him; It was the chief priests and scribes and elders who said, “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.” They acknowledged His works done on behalf of others, yet refused to admit the claims which these works substantiated; Of His life on earth they were not ignorant—of His acts of kindness and power they could speak. Those acts testified that He was God’s servant—the Christ—as the men who professed to expound God’s word should have known. yet they asked, after all they had heard and seen, that His claim to be the. Messiah should be settled by His immediate descent from the cross. Power exerted for the benefit of others was a proof of His Messiahship—power put forth to save Himself from death when on the cross was never predicted as a proof that the King of Israel was on earth. They rejected what the word of God would have led them to look for, and asked for a sign which no prophet had authorized them to expect. It was right to connect the presence of the King with the display of power, but it was wrong to connect it with the exercise of that power to save Himself. The passers by had proved their ignorance of the subjection due from the Son to the Father—the chief priests here showed their ignorance of the word of God; and, stranger than all, they unwittingly fulfilled the Psalms as they taunted Him with being forsaken of God. (Compare v. 43 with Psa. 22:88He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. (Psalm 22:8)). How strange that those, who professed to teach from the word, should have fulfilled the prediction as they hurled at Him this taunt, the bitterest and most cruel of all. If such was the conduct of the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, can we wonder at what follows-” The thieves also which were crucified with him cast the same in his teeth.”
What an exhibition, then; lave we of man, the religious man by profession, as the Jews. were; and the educated man who professed to know God’s word, as the chief priests and the scribes. They had crucified the Lord between two thieves, but by their behavior to Him they proved themselves to be true companions of those whom they had associated with God’s Son. Man’s trial of 4000 years was ended. He had acted as the tool of the enemy, and driven out God’s Son from the world He had originally created; for, Jesus, “when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”
What could God do under such circumstances? That He should immediately act in power, who had been a silent spectator of man’s atrocity and sin, was only what could be expected. He did act in power, for we read: “and behold the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.” But, whilst acting in power, He did not act in judgment against man, because He had acted in judgment against His own well-beloved Son. For during that time of darkness, mysterious to man, when all nature mourned for the death of the King.
There are passages in Ezek. 31:15;3215Thus saith the Lord God; In the day when he went down to the grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed: and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him. (Ezekiel 31:15)
15When I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country shall be destitute of that whereof it was full, when I shall smite all them that dwell therein, then shall they know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 32:15). 7, 8, which may help us to understand the suitability of the darkness at the time of the Lord’s crucifixion. The language of Ezekiel is figurative, the’ language of the evangelists must be taken in its literal meaning. God by the prophet spoke of the mourning of nature at the fall of the Assyrian, that great cedar which towered over all; and at the fall of the Egyptian monarch, “the young lion of the nations.” If such language could be used even figuratively concerning the fall of such monarchies, how suitable and expressive was that supernatural darkness when the true King of Nations (Rev. 15:33And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. (Revelation 15:3), margin), under whose rule alone all tar; be blessed, was about to leave the world by death brought about by the creature’s iniquity, whilst men on earth, as far as we read, were silent, awe-struck, apparently, by the strange unnatural gloom in which the land was enveloped, God’s well-beloved Son, who had always done on earth that which pleased His Father, was experiencing the full weight of God’s anger against sin. “The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Death took place, the death of the sin-offering, and the shedding of that blood, without which there could be no remission; but, now shed, the ground was laid, and all could see it, on which God could publicly deal in grace with those who deserved His everlasting wrath. Here then, we learn, at the earliest possible moment at which it could be displayed, what that sacrifice is in God’s sight, and what He can do in consequence.
“The veil was rent.” By His command it had been erected, by His power it was rent in twain. Under the eye of the mediator of the first covenant that veil had been first erected; because of the sacrifice of Himself, the mediator of the new covenant, the veil was rent in twain. He, who had caused it to be erected, alone had authority to part it asunder. He caused it to be reared up when first there was a redeemed nation on earth. He caused it to be torn asunder when first redemption had been accomplished. So, as soon as the Lord had died, there was manifested in the temple what had taken place on Calvary. Outside the gate the Lord had suffered, but inside the sanctuary God showed what His death was in His sight, as the rent veil betokened the way into the holiest opened out for sinners by virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ.
(To be concluded in next Vol., D. V.)