His Death

by PENN, I.E. | Category: Time For Christ | Mar 2008

A time to die

Almost half a millennium before His death, the year and month when Messiah would be cut off and have nothing were predicted (Dan. 9:23-27, Neh. 2:1-8). The very day of the month was foreshadowed in Jewish festivals dating back over 1200 years before the event (Deut. 16:1-8). The gospels actually count down its day-time hours through the third, sixth and ninth hours by local reckoning. In all the Scriptures, no day is forecast so accurately from such a distance, nor recounted with such precision.

The course of that day can be traced once we recognise markers identifying some of the four watches of the preceding night (Mark 13:35) and combine them with the three-hourly subdivisions of the succeeding day-time. This succession of events shows how the Lord treated differently, and at different times, the various classes of people who crossed His path. One such group were His disciples: the bold but brash Peter, the quiet but persistent witness John, James the last of His inner circle, Judas Iscariot who sold Him and rounded it off with a kiss, the disciples as a whole whom He ministered to and protected throughout, and the loyal women from Galilee at the foot of the cross, faithful to the end.

In contrast, He knew when to speak and when to keep silent during the relentless night and day pursuit by His enemies: the chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, elders, the false witnesses, the mob baying for Barabbas, culminating in the very rulers of the people of God joining the spectators and passers-by, jeering Him on at Calvary. We observe, too, how the different bands of temple guards and soldiers abused Him before finally handing Him to the more thorough-going cruelties of Rome which began in low-key by Herod, the Roman lackey, and were continued by the guard of the Roman governor. Pilate, though personally convinced of his Prisoner's innocence, abdicated his legal and moral responsibilities in a deluded fit of self-preservation, and delivered the Lord up to be scourged and crucified. All this had happened by the sixth hour of the Roman day, probably by the first hour of local daylight reckoning.

Bearing His cross outside Nehemiah's walls, the Lord's burden was alleviated somewhat by Simon of Cyrene, but His sympathy is for the awful fate awaiting the mothers of Jerusalem who lamented His passage. His first thought when nailed, drug-free, to the tree around the third hour was to place the gambling executioners in the place of the unwitting sinner (Luke 23:34), a desire to save which found complete expression in the salvation of the repentant, trusting thief. Lastly, despite His pain, He continued selflessly to care for His soul-pierced mother before, at noon-day, the land was plunged into darkness.

A timeless death

For all the detail given of that day, almost nothing is recorded of the ensuing and final three hours save for the Lord's anguished cry. Unseen by human eye, the sword of the wrath of God smote Him when He became the propitiation for the whole world. This was the due season when Christ died for the ungodly, including those who had a hand in His crucifixion, and any who may be reading these words. Such darkness, in which it is impossible for mortals to see and hence have a sense of time, indicates to us the eternal dimensions of the work of salvation which He declared as 'finished' as at the end of the ages, when He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

For Him time was perhaps measured in a different way: the succession of events marking His carrying out of the Father's will reflected in His counting down of the numerous Scriptures that had to be fulfilled at Calvary (John 19:28-30). His was a count-down from eternity since the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. The timelessness the darkness indicates, too, is seen in its outcome: the resurrected Lord may now and ever be viewed as a Lamb standing as though it had been newly slain, the once-for-all sacrifice at Calvary ready for acceptance by the believing sinner, and by the people of God as they enter into the Holies.

PENN, I.E. | Mar 2008
Time For Christ