The Crucifixion

187:5.1Al­though it was early in the sea­son for such a phe­nom­e­non, shortly af­ter twelve o’clock the sky dark­ened by rea­son of the fine sand in the air. The peo­ple of Je­ru­sa­lem knew that this meant the com­ing of one of those hot-wind sand­storms from the Ara­bian Desert. Be­fore one o’clock the sky was so dark the sun was hid, and the re­main­der of the crowd has­tened back to the city. When the Mas­ter gave up his life shortly af­ter this hour, less than thirty peo­ple were pres­ent, only the thir­teen Ro­man sol­diers and a group of about fif­teen be­liev­ers. These be­liev­ers were all women ex­cept two, Jude, Je­sus’ brother, and John Zeb­e­dee, who re­turned to the scene just be­fore the Mas­ter ex­pired.

187:5.2Shortly af­ter one o’clock, amidst the in­creas­ing dark­ness of the fierce sand­storm, Je­sus be­gan to fail in hu­man con­scious­ness. His last words of mercy, for­give­ness, and ad­mo­ni­tion had been spo­ken. His last wish—con­cern­ing the care of his mother—had been ex­pressed. Dur­ing this hour of ap­proach­ing death the hu­man mind of Je­sus re­sorted to the rep­e­ti­tion of many pas­sages in the He­brew scrip­tures, par­tic­u­larly the Psalms. The last con­scious thought of the hu­man Je­sus was con­cerned with the rep­e­ti­tion in his mind of a por­tion of the Book of Psalms now known as the twen­ti­eth, twenty-first, and twenty-sec­ond Psalms. While his lips would of­ten move, he was too weak to ut­ter the words as these pas­sages, which he so well knew by heart, would pass through his mind. Only a few times did those stand­ing by catch some ut­ter­ance, such as, “I know the Lord will save his anointed,” “Your hand shall find out all my en­e­mies,” and “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” Je­sus did not for one mo­ment en­ter­tain the slight­est doubt that he had lived in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will; and he never doubted that he was now lay­ing down his life in the flesh in ac­cor­dance with his Fa­ther’s will. He did not feel that the Fa­ther had for­saken him; he was merely recit­ing in his van­ish­ing con­scious­ness many Scrip­tures, among them this twenty-sec­ond Psalm, which be­gins with “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” And this hap­pened to be one of the three pas­sages which were spo­ken with suf­fi­cient clear­ness to be heard by those stand­ing by.

187:5.3The last re­quest which the mor­tal Je­sus made of his fel­lows was about half past one o’clock when, a sec­ond time, he said, “I thirst,” and the same cap­tain of the guard again moist­ened his lips with the same sponge wet in the sour wine, in those days com­monly called vine­gar.

187:5.4The sand­storm grew in in­ten­sity and the heav­ens in­creas­ingly dark­ened. Still the sol­diers and the small group of be­liev­ers stood by. The sol­diers crouched near the cross, hud­dled to­gether to pro­tect them­selves from the cut­ting sand. The mother of John and oth­ers watched from a dis­tance where they were some­what shel­tered by an over­hang­ing rock. When the Mas­ter fi­nally breathed his last, there were pres­ent at the foot of his cross John Zeb­e­dee, his brother Jude, his sis­ter Ruth, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris.

187:5.5It was just be­fore three o’clock when Je­sus, with a loud voice, cried out, “It is fin­ished! Fa­ther, into your hands I com­mend my spirit.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he bowed his head and gave up the life strug­gle. When the Ro­man cen­tu­rion saw how Je­sus died, he smote his breast and said: “This was in­deed a righ­teous man; truly he must have been a Son of God.” And from that hour he be­gan to be­lieve in Je­sus.

187:5.6Je­sus died roy­ally—as he had lived. He freely ad­mit­ted his king­ship and re­mained mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion through­out the tragic day. He went will­ingly to his ig­no­min­ious death, af­ter he had pro­vided for the safety of his cho­sen apos­tles. He wisely re­strained Pe­ter’s trou­ble-mak­ing vi­o­lence and pro­vided that John might be near him right up to the end of his mor­tal ex­is­tence. He re­vealed his true na­ture to the mur­der­ous San­hedrin and re­minded Pi­late of the source of his sov­er­eign au­thor­ity as a Son of God. He started out to Gol­go­tha bear­ing his own cross­beam and fin­ished up his lov­ing be­stowal by hand­ing over his spirit of mor­tal ac­quire­ment to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Af­ter such a life—and at such a death—the Mas­ter could truly say, “It is fin­ished.”

187:5.7Be­cause this was the prepa­ra­tion day for both the Pass­over and the Sab­bath, the Jews did not want these bod­ies to be ex­posed on Gol­go­tha. There­fore they went be­fore Pi­late ask­ing that the legs of these three men be bro­ken, that they be dis­patched, so that they could be taken down from their crosses and cast into the crim­i­nal burial pits be­fore sun­down. When Pi­late heard this re­quest, he forth­with sent three sol­diers to break the legs and dis­patch Je­sus and the two brig­ands.

187:5.8When these sol­diers ar­rived at Gol­go­tha, they did ac­cord­ingly to the two thieves, but they found Je­sus al­ready dead, much to their sur­prise. How­ever, in or­der to make sure of his death, one of the sol­diers pierced his left side with his spear. Though it was com­mon for the vic­tims of cru­ci­fix­ion to linger alive upon the cross for even two or three days, the over­whelm­ing emo­tional agony and the acute spir­i­tual an­guish of Je­sus brought an end to his mor­tal life in the flesh in a lit­tle less than five and one-half hours.