Returning from the Crucifixion

Edward Griffin (1770—1837)
 

Luke 23:47-49
"The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, "Surely this was a righteous man!"

When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their bosoms and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things."

At the time of our Savior's advent the scepter had so far departed from Judah, that all their civil affairs were managed by a Roman governor set over them without their consent. Though the Sanhedrin was still invested with ecclesiastical authority, they no longer retained the power of capital punishment: and when the chief priests and elders had conspired to crucify the Son of God, they could not execute their purpose without the consent of the Roman governor.

In all the provinces of the Roman empire bodies of soldiers were stationed to keep the conquered nations in subjection. These were divided into companies of from sixty to a hundred and twenty, and each company was commanded by a first and second centurion. Such a one was Cornelius of Caesarea. Such a one was the believing centurion of Capernaum whose servant Christ healed. And such a one was the man who commanded the ruffian band that insulted and crucified the Lord of glory.

The wicked Pilate, who had been reluctant to deliver up an innocent man to death, not more from love of justice than from an unaccommodating spirit towards the Jews, at length, for fear of being accused to Caesar, scourged him and resigned him to be crucified, and appointed his own soldiers to execute the horrid sentence. "Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall," called the pretorium. There were four that acted as special executioners on this occasion; who, "when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part." These four are thought to have been those who were with the Roman lictors. The lictors were officers attendant on the Roman magistrates, who not only acted as marshals, but, by means of soldiers under them, arrested and executed criminals. But those who took Jesus into the pretorium "gathered unto him the whole band." That band, which we find under the command of a centurion, was deemed necessary to keep the peace and to guard as well as insult the prisoner. Whatever control an intermediate lictor might have had over the four executioners, the centurion is understood to have presided over the whole scene of mockery and torture.

As our Savior was condemned for claiming to be the king of the Jews, the soldiers laid themselves out to insult this claim. They stripped him and put on him a scarlet or purple robe, and platted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand for a scepter, and bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, king of the Jews. And they spit upon him, and struck him with their hands, and smote him upon the head with the reed, driving the thorns into his temples. After this horrid mockery they took off the robe and put his own clothing on him and led him away to crucify him, bending under one end of his cross. When they arrived at Calvary they suspended him between two thieves, and drove the dreadful spikes through the live nerves of his hands and feet; and while the whole weight of his body hung suspended on these agonized cords, and the chief priests and the multitude were scoffing and wagging their heads, and the thieves were blaspheming, the soldiers insulted him with vinegar mingled with gall and with wine mingled with myrrh, and cried in outrageous mockery, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." And when they had done all this, they let him hang in agony and sat down by the cross to watch him and to prevent his friends from coming to take him down.

This centurion must have had a hard and barbarous heart, or he could not have permitted his soldiers to treat the sufferer thus. For though he was obliged to see him executed, it cannot be doubted that he had power to restrain their wanton tortures. With such a brutal heart he brought the divine victim to Calvary. With such a heart he presided over the erection of the cross and the driving of the nails. And with such a heart he sat down with his soldiers to watch him there.

But while he sat there, astonishing things appeared. It was nine in the morning when Jesus was nailed to the cross. After they had blasphemed and wagged their heads for three hours, a miraculous eclipse of the sun began at noon and continued until his death at three o'clock, in the time of the full moon. And darkness was over all the land until three o'clock. This was enough to draw the attention of the centurion to every circumstance relating to this wondrous man. And as he listened to what might escape him, he heard him praying for his murderers: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." This was such a temper as he had never witnessed before. He further heard him calmly commit his mother to the beloved disciple: "Woman, behold your son;" and to John, "Behold your mother." Again he heard him with his last words claim God for his Father and resign himself into his hands: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." This did not look like an impostor. An impostor would not have remained steadfast during the agonies of a lingering death and gone into eternity with a lie in his right hand.

But behold greater wonders yet. At the last convulsion of the expiring God a great earthquake heaves the mountain and rends asunder the rocks. "Now when the centurion and those who were with him watching Jesus, [that barbarous band,] saw the earthquake and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God!" Or as another evangelist says, "And when the centurion which stood by him, saw that he so cried out and gave up the Spirit, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God." Or as it is in our text, "Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man." He was fully convinced, and so were at least some of the soldiers, that they had been mocking and murdering the Son of God, and he at least was brought to glorify God.

Considering the greatness of the occasion and the greatness of the grace, it is not too much to believe that that barbarous captain and some of his murderous band were subdued by the side of the cross they had reared, and washed white in the blood they had shed, and brought to cast their terrified souls on him whom they had so greatly insulted. Astonishing grace! Who will ever despair again?

We are further told that "all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their bosoms and returned." These are distinguished in the text from "all his acquaintances and the women that followed him from Galilee;" who, instead of returning, lingered about the spot to which they were attracted by bleeding affection; though, from the fear of the Jews, they "stood afar off beholding these things." Those who returned smiting their bosoms, had not come to Calvary to weep, but to enjoy the sight. They are described as "the people that came together to that sight." And their smiting their bosoms is attributed, not to former convictions, but to convictions received that day. They "beholding the things which were done, smote their bosoms and returned." John and Mary, and the other disciples who followed him weeping, smote their bosoms when they were going—but these only when they were returning. They were not the actors in the scene, but spectators; and are at one time marked as "the people that came together to that sight," at another, as "the people" who "stood beholding." But though not actors, they joined, like giddy spectators, in the blasphemous spectacle.

"And the people stood beholding; and the rulers also, with them, derided him, saying: He saved others, let him save himself, if he is Christ the chosen of God." For three hours they mocked, until the darkness commenced. But the decisive proofs which followed of the Messiahship of Jesus, filled them with consternation for the enormous sin they had committed. It was not a few of the spectators who thus returned, but the whole mass. "All the people that came together to that sight—smote their bosoms and returned." All had come to see; and they had seen and were convinced. Not being committed by assuming the responsibility of that murder they were not willfully braced against conviction, and therefore to a man fell under the overwhelming evidence that dropped like a noontide sun around the cross of Christ. Being from that time filled with distress, many of them were doubtless among those who, fifty-one days after, flocked to hear the Gospel at Pentecost, and were charged with having "by wicked hands, crucified and slain" the Son of God; and were among the three thousand who were pardoned by the agonies thus insulted. Again we cry, amazing grace! Let no Manasseh or Magdalene or Saul of Tarsus ever fear to apply to such a Savior.

But the Jewish actors in this scene did not return smiting their bosoms. They had sinned against so much light and with so much malice, that they were, for the most part, abandoned by God, and became proof against everything. After the darkness had continued three hours, they were still mocking. When Christ in his last moments uttered the Hebrew words of the first verse of the twenty second Psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" One said, he calls for Elijah, and ran and filled a sponge of vinegar and offered it to him to drink. "The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him." And after all the miracles that had clustered around his death, they went to Pilate and besought that his legs might be broken and that the body might be taken away.

The next day, though it was their Sabbath, they went to Pilate again and said, "We remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day." Pilate gave them permission, and they went, on their Sabbath, "and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch." The next morning, when the watch came in under the strongest agitation and testified of the earthquake and the resurrection and the vision of angels—they hired them to perjure their souls by swearing that his disciples came by night while they slept, and stole him away. And they continued to rise up against all the miracles of the apostles, and to rage in proportion to the increase of evidence.

The principal actors among the Jews, and particularly the chief priests, knew that Jesus was the Messiah. "Then cried Jesus in the temple, [to the priests chiefly] as he taught, saying, You both know me and you know where I am from." "When the gardeners saw him, [the parable was spoken in the temple against "the chief priests and the scribes and the elders."] they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir, come let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours!"

They wished to be esteemed the most holy, and to impose their own traditions for laws, and to engross the worship of the people themselves; and they could not bear to have their hypocrisy exposed and their tyranny broken by the reformation which Jesus was introducing. They slew the known heir, that they might thus seize the inheritance.

But there were some among the crucifiers of Christ who had not this knowledge. "I know that through ignorance you did it as did also your rulers." "We speak the wisdom of God—which none of the princes of this world knew; [Herod and Pilate particularly;] for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Indeed all that were susceptible of salvation were without this knowledge: for to take that high and malignant ground against a known Messiah, was the sin unto death.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Not one of the murderers that did know was prayed for." "I obtained mercy," says Paul, "because I did it ignorantly in unbelief;" implying that but for ignorance, his opposition to Christ would have been unpardonable.

Here then were five descriptions of people at the cross and among these breaking wonders, and each with a different effect. 1. The disciples, with profound grief and awe.

2. The Roman soldiers stained with blood, and acknowledging with dreadful alarm, and in some cases probably with true contrition, that they had mocked and murdered the Son of God.

3. Idle spectators, who came together to enjoy the sight, and mingled in with the impious scoffs, but went away in anguish smiting their bosoms.

4. Jewish actors in the scene who did not know the high character of their victim, but hated him because they had a Jewish heart.

5. The more knowing priests and scribes and elders who crucified him because he was the Messiah.

We have no evidence that either of the last two classes were at all affected by the miracles; and know that the last class of all could not be affected otherwise than by being stirred up to greater rage.

Pagan soldiers, after all their insults and murderous cruelty, can be conquered by evidence and brought to repentance. Even Jews who have sinned against all their light, but have not actually joined in the crucifixion, can submit to evidence and smite their bosoms. But Jews who have imbrued their hands in a Savior's blood against all the light of their Scriptures, can view the miraculous eclipse, can feel the heaving earth, can see the rocks and the veil of the temple rent, can witness the greater miracle of such a death—and go away as doltish as brutes! And those who knew him to be the Messiah, could go away enraged the more at these attestations of Heaven.

From this interesting piece of history we learn:

1. That a sudden discovery of the claims of Christ, connected with a sense of having rejected and crucified him, will cause men to tremble and smite their bosoms. How transfixed to earth in dreadful astonishment were those wretches at the cross, when sudden conviction broke upon them that the being they had murdered was the Son of the great and dreadful God. Never was Cain worse confounded when taken by his Maker with his brother's blood in his skirts.

So in these days, sinners are often arrested by the very side of the cross which they have reared, and by the very body which they have pierced. The claims of Jesus as the Messiah, and the solemn fact that their sins caused his death, open upon them. And when they are thus seized and convicted, how do they beat their bosoms and cry, "Woe is me! What mean these bloody hands? Undone, undone forever! Rocks and mountains cover me!" What is the reason that they should weep and break their hearts? What have they done? Alas they knew not what they did. But now they know. Is it any wonder that they tremble? Blame not their tears. They have cause enough to weep.

And so have we who may be now returning from the cross with the doltishness of the chief priests. We have been to Calvary, beholding a murdered Savior: we have been viewing the darkness and the earthquake and the opening graves: and now as we return let us smite our bosoms, for we too have conspired to murder him.

It is at the cross that we must see sin in its most horrid forms.

It is by the cross that sin must be crucified to us.

It is under the droppings of the cross that all our guilt must be purged away.

2. There are some whom no wonders can subdue or convince. Not the darkness, nor the earthquake nor the rending of the veil, nor the rending of the graves, nor all the wonders of eighteen hundred years, nor the great agitation which is now shaking the consciences of men, nor the resurrection of the spiritually dead—can bring them to smite their bosoms. They have complete evidence before them of the existence of those identical wonders which convinced the centurion.

Matthew wrote his Gospel but eight years after the crucifixion, and on the very ground. And he appealed to the whole nation, friends and foes, and to thousands of Jews who had come up to the feasts from all the known parts of the world, in proof of facts alleged to have been done before their eyes; such as the miraculous cures, the raising of the dead and casting out devils, the darkness, the earthquakes, the vision of angels, the resurrection, the appearances of the risen Savior, once to five hundred at a time, and his ascension from Olivet, before Jerusalem, in the presence of a multitude.

If these facts were not so, the impudent imposture would have been known to all men, and prevented a single convert, much more the thousands who flocked to Christ on that ground and in that day and sent their testimony convincingly through the world. If the records of the events were published in that day, the facts must have been as they are stated.

If the records were forged and brought forward, say a hundred years afterwards, containing names and facts never heard of before, the mention of churches in the most public cities in the world, and Epistles sent to those churches, when neither churches nor the name of Christianity had ever been heard of—they could not have been believed by man, woman, or child, much less by the best and most learned men of the age.

We have therefore as much evidence of the facts as had the crucifiers of Christ; and if it could convince such hardened monsters and suddenly transform them into worshipers and martyrs, it ought to convince us.

We have more evidence than they. We have seen the Spirit of God applying the truths of the Bible, and the providence of God supporting the Church against all the corruptions of the world, for eighteen hundred years. Even now God is displaying before your eyes wonders of evidence in honor of his Son. That divine power which attends the Gospel, by which the blind are made to see and feel Bible truths, and by which wonderful transformations of heart and life are effected, producing all the real goodness which has appeared in our world since the Cross, furnishes proof no less decisive than the darkness and the earthquake which attended the crucifixion. It is evidence for which we are not indebted to historical records, but which lies before our eyes as obviously as the miracles did before the spectators of the passion.

By this power many are now convinced that they have been crucifying the Son of God, and are returning from their wickedness smiting their bosoms. You see their tears, you hear their sighs. Let this great earthquake by which so many hearts are shaken, awaken all from the sleep of infidelity, and break off the covering of the graves that the spiritually dead may come forth.

But no evidence will bring man to submit without the effectual operation of almighty grace. Calvary may send forth a thousand wonders; Pentecost may speak with a thousand tongues; revivals of religion may stamp the attestations of the Holy Spirit upon revealed truth; but all to no purpose to hearts resolved not to feel. And many, like the Jews, will continue to resist all the light that Heaven and earth can yield, until wrath comes upon them to the uttermost!

Even those who are brought by conviction to smite their bosoms, will hold out with stubborn perseverance against God. Nothing but all conquering power can bring them to apply for cleansing to the blood they have shed.

3. But there is another class who constitute the greatest wonder of the creation. They rank with the Jewish priests who opposed and crucified Jesus as the Messiah. It seems impossible that any but madmen should have pursued such a course. But we see the same thing acted out in modern times. Men oppose the truth, knowing it to be the truth of God, and reproach revivals, knowing them to be the work of God, and persecute Christians because they are the friends of God.

Some of them struggle against their convictions and try to disbelieve. Others, without even an attempt to doubt, remain as doltish as animals without souls. Others, roused to a little more reflection, resolutely say to God, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of your ways!" They will not pray; they will not attend Christian meetings; they will not meditate upon God. Others are rancorously opposed to God's law, to his decree of election, to the eternal punishment of the wicked—and cavil against him, and hate him and his service and his people, and openly oppose everything that belongs to God, knowing all the time that it is God whom they oppose. They all sin in defiance of conscience. And many of them, by sinning malignantly against light, commit the sin unto death.

Unhappy men! can you hope to prevail against God Almighty? to put down his religion? to change his government? "Have you an arm like God? or can you thunder with a voice like him? Or do you hope to escape out of his hands?

No! you have some indefinite purpose to be religious before you die—to put him off with the dregs of life—to serve him after you are done serving yourself, the world, and the devil. And do you think that he will accept that service? After you have thrust him away with contempt and rebelled against him all your life, on the presumption that he will help you repent at the last hour—can it be expected that he will save you? The manner in which he treats other aged sinners, gives you little reason to hope. Seldom is an aged sinner converted. But you imagine that the times are changing and greater grace may be expected, and more old sinners will be converted hereafter. But you are likely soon to fill up the measure of your iniquity, and either to find an early grave, or be left, abandoned of God, to prepare for a deeper Hell! Of all men you are among the most wicked, the most presumptuous, and the most endangered; and I may add, the most unwise.

With all the accuracy of your reasoning on other subjects—here you reason like madmen. With all the boasted soundess of your calculations in other matters—here you are more wild than suicide itself. And it is all the unconquerable obduracy and daring of your heart. Your intellect plainly sees what your interests are; your conscience feels your obligations; and yet that hard and profligate heart rushes to its objects in defiance of the heavens and reckless of your eternal interests. You know what you are doing; you know Whom you are provoking and challenging; and yet your implacable enmity to God and his ways carries you on. The great deceiver who whispers in your ear, and your own deceitful heart, suggest a thousand excuses, a thousand hopes of escape, and a thousand allurements—to tempt you from concern about your eternal soul. And willingly you yield to the suggestions. You hear God invite and command, but you heed it not. You will not pray; you will not even think. All the expostulations and entreaties of friends cannot persuade you once to bend the knee, or to read your Bible, or to attend the special Christian meetings. There is no plea of inability in the case. These are things which you acknowledge you can do. But you will not. It is your deliberate choice not to become Christians at present. It would interfere with the plans of life which you have laid out. And those plans you will pursue whatever God says. You are determined that your own self shall be gratified, however much God is disobliged and offended. If he tells you of his Son who died on the torturing spikes for sinners, it does not move you to forego one gratification for him, nor once to thank him, nor to repent of sin which made him bleed. It does not eclipse your love of sin, though it put out the sun. It does not shake your steadfastness, though it shook the mountains. It does not break the rock in your bosom, though it rent the rocks of Calvary. It does not bring you to smite your bosoms, though it thus affected the insulting Jews. It does not move a fibre of your callous heart, though it subdued Roman soldiers, with their bloody hands, into fear and contrition and an acknowledgment that he was the Son of God.

Go then and pursue your sinful ways and be the most hard-hearted of all men. Go and sink to a lower Hell than Sodom found! Go and spend an eternity in longing to escape out of Hell. Is it any wonder that God has built an eternal Hell? Is it any wonder that such obstinate despisers of Christ's dying love should sink lower than pagans—lower than devils?

4. There are some who, though not yet brought to smite their bosoms, are less hardened than these. To them I can come with greater hope.

Here then we stand by the cross of Christ. Draw near and behold what your sins have done! View the Son of God dying for your offences, and go not away with the doltishness of the chief priests. Why should not that blood which is dripping from the cross dissolve your hearts? Why should not the darkness and the earthquake convince you? Shall spiteful Jews, shall Roman soldiers, shall a dying thief—sooner yield to evidence, and go into the kingdom of Heaven before you? Fall down at the feet of the dying Savior, and let your hearts bleed their life away for the treasons which have caused his death. Hasten to be baptized in his blood, and evince your gratitude by lives devoted to his service.

What did it avail the unbelieving Jews to shut their eyes to the claims of the Messiah? Could they always keep them closed? With what unutterable astonishment, when their eyes opened in eternity, did they find themselves at the bar of him who had stood at their tribunal! What now do you think of him whom you insulted on the cross as unable to deliver himself? Who now shall deliver you out of his hands? Where are Pilate and Herod now? Ah! how changed the scene. And such a change, my poor hearers, will your eyes one day behold. When he who wept in the manger, who sweat in the garden, and bled on the cross; when he who has called in your streets and knocked at your doors, shall come in the clouds of Heaven, arrayed in the brightness of a thousand suns; when the heavens shall flee away at his presence and worlds shall be enkindled by the breath of his mouth; when the dead shall awake at his voice, and every sinner in earth and Hell shall be arraigned at his bar—then with another mind will you behold him whom you now reject!

You cannot now drop a tear at the very foot of the cross; but then to purpose you will look on him whom you have pierced and mourn. He will not then come to plead, but to judge; not to suffer, but to inflict, on the authors of his death. What grief will then rive your heart that you did not apply to him in season.

By all the unfathomable terrors of that day;
by the pleading love which now follow you in the Gospel;
by the pity which bled on the point of the spear and received the spittings of Roman soldiers;
by the mercy which forgave his murderers before his blood was cold on their hands;
I entreat, I beseech you to fall down at his feet and make your peace through his blood! Now it is offered to you without money and without price; tomorrow it may be too late! Go not from this house until you have received the great salvation. Why should you delay? Why need you delay? All Heaven is waiting for your decision. The Church on earth is waiting for your decision. The authority of the eternal God presses upon you. He commands you now to repent. Infinite dangers lie couched under a moment's delay. A moment's delay deserves eternal burnings. Why will you commit that unbounded sin? Why will you throw upon a dying Savior that measureless ingratitude? I hear a voice from the cross saying, "It is finished! If you ever come, come now." Amen.