They compelled one passing by, coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them, that he might bear his cross.
Parallel Translations
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They compelled one passing by, coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them, that he might bear his cross.
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And they compelled one that passed by called Symon of Cyrene (which cam oute of the felde and was father of Alexander and Rufus) to beare his crosse.
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And they compelled one that passed by, called Simon of Cyrene (which came out of the countrey, and was father of Alexander and Rufus) to beare his crosse.
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (8)
Passages linked to Mark 15:21 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 27:32 As they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, and they compelled him to go with them, that he might carry his cross.
- Luke 23:26 When they led him away, they grabbed one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it after Jesus.
- Romans 16:13 Greet Rufus, the chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.
- Luke 14:27 Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross, and come after me, can’t be my disciple.
- Acts 2:10 Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the parts of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
- Acts 6:9 But some of those who were of the synagogue called “The Libertines”, and of the Cyrenians, of the Alexandrians, and of those of Cilicia and Asia arose, disputing with Stephen.
- Acts 11:20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.
- Acts 13:1 Now in the assembly that was at Antioch there were some prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain The rage of the wicked hath no measure, but…
The rage of the wicked hath no measure, but in the mean season, even the weakness of Christ, being in pain under the heavy burden of the cross, doth manifestly show that a lamb is led to be sacrificed.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 16 And the soldiers led him away into the…
16 And the soldiers led him away into the hall, called Praetorium; and they call together the whole band.
17 And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head,
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18 And began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!
19 And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him.
20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, and put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him.
21 And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.
Ver. 21. And they compel one Simon] αγγαρευουσι, cogunt invitum. We all come off heavily, and shrink in the shoulder when called to carry the cross, as Peter did, Joh 21:18.
The father of Alexander and Rufus] Men famously known in the Church, and therefore here but named only. God will recompense even involuntary services.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain To make this history complete, all the other evangelists…
To make this history complete, all the other evangelists must be consulted, and compared with Mark, who omits many considerable passages recorded by them; we have done it in our notes on Mat 27:32-50, See Poole on "Mat 27:32", and following verses to Mat 27:50, to which I refer the reader, both for the understanding the several passages of this relation, and reconciling any small differences between the relations of the several evangelists. It is the observation of some, that when in Scripture the father is made known by the son, or sons, it signifieth some more eminency in the sons than in the father. Many think that this Simon was a pagan: though it be not certain, yet it is not improbable, that this Alexander was the same who is mentioned Act 19:33, persecuted there by the Jews; and Rufus, he whom Paul saluteth, Rom 16:13, calling him chosen in the Lord. They say they were both at Rome, where they judge St. Mark was when he wrote this history, and that Mark mentions them as those who could attest the truth of this part of the history. The father bare Christ’s cross, (or one end of it), there is all we read of him. The sons believe on him who died upon it. So free is Divine grace, fixing where it pleaseth. Concerning the wine mingled with myrrh, we spake in our notes on Mat 27:32-50. Some think our Saviour’s friends gave it him to refresh him; but it is most probable it was given him to intoxicate him, that he might be less sensible of the pain he should endure upon the cross: whatsoever they intended, our Saviour refused it, having wine to uphold him which they knew not of. For other things relating to this story, see the notes on Mat 27:32-50.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain The sentence of death being passed by Pilate, who…
The sentence of death being passed by Pilate, who can, with dry eyes, behold the sad pomp of our Saviour’s bloody execution? Forth comes the blessed Jesus out of Pilate’s gate, bearing that cross which soon after was to bear him; with his cross on his shoulder, he marches towards Golgotha; and when they see he can go no faster, they force Simon the Cyrenian, not out of compassion but indignation, to be the porter of his cross. This Cyrenian being a Gentile, not a Jew, that bare our Saviour’s cross, thereby might be signified that the Gentiles should have a part in Christ, as well as the Jews, and be sharers with them in the benefits of the cross. At length our holy Lord comes to Golgotha, the place of his bitter and bloody execution; here, in a public place, with infamous company, betwixt two thieves, is he crucified; that is, fastened to a great cross of wood, his hands stretched forth abroad, and his feet closed together, and both hands and feet fastened with nails; his naked body lifted up in the air, hanging betwixt heaven and earth; signifying thereby, that the crucified person deserved to live in neither. This shameful, painful, and accursed death, did the holy and innocent Jesus suffer and undergo, for shameless sinners.
Some observe all the dimensions of length, breadth, depth, and height, in our Saviour’s sufferings;
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for length, his passion was several hours long, from twelve to three, exposed all that time both to hungerand cold. The thieves that were crucified with him, endured only personal pains, but he underwent the miseries of all mankind.
As to its breadth, his passion extended over all the powers and parts of his soul and body; no part free but his powers and parts of his soul and body; no part free but his tongue, which was at liberty to pray for his enemies.
His sight was tormented with the scornful gestures of those who passed by, wagging their heads;
his hearing grieved with taunts and jeers of the priests and people;
his smelling offended with noisome savours in the place of skulls;
his taste with the gall and vinegar given him to drink;
his feeling was wonderfully affected by the nails which pierced his tender nerves with a multiplicity of wounds;
and for the depth of his passion, it was as deep as hell itself; enduring tortures in his soul, as well as torments in his body; groaning under the burthen of desertion, and crying out, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Lastly, For the height of his passion, his sufferings were as high as heaven, his person being infinite as well as innocent, no less than the Son of God, which adds infinite worth and value to his sufferings, Lord, Let us be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length, depth and height, of our Saviour’s love, in suffering for us, and let us know that love of his which passeth knowledge.
Observe next, The inscription wrote by Pilate over our suffering Saviour, This is Jesus the King of the Jews; it was the manner of the Romans, when they crucified a malefactor to publish the cause of his death in capital letters, placed over the head of the person.
Now it is observable, How wonderfully the wisdom of God over-rules the heart and pen of Pilate to draw this title, which was truly honourable, and fix it to his cross; Pilate is Christ’s herald, and proclaims him King of the Jews.
Learn hence, That the regal dignity of Christ was proclaimed by an enemy, and that in a time of his greatest sufferings and reproaches; Pilate, without his own knowledge, did our Saviour an eminent piece of service; he did that for Christ which none of his own disciples durst do; not that he did it designedly, but from the special over-ruling providence of God; no thanks to Pilate for all this, because the highest services performed to Christ undesignedly, shall neither be accepted nor rewarded by God.
Observe farther, The several aggravations of our Lord’s sufferings upon the cross.
1. From the company, he suffered with two thieves; it had been a sufficient disparagement to our blessed Saviour to have been sorted with the best of men; but to be numbered with the scum of mankind, is such an indignity, as confounds our thoughts. This was designed by the Jews to dishonour and disgrace our Saviour the more, and persuade the world that he was the greatest of offenders; but God over-ruled this also, for fulfilling an ancient prophecy concerning the Messiah, And he was numbered with the transgressors Isa 53:12.
2. Another aggravation of our Lord’s sufferings upon the cross, was the scorn and mocking derision which he met with in his dying moments, both from the common people, from their chief priests, and from the thieves that suffered with him. The common people reviled him, wagging their heads; the chief priests, though men of age and gravity, yet barbarously mocked him in his misery; and not only so, but they atheistically scoff and jeer at his faith and affiance in God, saying, He trusted in God that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, if he would have him.
Where note, That persecutors are generally atheistical scoffers; the chief priests and elders, though knowing men, yet they blaspheme God; they mock at his power, and deride his providence, which is as bad as to deny his being; so that from hence we may gather, That those who administer to God in holy things, by way of office, if they be not the best, they are the worst, of men. No such bitter enemies to the power of godliness, as the ministers of religion, who were never acquainted with the efficacy and power of it upon their own hearts and lives. Nothing on this side hell is worse than a wicked priest, a minister of God devoted to the service of the devil.
A third aggravation of our Lord’s sufferings upon the cross, was this, that the thieves that suffered with him, reviled him with the rest; that is, one of them, as St. Luke has it, or perhaps both of them might do it at first; which , if so, increases the wonder of the penitent thief’s conversion.
From the impenitent thief’s reviling Christ, we learn, That neither shame nor pain will change the mind of a resolute sinner, but even then, when he is in the suburbs of hell, will he blaspheme: They that were crucified with him, reviled him.
But the most aggravating circumstance of all the rest in our Lord’s sufferings, was this, That he was forsaken of his Father; My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Thence learn, That the Lord Jesus Christ, when suffering for our sins, was really deserted and forsaken by his Father, and left destitute, of all sensible consolation! Why hast thou forsaken me?
Learn farther, That under this desertion, Christ despaired not, but still retained a firm persuasion of God’s love unto him, and experienced necessary supports from him: My God, My God, these are words of affiance and faith.
Christ was thus forsaken for us, that we might never be forsaken by God; yet by God’s forsaking of Christ, we are not to understand any abatement of divine love, but only a witdrawing from the human nature the sense of his love, and a letting out upon his soul, a deep, afflicting sense of his displeasure against sin.
There is a twofold desertion; the one total, final, and eternal, by which God utterly forsakes a person, both as to grace and glory, being for sin wholly cast out of God’s presence, and adjudged to eternal torments. This Christ was not capable of, nor could the dignity of this person admit it.
The other is a partial, temporary desertion; when God for a little moment hides his face from his children. Now this was most agreeable to Christ’s nature, and also suitable to his office, who was to satisfy the justice of God for our forsaking of him, and to bring us back again to God, that we might be received forever.
Observe lastly, What a miraculous evidence Christ gave of his Godhead; instantly before he gave up the ghost, he cried with a loud voice. This shews he did not die according to the ordinary course of nature, gradually drawing on, as we express it; but his life was whole in him to the last, and nature as strong as ti was at first.
Other men die by degrees, and towards their end their sense of pain is much blunted: but Christ stood under the pains of death in his full strength, and his life was whole and entire in him to the very last momnent. This was evident by the mighty outcry he made when he gave up the ghost that could cry with such a loud voice as he did (in articulo mortis) could have kept himself from dying if he would.
Hence we learn, That when Christ died, he rather conquered death, than was conquered by it, he must voluntarily and freely lay down his life, before death could come at him. Thus died Christ, the captain of our salvation; and, like Sampson, became more victorious by his death, than he was in his life.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And they gave him to drink wine mingled with…
And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh,.... Wine mingled with frankincense was what was usually given by the Jews to persons going to die (w):
"he that goes to be executed they mix for him, , "a grain of frankincense in a cup of wine", that his mind may be disturbed, or not sensible; as it is said, Pro 31:6, "give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to the bitter in soul": and the tradition is, that the honourable women in Jerusalem gave this freely, and brought it them; and if they did not, it was provided by the congregation,''
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at the public expense; the design of it was to intoxicate, that they might not feel their pain and misery: but neither the rich women in general, nor were the public so disposed towards Christ, as to provide such a potion for him: it is most likely therefore that this was prepared by his friends, as Mary Magdalene, Martha, and others, in order to cheer and refresh his spirits; and was different from what the soldiers gave him, which was vinegar mixed with gall, though the Persic version so reads here:
but he received it not; nor would he so much as taste of it, as he did of the other, to show that he needed no such outward means to support his spirits, nor desired any allay of his sorrows, and was not afraid to meet death in all its terrors; and besides, he had said he would drink no more of the fruit of the vine till he drank it new in his Father's kingdom, Mat 26:29; See Gill on Mat 27:34.
(w) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 43. 1. Bemidbar Rabba, sect. 10. fol. 193. 4. Maimon. Hilch. Sanhedrin, c. 13. sect. 2, 3. Moses Kotsensis Mitzvot Tora, pr. affirm. 98.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The father of Alexander and Rufus - These were…
The father of Alexander and Rufus - These were afterward two eminent Christians, and must have been well known when St. Mark wrote.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 21. A Cyrenian] One of Cyrene, a celebrated…
Verse 21. A Cyrenian] One of Cyrene, a celebrated city in the Pentapolis of Libya.
The father of Alexander and Rufus] It appears that these two persons were well known among the first disciples of our Lord. It is not unlikely that this is the same Alexander who is mentioned, Ac 19:33, and that the other is the Rufus spoken of by St. Paul, Ro 16:13.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain St. Jerome thinks Alexander and Rufus were disciples of…
St. Jerome thinks Alexander and Rufus were disciples of Christ, and on this account the name of their father is here expressed (St. Jerome in Dionysius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 21. Simon a Cyrenian — Cyrene was a distinguished…
21. Simon a Cyrenian — Cyrene was a distinguished city in northern Africa, in which, though consisting mostly of Greeks, a Jewish colony was located. Having much intercourse with Jerusalem, they maintained a regular synagogue at that city. Simon appears at this time to have been a resident, at any rate temporarily, either of Jerusalem or its adjacent country, inasmuch as it is from the country he is coming when he is so sadly met by the procession of our Lord’s executioners. Very probably he was known to be a favourer of Jesus, and for that reason was pressed into this cruel service. This probability is corroborated by the facts which we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, that a number of the early converts to Christianity were members of the Cyrenian synagogue. (Compare Act_2:10; Act_6:9; Act_11:19-20.) Mark says that he was father of Alexander and Rufus, names which appear to be favourably familiar to his Christian readers. Impressive to their hearts must have been the thought that their own father had borne the Saviour’s cross. If the tradition be true, that Mark wrote his Gospel at Rome, it is highly probable that the Rufus mentioned in Rom_16:13 was one of the sons here named. Bear his cross — Probably the Saviour had fainted under the burden of the cross, and Simon was made to bear it entirely in his room or to share a part of its weight. Indeed, when we consider how large and heavy the beam of a cross must be to support at a height the body of a man, it seems impossible that the entire cross could have here been borne. Some have thought, with apparent truth, that it was but the cross-beam that was carried through the streets, as the indication and the token of shame.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 21. they compel] The condemned were usually obliged to…
21. they compel] The condemned were usually obliged to carry either the entire cross, or the cross-beams fastened together like the letter V, with their arms bound to the projecting ends. Hence the term furcifers = “cross-bearer.” “Patibulum ferat per urbem, deinde affigatur cruci.” This had a reference to our Lord being typified by Isaac bearing the wood of the burnt offering, Gen_22:6. But exhausted by all He had undergone, our Lord sank under the weight laid upon Him, and the soldiers had not proceeded far from the city gate, when they met a man whom they could “compel” or “impress” into their service. The original word translated “compel” is a Persian word. At regular stages throughout Persia (Hdt. viii. 98; Xen. Cyrop. viii. 6, 17) mounted couriers were kept ready to carry the royal despatches. Hence the verb (angariare Vulg.) denotes (1) to despatch as a mounted courier; (2) to impress, force to do some service. It occurs also in Mat_5:41, “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”
Simon a Cyrenian] The man thus impressed was passing by, and coming from the country (Luk_23:26). His name was Simon, a Hellenistic Jew, of Cyrene, in northern Africa, the inhabitants of which district had a synagogue at Jerusalem (Act_2:10; Act_6:9).
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the father of Alexander and Rufus] St Mark alone adds this. Like “Bartimæus, the son of Timæus,” these words testify to his originality. From the way they are mentioned it is clear that these two persons must have been well known to the early Christians. Rufus has been identified with one of the same name saluted by St Paul, Rom_16:13.
to bear his cross] The cause of execution was generally inscribed on a white tablet, called in Latin titulus (“qui causam pœnæ indicaret,” Sueton. Calig. 32). It was borne either suspended from the neck, or carried before the sufferer. The latter was probably the mode adopted in our Lord’s case. And Simon may have borne both title and Cross. St Mark does not mention our Lord’s words on the way to the women (Luk_23:28-31).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (21) The father of Alexander and Rufus.—The fact recorded…
(21) The father of Alexander and Rufus.—The fact recorded here, and not elsewhere, is one of the most striking instances of the independent character of St. Mark’s Gospel. It is clear that it had a special interest for himself and the readers for whom he wrote; what that interest was we can only conjecture. The two names were so common that we cannot arrive at more than a probable identification, but the mention of a “Rufus chosen in the Lord” as prominent among the Christians of Rome (Rom_16:13), taken together with the evidence which connects St. Mark’s Gospel with that Church (see Introduction), tends to the conclusion that he was one of the two brothers thus mentioned. But if so, then we are led on to some other facts of no slight interest. St. Paul speaks of the mother of Rufus as being also his mother—i.e., endeared to him by many proofs of maternal kindness—and so we are led to the belief that the wife of Simon of Cyrene must, at some time or other, at Antioch or Corinth, and afterwards at Rome, have come within the inner circle of St. Paul’s friends. This, in its turn, connects itself with the prominence given to “men of Cyrene” in St. Luke’s account of the foundation of the Gentile Church of Antioch (Act_11:20). (See Note on Mat_27:20.)
(21-38) See Notes on Mat_27:32-51.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And they compel one passing by Simon of Cyrene,…
And they compel one passing by Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them, that he might bear his cross. It seems from St. Matthew (Mat_27:32) that our Savior bore his own cross from the palace to the gate of the city. The tablet, with the inscription afterwards attached to the cross, would be carried before him; and a certain number of soldiers would be appointed to go with him to the place of execution, and to see the sentence carried out. Having passed out through the gate of the city, they met one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, and they compel him (aggareuousi); literally, they impress him. The Cyrenians had a synagogue in Jerusalem, (Act_6:9) and this Simon may probably have been one of those who had come up to keep the Passover. He must have been a Hellenistic Jew, a native of Cyrene, on the north coast of Africa. Alexander and Rufus, his sons, were no doubt, at the time when St. Mark wrote his Gospel, well-known disciples of our Lord. St. Paul, writing to the Romans, (Rom_16:13) sends a special salutation to Rufus, "chosen in the Lord, and his mother, and mine;" a delicate recognition by St. Paul of something like maternal care bestowed upon him by the mother of Rufus. It is probable that his father Simon, and perhaps his brother Alexander, may have been dead by this time. Rufus is also honorably mentioned by Polycarp in his Epistle to the Philippians. There is a tradition, mentioned by Cornelius a Lapide, that Rufus became a bishop in Spain, and that Alexander suffered martyrdom. To go with them , that he might bear his cross. St. Luke (Luk_23:26) adds the touching words, "to bear it after Jesus (ferein upisyen tou Ihsou).
Vers. 21-32. The crucifixion.
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The bigots and the mob have gained their end, and now have their own way with "the Holy One and the Just." The power of Rome is brought into the service of Jewish fanaticism and malice. All evil influences have conspired together. Now is their hour and the power of darkness. The world"s sin has culminated in the rejection of the world"s Savior. All happens as has been foreseen in the counsels of God, and foretold by inspired prophets and by the Son of man himself. The Christ of God is crucified.
I THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE CRUCIFIXION. The story is very simply told; there is no endeavor to excite feeling by any other means than by the clear and artless relation of the facts. But this is enough to awaken the sympathy of every mind capable of realizing the injustice of Christ"s enemies, and the meekness, compassion, and fortitude of the Sufferer.
1. The bearing of the cross. That Jesus, exhausted by the events of the past night and of this morning, by the wakeful hours, the scourging and the insults he had endured, should now be incapable of carrying the instrument of his final sufferings, is natural enough. The soldiers, indisposed themselves to bear the burden, beneath which they see the Sufferer sinking, impress into the service a Cyrenian Israelite, who has come to the Passover now celebrating at Jerusalem, and who has been sleeping in one of the villages near the city, but is on his way to the scene of the sacred solemnities. What seems to the soldiers and to the mob a degradation, is to become an honorable and happy memory to Simon, whose family is destined in after years to hold a high place in the regard of the Christian community, and whose name is henceforth to be linked with that of the Redeemer by this sacred and touching association.
2. The approach to Golgotha. Imagination has filled the void wisely left by the evangelists; and the via dolorosa has been marked by "stations," each of which has been signalized by some episode of suffering, mercy, or sympathy. The spot where the execution of the iniquitous sentence took place may have been to the north-west of the city, and the name place of a skull may have been derived from its form, rounded and bare. It needs no fanciful legends to endear a spot so memorable to the heart of Christendom; the pathos of the plain fact is enough. Calvary mournful Calvary was the scene of Immanuel"s passion.
3. The offering of myrrh-mingled wine. The compassion of the ladies of Jerusalem is said to have provided a soporific, stupefying, narcotic draught, to be administered in humanity to the criminals who were condemned to die a painful and lingering death, it seems to have been in conformity with custom and from motives of sympathy that the draught was offered to Jesus. "Fill high the bowl, and spice it well, and pour The dews oblivious: for the cross is sharp; The cross is sharp, and he Is tenderer than a lamb.
His refusal was owing to his determination to accept to the full the lot of undeserved pain and anguish appointed for him. "Thou wilt feel all, that thou may"st pity all." He had already exclaimed, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" and it would seem that this cup of woe could not be drunk except by the retention of his faculties to the very last.
4. The parting of his garments. These were the perquisite of the executioners, who divided amongst themselves some of his raiment, and who cast lots for the seamless robe. This was not on]y the fulfillment of a prediction, but it was an element in the humiliation and self-sacrifice of the Son of man.
II THE CRUCIFIXION AND ITS ACCOMPANYING CIRCUMSTANCES. "They crucified him;" such is the brief notification of the most stupendous crime committed in the history of mankind. Every circumstance recorded in such a connection is worthy of attention.
1. There is a note of time. It was the third hour, i.e. nine o"clock in the forenoon. From this we infer how hurried had been the proceedings since the break of day, and how prolonged were those sufferings, which did not close until three in the afternoon.
2. There is a memorandum of the superscription. This was the accusation, upon which, unproved and misrepresented, Pilate had been induced to sanction this legal murder. A King crucified, and crucified by his subjects; no wonder that such a crime should be disowned, or rather such a stigma resented, by the priests and elders. When Pilate persisted that the inscription should remain, he bore witness unconsciously alike to the spiritual royalty of Jesus and to the flagitious rebellion of the leaders of the Jewish nation. The cross was in truth Christ"s earthly throne, the symbol of a world-wide empire. He had said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
3. There is an account of his companions upon the cross. If anything could possibly add to the ignominy of our Savior"s death, it was the society in which he suffered. Barabbas had, indeed, been released; but there were two robbers condemned to death, and awaiting the execution of their sentence. Accordingly, advantage was taken of the opportunity to carry out the sentence against the Christ and the criminals upon the same occasion. Thus was he "numbered with the transgressors," and an additional stigma attached to him by his association with the vilest of the vile. No wonder that the ignorant and unspiritual made this a ground of reviling against Jesus, and of reproach against his followers.
III THE MOCKERY THAT FOLLOWED THE CRUCIFIXION. To add to the insults, the jeering, the scoffing, which Jesus had endured during his trials, it was permitted that his dying hours should be disturbed, and his dying agonies intensified, by the mockery of various classes of his foes.
1. The passers-by railed on him. With the customary contempt for the fallen and deserted, those passing in and out of the city insulted the Crucified, with gestures of derision and tones of contempt, recalling the language in which he had asserted his authority, and contrasting it with his pitiable condition, terrible sufferings, and apparent helplessness.
2. The chief priests and scribes, who had been foremost in effecting his downfall, were prominent in glorying over the work of their hands, and in scoffing at him upon whom they had wreaked their vengeance. From their lips came the language which, intended to be a reproach, was really, and has ever been deemed, one of the most glorious tributes ever paid to the Redeemer: "He saved others; himself he cannot save!" When they asked that he should come down from the cross upon which their malice had raised him, and professed their willingness upon such evidence to believe in him, we cannot doubt that their words were hollow, vulgar mockery.
3. That no element of misery might be wanting in the Savior"s anguish, it was permitted that the very thieves should join in the raillery with which Jesus was encompassed and tortured. This, indeed, only gives an additional touch of pathos to the story of the penitent thief which St. Luke tells so exquisitely, and shows, in the brighter colors of contrast, the powerful gentleness and unselfish pity of the dying Savior.
APPLICATION.
1. Admire the submission and meekness of Christ"s demeanour.
2. Consider with gratitude the redemptive purpose which animated and sustained the Sufferer.
3. Learn to glory in that cross, which, from an emblem of shame, has by Christ been transformed into a symbol of salvation.
Vers. 21-32. The Crucifixion.
I THERE MAY BE A BLESSING IN ENFORCED SERVICE. Simon the Cyrenian is raised into the light of history; perhaps to teach us this. No nobler honor for the Christian than to reflect, "I have been called to bear the cross." And for some to reflect, "I was forced into carrying the cross I would have refused, or left on the ground." So with that other Simon, surnamed Peter.
II PAIN IS RATHER TO BE STRUGGLED WITH THAN ARTIFICIALLY SUPPRESSED, We seek anodynes for our troubles.
Jesus teaches us to react against them by the force of faith. In the hour of duty we are to seek presence, not absence, of mind; to collect our faculties, not to distract them.
III WHAT IS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE MAY BE MORALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Christ could have come down from the cross in the former sense, could not in the latter. He presents the ideal of suffering service for us, and the revelation of God"s ways. There may be things which God cannot do, in our way of speaking, because he knows they are not well to be done. We, at ]cast, cannot save ourselves at the expense of duty, and must be content to appear foolish or impotent to many. Suffering and salvation are facts eternally wedded and at one. J.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian.
Mar_15:21
And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian.
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Bearing the cross
I. In going through the history of the fact, our thoughts must glance along the links of the connection between the last appeal of Pilate, Behold, the Man, and the subject which claims our attention now.
II. We pass from the historic fact to the challenge founded upon it. In view of what is now meant by cross bearing, we ask, Who among you is willing to become a cross bearer for Christ? The only cross in prospect now is a cross for the soul. Carrying a cross after Christ means, for one thing, some kind of suffering for Christ. View the cross bearing as something practical, in distinction from something only emotional, and answer the question, who is now willing to be a cross bearer for Christ? Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and your children! On the roadside near an old Hungarian town, grey with the stains of time and weather, there is a stone image of the great Cross bearer, and under it is sculptured this inscription in Latin; Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow. The thorough woe-begoneness of that image, remarks an old scholar, used to haunt me long: that old bit of granite-the beau-ideal of human sorrow, weakness, and woe-begoneness. To this day it will come back upon me. Natural sensibility is not irreligious; but, considered in itself alone, it is not religion. With all the pain of bursting heart, and all the leverage of straining strength, Simon, bearing the cross for Christ, is the perpetual type of one who not only feels for Christ, but who tries to do something. I charge you by the crown of thorns, that you shrink from no ridicule that comes upon you simply for Christs sake. On July 1, 1415, when John Huss had to die for Christs sake, and when, on the way to the dread spot, the priests put upon his head a large paper cap, painted with grotesque figures of devils, and inscribed with the word, Hoeresiarcha! he said, Our Lord wore a crown of thorns for me; why should not I wear this for Him? I charge you by the truth that Christ was not ashamed of you, that you be not ashamed of Christ. In view of the strength assured to each cross bearer, who is willing? (Charles Stanford, D. D.)
Carrying the cross for Christ
Christ comes forth from Pilates hall with the cumbrous wood upon His shoulder, but through weariness He travels slowly, and His enemies urgent for His death, and half afraid, from His emaciated appearance, that He may die before He reaches the place of execution, allow another to carry His burden. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, they cannot spare Him the agonies of dying on the cross, they will therefore remit the labour of carrying it. They place the cross upon Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country. We do not know what may have been the colour of Simons face, but it was most likely black. Simon was an African; he came from Cyrene. Alas poor African, thou hast been compelled to carry the cross even until now. Hail, ye despised children of the sun, ye follow first after the King in the march of woe. We are not sure that Simon was a disciple of Christ; he may have been a friendly spectator; yet one would think the Jews would naturally select a disciple if they could. Coming fresh from the country, not knowing what was going on, he joined with the mob, and they made him carry the cross. Whether a disciple then or not, we have every reason to believe that he became so afterwards; he was the father, we read, of Alexander and Rufus, two persons who appear to have been well-known in the early Church; let us hope that salvation came to his house when he was compelled to bear the Saviours cross. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Simon helping Jesus
Little did these people know that they were making this man immortal! Notice in this connection:
I. The greatness of trifles. Had Simon started from the little village where he lived five minutes earlier or later, had he walked a little faster or slower, had he happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, had he gone in at another gate, had the centurion not fixed on him to carry the cross, all his life would have been different. And so it is always. Our lives are like the Cornish rocking stones, pivoted on little points.
1. Let us bring the highest and largest principles to bear on the smallest events and circumstances.
2. Let us repose in quiet confidence on Him in whose hands the whole puzzling overwhelming mystery lies. To Him great and small are terms that have no meaning. He looks upon mens lives, not according to the apparent magnitude of the deeds with which they are filled, but simply according to the motives from which, and the purpose towards which, they were done.
II. The blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ. Though He bore Simons sins in His Own Body on the tree, He needed Simon to help Him to bear the cross; and He needs us to help Him to spread throughout the world the blessed consequences of that cross. For us all there is granted the honour, and from us all there is required the sacrifice and the service of helping the suffering Saviour of men.
III. The perpetual recompense and record of humblest Christian work. How little Simon thought, when he went back to his rural lodging that night, that he had written his Name high up on the tablet of the worlds memory, to be legible forever. God never forgets, or allows to be forgotten, anything done for Him. We may not leave our works on any record that men can read. What of that, if they are written in letters of light in the Lambs Book of Life, to be read out by Him, before His Father and the holy angels, in the last great day. We may not leave any separate traces of our service, any more than the little brook that comes down some galley on the hillside flows separate from its sisters, with whom it has coalesced in the bed of the great river, or in the rolling, boundless ocean. What of that, so long as the work, in its consequences, shall last?
IV. The blessed results of contact with the suffering Christ. Only by standing near the cross, and gazing on the Crucified Jesus, will any of us ever learn the true mystery and miracle of Christs great and loving Being and work. Take your place there behind Him, near His cross; gazing upon Him till your heart melts, and you, too, learn that He is your Lord, and Saviour, and God. Look to Him who bears what none can help Him to carry-the burden of the worlds sin; let Him bear yours; yield to Him your grateful obedience; and then take up your cross daily, and bear the light burden of self-denying service to Him who has borne the heavy load of sin for you and all mankind. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The compulsion of Simon
The Persian monarchs had a service of carriers or post, and these were called angari; they were allowed to seize on any horses and equipages they needed, to demand entertainment wherever they came, free of expense and this proved a great grievance. The word passed into use among the Greeks (ἀγγαρεύειν), and the Romans exercised pretty freely the same rights of requisitioning. When the Baptist said to the soldiers, Do violence to no man, he doubtless referred to this system of extorting the use of their horses, their beasts, even their own work, out of subject people, without payment. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)
Simon helping Jesus
We are not told as much, but we may conclude that Jesus had fallen under the weight. He seemed unable to bear the cross any further. Perhaps He had fainted from the loss of blood and from the long fasting. He sank on the pavement and could bear the wood no longer. Something of the sort must have occurred, or the centurion would not have halted the convoy, and ordered that the cross should be transferred to another. This was not done out of compassion, but out of necessity. Jesus could not bear it any further; therefore, in order that the place of execution might be quickly reached, someone else must be got to carry it. No Roman would carry the cross. To do so would dishonour him. The soldiers looked out for someone, and seized on Simon. They were wont thus to requisition men and animals for the service of the State. Simon was a foreigner, a native of Lybia in Africa, a dark man, possibly not exactly a negro, but so dark-complexioned that he went by the name of Niger, or the Black Man. He was coming into the town, probably laden with the wood for the fire on which the Easter lamb was to be burnt, for on this day of the preparation the Jews were wont to go out of the city and collect the necessary wood, lay it on their shoulders and bring it home. So now, on the day of the preparation, the Lord carries on His shoulders the wood for the new sacrifice, on which He, the Lamb of God, was to have His life consumed. As He goes, He meets Simon carrying the wood into Jerusalem for the typical lamb. The soldiers at once seize Simon, make him cast down his load, and take on his shoulders the burden of Christs cross. He was the first; he, this African, to take up the cross, and follow Christ; he, the representative of the race of Ham, the most despised of all the descendants of Noah, that on which the yoke of bondage seems ever to have pressed. And now, how wonderful, if this our conjecture be true. The Romans and Greek, representatives of Japhet; the Jews, representatives of Shem; and Simon, the representative of Ham, are all united in one stream, setting forward to Calvary. Each, this day, gives a pledge of conversion; the centurion, the son of Japhet; the thief, the son of Israel, of Shem; and, first of all, the Cyrenian, the descendant of Ham … Simon was compelled. He was not, at first, willing to take it; if, as we suppose, he was carrying his bundle of wood, he was constrained to lay that down. So must we lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, that we may follow after Jesus, bearing His reproach. Simon shrank both from the burden and from the shame, and the natural man shrinks from the cross of Christ, shrinks from the cross that God lays on us. He compels us to bear the cross; and though we may wish to escape it at first, yet, if like Simon we submit, and bear it in a right spirit, it will bring us, as it did Simon, to meekness and patience, and a more perfect knowledge of Christ. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)
Shape of the cross
The shape of the cross on which our Lord suffered has been much debated. Some ancient Fathers, fancying they found a typical reference in the crossing of the hands over the head of the scapegoat, and in the peculiar mode in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, often assumed that it was in the form of what is commonly called a St. Andrews Cross; others again, seeing in the mystical mark or Tau set upon the foreheads of the righteous in Ezekiels vision a foreshadowing of the cross, concluded that it was like that which bears the name of St. Anthony, in form like a capital T. It is far more probable that it was what is known familiarly as the Latin Cross. It was prefigured by the transverse spits which the priest placed in the Pascal lamb. Its four arms, pointing to the four quarters of the globs, symbolized the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of Christs universal Church. It is a strong argument in favour of this form that the inscription was set above the head of the Crucified, which would be impossible in either of the other forms. (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)
Sharing the cross with Jesus
Jesus was pleased to take man unto His aid, not only to represent His Own need, and the dolorousness of His Passion, but to consign the duty unto man, that we must enter into a fellowship of Christs sufferings, taking up a cross of martyrdom when God requires us, enduring affronts, being patient under affliction, loving them that hate us, and being benefactors to our enemies, abstaining from sensual and intemperate delight, forbidding ourselves lawful recreations when we have an end of the spirit to serve upon the ruins of the bodys strength, mortifying our desires, breaking our own will, not seeking ourselves, being entirely resigned to God. These are the cross and the nails, and the spear and the whip, and all the instruments of a Christians passion. (Bishop Jeremy Taylor.)
Simon bearing the cross
A scene for all the ages of time and all the cycles of eternity; a cross with Jesus at the one end of it, and Simon at the other, suggesting the idea to every troubled soul, that no one need ever carry a whole cross. You have only half a cross to carry. If you are in poverty, Jesus was poor, and He comes and takes the other end of the cross. If you are in persecution, Jesus was persecuted too. If you are in any kind of trouble, you have a sympathizing Redeemer. Let this be a lesson to each of us. If you find a man in persecution, or in sickness, or in trouble of any kind, go up to him and say, My brother, I have come to help you. You take hold of one end of this cross, and I will take hold of the other end, and Jesus Christ will come in and take hold of the middle of the cross; after a while there will be no cross at all. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
A strange episode
Simon was probably a pilgrim to the feast; possibly had not known of the existence of Jesus Christ before; is not now seeking Him. But Christ crosses his path; and forced to yield a detested service, Simon learns in the brief companionship of a few hours enough to lead him to yield to Christ the service of a life. There is something very characteristic about this story. The Saviour is perpetually crossing mens paths in life; doing so sometimes painfully with some awful thought, painful aspect, thwarting some plan, spoiling some holiday pleasure, or some effort to get gain. And constantly we see the pain of first acquaintance, the early resentment against the gospel for spoiling plans and pleasures, giving way, and changing into lifelong fidelity. (R. Glover.)
So he got linked forever to the Lord! (J. Morison, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain CHAPTER 15:21-32 (Mar_15:21-32)
CHAPTER 15:21-32 (Mar_15:21-32)
CHRIST CRUCIFIED
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"And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them, that he might bear His cross. And they bring Him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull. And they offered Him wine mingled with myrrh: but He received it not. And they crucify Him, and part His garments among them, casting lots upon them, what each should take. And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him. And the superscription of His accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS. And with Him they crucify two robbers; one on His right hand, and one on His left. And they that passed by railed on Him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ha! Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save Thyself, and come down from the cross. In like manner also the chief priests mocking Him among themselves with the scribes said, He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with Him reproached Him." Mar_15:21-32 (R.V.)
AT last the preparations were complete and the interval of mental agony was over. They led Him away to crucify Him. And upon the road an event of mournful interest took place. It was the custom to lay the two arms of the cross upon the doomed man, fastening them together at such an angle as to pass behind his neck, while his hands were bound to the ends in front. And thus it was that Jesus went forth bearing His cross. Did He think of this when He bade us take His yoke upon us? Did He wait for events to explain the words, by making it visibly one and the same to take His yoke and to take up our cross and follow Him?
On the road, however, they forced a reluctant stranger to go with them that he might bear the cross. The traditional reason is that our Redeemer's strength gave way, and it became physically impossible for Him to proceed; but this is challenged upon the ground that to fail would have been unworthy of our Lord, and would mar the perfection of His example. How so, when the failure was a real one? Is there no fitness in the belief that He who was tempted in all points like as we are, endured this hardness also, of struggling with the impossible demands of human cruelty, the spirit indeed willing but the flesh weak? It is not easy to believe that any other reason than manifest inability, would have induced His persecutors to spare Him one drop of bitterness, one throb of pain. The noblest and most delicately balanced frame, like all other exquisite machines, is not capable of the rudest strain; and we know that Jesus had once sat wearied by the well, while the hardy fishers went into the town, and returned with bread. And this night our gentle Master had endured what no common victim knew. Long before the scourging, or even the buffeting began, His spiritual exhaustion had needed that an angel from heaven should strengthen Him. And the utmost possibility of exertion was now reached: the spot where they met Simon of Cyrene marks this melancholy limit; and suffering henceforth must be purely passive.
We cannot assert with confidence that Simon and his family were saved by this event. The coercion put upon him, the fact that he was seized and "impressed" into the service, already seems to indicate sympathy with Jesus. And we are fain to believe that he who received the honor, so strange and sad and sacred, the unique privilege of lifting some little of the crushing burden of the Savior, was not utterly ignorant of what he did. We know at least that the names of his children, Alexander and Rufus, were familiar in the Church for which St. Mark was writing, and that in Rome a Rufus was chosen in the Lord, and his mother was like a mother to St. Paul (Rom_16:13). With what feelings may they have recalled the story, "him they compelled to bear His cross."
They led Him to a place where the rounded summit of a knoll had its grim name from some resemblance to a human skull, and prepared the crosses there.
It was the custom of the daughters of Jerusalem, who lamented Him as He went, to provide a stupefying draught for the sufferers of this atrocious cruelty. "And they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He received it not," although that dreadful thirst, which was part of the suffering of crucifixion, had already begun, for He only refused when He had tasted it.
In so doing He rebuked all who seek to drown sorrows or benumb the soul in wine, all who degrade and dull their sensibilities by physical excess or indulgence, all who would rather blind their intelligence than pay the sharp cost of its exercise. He did not condemn the use of anodynes, but the abuse of them. It is one thing to suspend the senses during an operation, and quite another thing by one's own choice to pass into eternity without consciousness enough to commit the soul into its Father's hands.
"And they crucify Him." Let the words remain as the Evangelist left them, to tell their own story of human sin, and of Divine love which many waters could not quench, neither could the depths drown it.
Only let us think in silence of all that those words convey.
In the first sharpness of mortal anguish, Jesus saw His executioners sit down at ease, all unconscious of the dread meaning of what was passing by their side, to part His garments among them, and cast lots for the raiment which they had stripped from His sacred form. The Gospels are content thus to abandon those relics about which so many legends have been woven. But indeed all through these four wonderful narratives the self-restraint is perfect. When the Epistles touch upon the subject of the crucifixion they kindle into flame. When St. Peter soon afterwards referred to it, his indignation is beyond question, and Stephen called the rulers betrayers and murderers (Act_2:23-24; Act_3:13-14; Act_7:51-53) but not one single syllable of complaint or comment mingles with the clear flow of narrative in the four Gospels.
The truth is that the subject was too great, too fresh and vivid in their minds, to be adorned or enlarged upon. What comment of St. Mark, what mortal comment, could add to the weight of the words "they crucify Him"? Men use no figures of speech when telling how their own beloved one died. But it was differently that the next age wrote about the crucifixion; and perhaps the lofty self-restraint of the Evangelists has never been attained again.
St. Mark tells us that He was crucified at the third hour, whereas we read in St. John that it was "about the sixth hour" when Pilate ascended the seat of judgment (Joh_19:14). It seems likely that St. John used the Roman reckoning, and his computation does not pretend to be exact; while we must remember that mental agitation conspired with the darkening of the sky, to render such an estimate as he offers even more than usually vague.
It has been supposed that St. Mark's "third hour" goes back to the scourging, which, as being a regular part of Roman crucifixion, he includes, although inflicted in this case before the sentence. But it will prove quite as hard to reconcile this distribution of time with "the sixth hour" in St. John, while it is at variance with the context in which St. Mark asserts it.
The small and bitter heart of Pilate keenly resented his defeat and the victory of the priests. Perhaps it was when his soldiers offered the scornful homage of Rome to Israel and her monarch, that he saw the way to a petty revenge. And all Jerusalem was scandalized by reading the inscription over a crucified malefactor's head, The King of the Jews.
It needs some reflection to perceive how sharp the taunt was. A few years ago they had a king, but the scepter had departed from Judah; Rome had abolished him. It was their hope that soon a native king would forever sweep away the foreigner from their fields. But here the Roman exhibited the fate of such a claim, and professed to inflict its horrors not upon one whom they disavowed, but upon their king indeed. We know how angrily and vainly they protested; and again we seem to recognize the solemn irony of Providence. For this was their true King, and they, who resented the superscription, had fixed their Anointed there.
All the more they would disconnect themselves from Him, and wreak their passion upon the helpless One whom they hated. The populace mocked Him openly: the chief priests, too cultivated to insult avowedly a dying man, mocked Him "among themselves," speaking bitter words for Him to hear. The multitude repeated the false charge which had probably done much to inspire their sudden preference for Barabbas, "Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it again in three days, save Thyself and come down from the cross."
They little suspected that they were recalling words of consolation to His memory, reminding Him that all this suffering was foreseen, and how it was all to end. The chief priests spoke also a truth full of consolation, "He saved others, Himself He cannot save," although it was no physical bar which forbade Him to accept their challenge. And when they flung at Him His favorite demand for faith, saying "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe" surely they reminded Him of the great multitude who should not see, and yet should believe, when He came back through the gates of death.
Thus the words they spoke could not afflict Him. But what horror to the pure soul to behold these yawning abysses of malignity, these gulfs of pitiless hate. The affronts hurled at suffering and defeat by prosperous and exultant malice are especially Satanic. Many diseases inflict more physical pain than torturers ever invented, but they do not excite the same horror, because gentle ministries are there to charm away the despair which human hate and execration conjure up.
To add to the insult of His disgraceful death, the Romans had crucified two robbers, doubtless from the band of Barabbas, one upon each side of Jesus. We know how this outrage led to the salvation of one of them, and refreshed the heavy laden soul of Jesus, oppressed by so much guilt and vileness, with the visible firstfruit of His passion, giving Him to see of the travail of His soul, by which He shall yet be satisfied.
But in their first agony and despair, when all voices were unanimous against the Blessed One, and they too must needs find some outlet for their frenzy, they both reproached Him. Thus the circle of human wrong was rounded.
The traitor, the deserters, the forsworn apostle, the perjured witnesses, the hypocritical pontiff professing horror at blasphemy while himself abjuring his national hope, the accomplices in a sham trial, the murderer of the Baptist and his men of war, the abject ruler who declared Him innocent yet gave Him up to die, the servile throng who waited on the priests, the soldiers of Herod and of Pilate, the pitiless crowd which clamored for His blood, and they who mocked Him in His agony, -- not one of them whom Jesus did not compassionate, whose cruelty had not power to wring His heart. Disciple and foeman, Roman and Jew, priest and soldier and judge, all had lifted up their voice against Him. And when the comrades of His passion joined the cry, the last ingredient of human cruelty was infused into the cup which James and John had once proposed to drink with Him.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 21–41. They compel one Simon … to bear the…
21–41. They compel one Simon … to bear the cross. See notes on Matt. 27:32–56. Mark's account is almost parallel. Compare Luke 23:26–49; John 19:17–30. Only Mark declares that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. See Romans 16:13; 1 Tim. 1:20; Acts 19:33. Simon, while a native of Cyrene in North Africa, was a Jew.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Mar_15:21. Compel.—Press into service: original word is of Persian…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_15:21. Compel.—Press into service: original word is of Persian origin, and denotes the impressment into service which officials were authorised to make to expedite the mails.
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Mar_15:26. The fact that the inscription was written in three languages is quite enough to account for the slight variations in wording.
Mar_15:27. Thieves.—Robbers, or bandits.
Mar_15:28. Wanting in many of the best MSS., but found in all the most ancient versions; therefore probably genuine.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_15:21-41
(PARALLELS: Mat_27:32-56; Luk_23:26-49; Joh_19:17-37.)
Lessons from Calvary.—
I. Let us be willing to bear the cross for Him who bore the cross for us (Mar_15:21).—They compel Simon to bear His cross. It was a reproach, and none would do it but by compulsion. “We must not think it strange if crosses come upon us suddenly, and we be surprised by them.” The cross represents the sufferings which we are called upon to bear as Christians. “Cross-bearing and self-forgetfulness fitly go together (as in Mat_16:24); for he that will not deny himself the pleasures of sin and the advantages of the world for Christ, when it comes to the push will never have the heart to take up his cross.” In running the race set before us there is often a cross in the way—something which is not only not joyous, but even grievous. This is no mournful aspect of discipleship; for if we are willing to bear the cross for Christ, we shall be thereby brought into closer fellowship with Christ.
II. The place of death to Him is the beginning of life to us (Mar_15:22).—“Once a Golgotha, Calvary has ceased to be a place of skulls. Where men went once to die they go now to live.” There was opened the fountain for sin and uncleanness—for your sins and mine, for the sins of the whole world. Have you been to the place called Calvary?
III. The manner of death He endured for us shews with what manner of love He loved us (Mar_15:24).—Crucifixion was regarded as the appropriate punishment for the most infamous characters. “The cross being placed in position, the victim was within reach of every hand that might choose to strike a blow, and near enough also to note every gesture of insult, and to hear every mocking word levelled at him.” Yet for us, for our salvation, Christ was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The rocks rent asunder when Jesus died; and surely our hearts must be harder than granite if the story of the Cross fail to touch them. Christ died for the ungodly, and He will not see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied until every heart is renewed, as it has been redeemed.
IV. The cruel challenge (Mar_15:29-32).—Could our Lord’s enemies but have grasped the truth comprehended in their sarcastic taunt, tears of gratitude would have dimmed their eyes as they learned that Christ had voluntarily laid by the power He possessed to save Himself, that by His death the way might be opened for fallen man to return to God. In wilful and therefore criminal ignorance the terrible act of crucifixion was sanctioned and carried out. It is possible for men to be fulfilling Scripture prophecies even when they are breaking Scripture precepts.
V. The two signs—light at birth, and darkness at death (Mar_15:33). At the Saviour’s birth heaven’s host rejoiced and the dazzling lustre of the glory of the Lord was manifest. At the Saviour’s death the prophecy was fulfilled, “I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.” So awestruck were the people that one heathen writer said concerning it, “There was a general belief that either the God of nature was suffering, or the machine of the world was tumbling to ruin”
VI. The cry of a Saviour’s agony (Mar_15:34).—It is as though He had said, “I could have borne all else—the being despised and rejected of men; I could have endured the outward pain, the bodily anguish; but oh! My Father, Thy smile has been My light, Thy presence and fellowship My joy. Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” We have here the summit of human bliss—“My God! My God!” We have here the lowest depth of human woe—the being God-forsaken.
VII. Triumph in death (Mar_15:37).—He commended His soul to God and expired. He triumphed in death at Calvary. So may we.
VIII. The signification of the rent veil (Mar_15:38).—The kingdom of heaven is open to all believers. We may now draw near in full assurance of faith; for we may boldly “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil—that is to say, His flesh.”—S. Oliver.
Mar_15:25. The Son of God nailed to the Cross.—Upon the crucifixion of a good man Xenophon or Livy would have lavished all the stores of descriptive language, loaded the memory of the murderers with every indignant epithet, and honoured the virtue and heroism of the sufferer with the highest applause. Mark despatches his history of the crucifixion of the Son of God in one word, saying, with apparent coolness and bold simplicity, “And they crucified Him.” Taught to record the deed and suppress the reflexion, he hath, however, given the world all that faith desires for a foundation, a fact under the hand and seal of the Spirit of truth.
I. The crucifiers.—
1. Israelites and Gentiles, the two great divisions of men at that time, took part in it; the agency of both was criminal, though not equally criminal. “He that delivered Me to thee,” said our Lord to the Roman governor, “hath the greater sin.” The agency of Judas and Caiaphas was more criminal than the agency of Herod and Pontius Pilate, and the Gentiles were less blamable than the people of Israel. By the hands of wicked men Christ was crucified and slain, but their wicked hands did that which the righteous counsel of God determined before to be done. The determination of His counsel was just and holy; the deed of the ungodly assembly who executed it was wicked and unjust.
2. The crucifiers knew not what they did. Ignorance, though neither the justification nor the excuse of wickedness, is an alleviation pleadable in applications to the throne for pardon.
II. The Crucified.—
1. The Man Christ Jesus is Son and Servant and Elect of God (Psa_2:7; Isa_13:1),—Son, the Brightness of glory, the express Image, and in every perfection the Equal of the Father, by whom He is begotten; Servant, righteous Servant, who, doing the work which pleased the Father, glorified Him on earth, finishing it by bowing His head and giving up the Ghost; Elect of God, and precious Chosen of Him from eternity, and foreordained to obedience and suffering before the corner-stones of creation were fastened.
2. The Man Christ Jesus is the Seed of the woman, and the Seed of Abraham, the Root and Offspring of David, and the Son of Mary (Gen_3:15; Gen_22:18; Rev_22:16; Luk_1:32; Act_2:30). These titles, which break forth along the line of His ancestry according to the flesh, are proofs that He is the Saviour promised to the world and invitations to believe and praise the love of God, who in “the fulness of time sent forth His Son,” etc.
3. The Man Christ Jesus is the Mediator, the Surety, and the Messenger of the covenant. In the covenant, of which Christ Jesus is mediator, there is an old and a new testament. The efficacy of His mediation, running along the Old Testament, breaks forth with greater lustre and vigour under the New; and “by means of His death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first testament, they who are called” under both, whether Israelites or Gentiles, “receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” The Mediator of the covenant is the Surety of it. The vigour of His suretyship, together with its precious effects, extends itself to both testaments of the covenant; but under the new its beauty is more conspicuous and its effects more extensive. The Mediator and Surety is the Messenger of the covenant. The glad tidings of a new and everlasting covenant He published to the world in paradise, proclaimed by His holy prophets, sealed and ratified with His own blood upon the Cross, and by the mouth of His apostles, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, made them known to all nations for the obedience of faith.
4. The Man Christ Jesus is the Priest, the Prophet, and the King whom God hath raised up and anointed. Salvation, effected by His death as a priest and revealed in His Word as a prophet, is completed under His administration as a king. While on earth He executed the offices in His humiliation; and after rising and ascending into heaven, He executes them in His exaltation. Their glory is not an occasional and transient blaze, but a sunshine, which shall continue for ever, and fill the heaven of heavens with brightness of glory through eternity.
III. The crucifying.—Christ Jesus is the Man by Himself. Among the sons of the mighty none is equal to Him, none is like Him, and there is none besides Him. The crucifying is a deed of which, in all its circumstances, there is no example in the history of punishment.
1. The crucifying of the Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as a deed which executed the counsel of God (Act_2:23).
2. The crucifying of the Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as a deed that fulfilled many prophecies of Scripture (Gen_3:15; Psa_22:16; Isaiah 53.; Zec_12:10; Dan_9:26).
3. The crucifying of the Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as the infliction of a penalty. The crucifiers beheld it as the punishment which their laws inflicted upon blasphemers of God and the king; but “He had done violence to none, neither was any deceit in His mouth. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, to put Him to the grief” of dying on the Cross, and to “make His soul an offering for sin.” In the judgment of God, which is according to truth, the crucifying of the Lord of Glory, in our nature and stead, is the punishment that transgressors of the law under which He was made deserved.
4. The crucifying of the Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as the operation of a curse. The curse is the sentence which the Lawgiver denounced upon the transgressor of His law.
5. The crucifying of the Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as the expedient of reconciliation for iniquity. In this expedient the wisdom and love of God break forth to the world, and meeting together with His holiness, mercy, truth, and righteousness, glorify themselves in the highest.
IV. Wonders in the Crucifixion.—Here God and man, sin and holiness, love and hatred, weakness and strength, honour and dishonour, death and victory, the blessing and the curse, meet together, and exert themselves wondrously, forming coalitions of conflicting causes, and producing effects apparently discordant, yet perfectly harmonious.—A. Shanks.
The call of the Cross.—The Cross is the symbol of the eternal love of God, and it is the symbol of the perfect life of man. The call of the Cross is like the call of other facts of nature and of the universe. It is like the call of the sunshine and the rain, and no more mysterious. The sunshine and the rain call the farmer to sow the seed to co-operate with nature, to link his little life with the great life of God. The one is no more mysterious than the other. The farmer labours in a narrow sphere; the Christian labours in all the spheres. The Cross shews to us the true life of man—the Christ-life.
I. The Cross calls all men to personal holiness.—The end of salvation is that men may have the very life of God. There are two elements in this idea of holiness. The sacrifices when they were brought to be offered, if they were acceptable sacrifices, must be of animals in perfect health, perfect physical health and purity. And so the primary idea of holiness is that of healthfulness or of purity. We speak of the sacrifice of Christ, the stainless purity of Christ: to be fit to be offered to God as He was—to that all men are called. But then there is another idea in connexion with these sacrifices. The first idea was the idea of health and purity; the second idea is of something which is set apart to the service of God. Now we are to understand that goodness does not imply weakness. Goodness implies the finest strength and the finest beauty and the most finished culture, all set apart to God. There has been an idea in other ages that what we call the heroic virtues—bravery, courage—that these were the things which require strength. But love requires more strength than all the heroic virtues combined. It was a braver thing for Ignatius Loyola, when that rabble of Chinese turned upon him and a rude ruffian rushed up and spat in his face, quietly to look down and smile upon him and commend him to the love of God, than for Marshal Ney at Waterloo to lead the Old Guard. The one had all the enthusiasm and passion of a great occasion; the other saw ten thousand men against him and only God above. A man once said: “If I were an artist, I should like to paint my ideal of God; I should paint Him, not as some have painted Him, as a feeble old man with snowy hair; I should paint Him, not as others have painted Him, seated upon a lofty throne, with thousands bowing before Him; I should paint my ideal of God as a great cloud, and out of the cloud an outstretched hand, and in our weakness and guilt, in our consciousness of our utter impotence to be that to which we are called, I would see that hand reaching from beyond the stars.”
II. The Cross calls all to fill their lives with service and sacrifice for humanity.—Christ’s ideal is to become our life. Not only are we to become like Him, not only are we to think His thoughts, but we are to do as He did. I sometimes wonder how it is that people have so mistaken emphasis, and have spent so much time in seeking to adjust the death of Christ to a philosophical system, when all the while there is the example of One who went about doing good, who bound up the broken-hearted, who was seeking opportunities to be helpful to those who are in suffering. It is only one thing that can make a cross, and that is love; and love must go into that shape, because love means sacrifice. Love always hangs on the cross. The more we love, the more we must suffer. The more our hearts are tied to our dear ones, the more awfully will they be broken if those dear ones do not realise the life to which they are called.
III. We are called by that Cross of Christ to believe in the triumph of the truth and righteousness.—That shews us, as nothing else does, what has been spent—that poverty, that sorrow, that sin, can be destroyed. And in our hours of darkness, when we feel as if everything were going awry, when it seems to us as if there were no God at the heart of things, when we look up into the great wide sky inquiring wherefore we were born, for earnest or for jest—in those moments, when it seems as if nothing but a heartless and cruel fate were at the heart of things, the voice from the cross, serene as the music of the angel-choirs, rings out its inquiry, “Can you believe that a work which was baptised with the blood of the Son of God, and which Jesus died to start, can ever be defeated?”—A. H. Bradford, D.D.
Mar_15:26. The title on the Cross.—That white board has long since perished—it has crumbled to dust; and yet there is a glorious sense in which the inscription can never be obliterated. Fire cannot burn it out; waters cannot wash it away; spears cannot erase the wondrous words; and to-day, in living letters of glorious light, it stands out for as and for every living creature to read that Jesus—this Jesus of Nazareth—is King—King of the Jews and King of the world.
I. What this inscription meant to Pilate.—It was Pilate’s revenge on the priests; it was a studied insult to them. It was one of those sarcastic sallies in which the Romans delighted. Pilate must have fallen very low to make scoff and sport at such a time. There is no knowing where a man may be led when he once gives way to revenge. Nothing is sacred then; he will trample under-foot foot the most solemn thing; he will disregard the most solemn moment. For ever the character of Pilate stands out as the character of a man who knew the right, but did it not—who was convinced of the true path, but deliberately turned round and walked in the false;
II. What the priests could have seen in that inscription—To them it was one of the most startling and searching sentences upon which their eyes had ever looked, and we can see from the wondrous story how vexed, how bitter, they were when they found out the trick that Pilate had played upon them. Why, there was the very thing they least loved—that proclamation of the Kingship of this Man dying on the Cross. They could not reconcile His lowly origin and His ignominious death with His Divine claims and glorious title. And that is the difficulty with many even now. The real distinctive character of Christianity is that it is independent of all outward and material conditions of greatness.
III. What could have been the special relation to Jesus, as He hung upon the Cross, of that inscription above His head?—It was written in jest—but there was a tremendous meaning in those words! There, above the Cross, is inscribed His sweetest name. Jesus! Mystic, blessed, soul-healing name! Jehovah! Emmanuel! Shepherd! Unspeakable Gift! Saviour! Name of sweetness! Name of power! Name for the guilty! Name for the lost! Name for all nations! Note also that on the Cross is a mark of the wondrous condescension of Jesus, for there is “Nazareth,” “Jesus of Nazareth,” despised Nazareth. Ay, and there I see also His rightful dignity, “King.” But where is His throne, and where His sceptre and His crown? Ah! don’t you see them? That wooden Cross is His throne; the nails in His hands are His sceptre; those twisted thorns form His crown. “He conquered when He fell”; He reigned when He died; and never king was more kingly than Jesus on the Cross. But I see also a hint of His future glory. “King of the Jews.” He is coming again; and “when He cometh to make up His jewels,” as the children sing, among the brightest of His crown shall be some of the children of Abraham, “bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh”; and though now they are cast out and scattered, though they are a nation and yet no nation, though indeed they have no human king and no human governor, when He comes, He who scattered Israel shall gather them, and reign over the people who once pierced Him.
IV. What is it to us?—What is it to me? Some one has said that that inscription on the Cross was the first printed sermon. It was printed in three languages—in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Hebrew was the language of religion, Greek the language of culture, Latin the language of power. Was it not prophetic? Has it not its messages for to-day? Yes. What is the message of the Cross for men of culture? It is this: that Jesus must be their King, Jesus must be owned as Master of the mind and Lord of every gift and talent. Oh that to-day intellect, genius, science, art, literature, and all culture might own the kingship of Christ! And what shall we say of the Latin—the emblem of power and empire? Christ must be King—King over men of influence, men of power, statesmen, rulers, magistrates, judges. King in the senate-house, King on the bench, King in our courts of law, King in all our local assemblies. Dare we forget it? Woe be to our dear land if we do! And what of religion? Oh, if He is not King here, religion will be the deadest, dullest, dreariest, most abominable thing of all! Oh that we who profess to be men and women religious in heart and life may truly own the kingship of Christ! Now I want us all to recognise in these three languages emblems of the three parts of our own lives; and I want us to say to Jesus Christ, “Oh, Christ of the Cross, Saviour of men! come and rule in my life, not in one part of it, but in all parts of it—come and make me all Thine own.”—W. J. Mayers.
Jesus our King.—” Behold your king!” exclaimed Pilate to the Jews, as they crowded round his tribunal to witness the condemnation of Jesus. The words may have been spoken in sarcasm; but we would hope they were rather intended as a last appeal to the compassion of the populace. Some have even thought that they embodied the secret impression of Pilate’s own mind. Certain it is that he was alarmed by the peculiarity of Christ’s appearance and manner; and possibly enough he entertained a fear lest He should have a real claim to the title thus assigned Him. But, with whatever motive he uttered the words—whether in derision or in seriousness, in contempt or in faith—his tongue was the instrument of Providence in declaring a great and stupendous truth; and that truth he afterwards recorded, in “the three great languages of the ancient world—the languages of culture, of empire, and of religion”—upon the Cross of Christ.
I. The kingly relation in which Jesus stands to us is far more definite and intelligible than it was to the Jews.—
1. Though He was indeed their king by the strongest claims—announced to them as such by prophecy, expected by them in that character for ages, and manifested to them by demonstrations of miraculous power—yet it must be confessed that there was much difficulty and much obscurity hovering about His pretensions, when He stood before the tribunal of Pilate or hung upon the tree of Calvary. It must have been a hard matter even for the eye of faith to discover in that apparently helpless and destitute Object any appearance of regal dignity. He seemed abandoned alike by heaven and earth—One whose condition was that of utter hopelessness, whose ruin was inevitable, and who was only rescued from absolute contempt by the placid dignity of His manner. Accordingly we find that even those who had seen His arm uplifted in the majesty of omnipotence, and heard His voice when it hushed the tumult of the waves or called the dead back to earth, made shipwreck of their faith in this hour of trial. Although therefore a keen observer of mankind might, as Pilate did, perceive in the conduct of Jesus symptoms of an extraordinary and wondrous character, how were the multitude to discriminate or to recognise a King in One condemned to crucifixion as a criminal? But we are under no such difficulty. To us Jesus appears not as a culprit, but as the Conqueror of death and the Lord of life. Why, then, should we hesitate to acknowledge Him as our King?
2. The Jews were differently situated from us with respect to Christ, as they had received no positive, public, and official assurance from Him of His being their king. It did not enter into His design to announce Himself formally to them in that capacity. He was, in fact, their spiritual, not temporal sovereign; but as long as He was present amongst them in person He could never have made them comprehend the distinction. He therefore left it to His apostles to explain fully the nature of His kingdom, its extent, and the qualifications requisite for membership in it. Now the explanation which the apostles gave in consequence of that commission we are in full possession of. We find in the New Testament an account of a spiritual kingdom, whose Invisible Head is Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
3. The Jews had received no such benefits as they expected from Christ as their King. He had, it is true, proved a great and signal benefactor to them in many respects; but the blessings of His kingdom were not dispensed so long as He remained on earth in the flesh. The Holy Spirit, who was to be the agent in dispensing the blessings and extending the bounds of that kingdom, did not openly commence His work till Christ’s bodily presence was withdrawn. We, on the other hand, have from infancy shared all the present privileges and advantages of Christ’s kingdom, and have been cheered with the hope of those which are hereafter to be revealed. We therefore are utterly without excuse if we do not acknowledge and reverence Him as our King. In His hands the Father has been pleased to place the absolute control of all our destinies. He is our Ruler, our Protector, our Example, and our Judge.
II. The feelings with which we should regard Jesus as our King.—
1. With reverence. The very thought of Him should stifle every lofty imagination and hush every unguarded word. We bend ourselves, with a feeling of awe, before an earthly monarch: should we not, then, present ourselves in a constant attitude of humility before the Supreme Sovereign of creation? Let this thought operate upon the minds of those who are in the habit of speaking lightly of the gospel, and using the name of Christ more familiarly than they would that of a common acquaintance. This practice, though originating often in thoughtlessness, is an offence of a very serious cast, which blunts the delicate edge of spiritual susceptibility.
2. With love. An earthly sovereign, by a few acts of munificence, or even by a few generous expressions, finds an easy passage to the hearts of his people. But has Christ conferred no more than one or two benefits upon us? Has He uttered only a few expressions of kindness? Surely, if ever sovereign deserved the love of His subjects, it must be He who, after having said and done everything that could encourage and console, laid down His life for them! What an inversion is it, not merely of right reasoning, but of proper and honourable feeling, when we loudly extol those whose ambition has led thousands to death, as sheep to the slaughter, but dare to depreciate that Divine Mercy which could offer up itself a sacrifice for the ungodly!
III. Where especially shall we offer our homage to Christ as King?—He is not to be seen, as formerly, walking amongst men, in the humble state of a companion, or the still more lowly form of a servant. Nor is He at present to be seen by us in the magnificence of celestial splendour. The time indeed will come when the eye that now looks to Him in faith shall actually behold Him in all the brightness of His glory. But the mists of earth cannot yet be penetrated, and we must be satisfied with a distant and mental contemplation of our King. Yet is He not far from any one of us; and occasions there are when we may know that He is specially among us, to receive our worship and our praise.
1. He marks the looks, the gestures, nay, the inmost thoughts, of those who present themselves in the courts of His house. And there also those who are thus seen by Him may with the eye spiritual behold Him in return—may see Him smiling benignly, may hear Him whispering peace, and may feel Him in their souls blessing their efforts and strengthening their resolutions.
2. We may behold and worship Him in the retirement of private devotion. When, bowed down under the sense of sin, or in affliction or sickness, we raise our hearts to heaven, we may see Him bending from His throne. of love to hear our prayer and recommend it by His advocacy to His Father.
3. But surely our homage is more particularly due to Him when we kneel before Him at that altar which He Himself consecrated as the peculiar scene of His intercourse with His people. There He meets us by special appointment. There He pours forth in fullest measure the riches of His grace. There, then, let us not fail to present ourselves continually before Him, and offer Him our most heartfelt praise and thanksgiving, and plead before the Eternal Father the Great Sacrifice of Calvary.
Mar_15:34. Our Lord’s desertion by the Father.—This complaint is borrowed from the twenty-second Psalm, which begins with these words. And if it be asked why our Saviour chose to express Himself on this occasion in the language of David, two probable reasons may be given for this.
1. That the Jews might call to mind the great resemblance between His case and that of this illustrious king and prophet. In both cases innocence and virtue were borne down by violence and eclipsed under a cloud of sufferings, while the wicked triumphed and the vilest of men were exalted.
2. The other reason of Christ’s taking the words of this psalm might be that this psalm was allowed to belong to the Messiah, and to have its ultimate completion in Him. To signify that He was the person foretold in this psalm our dying Lord makes the complaint His own, and this after His crucifiers had as it were challenged Him to make good His titles to this character.
I. Consider the style which our dying Lord uses in addressing Himself to God.—“My God, My God.”
1. These words can signify no less than a consciousness of His integrity at the time of our Saviour’s using them. At that very time His heart was so far from reproaching Him as to applaud every action of His life and fill Him with great peace and assurance.
2. Christ might well say, “My God, My God,” because He had chosen and avouched Him for such, and loved and delighted in Him with a flame of devotion which angels themselves cannot equal.
3. These words imply the filial confidence and trust which Christ reposed in His Father at the very time that He complained so tenderly of His having forsaken Him.
II. In what sense was Christ forsaken by God in His passion?—
1. Are we to believe that God was angry with His well-beloved Son? Was His heart turned against Him, and His love towards Him for some time interrupted? Did the wrath of God fall upon this sacrifice like fire from heaven, and as. it were consume it, as He saith of His own zeal? These things I call impossible. For how in the nature of things could they possibly be? How could the same Person at the same time be both innocent and guilty, the object of the love of God and of His wrath? Or how could the righteous Judge of the world, who is infinite in knowledge, reckon things and persons to be what they really were not?
2. But if God was not angry with His Son, might not the Son apprehend that He was, or at least doubt of the continuance of His Father’s love to Him, the fear of which filled Him with this amazing anguish? No. The Scripture saith it is impossible for God to lie. But what had such a delusion as this been better?—to make His Son believe things for which there was no manner of foundation? And as for His being in such an error if left to Himself, it is also impossible. His conscience could not accuse Him of what He never committed; and He had too worthy and honourable thoughts of the Deity to apprehend His displeasure, while His own heart did not condemn Him.
3. The true meaning of this complaint.
(1) “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” i.e. “Why dost Thou leave Me destitute of Thy heavenly aid in this dreadful conflict? In My agony when I prayed so fervently that the cup might pass from Me there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Me; but now Thou neither helpest Me immediately nor by Thy holy angels: I am left to wrestle single against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.” And was He not a match for them in His own strength?—able alone to stand against their whole force, and to support the load of sufferings which was laid upon Him, without the assistance of ministering angels? Doubtless He was, and for that reason was left to Himself upon the Cross.
(2) “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” i.e. “Why hast Thou taken from Me the joys and consolations of Thy presence. If I had these, as I have formerly enjoyed them, no sorrows and pains that I could feel would make any great impression upon Me. But, oh! the scene is changed, and that darkness which now covers the earth is but an emblem of that thicker night which has involved My soul!”
(3) “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” i.e. “Why am I left so long in this suffering condition, exposed to the insults of wicked men and the rage of infernal spirits, a spectacle of shame and horror to the world? Why dost Thou delay so long to take My soul? Oh, come, My Father, and at length release My wearied spirit!”
(4) How is the condition of our Redeemer changed since the time He made this bitter complaint! As the sun, after its eclipse, broke out with double lustre upon the world, so did the light of His Father’s countenance upon His soul; shame and sorrow and suffering were succeeded by glory, rest, and felicity—and victory with triumph.
III. Inquire into the reasons of God’s thus forsaking His beloved Son.—As the Scripture does not give us any particular reasons of this, distinct from those of His sufferings in general, we have no other rule to go by but the end or design of His sufferings, which relates either to His example, or His sacrifice, or His priesthood, or His victory over the enemies. of His Church. 1. If the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to forsake His well-beloved Son in His dying passion, it was in order to add the greater perfection to His example (1Pe_2:2; Heb_5:7-9). To carry His example to the greatest height, He not only suffered from men, but from God—pain and shame and death from men, desertion from God: in all teaching us how to behave with humble, filial resignation to the One, and charity and meekness to the other.
2. Another design of the Father in this temporary desertion of His dying Son might be to increase the perfection of His atonement (1Pe_2:24; Heb_9:26; Heb_10:14; Eph_1:7). He not only sheds His blood, in which the life of the body consists, but He sheds it with all the circumstances necessary to complete the expiation: His soul had its share of suffering; and though, being pure and innocent, He could know nothing of the gnawings of a guilty conscience, that worm which never dies, nor suffer under the wrath and displeasure of a Holy God, who, loving righteousness, could not for a moment hate that Person who of all beings represented Him most exactly in this respect, yet He bore all that an innocent being could well be liable to, and for so long a time as the Divine Wisdom judged meet.
3. This circumstance of our Saviour’s sufferings, His being forsaken of God, contributes to the perfection of His priesthood. He suffered by inward sorrow and desertion, as by outward and bodily pain, and is therefore able to succour them that are in the same condition, so as to be also willing and inclined to do it.
4. This completes His victory over the grand adversary of God and man, and renders His triumph the more glorious. Satan shall see that he has another kind of person to deal with than he had in the first Adam—One who, left to Himself, is not only able to cope with him, but easily to baffle all his temptations and stratagems, and with an invincible courage to repel all his assaults.
Concluding reflexions.—
1. How should this endear the Redeemer of the world to us, who was willing to suffer such things for our sakes—shame and pain and death; to be persecuted by men, assaulted by Satan, and forsaken of God!
2. This part of the history of our Saviour’s last passion carries in it a great deal of instruction and consolation to His faithful disciples when they are in like circumstances with Him.—H. Grove.
Mar_15:38 The rent veil.—This seems a trifling incident to record in such a solemn place. That an ancient curtain, worn out in the lapse of years, should be torn—what is there in that to excite surprise or be thought worthy of notice, especially at such a time?
I. The whole worship and ritual of the Jews was like a volume of pictures, by which they were taught spiritual truths.—
1. The veil told them that there was a barrier between them and God—sin. They felt as they gazed upon it somewhat of the same awe that falls upon us as we stand outside the chamber of death, and know that a few feet away there is a visitor stronger than any human power, unseen, but terribly real.
2. There is nothing to hinder us from coming face to face with God in worship—no outward symbol that sets a barrier to us, past which we dare not go. But though the veil has been taken away, that still remains of which the veil was but the picture. Our sin hangs as a thick curtain between us and the purity of God.
3. Have we ever felt that this veil is there, over our hearts—no delusion, but an awful fact? It is indeed the most fundamental of all truths—that which we must start with. Here a beginning is made with us by God. He speaks to sinners, and to sinners alone. We cannot feel the full joy of salvation if we have not first felt the sorrow, the desolation, of the separation that sin has made between us and God.
4. The depths and the heights of Christian experience lie close together. There is no better place to seek God, no surer place to find Him, than in some valley of humiliation. The veil of the temple—let us take our stand before it, along with the great company of those who in all ages have mourned over their sin.
II. The death of Christ can take the barrier of sin away.—
1. It is broken; the veil is rent; there is a way for us to God, a living way, for whomsoever will tread it. This is the gospel of Christ. It is a gospel that wounds before it heals, humbles before it exalts, strikes us down with a conviction of sin before it lifts us up with the assurance of forgiveness.
2. It is glad tidings to know that Christ has opened this way. But what good will it do to know it if we do not tread it? It will not do for us just to say, “Yes, Christ is the Saviour of sinners.” We must each one by one take a journey to the Cross alone, and meet Christ there. In the darkness we stretch out the feeble hands of faith, and pray that the veil may be withdrawn, the shadow lifted from off our souls. And lo! even as we pray our scarlet sins become white as snow, the veil is rent, and we are at peace with God.
III. The rent veil signifies also that death is conquered.—To the Jews death was at the best a sore discouragement, an unsolved problem. God was on the other side of the veil—they knew that; but whether He dwelt there alone or in company with the living saints of bygone days they could not be quite sure. So the whole of life was to them but a walking in the valley of the shadow of death, at the farther end of which sat that giant form—dim, dark, repulsive—filling up the whole space, and projecting his gloomy shadow along the whole path they travelled. But Christ has changed all this. He has rent for us the veil that is over our eyes, has brought to light the life and immortality that is beyond death, and has shewn to us on the other side not an empty heaven where God sits alone, but a heaven peopled with all who have loved and served Him here.—R. T. Cunningham.
Mar_15:39. The confession of the centurion.—Many of us no doubt have witnessed a death—the death, probably, of some one near and dear to us. It was one of those events, necessarily rare in life, that in a few moments impress a stamp upon us which a lifetime cannot efface. We are not dead metal, but living souls. Such moments are full of awe,—not merely because of this more immediate contact with things unseen, but because of the increased responsibility; for we have one more great crisis to answer for, one more opportunity of making a fresh start on the flood-tide of feeling, which a crisis of this kind almost necessarily involves. And yet, after all, how small the event was which effected all this! The death of just one out of the myriads of the human race. How few there were that even for a short time missed him! How very narrow was the circle of affairs that was in any degree affected by his loss! But in spite of the evident want of change in the world around us, we cannot for a moment doubt the reality of the change which has come over ourselves.
I. Once, and once only, in the history of the world all surrounding circumstances did change, in order to be more in harmony with a scene of death.—Once, and once only, nature has swerved from its iron course for the sake of a dying man, and shewn clear signs of distress and suffering, in order to be in sympathy with a soul in agony. And well might it do so; for the agonised soul was the soul of its Maker and its Master. When the human soul of Christ took its willing flight to the hands of its Heavenly Father, the sun hid its face, “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent”—the very graves set free their dead. It was sights and sounds such as these which told upon the centurion and his companions, and wrung from them that marvellous confession, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
II. In all that multitude they were the very group from whom one might least have expected it.—Such an exclamation would have come naturally from the lips of the disciples. It would not have surprised us had it been uttered by the crowd—a mob which had been raised to such enthusiasm for Him on Palm Sunday by the report of the raising of Lazarus, and to such frenzy against Him by the machinations of the priests, might easily have been won back (we think) by portents like these. Nay, it would not wholly have astounded us if it had proceeded from the priests themselves. The darkness, and the earthquake, and the rending of the veil might have forced home the truth even on them. But no; the priests are already preparing to take further measures against “that deceiver.” The most that any of the people do is to smite their breasts and return. And as for the disciples, the very things that should have turned their hopes into certainties robbed them of hope altogether. On Easter morning the news of His resurrection seemed to them as “idle tales.” No; the only persons able to interpret these awful signs aright are despised Gentiles; and among these not people of thought and culture, but Roman soldiers. Nor was it the execution which touched them. The cruel punishments of Rome had made them familiar enough with scourging and crucifixion. But they had had other experiences to-day. They may have been part of the band who found themselves prostrate on the ground at the mere word of their Prisoner. They may have heard, one of them may have carried, the message from Pilate’s wife. They had heard the cry of the Jews, which made Pilate “the more afraid,” and of which their own exclamation seems to be an echo: “By our law He ought to die, because He made Himself Son of God.” And no doubt they had been on duty during the three hours of darkness, at the close of which came the earthquake. They had heard also the last great cry with which that Life which redeemed the world was yielded up. And St. Mark tells us that it was this cry, even more than the surrounding wonders, that called forth the confession of the centurion.
III. And why?—Possibly because such proof of unsubdued power, after the long hours of agony and exhaustion, seemed nothing short of miraculous. But still more perhaps because His dying immediately after such proof of power shewed that, after all that the malice of His enemies had inflicted on Him, His death was voluntary. He surrendered His life. There is yet one more fact which may well have contributed to produce this startling conviction in the mind of the centurion and his companions: the dying words of Christ. “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” They had heard that He claimed to be “Son of God”—a title quite unknown to them among their own divinities and heroes. What did it mean? “Son of Jupiter,” “Son of Venus,” “Offspring of the gods,” they could have understood. But “Son of God”? Death stared Him in the face; and to speak falsely in the hour of death is scarcely human; and yet with His dying words He had commended His spirit into the hands of that Almighty Father whose Son from His childhood upwards He had claimed to be. It was this then that drove the truth home to the Roman soldiers. “Certainly,” they said, “this was a righteous man.” Certainly this man was no deceiver. “Truly this was the Son of God.”
IV. The assent of more than eighteen centuries has ratified their verdict.—And it will hold good till He Himself makes good the promise made to Caiaphas: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
Lessons.—
1. Christ’s willing surrender of His life may teach us that in the spiritual world there is only one road to success—the surrender of self. He who “hallowed birth by being born,” and “conquered death by dying,” conquered the stubborn wills of men by surrendering His own. And there is no other way for us. This is not a lesson to be buried in a napkin until some great affliction calls it into use. It is a lesson for every day and every hour. There is no annoyance too trifling for the exercise of it. If in the petty vexations of which we have a dozen a day we learn to submit with cheerfulness for the sake of Christ’s Cross, we shall be ready even to give thanks to Him for His chastisement, when He sees fit to bruise us more severely. Thus all our lives long we may share the mind of our dying Master. To us to live will be Christ, and to die gain.
2. And this easily leads us to the second point—our Lord’s commendation of His spirit into the hands of His Father. If we have in any way learnt to surrender our wills to God, we shall not find it hard to commend our whole being to Him. The right to do so has been won for us by Christ. That which would be an abomination to Him, “who charges even the angels with folly,” becomes a sweet-smelling sacrifice when united with the Sinless Victim of the Cross. Christ’s offering was a double one—His own Divinity and our humanity. Ours must be double also—ourselves with Christ, Christ with ourselves. And this also is a work not for a few great and rare occasions, but for our whole life. In all that we do we must ever be commending ourselves, in union with Christ, to God. Yet there are times when it may be done with more than usual solemnity and devotion; and among these surely is our Easter Communion. Let Easter morning, or at least some day in Easter week, find us on our knees before God’s altar, saying with all the humble confidence a sinful soul can cherish, and all the loving self-sacrifice a grovelling heart can feel, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my life. Do with me as seemeth best unto Thee in time and in eternity.” And as we retire with the seal of Christ’s body and blood within us, assuring us that the fire of the Lord has fallen upon our offering, we shall know, not by the darkness and the earthquake, but by the light and peace of His presence, that “truly this is the Son of God.”—A. Plummer, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_15:21. Simon the Cyrenian.—Simon was a Jew by descent, probably born, certainly resident, for purposes of commerce, in Cyrene, on the North African coast of the Mediterranean. No doubt he had come up to Jerusalem for the Passover; and, like many strangers, met some difficulty in finding accommodation in the city, and so was obliged to lodge in one of the outlying villages. From this lodging he is coming in, in the morning, knowing nothing about Christ or His trial, and happens to see the procession as it is passing out of the gate. He is compelled by the centurion, for what reason we do not know, to carry the heavy Cross of the Saviour,—reluctantly no doubt, but gradually touched into some kind of sympathy; drawn closer and closer, as we suppose, as he looked upon this dying meekness; and at last yielding to the soul-conquering power of Christ.
I. The greatness of trifles.—Our lives are like the Cornish rocking-stones, pivoted on little points. The most apparently insignificant things have got such a strange knack of suddenly developing unexpected consequences, and turning out to be not small things at all, but great and decisive and fruitful. And so let us look with ever fresh wonder on this marvellous contexture of human life, and on Him that moulds it all to His own perfect purposes. Let us bring the highest and largest principles to bear on the smallest events and circumstances, for you never can tell which of these is going to turn out a revolutionary and formative influence in your life. And then let us learn this lesson, too, of quiet confidence in Him in whose hands the whole puzzling, overwhelming mystery lies.
II. The blessedness and honour of helping Christ—Christ’s Cross has to be carried to-day; and if we have not found out that it has, let us ask ourselves if we are Christians at all. There will be hostility, alienation, a comparative coolness, and absence of a full sense of sympathy in many people with you, if you are a true Christian. There will be a share of contempt from the wise and the cultivated of this generation, as in all generations. The mud that is thrown after the Master will spatter your faces too, to some extent; and if we are walking with Him, we shall share to the extent of our communion with Him in the feelings with which many men regard Him. Stand to your colours! Do not be ashamed of the Master in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. And there is another way in which this honour of helping the Lord is given to us. As in His weakness He needed some one to aid Him to bear His Cross, so in His glory He needs our help to carry out the purposes for which the Cross was borne. The paradox of a man carrying the Cross of Him who carried the world’s burden is repeated in another form too. He needs nothing, and yet He needs us.
III. The perpetual recompense and record of humblest Christian work.—“How little Simon knew that where-ever in the whole world this gospel was preached, there also this that he had done should be told for a memorial of him!” Why, men have fretted their whole lives away to get what this man got, and knew nothing of one line in that chronicle of fame. And so we may say it shall be always, “I will never forget any of their works.” We may not leave them on any records that men can read. What of that, if they are written in letters of light in that “Lamb’s Book of Life,” to be read out by Him before His Father and the holy angels in that last great day. We may not leave any separable traces of our service, any more than the little brook that comes down some gully on the hillside flows separate from its sisters, with whom it has coalesced in the bed of the great river or in the rolling, boundless ocean. What of that so long as the work, in its consequences, shall last!—A. Maclaren, D.D.
The firstfruits of the heathen world.—The Synoptists in the accounts which they give of the Crucifixion bring into prominent notice Simon of Cyrene as the man who was compelled to bear the Cross of Christ, and with this brief notice he disappears apparently from the pages of Scripture. I think, however, if we look a little more closely, we shall find that he reappears in Act_13:1 as a member of the early Church under the name of Simeon, who was called Niger. My view of the matter was suggested by the following considerations:
1. Simon and Simeon are interchangeable names, as where in Act_15:14 Simon Peter is called Simeon.
2. Simon of Cyrene might appropriately have been called Niger, in allusion to the colour of his skin, coming as he did from Africa.
3. Simeon, who was called Niger, is mentioned in Act_13:1, in close juxtaposition with Lucius of Cyrene. I might further add, not as an argument, but as a fitting corollary to the circumstances, that we can scarcely think that Simon would not have been greatly impressed by the scenes which he witnessed, if indeed he did not receive some personal blessing from our Lord—he who in so real a sense had borne the Cross up the hill to Calvary, who had come into such close contact with Christ at such a critical moment, and who in all probability had been an eye-witness of the Crucifixion. So that we might almost expect to find him a member of the early Church, or at least would meet him there without surprise. If this identity be a real one, we see in Simon of Cyrene the very firstfruits of the heathen world.—G. F. Assinder.
Providential leadings.—What moved Simon to take that turning in the streets which brought him to Christ and His Cross, and just at the very moment he was needed? We cannot say. How curiously we are led! We take one turning in life rather than another, hardly knowing why, and the whole of our after-history is changed. It is not chance—it is God and ourselves. We often say that our lives are very dull and commonplace—there is nothing romantic or interesting about them—their story is not worth the telling. If we could only see them for a moment as God sees them, how different they would look! If we could only see the meaning and importance of the events which are taking place, of the things we do so thoughtlessly, the words we speak so carelessly, and understand the eternal interests involved in every hour that we live, we need not seek for romance outside the narrow circle in which we live.—R. T. Cunningham.
Cross-bearing is never pleasant, take it at its best; there is always a sting and a hardship in it which makes us smart at the time: take it as for the most part we know it, and we shall find that we generally murmur and resist and complain, and try to shake it from our shoulders. But it must be done. It is through tribulation that our characters are perfected and heaven is won. So God does not ask our permission, or whether we are willing. He lays His Cross upon us, and compels us to carry it. Thank God He does!—R. T. Cunningham.
Carrying Christ’s Cross.—Christ’s Cross-bearing is not over yet; after nineteen hundred years He is still carrying it; and somehow I cannot but think of Him as continually tired and needing help. We can do something to relieve the sin and wretchedness beside which we live; and in relieving it we are making Christ’s Cross easier for Him to bear.—Ibid.
The Cross of Christ is the pivot of history.—On this the doors of ancient life shut and modern history open. Heathen nations, however new or young, are ancient; Christian nations, however old, are modern. Western civilisation began on Calvary. Significant is the fact that the root of the word stauros (cross), descending from the Sanskrit, and meaning what “stands’ or is “fixed,” and thence reappearing in all the Indo-Germanic languages of Europe, is a figure of history’s humblest yet mightiest landmark. On the head of that Cross were joined in one those three languages which represented religion, culture, and law, typifying the three world civilisations that were to become confluent and be vitalised by a Divine Person and character, and His ever-abiding Spirit. Asia furnished alike the Victim and him who delivered Him up; Europe the judge, tribunal, and executioners; but Africa bore the Cross. In this the century of hope for the Dark Continent, let it be remembered that one of her sons, in vicarious labour, carried that Cross on which the Redeemer of the African, as well as of the Asian and European, bore the sins of humanity.
Mar_15:22. Golgotha.—The most approved explanation of this name is that it denotes a place slightly elevated and skull-shaped. The Latin designation, Calvary, which comes from the Vulgate, may or may not be meant to express the same meaning. That it was a place where the skulls of malefactors executed there were found is fanciful and improbable, because the Jews would not have suffered it, who were so careful to avoid everything Levitically unclean. Though Christ was suffering so much at this moment, and was about to suffer so much more intensely, He forgot Himself, and thought only of the distress of those who followed Him weeping and wailing, who soon, in the judgments that were hastening to fall on the guilty city, would themselves suffer such hitherto unknown calamities (Luk_23:27-31).—H. B. Hackett, D.D.
Mar_15:23-26. The mystery of eternity. Death by crucifixion was of all deaths the most shameful and most horrible—a pagan penalty that Judaism had never adopted, and one only inflicted by pagans on those of whom it was meant to make a horrible example. Wounding no vital part, and not robbing the victim of any blood, it was a death horribly lingering; while infinite varieties of anguish—from the crushed nerves, from the weight of the body, from the exposure to the scorching sun, from the fever set up by the wounds, and, in Christ’s case, from the back ridged and furrowed, where each stroke of the lash had cut through the flesh—all conspired to make it a death of horror. Yet this is inflicted on Jesus, the Son of God, whose crime was mercy, whose mission here was one of redeeming love.
I. All the mysteries of human nature are here.—
1. That of sin: depravity, as we have already noted, shewing itself clearly here, and demonstrating the corruption of mankind.
2. That of free-will is here. God restrains our sin by truth, mercy, grace, appeal, and warning, but not by force. Man’s freedom to wreck his immortal nature is shewn conspicuously here.
3. That of judgment is here suggested strongly. After these things must there not be some reckoning? (Luk_23:31).
II. The mysteries of Divine revelation are here.—Not till a man has seen God in Christ on the Cross has he seen God. Here all marvels of God are displayed.
1. The mystery of God’s love is here. Nature reveals God’s wisdom; providence, His mercy and His judgment; but Calvary reveals His heart. It displays God’s passion of mercy, His yearning to bless, His appreciation of man, His power of sacrifice.
2. The mystery of God’s meekness is here. Daily He turns the left cheek to those who smote the right, and men mistake His patience for indifference to their faults. Here the meekness and lowliness of the Lord God Almighty are displayed.
3. The mystery of God’s method of curing sin is here. By enduring its strokes He shames and vanquishes transgression.
III. The mysteries of salvation are here.—
1. For here is atonement. The sin of man had never been adequately owned, prayed for, counterbalanced. But by accepting death—its penalty—Christ owns the death-worthiness of our sin. In His prayer, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do,” He makes intercession for the whole guilty race. And there is enough love, faith, obedience, goodness, in Christ’s dying to more than balance all the dishonour a world’s transgression has done its God. This owning, praying for, repairing the wrong of a world’s transgression is atonement.
2. Reconciliation is here (Joh_10:17; 1Jn_4:19). Our love meets God’s love there, and we are reconciled.
3. The mystery of a great inspiration is here. Ever since, the Cross has been the pattern on the mount which holy lives have copied, and it has inspired love and sacrifice into countless hearts.
IV. All mysteries of consolation are here.—Had Christ evaded death, who would have dared to face it? But when He has been with us in passing through the waters, He has changed Jordan’s streams into still waters and its banks to green pastures. Death fixed its sting in Christ and left and lost it there. “He hath abolished death” (2Ti_1:10) by dying, and the consolations of peace and of immortal hope come from it. Thus Christ’s Cross is our Alpha and Omega, glowing with law and gospel, comfort and constraint, power and peace; it is the new tree of life in the midst of life’s wilderness. Let us refuse to glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.—R. Glover.
Mar_15:23. “Wine mingled with myrrh.”—Literally, “myrrhed wine,” that is, drugged wine, to produce heartening it might be (see Bartholinus, de vino myrrhato, in his De Cruce, p. 136), or to induce comparative anæsthesis or insensibility. Myrrh is a strong stimulant. The administration of drugged wine to criminals about to suffer was a merciful custom, which relieved to a small degrees the excessive ferocity so characteristic of the executions of those olden times (see Buxtorf’s Lexicon Talmudic, p. 2131, and Wetstein in loc). “But He received it not.” Or, as the reading is in the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, and “the queen of the cursives”
(33), who, however, received it not (ὅς instead of ὅ). Our Lord did not Wish to use any artificial means to mitigate or otherwise modify His sense of the sufferings connected with the culmination of His work. The value of these sufferings centred in the free activity that, first of all, chose their endurance, in consideration of the sublime moral ends to be subserved, and then self-sacrificingly held out, under their undiminished superincumbence, till all was finished.—J. Morison, D.D.
Mar_15:24-25. “When they had crucified Him,” i.e. when they had affixed Him to the Cross. A world of pain is hidden behind these simple words. Stripping the Sufferer of cloak and coat, the outer and inner tunic, the soldiers would place Him on the Cross as it lay on the ground, and, stretching His arms across the cross-beam, drive the point of a large iron nail through one open palm after the other with blows from a mallet. They would then draw the legs down the upright, and drive another such nail through either foot, or perhaps through both together. Then, lifting the Cross into its socket, fresh pangs would thrill along all the fine and sensitive nerves thus lacerated, and the whole body would be racked with excruciating pains. All this He endured for us men and our salvation. And it seems probable that it was at this point that, instead of breaking into a scream of agony, He uttered the prayer for His murderers which Luke (Luk_23:34) records, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”—S. Cox, D.D.
Mar_15:26. “The King of the Jews.”—Jesus is a King, and the King of the Jews; and neither the insult of Pilate, nor the anxious denial of the multitude, can affect the reality of that fact in the smallest degree. Though humbled, insulted, and crucified, Jesus was and is at once the King of Israel and the Head and Sovereign of every immortal man. To Him the Almighty has assigned the throne of His father David; and that throne, therefore, He needs must occupy. Nay, He has been exalted to kingly supremacy over the whole universe; and that kingly supremacy all must acknowledge, or perish.—J. Cochrane.
Mar_15:27-28. Christ’s companions in shame.—Pilate may have to surrender Barabbas, the leader of the band, to the clamour of powerful hypocrites; he all the more readily will crucify two of his comrades. If he is to crucify Christ, he will label Him “King of the Jews,” and give Him two thieves to keep Him company, in token of the sort of nation He would have to rule. The fact that such association dishonours Christ does not prevent him ordering it when it may give him the sweets of a little revenge in shewing his contempt for everything Jewish. Yet even so there is something very instructive as the association of transgressors with Him in His death.
1. It is suggestive of the philosophy of the Atonement. The prophecy alluded to in Mar_15:28 was quoted by Jesus Himself (Luk_22:37), and gives the simplest theory of the Atonement which we can frame. Numbered with two conspicuous transgressors, the fact suggested that God had “numbered” Him with the whole race of transgressors, and permitted the common penalty of the world’s sin to fall on Him. He is associated with us in our curse, that we may be associated with Him in heavenly bliss.
2. Where most need and misery are, there Christ always is. On His Cross He is near those dying on a cross. He is always nearest the neediest.
3. Be not over-solicitous of reputation. Christ is classed with thieves, Paul with deceivers. One of the most universal of afflictions for Christ’s sake is being misunderstood. Marvel not if your name be “cast out as evil.”—R. Glover.
Mar_15:28. Fulfilment of Scripture at the Crucifixion.—Above every other aspect, the crucifixion of Christ was fulfilment. Let any one familiar with the language of prophet and psalmist pencil-mark every one of their words, verses, and versicles found in the Evangelists’ story of Calvary. The result will be a well-underscored page, and the effect very striking to the eye. In the Greek text, like that of Westcott and Hort, where Old Testament language is printed in uncial or capital letter type, the effect is startling. From many angles of vision, the seers of truth in the past ages caught glimpses of history’s most august figure. Many are the photographic outlines set in the Old Testament pages of the Sinless Victim; but they are in profile or silhouette. Not one is perfect, none full-face or express image. Even they who wrote down their visions could not fully compre hend and interpret what they saw. Nevertheless, while inquiring and searching diligently of the salvation to come, they searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of the Messiah and the glory that should follow.
Mar_15:29-32. Mockers at the Cross.—One does not know whether the blindness or the cruelty of these words is the more wonderful. There is nothing so cruel or so blind as religious hatred.
I. Christ’s Cross apparently shatters to fragments Christ’s claims—Either Jesus Christ died and rose again from the dead, and then He is the Son of God, and God hath exalted Him to be a Prince and a Saviour, as He claimed to be; or He died like other men, and there is an end of it. And then it is no use to talk about Him as a wise Teacher and a lovely perfect character, He is a fanatical Enthusiast, all the beauty of whose religious teaching is marred and spoiled by the extravagant personal claims which He attached to it. We must dismiss the fair dream of a perfect Man, unless we are prepared to go further and say, an Incarnate God.
II. The Cross of Christ is a necessity, to which He voluntarily submitted in order to save a world.—These men only needed to alter one letter to be grandly and gloriously right. If, instead of “could not,” they had said “would not,” they would have grasped the very heart of the power and the very central brightness of the glory of Christianity. It was His own will, and no outward necessity, that fastened Him there; and that will was kept steadfast and immovable by nothing else but His love—He Himself fixed the iron chain which bound Him. He made the “cannot.” It was His love that made it impossible that He should relinquish the task; therefore His steely will, like a strong spring constantly working, kept Him close up against the sharp edge of the knife that cut into His very heart’s life.
III. The Cross is the throne of Christ.—His dominion is a dominion based upon suffering, and wielded in gentleness and meekness; and the crown of thorns lies beneath the many diadems that He wears in heaven. The sceptre of reed, light, fragile, emblem of a meek and merciful dominion that lays a light and loving hand upon the inner springs of the will, and commands by serving, is a stronger rod of dominion than all golden jewel-tipped sceptres that monarchs bear.
IV. The death of Christ is the great proof that God had delight in Him.—Mystery of mysteries, where blend all opposites in harmonious reconcilement: Divine justice and Divine righteousness; the extremities of humiliation and the superlative of exaltation: life and death, the Divine forsaking and the Divine complacency.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Mar_15:31. Truth in mockery.—Many true things have been said in jest. This is one. Never did a more important truth fall from the lips of a scoffer.
I. A great tribute involuntarily accorded to Jesus.—“He saved others.” They practically condemn their own unbelief and their treatment of Him by making this admission. Even His bitterest enemies could find nothing worse to say about Him than this—that He had spent His life in acts of self-sacrificing love. And yet they have no compunction in hounding to death the One True Benefactor of mankind!
II. A declaration true in one sense, false in another.—” Himself He cannot save.”
1. Not true in the sense they meant.
(1) That God had disowned Him as an impostor.
(2) That He was unable from want of power.
2. But most blessedly true in a sense far beyond their comprehension.
(1) Christ’s sufferings and death were part of a Divine plan.
(2) They fulfilled a pledge given (Gen_3:15).
(3) The object to be attained by them. (a) God’s honour. (b) Man’s rescue.
Mar_15:32. Sight not conducive to faith.—An earnest desire to see is but a very ill disposition in order to believe. Had Christ descended from the cross and not died, all faith had been quite destroyed, and He could not have been either the Author or Finisher of it. See here another delusion of human pride, to imagine that miracles are of themselves sufficient to engage men to believe—as if faith were not a gift of God. These men will believe, they say, if Christ save Himself from death—when they themselves had seen Him raise one who had been dead four days, without any other effect than increasing in envy, incredulity, and hardness of heart. So greatly does the sinner deceive himself.—P. Quesnel.
Mar_15:33. The veiled Cross—The darkening of the sun was the testimony of nature to her dying Lord. It is a hint of the truth that creation is dependent on Him, that nature is supported by unseen and spiritual powers, that the fate of the earth ultimately rests on that of the “kingdom of God.”
I. The suggestions of this darkness.—
1. It indicated the going out of the world’s Light.
2. It represented the ignorance of the Gentiles and the malignity of the Jews.
3. It reminds us of the mystery of the Atonement. Christ went into the darkness to save us from darkness; and when the gloom passed away, and the sun shone upon the Cross, the restored light was like the bow of promise after the Flood, a sign of peace between man and God.
II. The effects of the darkness upon those who surrounded the Cross.—
1. It increased the solemnity of the event.
2. It veiled His agony from those around.
3. It whispered warning to the impenitent.—A. Rowland.
The supernatural darkness.—It was not occasioned by an eclipse, for the full moon cannot intervene between the earth and the sun. It was no doubt supernaturally contrived or overruled, as a fringe of the entire supernatural drapery of the great supernatural event which was transpiring within the Sufferer on the Cross. Not that any universal laws were contravened or suspended. But a new force came in, which limited the scope and modified the direction of the other forces that were ordinarily at work. Or when we go to the ultimates of thought, and to the corresponding ultimates of objective reality, we may represent the case thus—a peculiar volition took place in the Divine mind, which modified the action, in that particular scene, of the omnipotent Divine hand. It was meet that there should be around our Lord a penumbra of darkness. It at once reflected the mediatorial eclipse that was going on within, and cast a fitting shade over the guilty population in the immediate vicinity of the scene.—J. Morison, D.D.
Mar_15:34. The causes of Christ’s desolation.—Though we cannot understand this sorrow of our dear Lord, because to us, perhaps, to be forsaken of God would mean so little—though we feel that we are in the presence of a mystery we cannot fathom, whose depths we cannot enter, at whose brink we can but stand and wonder and adore,—yet we may in reverence consider three causes which seem to have produced this element of the Sacred Passion.
1. The first cause of this awful desolation was the fact of the accumulated sin of the whole world, from the disobedience of Eden down to the last intention of sin that shall be disturbed by the archangel’s trumpet, resting upon one Human Soul, to whom the faintest shadow of sin was intolerable.
2. The second cause was the gathering of the hosts of darkness, vanquished in the wilderness, and in the garden, and in many of the souls they had possessed, but now, rallied and marshalled and massed for one last supreme effort, hurling themselves with the fury of despair and hate upon their Vanquisher.
3. The third cause was the hiding of the Father’s face. He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity could not look even upon His beloved Son, when deluged thus in our sin.
“He hides His face from sinners,
He hideth it from Thee.”
And what is all this but hell itself! To be deluged in sin, literally sin-ful, to be surrounded and attacked and tormented on all sides by devils, to be hidden from the light of God’s countenance—what is all this but the foretaste of that misery of outer darkness, of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of everlasting destruction from the presence of God—the final awfulness of unrepented sin.—H. S. Miles.
The forsaking of Christ by His Father.—All His other sufferings seem small by the side of this; they bore rather upon His body, this upon His soul; they came from the hands of men, but this from His Father.
1. This was a penal forsaking, inflicted on Christ for the satisfaction of our sins.
2. It was a real forsaking, not a fictitious one. The Father kept back at this time all the joys, comforts, and love from Christ the Man.
3. This forsaking took place in the very time of Christ’s need. Yet His soul still cleaves to God for all this.—Jas. Lonsdale.
Why God forsakes.—For our sins, worldliness, carelessness, coldness, God justly forsakes us. Let us look diligently for the cause. Let us ask, “Is it in this thing or in that, that we have grieved Thy Holy Spirit? What duty have we neglected? What evil temper shewn? Do our thoughts wander in prayer? Are we formalists? Are we unthankful for Thy love?” So let us search our spirits that nothing escape us.—Ibid.
The cry of desertion.—Speaking of the words uttered by Christ in this terrible moment of loneliness, one says: “When I read what men have written to explain the meaning of Jesus in that cry, I always feel anew how much deeper than our comprehension went His identification with humanity when He plunged into the darkness of its sin. ‘He was made flesh.’ Into what mysterious contact with the sinfulness to which the flesh of man had given itself that ‘being made flesh’ brought Him I know no man has ever fathomed. If I try to fathom it at all, I can only picture to myself the most Christlike act, the most Messianic entrance into the strange and dreadful fate of other men which my imagination can conceive.” The perfectly Holy One did bear sin, and out of the horrible abyss into which He had plunged came the agonising cry.
The last temptation and triumph.—These words are a quotation from the twenty-second Psalm. Are they not more an appropriation of the whole psalm? The words directed the disciples to it as pointing out the current of His thoughts and expressing His condition. Thus they direct us, and in the psalm and its character we must look for the meaning and significance of His cry. Pitying them amid His agony, He cannot tell them all; but calling to mind the old familiar hymn, let them find His heart and its experience and triumph there. Read that psalm as such, and however darkly it opens, that only makes more glorious the psalmist’s testimony. It is the history of a passionate soul passing through fierce discipline and suffering to confident security and triumph, feeling its way through weakness to strength, proving each step how faithful, how wonderful, is the abiding presence and keeping of God. The passionate cry of its opening verse is but the vivid sense of need, and emphasises the needlessness of all fear, the sureness of God’s enclosing and faithful deliverance—the impossibility of being forsaken, for “God delivers even from the horns of the unicorn.” Christ’s utterance told truly His suffering and need, but pointed directly to the sureness of His triumph and glory. By the very words He chooses He would seem to be feeling after and touching His disciples’ inner thought and weakness, forestalling as it were their despairful fears and conclusion when the tragedy shall be complete; and by pointing in such words their uncomprehending thought, and carrying their minds to this psalm, He would comfort them in its assurances and give them its hope and security. Looked at in the light of the whole psalm, Christ is standing face to face with His sacrifice and work, facing its temptation and measuring Himself with it. The shadow which has crept nearer and nearer, vague but threatening, and deepening into awfulness, through His whole ministry, at length is known and felt, has become palpable and distinct, and holds Him; and He must know its meaning and measure. Isolating Him from human sympathy, it insinuates Him isolated from God also. The fear of the psalmist grows distinct and forceful before His broken and suffering spirit, challenging His faith; He takes it up, and through it moves into the confidence of the psalmist. “God doth not abhor the affliction of the afflicted.” He hurls the insinuation, baffled and destroyed, from Him by His clear consciousness and confidence in the Father. He has measured His strength and resources, and can drink the cup He has accepted, and, drinking it, His work is finished.—S. D, Thomas.
Mar_15:37. The death of Christ reveals—
1. His perfect humanity.
2. A completed work of self-sacrifice.
3. The completeness of His rejection by the world.
4. The completion of the old dispensation.
5. A completed salvation. We instinctively expect consistency in a great and good man’s death. We feel he ought to leave the trail of his greatness behind him. His dying influence should adorn what he leaves as witness to his worth. So Christ dies, sinking to rest as the setting sun in a stormful sky, making His life’s close His triumph. You have seen the broken banks of storm-clouds massed in the heavy west of a winter’s sky, with broken dun cloudlets floating through monotonous grey, changed into splendour by the sinking sun, flushed into rose and floating islets of light and gold, and then the many tints deepening into the deep purple of evening’s quiet. So Christ passed and sank to rest, so set the Sun of Righteousness, changing the storm, the tragedy, and Cross by heroism, wondrous words and prayers, into light and glory, deepening into serenity and rest. There was such a nobleness and greatness in the whole we cannot think of it as death; it was but a setting, His life’s work crowned.—Ibid.
Mar_15:38. The veil rent.—This veil formed the first mark of distinction which was observed in the use of the Temple with respect to the several gradations of those who worshipped therein. In these gradations consisted a feature of the Jewish Church which was not to be preserved in that which was to succeed it. In the new temple there was to be no family like Aaron’s, no tribe like Levi’s, no nation like the Israelites. The partition walls between outward and inner court, between the temple and its holy of holies, were all broken down; and the idolater who came in at the eleventh hour was as free of the new temple as the converted son of Abraham, whose fathers had served there from the first dawn and early morning of the Church. See Heb_9:1-8; Heb_10:16-22.—S. Hinds.
Mar_15:39. Recognising nobleness.—Next to being noble is the ability to recognise nobleness in others. In fact, this ability indicates a measure of nobleness in oneself; the recognition is a proof of kinship. It is in this as it is in every other line of observation and of outreaching: one’s perceptions and attractions and repulsions are the truest test of one’s personal character. The next thing to being manly is to recognise and honour manliness in another. The next thing to being unselfish is to recognise and honour unselfishness in another. The next thing to being pure is to recognise and honour purity in another. And the next thing to being Christlike is to perceive the likeness of Christ; indeed, to perceive Christ’s likeness is in itself to be Christlike.—H. C. Trumbull.
Mar_15:40-41. Women at the Crucifixion.—How true to the purpose of woman’s creation as the helpmeet of man was the association of these faithful, clinging souls with their Lord in His passion! And He, in the perfection of His manhood, did not refuse the comfort of their presence. As He looked down upon that little group of loving faces in the midst of the pitiless crowd that was now surging round His Cross, we may reverently believe that the Son of Man found a little’ comfort in their true-hearted devotion, seeing in them the firstfruits of the faithful of all time, in whom He should see of the travail of His soul.—H. S. Miles.
Woman’s ministry to Christ.—If such a thing is possible, the Saviour had done much more for woman than for man. Some who have rejected the gospel (Comte, for instance) have been the readiest to admit that it has raised the status of women immeasurably. Of the many elements in the gospel which have contributed to this, nothing has been more operative than the services which the Saviour has received from woman’s hand. The gospel gave them a noble cause, to be advanced by methods of holiest peace; it engaged the love which made such service a delight, and gave the grace which crowned it with supreme success. The ministry of women to the Rabbis was a recognised thing; and Jesus, in His homeless greatness and in His Divine poverty, could receive the gentle tendance of Galilean matrons without reproach.
(1) It is a great cause which enlists the best feelings of the best women on its side.
(2) Some might have objected to their going there, asking, “What good could possibly be done?” In dealing with such questions it is always safer to trust to the instincts of affection than to our reason. Their heart bade them stand beside Him, and, doing so, they gave a testimony greatly needed and of richest worth, and found themselves ready to help Joseph in his gracious task.
(3) Mary Magdalene, “out of whom went seven demons” (Luk_8:2), ought to be regarded as having been a great sufferer whom Christ relieved, not as a great sinner whom Christ forgave. We have in her action the full beauty of gratitude displayed.
(4) Mary, wife of Cleophas (or Alpheus, for these are two forms of one name), is another instance of a good mother having good sons. When we see her heroic love, and that of Salome, who stands beside her, we do not marvel that each of them is the mother of two apostles.
(5) What honour these women find, without having a single thought of working for it! So honour ever flies those who seek, but seeks those who merit it. See to thy work, and God will see to your reward.—R. Glover.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 15
Mar_15:21. The shape of the Cross.—The shape of the Cross on which our Lord suffered has been much debated. Some ancient Fathers, fancying they found a typical reference in the crossing of the hands over the head of the scape-goat, and in the peculiar mode in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, often assumed that it was in the form of what is commonly called a St. Andrew’s cross; others again, seeing in the mystical mark or Tau set upon the foreheads of the righteous in Ezekiel’s vision a foreshadowing of the Cross, concluded that it was like that which bears the name of St. Anthony, in form like a capital T. It is far more probable that it was what is known familiarly as the Latin cross. It was prefigured by the transverse spits which the priest placed in the paschal lamb. Its four arms, pointing to the four quarters of the globe, symbolised “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height “of Christ’s universal Church. It is a strong argument in favour of this form that “the inscription” was set above the head of the Crucified, which would be impossible in either of the other forms.—Dean Luckock.
Mar_15:24. Stripped of His raiment.—Dr. Norman Macleod relates the following incident: “Tom Baird, the carter, the beadle of my working-man’s church, was as noble a fellow as ever lived—God-fearing, true, unselfish. I shall never forget what he said when I asked him to stand at the door of the working-man’s congregation, and when I thought he was unwilling to do so in his working clothes. ‘If,’ said I, ‘you don’t like to do it, Tom; if you are ashamed—’ ‘Ashamed I’ he exclaimed, as he turned round upon me,’ I’m mair ashamed o’ yersel’ sir. Div ye think that I believe, as ye ken 1 do, that Jesus Christ, who died for me, was stripped o’ His raiment on the Cross, and that I—Na, na, I’m prood to stand at the door.’ Dear, good fellow I There he stood for seven winters, without a sixpence of pay, all from love, though at my request the working congregation gave him a silver watch. When he was dying from small-pox, the same unselfish nature appeared. When asked if they would let me know, he replied: ‘There’s nae man leevin’ I like as I do him. I know he would come. But he shouldna’ come on account of his wife and bairns, and so ye maunna’ tell him I’ I never saw him in his illness, never hearing of his danger till it was too late.”
A hardened gamester.—There was a profligate gamester whose conversion was attempted by some honest monks, and they, in order to break his heart for sin, put into his hands a fine picture of the crucifixion of Christ; but when they inquired what he was studying so intently in the picture, hoping his conversion was going forward, he replied. “I was examining whether the dice with which the soldiers are casting lots for the garment be like ours.” This man too well resembles bad men in the ceremonies of religion, for their hearts guide their eyes to what may nourish their vices, not to what would destroy them.
Mar_15:25. The Gross explains the world’s mystery.—In the Palace of Justice at Rome they take you sometimes into a chamber with strangely painted frescoes on the ceiling, and around the walls, and upon the floor, in all kinds of grotesque forms. You cannot reduce them to harmony; you cannot make out the perspective; it is all a bewildering maze of confusion. But there is one spot upon the floor of that room, and one only, standing upon which every line falls into harmony; the perspective is perfect, the picture flashes out upon you, instinct with meaning in every line and panel. You can see at that point, and that only, the design of the artist that painted it. I believe that this world is just as bewildering a maze looked at at every point except one. I look back upon the records of history; I look upon the speculations of science; I endeavour to gaze into the future of this world’s career; wherever I turn I am opposed by the mysteries that hem me in and crush me down, until I take my stand at the foot of the Cross. Then darkness and discord become light and harmony; the mystery is solved; the night that shuts me in becomes radiant with the Divine light and glory. At the foot of the Cross art, science, literature, history, become at once to me a Divine, a glorious, and a blessed thing. And so I claim for my Lord His rightful dominion over all the works of His hands. We will gather all the beauties of art, all the treasures of music, all that is brightest and best in this world, and we will lay them down at His feet; for “worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive might, and majesty, and riches, and power, and honour, and glory.” His is the sceptre, His is the right, His this universal world.—Dr. Manning.
The Cross the sufferer’s support.—A poor woman in a ward of one of the great London hospitals had to undergo a fearful operation, and as a special favour besought that it might be performed on Good Friday, which was close at hand, that the reflexion on her Redeemer’s agony might the better enable her to endure her own sufferings.—A preacher has found an illustration of the saving efficacy of the Redeemer’s work in the great breakwater or pier which stretches in front of Plymouth Harbour, on which all the force of the storms expend their violence, and behind whose solid strength the ships of many a distant land find shelter and security. So does the atonement of Christ offer us rest for our souls, if only we seek it as our refuge; and so too, when the things of this world are full of bitterness, we shall find life sweetened and purified by means of the Cross.
Mar_15:31. Salvation of others by self-sacrifice.—
1. A converted Japanese was explaining the Atonement. He used this touching illustration: A woman was crossing the great plain. She carried a child on her back. When in the midst of the plain, she looked suddenly behind her and saw that it was afire. She had but a moment to think. She laid down the child, desperately scooped with her hands a hole in the earth, with trembling haste laid the child in it, and covered it with her own body. There they found the two. The poor mother was dead, but the child was saved. “So Jesus died for me,” said the simple-hearted convert. “That I might live, He put His body between me and everlasting fire.”
2. When Dr. Bushnell, after telling one of his children that if he touched the plants in the conservatory his own geranium, as a penalty, should be put in the cellar, and, seeing the child disobey, put his own geranium, the largest and most beautiful of all, into the cellar instead, the boy understood the sacrifice of feelings thus made—that if he was to be spared, and his father’s word respected, his father must suffer.
3. A wealthy young man, living in London, undertook to improve the condition of the poor of that vast city. For this purpose he visited them and gave away large sums. But within a short time he discovered that, if he was to do any permanent good, he must live among them. He did not hesitate. He took a lodging in the heart of the Seven Dials, the worst district of the city. There he toiled until he died. He was cut off in the beginning of his work, but he succeeded. He had found the secret of his calling—that if he would save, he must Buffer.
Self-sacrificing devotion.—Edwin, King of Northumbria, in 617 gave audience to an envoy from the King of Wessex. In the midst of the conference the envoy started to his feet, drew a dagger from his robe, and rushed madly on the king. Lilla, one of the royal band, threw himself between Edwin and the assassin; but so furious was the stroke that even through Lilla’s body the dagger still reached its aim. The king, however, soon recovered, though his devoted servant died.
Sacrifice to save.—In the early days of the American settlement Captain John Smith was among the most intrepid of the explorers, and earned for himself the title of “Father of the Colony.” He was once seized by the Indians and held in captivity, being afterwards sentenced to death. A tenderhearted Indian maiden, touched with pity, interceded for him, but in vain, and then flung herself beneath the executioner’s axe, and clasped the victim in her arms, risking her own life, but saving the captain and the colony of Virginia.
Mar_15:33. Christ eclipsed.—A pious astronomer, in describing an eclipse which he witnessed in Norway, says: “I watched the instantaneous extinction of light, and saw the glorious scene on which I had been gazing turned into darkness. All the horizon seemed to speak of terror, death, and judgment; and overhead sat, not the clear flood of light which a starry night sends down, but there hung over me dark and leaden blackness, which seemed as if it would crush me into the earth. And as I beheld it I thought, “How miserable is the soul to whom Christ is eclipsed!” The thought was answered by a voice; for a fierce and powerful seabird which had been swooping around us, apparently infuriated at our intrusion on its domain, poured out a scream of despairing agony when it was surprised in the darkness.” What, then, will be the fearful surprise when the lost soul finds itself in that world “where hope withering flees, and mercy sighs, Farewell!”
Nature’s sympathy with her Lord.—We feel a deep appropriateness in the sympathy of nature with the crucifixion of our Lord, in the profound darkness that overspread the earth as the outer token of the spiritual darkness that overwhelmed His soul, and in the rending of the rocks that accompanied the rending of His mortal flesh and the separation between soul and body. Superstition has sought for farther proofs than those which Scripture gives of such sympathy, and imagined that it has found them in the continual trembling to this day of the leaves of the aspen when all around is still, as if in shuddering recollection of the use made of its wood for the construction of the cross; and also in the dark stains that appear ineffaceably on the leaves and the crimson spots that mingle with the white blossoms on one of the commonest weeds of our cornfields, said by tradition to have grown beneath the Cross. And the scarlet anemones, which blaze in spring-like embodied flames on the hills of Palestine, are called by the Christian residents “blood-drops of Christ,” under the idea that these beautiful flowers were dyed with the blood that issued from our Saviour’s pierced side. Unfounded as these superstitions are, it must be confessed, notwithstanding, that there is something in them that appeals to our natural sense of fitness. It is difficult to realise that nature should hold on serenely in her accustomed way while her Lord was dying. We should have expected that the supernatural darkness would have continued all the time—that the fields would languish and the flowers fade in token of their deep sympathy with the death of Him who gave them all their beauty, and whose smile of blessing rested always upon them while He trod the earth,—Hugh Macmillan, D.D.
Mar_15:37. The death of Death.—A Greenland missionary relates the following: “Last winter, Jacob, a native assistant of mine, was summoned to his rest. On the day before his death, having been asked how he felt, he replied, ‘I shall not rise from this bed again; I am called hence to the Lord.’ He then raised his arm, stretched it out and said, ‘Look! my arm is nothing but bones and skin. It is the same with my earthly body: the flesh is dead within me; my desire is fixed on my heavenly country—that country where I shall behold Him who loves me and whom I love. Yes, I shall see Him shortly.’ When asked whether he feared death, ‘Oh no,’ he answered; ‘how can I love Christ and fear death? The death of Christ was the death of Death.’ ”
Mar_15:39. Power of the Cross.—The well-known story of Colonel Gardiner’s conversion illustrates the power of the Cross. He lived a gay life, and after having spent the Sunday evening in carousing retired to his room, when he took up a book entitled The Christian Soldier, intending to make fun of it. He fell asleep with the book in his hand, and dreamed: a blaze of light shone on the book, and overhead he saw suspended in the air a vivid representation of the Saviour on the Cross. Distinctly he heard a voice saying, “This I did for thee: what hast thou done for Me?” He awoke, and filled with contrition he sought and found pardon and peace.—One afternoon a man stood in Antwerp Cathedral gazing at Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross.” He was so absorbed in what he saw, that when the verger came and told him it was time to close the cathedral he exclaimed, “No, no, not yet; wait until they get Him down.”
Involuntary testimony to the Divinity of Christ.—A well-known learned man of Saxony, after having all His life long attacked Jesus and his gospel with all the weapons of sophistry he could command, was in his old age partially deprived of his reason, chiefly through the fear of death, and frequently fell into reigious paroxysms of a peculiar nature. He was almost daily observed conversing with himself, while pacing to and fro in his chamber, on one of the walls of which, between other pictures, hung one of the Saviour. Repeatedly he halted before the latter, and said in a horrifying tone of voice, “After all, Thou wast only a man.” Then after a short pause he would continue, “What wast Thou more than a man? Ought I to worship Thee? No, I will not worship Thee, for Thou art only Rabbi Jesus, Joseph’s son, of Nazareth.” Uttering these words, he would return with a deeply affected countenance, and exclaim, “What dost Thou say? That Thou earnest from above! How terribly Thou eyest me! Oh, Thou art dreadful! But Thou art only a man, after all!” Then he would again rush away, but soon return with faltering step, crying out, “What! Art Thou in reality the Son of God?” The same scenes were daily renewed, till the unhappy man, struck by paralysis, dropped down dead; and then really stood before his Judge, who, even in His picture had so strikingly and overpoweringly judged him.
Rousseau’s testimony to the death of Christ.—Rousseau once wrote in one of his better moments that “if the death of Socrates was that of a sage, the death of Jesus was that of a God.” It may be too, probably, that he wrote not as one who adores, but as one who admires. Bitter epigrams on Rousseau’s sentence were not wanting. “It may be a pretty turn,” some one said, “but then, unluckily, it is absurd.” But He who in one undivided Person is God and Man, who died His death, is so different from all others that the paradox of Rousseau is literally true.—Bishop Wm. Alexander.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Mark
THE DEATH WHICH GIVES LIFE
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SIMON THE CYRENIAN
Mar 15:21.
How little these soldiers knew that they were making this man immortal! What a strange fate that is which has befallen chose persons in the Gospel narrative, who for an instant came into contact with Jesus Christ. Like ships passing athwart the white ghostlike splendour of moonlight on the sea, they gleam silvery pure for a moment as they cross its broad belt, and then are swallowed up again in the darkness.
This man Simon, fortuitously, as men say, meeting the little procession at the gate of the city, for an instant is caught in the radiance of the light, and stands out visible for evermore to all the world; and then sinks into the blackness, and we know no more about him. This brief glimpse tells us very little, and yet the man and his act and its consequences may be worth thinking about.
He was a Cyrenian; that is, he was a Jew by descent, probably born, and certainly resident, for purposes of commerce, in Cyrene, on the North African coast of the Mediterranean. No doubt he had come up to Jerusalem for the Passover; and like very many of the strangers who flocked to the Holy City for the feast, met some difficulty in finding accommodation in the city, and so was obliged to go to lodge in one of the outlying villages. From this lodging he is coming in, in the morning, knowing nothing about Christ nor His trial, knowing nothing of what he is about to meet, and happens to see the procession as it is passing out of the gate. He is by the centurion impressed to help the fainting Christ to carry the heavy Cross. He probably thought Jesus a common criminal, and would resent the task laid upon him by the rough authority of the officer in command. But he was gradually touched into some kind of sympathy; drawn closer and closer, as we suppose, as he looked upon this dying meekness; and at last, yielded to the soul-conquering power of Christ.
Tradition says so, and the reasons for supposing that it was right may be very simply stated. The description of him in our text as ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’ shows that, by the time when Mark wrote, his two sons were members of the Christian community, and had attained some eminence in it. A Rufus is mentioned in the salutations in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, as being ‘elect in the Lord,’ that is to say, ‘eminent,’ and his mother is associated in the greeting, and commended as having been motherly to Paul as well as to Rufus. Now, if we remember that Mark’s Gospel was probably written in Rome, and for Roman Christians, the conjecture seems a very reasonable one that the Rufus here was the Rufus of the Epistle to the Romans. If so, it would seem that the family had been gathered into the fold of the Church, and in all probability, therefore, the father with them.
Then there is another little morsel of possible evidence which may just be noticed. We find in the Acts of the Apostles, in the list of the prophets and teachers in the Church at Antioch, a ‘Simon, who is called Niger’ {that is, black, the hot African sun having tanned his countenance, perhaps}, and side by side with him one ‘Lucius of Cyrene,’ from which place we know that several of the original brave preachers to the Gentiles in Antioch came. It is possible that this may be our Simon, and that he who was the last to join the band of disciples during the Master’s life and learned courage at the Cross was among the first to apprehend the world-wide destination of the Gospel, and to bear it beyond the narrow bounds of his nation.
At all events, I think we may, with something like confidence, believe that his glimpse of Christ on that morning and his contact with the suffering Saviour ended in his acceptance of Him as his Christ, and in his bearing in a truer sense the Cross after Him.
And so I seek now to gather some of the lessons that seem to me to arise from this incident.
I. First, the greatness of trifles.
If Simon had started from the little village where he lodged five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate, or if the centurion’s eye had not chanced to alight on him in the crowd, or if the centurion’s fancy had picked out somebody else to carry the Cross, then all his life would have been different. And so it is always. You go down one turning rather than another, and your whole career is coloured thereby. You miss a train, and you escape death. Our lives are like the Cornish rocking stones, pivoted on little points. The most apparently insignificant things have a strange knack of suddenly developing unexpected consequences, and turning out to be, not small things at all, but great and decisive and fruitful.
Let us then look with ever fresh wonder on this marvellous contexture of human life, and on Him that moulds it all to His own perfect purposes. Let us bring the highest and largest principles to bear on the smallest events and circumstances, for you can never tell which of these is going to turn out a revolutionary and formative influence in your life. And if the highest Christian principle is not brought to bear upon the trifles, depend upon it, it will never be brought to bear upon the mighty things. The most part of every life is made up of trifles, and unless these are ruled by the highest motives, life, which is divided into grains like the sand, will have gone by, while we are waiting for the great events which we think worthy of being regulated by lofty principles. ‘Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.’
Look after the trifles, for the law of life is like that which is laid down by the Psalmist about the Kingdom of Jesus Christ: ‘There shall be a handful of corn in the earth,’ a little seed sown in an apparently ungenial place ‘on the top of the mountains.’ Ay! but this will come of it, ‘The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon,’ and the great harvest of benediction or of curse, of joy or of sorrow, will come from the minute seeds that are sown in the great trifles of our daily life.
Let us learn the lesson, too, of quiet confidence in Him in whose hands the whole puzzling, overwhelming mystery lies. If a man once begins to think of how utterly incalculable the consequences of the smallest and most commonplace of his deeds may be, how they may run out into all eternity, and like divergent lines may enclose a space that becomes larger and wider the further they travel; if, I say, a man once begins to indulge in thoughts like these, it is difficult for him to keep himself calm and sane at all, unless he believes in the great loving Providence that lies above all, and shapes the vicissitude and mystery of life. We can leave all in His hands-and if we are wise we shall do so-to whom great and small are terms that have no meaning; and who looks upon men’s lives, not according to the apparent magnitude of the deeds with which they are filled, but simply according to the motive from which, and the purpose towards which, these deeds were done.
II. Then, still further, take this other lesson, which lies very plainly here-the blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ.
If we turn to the story of the Crucifixion, in John’s Gospel, we find that the narratives of the three other Gospels are, in some points, supplemented by it. In reference to our Lord’s bearing of the Cross, we are informed by John that when He left the judgment hall He was carrying it Himself, as was the custom with criminals under the Roman law. The heavy cross was laid on the shoulder, at the intersection of its arms and stem, one of the arms hanging down in front of the bearer’s body, and the long upright trailing behind.
Apparently our Lord’s physical strength, sorely tried by a night of excitement and the hearings in the High priest’s palace and before Pilate, as well as by the scourging, was unequal to the task of carrying, albeit for that short passage, the heavy weight. And there is a little hint of that sort in the context. In the verse before my text we read, ‘They led Jesus out to crucify Him,’ and in the verse after, ‘they bring,’ or bear ‘Him to the place Golgotha,’ as if, when the procession began, they led Him, and before it ended they had to carry Him, His weakness having become such that He Himself could not sustain the weight of His cross or of His own enfeebled limbs. So, with some touch of pity in their rude hearts, or more likely with professional impatience of delay, and eager to get their task over, the soldiers lay hold of this stranger, press him into the service and make him carry the heavy upright, which trailed on the ground behind Jesus. And so they pass on to the place of execution.
Very reverently, and with few words, one would touch upon the physical weakness of the Master. Still, it does not do us any harm to try to realise how very marked was the collapse of His physical nature, and to remember that that collapse was not entirely owing to the pressure upon Him of the mere fact of physical death; and that it was still less a failure of His will, or like the abject cowardice of some criminals who have had to be dragged to the scaffold, and helped up its steps; but that the reason why His flesh failed was very largely because there was laid upon Him the mysterious burden of the world’s sin. Christ’s demeanour in the act of death, in such singular contrast to the calm heroism and strength of hundreds who have drawn all their heroism and strength from Him, suggests to us that, looking upon His sufferings, we look upon something the significance of which does not lie on the surface; and the extreme pressure of which is to be accounted for by that blessed and yet solemn truth of prophecy and Gospel alike-’The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’
But, apart from that, which does not enter properly into my present contemplations, let us remember that though changed in form, very truly and really in substance, this blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ is given to us; and is demanded from us, too, if we are His disciples. He is despised and set at nought still. He is crucified afresh still. There are many men in this day who scoff at Him, mock Him, deny His claims, seek to cast Him down from His throne, rebel against His dominion. It is an easy thing to be a disciple, when all the crowd is crying ‘Hosanna!’ It is a much harder thing to be a disciple when the crowd, or even when the influential cultivated opinion of a generation, is crying ‘Crucify Him! crucify Him!’ And some of you Christian men and women have to learn the lesson that if you are to be Christians you must be Christ’s companions when His back is at the wall as well as when men are exalting and honouring Him, that it is your business to confess Him when men deny Him, to stand by Him when men forsake Him, to avow Him when the avowal is likely to bring contempt upon you from some people, and thus, in a very real sense, to bear His Cross after Him. ‘Let us go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach’;-the tail end of His Cross, which is the lightest! He has borne the heaviest end on His own shoulders; but we have to ally ourselves with that suffering and despised Christ if we are to be His disciples.
I do not dwell upon the lesson often drawn from this story, as if it taught us to ‘take up our cross daily and follow Him.’ That is another matter, and yet is closely connected with that about which I speak; but what I say is, Christ’s Cross has to be carried to-day; and if we have not found out that it has, let us ask ourselves if we are Christians at all. There will be hostility, alienation, a comparative coolness, and absence of a full sense of sympathy with you, in many people, if you are a true Christian. You will come in for a share of contempt from the wise and the cultivated of this generation, as in all generations. The mud that is thrown after the Master will spatter your faces too, to some extent; and if you are walking with Him you will be, to the extent of your communion with Him, objects of the aversion with which many men regard Him. Stand to your colours. Do not be ashamed of Him in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
And there is yet another way in which this honour of helping the Lord is given to us. As in His weakness He needed some one to aid Him to bear His Cross, so in His glory He needs our help to carry out the purposes for which the Cross was borne. The paradox of a man’s carrying the Cross of Him who carried the world’s burden is repeated in another form. He needs nothing, and yet He needs us. He needs nothing, and yet He needed that ass which was tethered at ‘the place where two ways met,’ in order to ride into Jerusalem upon it. He does not need man’s help, and yet He does need it, and He asks for it. And though He bore Simon the Cyrenian’s sins ‘in His own body on the tree,’ He needed Simon the Cyrenian to help Him to bear the tree, and He needs us to help Him to spread throughout the world the blessed consequences of that Cross and bitter Passion. So to us all is granted the honour, and from us all are required the sacrifice and the service, of helping the suffering Saviour.
III. Another of the lessons which may very briefly be drawn from this story is that of the perpetual recompense and record of the humblest Christian work.
There were different degrees of criminality, and different degrees of sympathy with Him, if I may use the word, in that crowd that stood round the Master. The criminality varied from the highest degree of violent malignity in the Scribes and Pharisees, down to the lowest point of ignorance, and therefore all but entire innocence, on the part of the Roman legionaries, who were merely the mechanical instruments of the order given, and stolidly ‘watched Him there,’ with eyes which saw nothing.
On the other hand, there were all grades of service and help and sympathy, from the vague emotions of the crowd who beat their breasts, and the pity of the daughters of Jerusalem, or the kindly-meant help of the soldiers, who would have moistened the parched lips, to the heroic love of the women at the Cross, whose ministry was not ended even with His life. But surely the most blessed share in that day’s tragedy was reserved for Simon, whose bearing of the Cross may have been compulsory at first, but became, ere it was ended, willing service. But whatever were the degrees of recognition of Christ’s character, and of sympathy with the meaning of His sufferings, yet the smallest and most transient impulse of loving gratitude that went out towards Him was rewarded then, and is rewarded for ever, by blessed results in the heart that feels it.
Besides these results, service for Christ is recompensed, as in the instance before us, by a perpetual memorial. How little Simon knew that ‘wherever in the whole world this gospel was preached, there also, this that he had done should be told for a memorial of him! ‘ How little he understood when he went back to his rural lodging that night, that he had written his name high up on the tablet of the world’s memory, to be legible for ever. Why, men have fretted their whole lives away to win what this man won, and knew nothing of-one line in the chronicle of fame.
So we may say, it shall be always, ‘I will never forget any of their works.’ We may not leave our deeds inscribed in any records that men can read. What of that, If they are written in letters of light in the ‘Lamb’s Book of Life,’ to be read out by Him before His Father and the holy angels, in that last great day? We may not leave any separable traces of our services, any more than the little brook that comes down some gulley on the hillside flows separate from its sisters, with whom it has coalesced, in the bed of the great river, or in the rolling, boundless ocean, What of that so long as the work, in its consequences, shall last? Men that sow some great prairie broadcast cannot go into the harvest-field and say, ‘I sowed the seed from which that ear came, and you the seed from which this one sprang.’ But the waving abundance belongs to them all, and each may be sure that his work survives and is glorified there,-’that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.’ So a perpetual remembrance is sure for the smallest Christian service.
IV. The last lesson that I would draw is, let us learn from this incident the blessed results of contact with the suffering Christ.
Simon the Cyrenian apparently knew nothing about Jesus Christ when the Cross was laid on his shoulders. He would be reluctant to undertake the humiliating task, and would plod along behind Him for a while, sullen and discontented, but by degrees be touched by more of sympathy, and get closer and closer to the Sufferer. And if he stood by the Cross when it was fixed, and saw all that transpired there, no wonder if, at last, after more or less protracted thought and search, he came to understand who He was that he had helped, and to yield himself to Him wholly.
Yes! dear brethren, Christ’s great saying, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,’ began to be fulfilled when He began to be lifted up. The centurion, the thief, this man Simon, by looking on the Cross, learned the Crucified.
And it is the only way by which any of us will ever learn the true mystery and miracle of Christ’s great and loving Being and work. I beseech you, take your places there behind Him, near His Cross; gazing upon Him till your hearts melt, and you, too, learn that He is your Lord, and your Saviour, and your God. The Cross of Jesus Christ divides men into classes as the Last Day will. It, too, parts men-’sheep’ to the right hand, ‘goats’ to the left. If there was a penitent, there was an impenitent thief; if there was a convinced centurion, there were gambling soldiers; if there were hearts touched with compassion, there were mockers who took His very agonies and flung them in His face as a refutation of His claims. On the day when that Cross was reared on Calvary it began to be what it has been ever since, and is at this moment to every soul who hears the Gospel, ‘a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.’ Contact with the suffering Christ will either bind you to His service, and fill you with His Spirit, or it will harden your hearts, and make you tenfold more selfish-that is to say, ‘tenfold more a child of hell’-than you were before you saw and heard of that divine meekness of the suffering Christ. Look to Him, I beseech you, who bears what none can help Him to carry, the burden of the world’s sin. Let Him bear yours, and yield to Him your grateful obedience, and then take up your cross daily, and bear the light burden of self-denying service to Him who has borne the heavy load of sin for you and all mankind.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain It is possible that this may be the same…
Rufus
It is possible that this may be the same Rufus mentioned in Rom 16:13.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 15:21-22 After they left the walled city of Jerusalem,…
15:21-22 After they left the walled city of Jerusalem, Jesus’ strength apparently failed. The Roman soldiers forced Simon . . . from Cyrene in northern Africa to carry Jesus’ cross (cp. Matt 5:41). Normally, a crucifixion victim was forced to carry the horizontal crossbeam (the patibulum) of his own cross to the place of execution. The vertical post (the staticulum) was sometimes left permanently in the ground as a warning and deterrent (like a hangman’s scaffold in a public square). • Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus, who were probably known to Mark’s readers (cp. Rom 16:13). • Golgotha is Aramaic, meaning Place of the Skull. In the Latin Vulgate, “skull” is calvariae (“Calvary”). In Jesus’ day, Golgotha lay outside the walled city of Jerusalem (John 19:20; see Matt 27:32; Heb 13:12). When Herod Antipas later enlarged the city with the so-called third wall, Golgotha was enclosed.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.