Matthew 27:40
“If you are the Son
of God, come down from the cross”
As the soldiers, chief priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, and
on lookers glared upon the man being nailed to the cross they demanded that he
prove himself, that he validate everything he said he was.
“Let him come down from the cross and we will believe,”
is what they said. “But if you will not,
then you are not who you say you are,” is what they thought.
But Jesus resisted the opportunity...the night before he
had done the same. As Peter drew his
sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, Jesus scolded him
saying, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once
send me more than twelve legions of angels?”
Where are the angels now?
Where is the heroism? Where is
the great king and mighty warrior? Have we nothing but a humiliated, defenseless man who can do nothing to save
himself? The conclusion of the matter
for those there that watched his death: this is not God and
this is not the Son of Man.
His death was seen as a failure, a flop. The kindest and most forgiving onlooker would
have graciously thought of him, at best, as nothing more than a martyr who died
serving his cause, but even they would have doubted his sincerity as he spoke
not a word in his defense of all the accusations. He did nothing to even defend, prove, or
validate himself at that moment. Most would have looked
upon the dying man as a phony, fraud, and fake.
A liar who deceived the hearts and minds of thousands. Now receiving his due justice for his
lies. They would have considered John
the Baptist who had been beheaded partly due to loyalty to His cause. They would have thought of the cowardice of
his most devoted followers, most of whom were nowhere to be found at this
moment.
There he was. Alone,
naked, shamed, struggling to draw breath.
If he was God, if he was the Messiah, if he was the “I AM,” could not he
do better than this? This was the death
of a criminal not a warrior, not God, not a mercenary, not a king. Covered in blood and spit...it was a
shameful, awful scene...a humiliating scene.
The lowest of low.
That is exactly where his mission was to take him. To the depths of human rejection. Despised and derided by the world. He would not meet their demands and he would
not give them what they wanted. For had he
given them what they wanted, had he stood up to the humiliation he was
facing...he would not have been able to give them what they needed...what we
needed.
But this was but a cake walk compared to what he faced
next.
Matthew 27:46 And
about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli,
lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?"
Man had turned his back upon him, but that was nothing
compared to what he felt and faced when His own Father turned his back as well. The one who had sent him on the mission in
first place. The one to who he had
devoted every step he took. He had said
himself that every word spoke came from his Father.
John records in John 16:32, that just a day before he had
claimed to his own disciples “behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come,
when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with
me.”
But here in this moment, on this cross, the father had
left him...alone.
And why? Why forsake
your son? Why turn your back when the
sinful world wrongly murdered him? Because when Jesus took up the cross, he
took up something the Father could have nothing to do with...something that
would separate Jesus from the Father. It
would have been a contradiction to his character and person had his Father done
any different. For when Jesus took up
the cross...He had become sin. Paul
tells us 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no
sin.” The weight of the cross was much heavier than what can be measured in
pounds or kilograms. Bearing the cross
meant bearing something Jesus had never carried before...the guilt and shame of
sin. But not his sin...our sin, the sin
of all mankind from Adam to you. That is
why he cried. That is why he sweated
blood. That is why he agonized over this
moment. In lifting the cross, in the
hanging upon the cross, he carried something that we could not. The weight of sin and the wrath of God. A dark moment, the darkest. A lonely moment, the loneliest. The pain of the nails in his wrists were at
this moment a mere pinch compared to the pain in his spirit and soul at this abandonment.
The wrath of God, the abandonment of God...His body could
no longer handle it, his lungs could no longer breath it. So with all that he had left, in a loud voice
he cried, “It is finished.” And so it
was, he breathed his last.
It is finished, it is finished, it is finished...sin,
guilt, shame, condemnation, hell, Satan...finished.
His humiliation meant our acceptance, our forgiveness,
our righteousness.
“For our
sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.”
At the cross it is finished and that finishing is our new
beginning.
Friday they demanded that he prove himself; that he validate
himself.
Sunday...He did.
