# commentaries

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<p><em>And Satan entered into Judas who was called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve</em>-</p><p> It was the Jewish ‘satan’ that put the idea of betraying Jesus into Judas’ mind, so <em><a href='B:490 22:2-3'>Luk 22:2-3</a></em> implies: “the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him…then entered Satan into Judas”. See on :2. The Jewish ideas of an immediate Kingdom and the throwing off of the Roman yoke by a glamorous, heroic Messiah entered Judas, and caused him to become so bitter against Christ’s Messiahship that he betrayed Him. The Jewish Satan, in the form of both the Jews and their ideology, was at work on the other disciples too: “Satan has desired to have you” (plural), Jesus warned them. Especially was the High Priest seeking Peter: “I have prayed for you (Peter – singular), that your&nbsp;faith doesn't fail you” (<em><a href='B:490 22:31-32'>Luk 22:31-32</a></em>). Could Jesus foresee the Satan – High Priest later arresting Peter and his subsequent trial in prison? Throughout the first century, the Jewish and Roman Devil sought “whom he may devour” (<em><a href='B:670 5:8'>1Pe 5:8</a></em>).</p><p>Note how “enter” is used in a non-physical sense in <em><a href='B:470 25:21'>Mat 25:21</a></em>: “Enter into the joy of your Lord”, entering in at the narrow gate (<em><a href='B:470 7:13'>Mat 7:13</a></em>), entering into another’s labours (<em><a href='B:500 4:38'>Joh 4:38</a></em>). ‘Satan’ enters a man’s heart in the sense that “the lusts of other things enter in” (<em><a href='B:480 4:19'>Mar 4:19</a></em>); in this sense we can “enter into temptation” (<em><a href='B:490 22:46'>Luk 22:46</a></em>).</p><p>The link between Judas and the ‘Devil’ is brought out by a consideration of Luke’s comment that Judas “sought an opportune time [<em>eukairan</em>] to betray Jesus” (<em><a href='B:490 22:6'>Luk 22:6</a></em>). But Luke earlier used this word in <em><a href='B:490 4:13'>Luk 4:13</a></em> to describe how the “Devil” in the wilderness departed from the Lord “until an opportune time” [<em>achri kairou</em>]. The Lord’s victory in the wilderness prepared Him for the victory over the ‘Devil’ which He achieved in His final passion. Just as the temptation to ‘come down from the cross’ was a repetition of the temptation to throw Himself down from the temple. John’s Gospel often repeats the history of the other Gospels, but in different language. In <em><a href='B:470 26:46'>Mat 26:46</a></em>, the Lord comments upon the arrival of Judas: “Rise, let us be going; my betrayer is coming”. But <em><a href='B:500 14:30-31'>Joh 14:30-31</a></em> puts it like this: “The prince of this world [a phrase understood as meaning ‘the evil one’, the Devil] is coming… Rise, let us be going”. John is picking up the mythological language of the ‘Satan’ figure, and applying it to a real person with real attitudes and sinful intentions – i:e. Judas, who is presented as a personification of the ‘Satan’ / ‘Devil’ / ‘Prince of this world’ principle.</p><p>We can easily overlook the huge significance of <em><a href='B:480 14:21'>Mar 14:21</a></em> recording the Lord’s words that Judas personally was guilty for betraying Him, and would suffer accordingly – even though <em><a href='B:490 22:22'>Luk 22:22</a></em> says that Judas did this because the Satan [i:e. the Jews] ‘entered him’. <em>Whatever</em> that means, it doesn’t mean that Judas nor anyone is thereby not personally responsible for their actions. </p><p>The translation of the Greek text in <em><a href='B:500 13:2'>Joh 13:2</a></em> has been problematic. “The Devil having put into the heart of Judas” doesn’t quite do justice to what the Greek is really saying. The respected expositor and Greek student C:K. Barratt insists that strictly, the Greek means ‘the Devil had put into his own [i:e. the Devil’s] heart, that Judas should betray Jesus’ (C:K. Barratt, <em>The Gospel According to St. John</em> (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978) p. 365. Barratt’s view of the Greek is confirmed in D:A. Carson, <em>Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility</em> (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1981) p. 131). This translation is almost impossible to make any sense of given the orthodox understanding of the ‘Devil’. And so most popular translations ignore the obvious difficulty by glossing over the strict meaning of the Greek. Understanding the ‘Devil’ as the innate source of temptation within the human heart, the picture becomes clearer. The idea is surely that the thought of betraying Jesus began within the Devil–mind of Judas; he ‘put the thought in his own mind’, as if to stress how Judas conceived this thought totally of himself and within his own mind, just as later Ananias and Sapphira [in an analogous incident] ‘conceived this thing within their heart’. So properly translated, <em><a href='B:500 13:2'>Joh 13:2</a></em> actually supports our general thesis about the Devil – it is stressing that the heart of Judas was itself responsible, that heart put the idea of betraying Jesus into itself – and nobody else was responsible. Note how the Lord addresses Judas as if Judas had full responsibility for his actions and control over them – e.g. “What you are going to do, do quickly” (<em><a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a></em>), and <em><a href='B:480 14:21'>Mar 14:21</a></em> “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had never been born”. Those two passages alone surely make it clear that Judas was no robot, no puppet on a satanic string. He had full responsibility and choice over his actions, hence these words of the Lord to him. Summing up, we are left with the question: Did <em>Judas</em> betray Jesus, or did <em>Satan</em>, working through Judas, betray Jesus? The answer, surely, is that it was Judas, and he must bear full responsibility for that.</p>


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<p><em>And he went away, and discussed with the chief priests and captains how he might betray him to them</em>-</p><p> The Jews discussed amongst themselves how they might arrest and kill Jesus: "And they plotted together how they might seize Jesus using trickery and kill him<em>"</em> (<em><a href='B:470 26:4'>Mat 26:4</a></em>). Again we see a parallel between the Jews and Judas; the Jewish 'satan' entered into him (:3). </p>


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<p><em>And they were glad, and agreed to give him money</em>-</p><p> Matthew says they gave him 30 pieces of silver immediately, but this would have been a down payment for a future promise of money. </p>


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<p><em>And he consented- </em>This Greek word is usually translated "confessed", in the sense of repenting of sin. He may have assured them that He felt the Lord's movement was wrong and that he had been sinful to support it.</p><p><em>And looked for an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the crowd</em>-</p><p> Perhaps this was why the Lord chose to spend His nights sleeping rough on Olivet rather than in the home at Bethany or of sympathizers in Jerusalem. He was giving Judas the chance to betray Him. If we look for an opportunity to sin, the Lord in a way provides it in that He can 'lead into temptation' unless we pray not to be so led.</p>


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<p><em>And the day of unleavened bread came, on which the Passover must be sacrificed</em>-</p><p> The Lord was aware that the Passover sacrifice was Himself. He wanted to die when the lambs were killed. And He did. His psychological manipulation of it all went perfectly. We can read "the day" of unleavened bread as meaning "the time", rather than referring to a particular period of 24 hours.</p>


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<p><em>And he sent Peter and John on an errand, saying: Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover</em>-</p><p> This is the language of the 'preparing' of the Marriage Supper (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 22:4'>Mat 22:4</a></em>). And yet at that meal, He explained to them how in fact He had been sent by God on a mission to "prepare" a place in God's Kingdom for them, and this preparation required His death on the cross (<em><a href='B:500 14:2-3'>Joh 14:2-3</a></em>). They would later have reflected that their journey and efforts to prepare were representative of His own work for them.</p>


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<p><em>And they asked him: Where do you want us to prepare for it?</em>-</p><p> Perhaps we are intended to see a veiled allusion to <em><a href='B:50 16:2'>Deu 16:2</a></em>, where we learn that the Passover was to be kept in the place which Yahweh chose. And they are asking the Lord where He has chosen to eat the Passover. Whilst He was and is not God, He functions as God and manifested Him in flesh.</p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: When you enter into the city, there you shall meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house to which he goes</em>-</p><p> This water was carried upstairs into the upper room, and became, as it were, the wine of the new covenant. Carrying water was woman's work, and the Lord surely arranged this special sign in order to show how at His table, there was gender equality. He was so far ahead of His time. The vague "such a man" is perhaps to conceal the identity of the householder, given that the Gospels were distributed at a time of persecution. Or perhaps it was in order to avoid the identifying of the house and turning it into some kind of shrine, or special honour being given to the householder.</p>


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<p><em>And you shall say to the master of the house: The Teacher says to you- </em>The anonymous man, unnamed perhaps for security reasons, was presumably a believer for this title to mean anything to the man. Likewise the reference to the Lord's time being at hand (Mt:) would've only been understandable by a disciple. The Lord wishes to assume that the man will appreciate that if the Lord's time of death was at hand, then He must first keep the Passover.</p><p><em>Where is the guest room, in which I shall eat the Passover with my disciples?</em>-</p><p> The "guest room" is the same concept as in <em><a href='B:500 14:2'>Joh 14:2</a></em>, where there in that very guest room which they had "prepared", the Lord says that He is now going to the cross to prepare <em>them</em> a room, an eternal place in the Father's house. He wished them to perceive a mutuality between them and Himself; what they had done, He was now going to do on a far greater scale. And to this day, we sense this mutuality between us and our Lord.</p>


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<p><em>And he will show you a large furnished upper room. There make ready</em>-</p><p> <em><a href='B:480 14:15'>Mar 14:15</a></em> brings out the paradox more strongly. The room was "ready" and yet there they were to "prepare"; "prepare" translates the same Greek word as "ready". All was prepared; the Lord was the Passover lamb and had prepared Himself for an untimely death, just as they were to keep Passover in advance of the 14th Nissan. They were to show willingness to do their part, but they could not fully do it. It has been done for them already. And we get this impression in all our attempts at labour for the Lord.</p>


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<p><em>And they went and found as he had said to them, and they made ready the Passover</em>-</p><p> As noted on :12, it was already "made ready", so they just did the cosmetic arrangements. We likewise can add nothing really to the Lord's sacrifice.</p>


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<p><em>And when the hour had arrived, he sat down with the apostles</em>-</p><p> There is no actual mention of the slaying of the paschal lamb, which should have been done that evening. It had already been strangely provided for them. "Sat down" is "dining" in Matthew; the idea is of reclining. </p><p>Joachim Jeremias gives a whole string of quotes from Rabbinic and historical writings that indicate that “At the time of Jesus the diners sat down" to eat. Yet the Gospel records are insistent that Jesus and the disciples&nbsp;<em>reclined</em>&nbsp;at the last supper (<em><a href='B:470 26:20'>Mat 26:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:18'>Mar 14:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:14'>Luk 22:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:12'>Joh 13:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:23'>Joh 13:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:25'>Joh 13:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:28'>Joh 13:28</a></em>). Yet at the Passover, it was apparently common to recline, because as Rabbi Levi commented “slaves eat standing, but here at the Passover meal people should recline to eat, to signify that they have passed from slavery to freedom". The breaking of bread is thus stressed in the records as being a symbol of our freedom from slavery. It should not in that sense be a worrying experience, taking us on a guilt trip. It is to celebrate the salvation and release from bondage which has truly been achieved for us in Christ our Passover.</p><p>"With the apostles" doesn't mean that only the twelve partook or were present. There are reasons to think that there were others present too. </p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer</em>-</p><p> It was 'with desire that He desired' [a real emphasis] to eat the Passover with His men. He so wants us to break bread with Him; He so wants us to partake of and with Him. He abides in us and we in Him; see on <em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em>. </p>


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<p><em>For I say to you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God</em>-</p><p> The Lord told us that the Passover feast would "be fulfilled in (i:e. by?) the Kingdom of God". This is confirmed by the description of "the marriage supper of the lamb" in <em><a href='B:730 19:9'>Rev 19:9</a></em>. Likewise the parable of Luke 14 speaks of "a great supper" at the beginning of the Millennium. As we share this feast together now, we are acting out a parable of the feast to be kept at the Lord's return. In the light of this, how important it is to ensure that there is no bitterness and disunity at the breaking of bread meeting! To be invited to sit at the King's table is an honour indeed (cp. <em><a href='B:100 19:28'>2Sa 19:28</a></em>). Remember that we are reaffirming our covenant. "This is the blood of the covenant" is a reference back to the blood of the Old Covenant being sprinkled upon the people, with their response of vowing obedience unto the end (<em><a href='B:20 24:7'>Exo 24:7</a></em>). The solemnity of that distant moment should be ours, weekly.</p>


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<p>- see on <em><a href='B:480 14:23'>Mar 14:23</a></em>. </p><p><em>And he took a cup- </em>This was by no means easy for Him, because in Gethsemane He struggled so deeply in order to take it. Surely Luke was aware of this and wishes us to remember it every time we break bread. He&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;take the cup- the cup we go on to read about, that was so difficult for Him to accept. Luke's record records the taking of the cup twice. This could be a reference to multiple cups of wine drunk at the Passover; or it could be that Luke simply records the incident twice. Or perhaps the Lord was simply drinking from the common table wine, and more than once drew out the symbology.</p><p><em>And when he had given thanks- </em>Here&nbsp;<em>eucharisteo</em>&nbsp;is used, but&nbsp;<em>eulogeo&nbsp;for</em> the 'blessing' of the bread. The difference may be in that the Lord took the bread, an accessory to the meal, and turned that which was so ordinary into something of spiritual symbolism; and His blessing of the bread was necessary for this. But&nbsp;<em>eucharisteo</em>&nbsp;includes the idea of grace,&nbsp;<em>charis</em>, and suggests more thankfulness for grace- a thought appropriate to the meaning of the Lord's blood shed for us by grace. And naturally we wonder whether the wine that was taken was one of the Passover cups, or simply some of the table wine, an accessory to the meal just as the bread was. Whilst there was a taking of four cups of wine at the Passover, this may not be the only explanation for Luke recording the taking of two of them. It could simply be that as they were eating the Passover lamb, they ate bread and drunk weak wine as part of the accompaniments which went with every Palestinian meal. And the Lord twice passed comment on the wine, that it represented His blood. This would be similar to the manner in which He chose the bread, the&nbsp;<em>artos</em>, the ordinary word for bread rather than one referring specifically to unleavened bread, as the symbol for His body- rather than the meat of the Passover lamb. He could have made use of the blood of the Passover lamb as a symbol in some way- e.g. He could have asked a servant to bring the blood of the lamb and asked the disciples to all dip their fingers in it. But instead He uses wine as a symbol of His blood. My hunch is that the wine was the ordinary table wine accompanying the meal, just as the bread was, and was not the ritually significant Passover cup. In any case, the tradition of drinking cups of wine at Passover was non-Biblical, and somehow out of keeping with the original spirit of Passover, which was to remember the haste with which the first Passover was eaten. <em><a href='B:530 10:16'>1Co 10:16</a></em> speaks of "the cup of blessing which&nbsp;<em>we&nbsp;</em>bless", with the emphasis on the "we". We are to do what the Lord did that night- not be mere audience figures, but actually do what He did:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><em>He said: Take this and share it among yourselves</em>-</p><p> "Among yourselves" carries the idea of 'among all of you'; Mt. <em>"</em>All of you, drink it". The appeal for all to drink it was surely said because some were doubtful as to whether they should take it. Perhaps there were others in the room apart from the twelve. But most likely this was yet another appeal to Judas- to drink the cup of salvation and forgiveness. He gave the reason in <em><a href='B:470 26:28'>Mat 26:28</a></em> - "For", or because, this was the symbol of the means for the forgiveness of sins. The Lord's attitude to Judas leaves us realizing we should never give up with the lost. Even the very worst of them. And given the Lord's eagerness that Judas break bread, we can hardly conclude that any sinner is thereby unworthy of participation at the breaking of bread. It is after all His table and not ours. This isn't to say that forms of discipline may not be required at times, but welcome at the Lord's table should never be withdrawn.</p>


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<p><em>For I say to you, I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine from this time forward- </em>An allusion to how the priest on duty was not to drink wine during his service. The Lord foresaw His work from then on, beginning with the cross, as an active doing of priestly work for us. This would imply that the essence of His work on the cross is the essence of His work for us today; there is a continuity between Him there and His work for us now, with elements of the same pain and passionate focus upon us and the achievement of our salvation. He is not waiting passively in Heaven for the time to return; He is actively busy for us. There is also the implication in His words that His future 'drinking' will be literal- He was holding literal wine in His hand, and He said He would not again drink it until the Kingdom. This suggests that at very least, He invites us to understand His future Messianic banquet as being in some ways a literal feast.</p><p>The Lord clearly taught the continuity between the breaking of bread and the future marriage supper by observing that He would not again drink the cup until He drinks it with us in the Kingdom. The parables of how the Gospel invites people as it were to a meal are suggesting that we should see the Kingdom as a meal, a supper, of which our memorial service is but a foretaste. We are commanded to enter the supper and take the lowest seat (<em><a href='B:490 14:10'>Luk 14:10</a></em>), strongly aware that others are present more honourable than ourselves. Those with this spirit are simply never going to dream of telling another guest 'Leave! Don't partake of the meal!'. But this is the spirit of those who are exclusive and who use the Lord's table as a weapon in their hands to wage their petty church wars. The very early church didn't behave like this, but instead sought to incarnate and continue the pattern of the meals of the Lord Jesus during His ministry. And this is one major reason why their unity drew such attention, and they grew. To exclude someone from the Lord’s table is to judge them as excluded from the Kingdom banquet. And those who make such judgment will themselves be rejected from it.</p><p><em>Until the kingdom of God shall come</em>-</p><p> The reference is primarily to the literal Kingdom to be established on earth at His return (<em><a href='B:490 22:29-30'>Luk 22:29-30</a></em> goes on to speak of the disciples eating and drinking in the Kingdom as they sit with Christ on His throne judging Israel), but there is a sense in which His word is fulfilled in the breaking of bread service, where He drinks wine with us as the invisible guest. For His parables of the Kingdom all speak of the experience of God's reign / Kingship as a present experience in the lives of His people. <em><a href='B:490 22:16'>Luk 22:16</a></em> adds with reference to the bread: "Until it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God". The fulfilment of Passover deliverance is finally in the last day, and yet the fulfilment of Passover is also to be seen in the breaking of bread service. Note in passing that the Lord's predilection for the term 'Kingdom of God' or 'Father's Kingdom' was perhaps to counterbalance the Jewish emphasis upon the Kingdom as being that of&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;father&nbsp;<em>David</em>&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:480 11:10'>Mar 11:10</a></em>). The Kingdom was God's, "<em>Yours</em>&nbsp;is the Kingdom", rather than simply and solely the re-establishment of Israel's Kingdom:&nbsp;</p>


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And he took bread- Taking bread, blessing and breaking it and giving to the disciples was exactly what the Lord did at the feeding of the 5000 and 4000 (<a href='B:490 14:19'>14:19</a>; <a href='B:490 15:36'>15:36</a>), and we are thereby justified in seeing what He did then as having a religious dimension, practicing thereby an extremely open table. To 'take bread' can mean [although not always] to actually eat bread. Consider: &quot;The disciples had forgotten to take bread,neither did they have with them more than one loaf&quot; (<a href='B:480 8:14'>Mk. 8:14</a>)- the force of &quot;neither...&quot; is that they had not eaten bread, rather than that they had forgotten to bring any with them. Philip complained that there would not be enough bread for each of the crowd to 'take' even a little, i.e. to eat just a little (<a href='B:500 6:7'>Jn. 6:7</a>). So it could be that the Lord took and ate bread, blessed it, and then asked the disciples to eat it. This sequence of events would then make the eating of bread a more conscious doing of what Jesus had done. He took the bread, and then He asks them to take the bread (&quot;Take, eat&quot;). He is inviting them to mimic Him. </p><p>And when he had given thanks- It was usual to bless a meal, especially the Passover lamb, but here the Lord offers a special prayer for the accessory to the meal, the side dish of bread. He wanted to highlight the significance of the most ordinary thing on the table and show that it represented Him. </p><p>He broke it- Not referring to any breaking of His body, for not a bone of Him was broken, but rather to the sharing of every part of Himself with us all; one aspect of Him to this one, another to that one. </p><p>And gave it to them- The use of didomi is set in the context of all the talk about how the Lord would be para-didomi, betrayed / handed / given over to the Jews. The idea is that what happened was ultimately the Lord's choice. He gave Himself, to God and to His people, rather than being given over to death against His will. The giving of the bread to them was symbolic of how He would give His body to crucifixion, and how the 'giving over' of Jesus by Judas was not something outside of the Lord's control. It was not a misfortune which changed plans, rather was it precisely in line with the Lord's own giving of His body.</p><p>Saying: This is my body which is given for you- He said &quot;This is My body which is given for you&quot; (<a href='B:490 22:29'>Lk. 22:29</a>), and also &quot;This is My body which is broken for you&quot; (<a href='B:530 11:24'>1 Cor. 11:24</a>). He surely said both, repeating the words as the disciples ate the bread. He chose bread and not lamb to represent His body because He wished to emphasize His ordinariness and thereby His presence in the human, daily things of life. To give ones' body is a very intimate statement, almost to the point of being sexual. This is the sober intensity and extent to which the Lord gave Himself for us.</p><p>When Jesus said &quot;this is My body&quot; we are to understand that 'this represents, this is [a symbol of] my body'. Jesus was clearly referring to what was usually said at the Passover: &quot;This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt&quot;. It wasn't of course literally the same bread. &quot;This is&quot; clearly means 'this represents' in <a href='B:450 5:3'>Zech. 5:3</a>,<a href='B:450 5:8'>8</a>; <a href='B:470 13:19-23'>Mt. 13:19-23</a>,<a href='B:470 13:38'>38</a>; <a href='B:530 11:25'>1 Cor. 11:25</a>; <a href='B:530 12:27'>12:27</a>. In some Bible versions, when we read the word 'means', it is simply a translation of the verb 'to be' (<a href='B:470 9:13'>Mt. 9:13</a>; <a href='B:470 12:7'>12:7</a>; <a href='B:490 15:26'>Lk. 15:26</a>; <a href='B:510 2:12'>Acts 2:12</a>). 'This is' should be read as 'this means / this represents'. The deftness of the way He broke that bread apart and held the cup comes out here in <a href='B:470 26:26'>Mt. 26:26</a>. He knew what that breaking of bread was going to mean.</p><p>Do this in remembrance of me- By inviting the disciples to share His cup and His baptism, He was offering them there and then a part in the life of self-crucifixion, which found its natural and final articulation in the death of the cross. He deftly poured out the wine as a symbol that His life was even then being poured out (<a href='B:490 22:19'>Lk. 22:19</a>).</p><p>The breaking of bread is intended as a special gift to us. Let it have its intended power. &quot;Do this in remembrance of me&quot; (<a href='B:490 22:19'>Lk. 22:19</a>) is an inadequate translation of the Greek text – &quot;the words do not indicate a mere memorial meal in memory of a man now dead, but strictly mean &quot;making present reality&quot; of Christ's saving death&quot;. So let the bread and wine truly be an aide memoire. That on a Friday afternoon, on a day in April, on a hill outside Jerusalem, around 2000 years ago, Jesus died for me. Three days later, a man dressed as a working man, a humble gardener, walked out of a tomb, perhaps folded His grave clothes first, and saw the lights of early morning Jerusalem twinkling in the distance. And 40 days later ascended through cotton wool clouds and blue sky, with the necks and throats of watching disciples moving backwards as they gaped at the sight; and will just as surely come again, to take you and me unto Himself. These things, and the endless implications of them, are what will fill our minds if they impress us as having really happened. If we believe the Bible is inspired, it will have the result of what Harry Whittaker called &quot;Bible television&quot;; we will see these things as if they happened before our eyes.</p>


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<p>- see on <em><a href='B:480 14:23'>Mar 14:23</a></em>. </p><p><em>And the cup in like manner after supper, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood- </em>The promises to Abraham were effectively the new covenant, even though they were given before the old covenant [the law of Moses] was given. The Lord's death confirmed those promises made to the Jewish fathers (<em><a href='B:520 15:8'>Rom 15:8</a></em>). But God's word is true as it stands and in that sense needs no confirmation, no guarantee of truthfulness. But in an effort to persuade us of the simple truth and reality of the promises of eternity in the Kingdom which were made to Abraham, God confirmed it through the death of His Son. This was foreseen in the horror of great darkness which Abraham experienced in Genesis 15. Abraham did nothing to confirm his side of the covenant; it was God who passed between the pieces of the slain animal, during a time of Divine darkness as there was on the cross, in order to demonstrate to Abraham and to us all how serious He was about keeping His promise. Through the death of Christ, God commended His love to us (<em><a href='B:520 5:8'>Rom 5:8</a></em>), He confirmed the covenant; not that He needed to do so, nor that His love needs any more commendation to us. But He did, in order to seek to persuade us of the truth of the promises which comprise the Gospel (<em><a href='B:550 3:8'>Gal 3:8</a></em>). In this sense "the promise was made sure [s:w. 'confirmed'] to all the seed" (<em><a href='B:520 4:16'>Rom 4:16</a></em>); the extra element of making sure or confirming the promise was in the death of God's Son. Our hope is therefore "sure<em>&nbsp;</em><em>and</em>&nbsp;confirmed [AV "steadfast"]" (<em><a href='B:650 6:19'>Heb 6:19</a></em>). <em><a href='B:650 9:17'>Heb 9:17</a></em> puts it another way in saying that a will or legacy is only confirmed [AV "of force"] by the death of the one who promised the inheritance, and the death of Christ was God's way of confirming the truth of what He had promised. This same word meaning 'confirmed' is used by Peter in writing of how we have "the word of prophecy made sure / confirmed" (<em><a href='B:680 1:19'>2Pe 1:19</a></em>). The prophesied word is the word of the Gospel, the promise of the Kingdom which began in Genesis, and this has been confirmed to us, made even more sure, by the Lord's death. Peter isn't referring to prophecy in the sense of future events being predicted in the arena of world geopolitics; the prophesied word is the word of our salvation, of the Gospel- which is how Peter elsewhere uses the idea of "the word". God can save who He wishes, as, how and when He wishes. He was not somehow duty bound, left with no option, forced by an unpleasant logical bind to suffer the death of His Son. He gave His Son, according to His own plan from the beginning. But He did it that way in order to persuade us of His love and simple desire to give us the Kingdom He has promised from the beginning of His revelation to men. The Lord's blood is "of the new covenant" not in that it&nbsp;<em>is itself&nbsp;</em>the new covenant, but rather in that it is the blood associated with the confirmation of that covenant as true. And so it is understandable that the Lord should wish us to understand His blood as the blood of the new covenant, the supreme sign that it is for real, and desire us to regularly take that cup which reminds us of these things. <em><a href='B:650 6:17-18'>Heb 6:17-18</a></em> carries the same idea- that in order to demonstrate the utter certainty of the things promised to Abraham's seed, God confirmed it by an oath so that we might a strong consolation and persuasion of the certainty of the promise. The death of God's Son was not therefore unavoidable for Him; He could save us as He wishes. But He chose this most painful way in the ultimate attempt to persuade men of the reality of His Son. With this understanding we can better appreciate the tales of the old missionaries who went to pagan and illiterate tribes and reported a strange response to their message once they explained the idea of the Son of God dying on a cross to show us God's love. It must be persuasive to us too, week by week as we reflect on the blood of the covenant.</p><p>"Covenant" literally means that which is to be disposed of or distributed, and was used about the distribution of property upon decease. The Lord's parables about the Master who distributes all His wealth and possessions to His servants were surely looking forward to His death, at which He gave us all He had- and that was and is visually symbolized in the breaking of bread, the division even of His body and life blood amongst us, for us to trade with.</p><p>Moses bound the people into covenant relationship with the words: “Behold the blood of the covenant" (<em><a href='B:20 24:8'>Exo 24:8</a></em>). These very words were used by the Lord in introducing the emblems of the breaking of bread (<em><a href='B:480 14:24'>Mar 14:24</a></em>). This is how important it is. We are showing that we are the covenant, special Israel of God amidst a Gentile world. Indeed, “the blood of the covenant" in later Judaism came to refer to the blood of circumcision (cp. <em><a href='B:10 17:10'>Gen 17:10</a></em>) and it could be that the Lord was seeking to draw a comparison between circumcision and the breaking of bread. For this is how His words would have sounded in the ears of His initial hearers. This is how vital and defining it is to partake of it.</p><p><em>Which is poured out for you</em>-</p><p> He perhaps followed this by saying "Shed for you" (<em><a href='B:490 22:20'>Luk 22:20</a></em>). This is often the way with Biblical statements- the general and global is stated, and then the scale is focused down to you personally. His blood was shed for many... but for you. However we may also have here a similar idea to that expressed in the parable of the man [Christ] who finds treasure [us] in the field of the world, and therefore gives all in order to redeem the field, in order to get us as His own (<em><a href='B:470 13:44'>Mat 13:44</a></em>). Likewise His blood was shed for many, the redemption price was paid for humanity, that He might redeem us. Putting <em><a href='B:490 22:20'>Luk 22:20</a></em> and <em><a href='B:470 26:28'>Mat 26:28</a></em> together, the Lord may have said: "…&nbsp; My blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins of you / for the remission of&nbsp;<em>your</em>&nbsp;sins". One wonders whether the Lord actually was pouring out the wine as He spoke the word "shed". The same word for "shed" is used of how the new wine put into old bottles "runs out". The idea may be that if we don't change, then we crucify Christ afresh. But the Lord may also have in mind that if Israel had accepted the wine of the new covenant which He preached, then the shedding of His blood could have been avoidable. The fact it could have been avoidable- for Israel didn't&nbsp;<em>have</em>&nbsp;to crucify their King- doesn't mean that God was not behind it, using it to confirm the covenant with us, nor that Christ did not of Himself give His own life. "Poured out" is ongoing, Gk. 'is being shed', another hint at the ongoing nature of His death:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>But behold, the hand of him that betrays me is with me at this table</em>-</p><p> To be together at table meant to be in fellowship and mutual acceptance of each other; one ought to trust those with whom he sat at table. This was the huge significance of the Lord's open table policy, dining with questionable and unholy characters, thereby overturning all the religious hang-ups about guilt by association. </p>


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<p><em>For the Son of Man indeed goes- </em>The Lord's 'going' was His going to the cross. The Lord used the same word in <em><a href='B:470 13:44'>Mat 13:44</a></em> in describing Himself as the man who 'goes'&nbsp;<em>with joy&nbsp;</em>and sells all that He has in order to buy / redeem [s:w:] the field (representing the world) in order to gain for Himself the treasure (the redeemed). His 'going' to the cross was therefore done with some form of "joy". Even when the only visible representative of the treasure were that band of mixed up men and a few doubtful women. He uses the word again in telling Peter to 'go' behind Him and carry His cross (<em><a href='B:470 16:23'>Mat 16:23</a></em>). Yet the Lord looked beyond the cross; He saw Himself as 'going' to the Father (<em><a href='B:500 7:33'>Joh 7:33</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:14'>Joh 8:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:21-22'>Joh 8:21-22</a></em> s:w:), in the same way as we do not only 'go' to our death, but ultimately even death itself is part of an onward journey ultimately towards God and His Kingdom. The Lord's attitude to His death was that He&nbsp;<em>knew</em>&nbsp;that He was now 'going to the Father' (<em><a href='B:500 13:3'>Joh 13:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:28'>Joh 14:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:5'>Joh 16:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:10'>Joh 16:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:16-17'>Joh 16:16-17</a></em> s:w:). This unique perspective upon death and suffering is only logical for those who have a clear conception of future resurrection and personal fellowship with the Father in His future Kingdom.</p><p><em>As it has been determined- </em>Mt. "as it is written". </p><p><em>But woe to that man through whom he is betrayed!</em>-</p><p> The Lord typically pronounced 'Woe' upon the Jewish world and their religious leaders. He classes Judas along with them, because his actions had been inspired by them. The devil, in this context referring to the Jewish opposition to Jesus, had put the idea of betrayal into the heart of Judas (<em><a href='B:500 13:2'>Joh 13:2</a></em>). "Woe" translates&nbsp;<em>ouai</em>, an intensified form of&nbsp;<em>ou</em>, "no". Perhaps in His word choice the Lord was still desperately saying to Judas 'No! No! Don't do it!'. He knew that He had to be betrayed, but His appeals for Judas to repent were therefore rooted in an understanding that the Bible prophecies would come true in some other way than through Judas. For otherwise, Judas would have had no real possibility of repentance, and no real choice but than to do what he did.</p>


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<p><em>And they began to question among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing</em>-</p><p> "Is it I, Lord?" lead to them asking each other rather than being satisfied with the Lord's cryptic response. Perhaps "every one of them" excludes Judas, because he apparently asked the question later, and replaces 'Lord' with "Master"[Gk. 'rabbi'] when he asks: "Master ['rabbi'], is it I?" (<em><a href='B:470 26:25'>Mat 26:25</a></em>). His usage of 'rabbi' to address the Lord may reflect how influenced he was by Judaism, and how he failed to appreciate the utter Lordship of Jesus. Judas maybe persuaded himself that this Jesus was just another itinerant rabbi, who Judaism would be better off without. Note that "Is it I?" is&nbsp;<em>eimi ego</em>, literally 'Am I?'. This is one of many examples of where&nbsp;<em>ego eimi</em>&nbsp;means simply 'I am', and [contrary to Trinitarian claims] the words do not mean that the speaker of them is claiming to be God.</p>


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<p><em>And there arose also a dispute among them, as to which of them would be counted as greatest</em>-</p><p> Even after the acted parable of the feet washing, there was still a strife amongst them about who should be greatest. They’d clearly not grasped the Lord’s teaching and example about not worrying about what place we take at a dinner. It could be that they accepted the Lord's upcoming death, and were wondering which of them ought to replace Him. They had thereby clearly missed His teaching in John 14-16, that although He was going away, He was coming again and would permanently be with them as Lord, master and leader through the gift of the Spirit.</p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them, and they that have authority over them are called Benefactors</em>-</p><p> We must be aware that in helping people, be it in teaching them the Truth of Christ, or in materially supporting them in their needs, we must never allow our position of ‘superiority’ become a vehicle for abusing their person, however unintentionally. The Lord in <em><a href='B:490 22:25'>Luk 22:25</a></em> spoke of how in the world, “benefactors” have power over people. His idea seems to have been: ‘If you show generosity in the world, you have authority over others; but you, after my example, must show generosity to others in humble acts of service but not expect authority over others as a result of this’. The giving of help or welfare in any form should therefore never become a source of control over another person. Their integrity and independence as a person must never be in this sense ‘abused’ by us or simply lost sight of, because we have helped them. Peter took due note of this teaching, repeating it in <em><a href='B:670 5:3'>1Pe 5:3</a></em>. </p>


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<p><em>But you shall not be so, but he that is the elder among you, let him become as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that does serve</em>-</p><p> Again, these words remained in Peter's mind and he faithfully teaches them to his converts in his letters. Perhaps Peter was especially sensitive to these words (see on :25) because he was the eldest among the group, and also the one who had been given a chief role at various times in the ministry. The Lord's words here were specifically directed at him.</p><p>The Lord was addressed as ‘Rabbi’ and to some extent acted like one. It was the well known duty of a rabbi’s pupils to serve their teacher and do menial chores for him; the Jewish writings of the time and the Mishnah are full of references to this. Yet the Lord treated His ‘servants’ radically differently- His behaviour at the Last Supper was just the opposite. And He even taught that He, the Lord of all, would be so happy that His servants were waiting for Him that He would “come forth and serve them” (<em><a href='B:490 12:37'>Luk 12:37</a></em>). He was a most unusual “Lord and Master”, one who served His servants, and whose death for them was His ultimate act of service. </p>


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<p><em>For which is greater, he that sits at the table, or he that serves? Is not he that sits at the table? But among you, I am he that serves</em>-</p><p> The parallel record in <em><a href='B:500 13:4-17'>Joh 13:4-17</a></em> describes the Lord actually serving as a servant, when He was the greatest. This was John's way of showing how the word [in this case, the Lord's own words as recorded here by Luke] became flesh in Him. </p>


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<p><em>But you are those who have stayed with me in my time of trial</em>-</p><p> The disciples' persistent failure to grasp our Lord's teaching must have been a great source of trial and frustration for Him. Despite His warnings about His coming sufferings, the disciples failed to comprehend this; perhaps partly due to Jesus Himself fluctuating between talking of his death in both literal and then figurative terms. In His time of greatest need of encouragement He found them sadly lacking in any real degree of spirituality beyond a fanatic allegiance to Him. And yet He graciously thanked them for continuing with Him in His temptations, even though they fell asleep. We can under-estimate how sensitive He is to our feeble spirituality, and how even the basic will to be loyal, no matter how much we fail in practice, means so much to Him. Yet their lack of comprehension must have been especially tragic, since one of the reasons for the gift of the disciples was to help Jesus through the pain of His ministry, and this was to culminate in the cross. After the Jews' first council of war against Christ, He prayed for strength and was answered by being given the twelve (<em><a href='B:490 6:11-13'>Luk 6:11-13</a></em>).</p><p>The disciples slept in Gethsemane, despite being asked to stay awake and encourage the Lord in His hour of need (<em><a href='B:490 22:45'>Luk 22:45</a></em>). Yet He thanks them for being those who continued with them in His temptations. When the Jews agreed at a council to kill Him, the Lord went to be alone with the twelve (<em><a href='B:500 11:53-54'>Joh 11:53-54</a></em>). He took such comfort from them even though they did not or would not understand the reality of His upcoming death. He, like us, could only take such comfort from His brethren if He viewed them positively. </p>


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<p><em>And I appoint to you a kingdom, even as my Father appointed me</em>-</p><p> The Greek for "appoint" is always elsewhere used about a covenant. They had just celebrated the new covenant in the Lord's blood. Participation in that new covenant meant that for sure, a Kingdom had been covenanted to them. The cup of the covenant speaks the same assurance to us today. All that is true of the Son becomes true for all those in Him. As He has been covenanted a Kingdom, so have we. The certainty of the Kingdom for Him is as sure as it is for we who are in Him. This takes some believing, but it is all part of our status "in Christ".</p>


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<p><em>So that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and you shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel</em>-</p><p> This is an allusion to the happiness of Solomon's servants as they sat down to food and wine; they listened to Solomon's wisdom as they ate. <em><a href='B:490 14:15'>Luk 14:15</a></em> speaks of us as happy servants. The idea is that the eating and drinking at the Lord's Passover table was to be repeated in the Kingdom to come. Joseph celebrated his brothers’ repentance with a meal together, at which they sat in their proper places (<em><a href='B:10 43:16'>Gen 43:16</a></em>). Likewise at the marriage supper of the lamb, with each in his proper place (<em><a href='B:490 14:10'>Luk 14:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:30'>Luk 22:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:730 19:9'>Rev 19:9</a></em>).</p><p>It was apparent that in the breaking of bread meetings, there had to be a host. The host was a vital figure. And yet herein lay the huge significance of breaking of bread meetings being held in homes- presumably the home of a richer believer- and yet it was the table <em>of the Lord</em>. <em>He</em> and not the master of the house was the host of that meeting. It's for this reason that it was unthinkable for any invited by grace to their Lord's table to turn away other guests- for it wasn't <em>their</em> table, it was the table of another One, and they were but guests. Attempts to bar others from the Lord's table in our own time are equally rude and deeply lacking in basic spiritual understanding. There are evident similarities between the breaking of bread experience and the marriage supper which we shall eat with the Lord Jesus in His Kingdom. The breaking of bread assembly is called "the table of the Lord"- and yet He says that we shall eat at "My table" at His return. </p>


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<p><em>And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, Satan has asked for you that he might sift you as wheat</em>-</p><p> The fact an Angel was called 'satan' in Numbers 22 and in Job's case means we can maybe have another look at <em><a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a></em>, where Jesus tells the disciples "satan has desired to have you (lit. 'demanded you for trial') that he may sift you as wheat". Wheat is normally a symbol of the righteous after a process of tribulation or judgement. The satan here could be an Angel, demanding them for trial from God, as Job's satan Angel did. The Lord’s comment that satan had demanded to have the disciples, especially Peter is clearly based upon the experience of Job, whom satan also demanded:&nbsp;The Lord saw a similarity between Job and Peter, in that Job’s sufferings were to be repeated in their essence in the experience of Peter. Only through that bitter weeping and reflection upon it, corresponding in the Lord’s analogy to all that Job went through, would Peter like Job emerge triumphant.</p><p>The Old Testament prophecies also give insight into the actual process of the betrayal. The Hebrew for "equal" in "a man my equal" (<em><a href='B:230 55:13'>Psa 55:13</a></em>) is invariably translated elsewhere as 'price' or 'estimation'; possibly implying that the Jews had set the same price on Judas' head (in the sense of a bribe offered to them) at one stage as they had on Jesus. The Jewish satan seeking Peter and the other disciples ("Simon, Satan has desired to have you", plural) implies an organized attempt to subvert each of the twelve, perhaps by offering a financial reward for becoming a secret agent for the Jews. Judas having an equal price in the Jews' eyes as Jesus indicates how highly he was seen to rank among the disciples in the public eye- as important to the Jews as Jesus himself. This further strengthens the impression that Judas was highly esteemed by both Christ and the other disciples. It would appear that the love of this money was a significant factor in Judas' downfall; in the same way as Joseph's brethren were blinded by a money motive in betraying him rather than being interested in his death for its own sake. In addition, Judas' motives seem to have also been from being influenced by the thinking of the Jewish satan, offering the chance of an immediate Kingdom. He is alluded to in <em><a href='B:690 2:19'>1Jn 2:19</a></em> (cp. <em><a href='B:500 13:30'>Joh 13:30</a></em>) as the prototype of all who left the true faith to be influenced by Judaist doctrine:&nbsp;See on <em><a href='B:670 5:8'>1Pe 5:8</a></em>.</p><p>It is noteworthy that the Lord had previously warned that the Jewish Satan / world would be actively trying to influence the disciples to stumble: “Woe unto the world (often referring to the Jewish world in the Gospels) because of the offences!... but woe to that man by whom the offence comes!... whoso shall offend one of these little ones (the disciples – <em><a href='B:450 13:7'>Zec 13:7</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:470 26:31'>Mat 26:31</a></em>) which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned” (<em><a href='B:470 18:6-7'>Mat 18:6-7</a></em>). This invites comparison with “Woe unto that man by whom the son of man is betrayed... it had been good for that man if he had not been born” (<em><a href='B:470 26:24'>Mat 26:24</a></em>). Notice that this stumbling of the disciples at the hand of the Jewish world and its servant Judas was to be around the time of Christ’s capture (<em><a href='B:470 26:31'>Mat 26:31</a></em>); which is what <em><a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a></em> is warning the disciples (“you” plural) about, and which proved to be so relevant to Peter in the hours after the Lord’s capture. Further proof that “the world” that was to cause these offences was the Jewish world is found by comparing <em><a href='B:470 13:38'>Mat 13:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 13:41'>Mat 13:41</a></em>. It’s also been pointed out that ‘Satan desires to sift you as wheat’ “is a proverbial expression” (H:A. Kelly, <em>Satan: A Biography</em> (Cambridge: C:U:P:, 2006) p. 312). Schleiermacher therefore observes about this passage: “There is no intention to teach anything with regard to Satan or to confirm that older belief” (F:E. Schleiermacher, <em>The Christian Faith</em> (London: Clark, 1999 ed:) p. 165).</p><p>There’s also some evident allusion back to the record of Job in the Septuagint version. “The Lord said to the Devil, ‘Behold I give him over [<em>paradidonai</em>] to you; only preserve his life” (<em><a href='B:220 2:6'>Job 2:6</a></em> LXX). <em>Paradidonai</em> and related words are very frequently used of how the Lord Jesus was ‘handed over’ to the systems of the Roman and Jewish Satan (e.g. <em><a href='B:480 14:41'>Mar 14:41</a></em>), and yet ultimately His life was preserved by God. Here in <em><a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a></em> we have the Jewish Satan desiring to have the disciples, just as Job’s ‘Satan’ desired. If the disciples grasped the allusion, they would perceive that they were to be as Job, and believe that ultimately the ‘Satan’ was under God’s control, and through prayerful endurance they would come to victory as Job did.</p>


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<p>- see on <em><a href='B:470 16:18'>Mat 16:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:3'>Luk 22:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 3:19'>Act 3:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:24'>Act 8:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 13:7'>2Co 13:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:680 1:12'>2Pe 1:12</a></em>.</p><p><em>But I prayed for you, that your faith should not fail- </em>Not only did the Lord pray that Peter’s faith wouldn’t fail. He repeatedly made the point in the lead up to Peter’s temptations that His disciples really <em>did </em>know Him, therefore they should never deny this (<em><a href='B:500 14:7'>Joh 14:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:17'>Joh 14:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:21'>Joh 15:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em>), and He taught them that all men <em>must</em> know they were His disciples, if they truly were (<em><a href='B:500 13:35'>Joh 13:35</a></em>). He was trying to strengthen Peter against the trial He knew would come: to deny that he knew Him. Likewise we may try to strengthen those prone to specific temptation, but the power of it depends on their recognition of their own weakness, and whether they have ears to hear. It would seem Peter didn’t, so confident was he of his own strength. Moses of his own freewill chose to intercede for Israel, concerning things which at the time they knew nothing about; things which were almost against their will, in fact. And this is the prototype of the Lord's mediation for us who know not what to pray for as we ought. Consider how he prayed for Peter when Peter didn't realize he was being prayed for. </p><p><em>And when you have been converted, strengthen your brothers</em>-</p><p> Paul referred to the Jews to whom he preached as his “brothers” (<em><a href='B:510 13:26'>Act 13:26</a></em>), and it may be that Peter at least initially understood his commission to “strengthen your brothers” as meaning preaching to his unbelieving Jewish brethren (although the same Greek word is used by Peter regarding his work of upbuilding the converts, <em><a href='B:670 5:10'>1Pe 5:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:680 1:12'>2Pe 1:12</a></em>). <em><a href='B:550 2:8-10'>Gal 2:8-10</a></em> informs us that Peter had a ministry to the Jews of the diaspora in the Roman empire just as much as Paul did to the Gentiles living in the same area (<em><a href='B:550 2:8-10'>Gal 2:8-10</a></em>). Because the Acts record focuses more on Paul’s work rather than Peter’s doesn’t mean that Peter was inactive. 1 Peter is addressed to Jewish converts living in the provinces of Asia Minor, and we can assume that Peter had spent years travelling around building up groups of believers based around the families of the individual Jews he had converted in Jerusalem at Pentecost. It would seem from <em><a href='B:530 1:12'>1Co 1:12</a></em> that Peter had made a number of converts in Corinth, and <em><a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a></em> strongly suggests Peter lived for a while in “Babylon” and had begun an ecclesia there. Whether this be taken as a code name for Rome or as literal Babylon (where there was a sizeable Jewish community), this was somewhere else Peter reached. All through this remarkable life of witness, he was motivated by his own experience of the Lord’s greatness, and His all sufficient grace toward him in his weakness. And a similar life of powerful witness lies before any who are touched likewise:&nbsp; </p><p>The command to strengthen brothers is given again in the Lord’s interview with Peter in John 21. Three times He asks him: ‘do you love me?’, and three times he invites Peter to care for the lambs and sheep- to strengthen his brethren. The triple denial and the triple re-instatement and triple confession of love both occurred by a fire, a <em>charcoal</em> fire on each occasion (<em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 21:9'>Joh 21:9</a></em>) just to heighten the evident connection. Peter’s conversion can therefore be equated with his response to the denials- the repentance, the realization of his own frailty, and desperate acceptance of the Lord’s gracious pardon. Yet Peter invites his fellow elders: “feed the flock of God”, repeating the Lord’s commission to him, as if he saw in himself a pattern for each man who would take any pastoral role in Christ’s ecclesia. The implication is that each man must go through a like conversion. And Peter points out that we are “a royal priesthood”, as if he saw each believer as a priest / pastor. Peter is our example. We all deny our Lord, camouflage it and justify it as we may. We all stand in Peter’s uncomfortable shoes. We do in principle what Judas did.</p><p>“When you are converted..." elicits the obvious response that Peter was converted already! The Lord had spoken of conversion as really seeing, really hearing, really understanding, and commented that the disciples (including Peter) had reached this point (<em><a href='B:470 13:15-16'>Mat 13:15-16</a></em>). But He also told them that they needed to be converted and become as children, knowing they knew nothing as they ought to know (<em><a href='B:470 18:3'>Mat 18:3</a></em>). Quite simply, there are different levels of conversion. Baptism isn’t conversion: it’s a beginning, not an end. </p>


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<p><em>And he said to him: Lord, with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death</em>-</p><p> Peter imagined himself going to prison and death "with you", walking alongside the Lord. But the reality of prison and death is that these things are faced alone. Walking with the Lord on the water, Peter could do it. But not alone. His impetuosity is indeed noticeable, but this should not make us unimpressed by his genuine level of dedication to his Lord. Peter did indeed go to prison and death with his Lord, but he was not then "ready" for that. That process of preparation was still ongoing.</p>


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<p><em>And he said: I tell you Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until you shall deny three times that you know me</em>-</p><p> Peter's problem with the cross was perhaps at the root of his denials of the Lord. Before the cock crowed twice, he denied Jesus twice (<em><a href='B:490 22:34'>Luk 22:34</a></em>). It's been pointed out that chickens couldn't have been anywhere near the High Priest's house because the priests forbad anyone in Jerusalem from keeping chickens, lest they stray into the temple. The <em>Encyclopaedia Judaica</em> points out that the priest who was the temple crier was called the <em>Gaver</em>, Hebrew for 'cock' or 'rooster'. This man opened the temple before dawn and called the priests and people to make the morning sacrifice. And he did this two or three times. Surely the Lord was referring to this when He spoke of the 'cock' crowing. Each time, Peter was being called to make the sacrifice with Jesus; but instead he denied knowledge of Jesus and the call to the cross which that knowledge entails. The context of the Lord's warnings to Peter about his forthcoming denial was that Peter had insisted he <em>would</em> die with Jesus, sharing in His sacrifice. And the Lord was foretelling that when that call came, Peter would deny the knowledge of Jesus. </p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: When I sent you out without purse and wallet and shoes, did you lack anything? And they said: Nothing</em>-</p><p> We are to realistically grasp the fact that His mission and ministry is in fact ours. And the total insecurity, exposure to danger, misunderstanding, slander, sudden calls of God to change direction and move way out of our comfort zone etc. are all part of participating in the short term fate and eternal victory of the One whom we follow. His call to each of us to preach Him is radical. He sent out His preachers with <em>no </em>money, <em>no </em>food etc. He didn’t tell them to go out without <em>extra</em> money, <em>extra</em> food nor clothes etc. He instead told them to take <em>none</em> of these things. Why? Surely because He wanted them – and us- to understand that the preacher of Christ is to be <em>totally</em> dependent upon His provision for them. It was a high challenge. When the disciples faltered at the Last Supper, the Lord told them that OK, if you have a purse, take it; if you want a sword for protection, then buy one. Surely He was saying, as He is to us today: ‘OK, I want you to rise up to the spirit of My ‘Let the dead bury their dead’ and ‘Take no money with you’ exhortations. But if you can’t, OK, take a lower level, but all the same, go forth and be My witnesses. <em>Please!</em>’.</p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: But now, he that has a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet, and he that has none, let him sell his cloak and buy a sword</em>-</p><p> As noted on :35, the Lord could be saying that He had intended them to learn from their experience when sent out on the preaching tour by Him; but they had not. He clearly didn't intended them to take Him literally, because there and then they had no chance to go buy swords. And then Peter pulled out a dagger the Lord tells him that that is quite enough. I take this verse as a lament that they had not retained the lessons learnt; for the Lord foresaw how they were going to all dramatically fail in Gethsemane and the subsequent events.</p>


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<p><em>For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: And he was numbered with the transgressors- </em>The Lord was reckoned "with" sinners, but not as a sinner. And therefore there was no point in the disciples fighting to stop Him being numbered with the transgressors. The prophecy had its specific fulfilment at the crucifixion (<em><a href='B:480 15:28'>Mar 15:28</a></em>). </p><p><em>For what is written about me must have its fulfilment</em>-</p><p> "Fulfilment" is not the best translation. AV "have an end" struggles towards expressing the idea of "to be finally settled" (Vine). We may have here another insight into the open nature of prophecy. The exact outcome and nature of events was variable to some extent; it depended to what extent the Lord wished to fulfil them. The prophecies came to be "finally settled"; and were then "fulfilled in me". </p>


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<p><em>And they said: Lord, look, here are two swords. And he said to them: That is quite enough</em>-</p><p> Again their literalism reflects a lack of faith and understanding. He is telling them that there is no point in fighting, because He must be crucified in the spirit of Isaiah 53. As noted on :35 and :36, He was lamenting that they had not learnt the lesson, that no sword or wallet was necessary. He dismisses any attempt to use those swords by saying "That is quite enough". </p>


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<p><em>And he came out and went, as his custom was, to the mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him</em>-</p><p> His custom for the last few nights of His life was to sleep there on Olivet; because He knew that Judas was wanting an opportunity to betray Him out of sight of the crowds. In the middle of the night in Gethsemane would be ideal; and the Lord set up this situation. </p>


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<p><em>And when he came to the place, he said to them: So that you do not enter into temptation, pray</em>-</p><p> "The place" may refer to Gethsemane, where He often went (<em><a href='B:500 18:2'>Joh 18:2</a></em>). But the language is reminiscent of Abraham and Isaac coming "to the place" of sacrifice. It was as if He saw that spot in Gethsemane as His place of death. Perhaps He did hope that a ram would as it were&nbsp;be provided; for He did pray there for the cup to pass from Him. It is a mark of His supremacy as a spiritual man that He was not solely focused upon Himself, but instead was concerned about the spiritual pressure on His men.</p><p>The relationship between prayer and temptation may not simply be that the Holy Spirit will be provided to fortify us against temptation if we pray. If we are in prayer, in the Father's presence, then we are less likely to just give in to temptation. However, the connection between prayer and strength against temptation is proof enough that Bible reading is not the only strength against temptation. So much more help and succour of the Holy Spirit is available (<em><a href='B:650 4:15-16'>Heb 4:15-16</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em>And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw away, and knelt down and prayed</em>-</p><p> "A stone's throw" is an allusion to David and Goliath near the brook:&nbsp;</p><p>Paul's description of himself on the Damascus road falling down and seeing a Heavenly vision, surrounded by men who did not understand, is framed in exactly the language of Gethsemane (<em><a href='B:510 22:7'>Act 22:7</a></em> = <em><a href='B:470 26:39'>Mat 26:39</a></em>); as if right at his conversion, Paul was brought to realize the spirit of Gethsemane. His connection with the Gethsemane spirit continued. He describes himself as "sorrowful" (<em><a href='B:540 6:10'>2Co 6:10</a></em>), just as Christ was then (<em><a href='B:470 26:37'>Mat 26:37</a></em>). His description of how he prayed the same words three times without receiving an answer (<em><a href='B:540 12:8'>2Co 12:8</a></em>) is clearly linked to Christ's experience in the garden (<em><a href='B:470 26:44'>Mat 26:44</a></em>); and note that in that context he speaks of being “buffeted” by Satan’s servants, using the very word used of the Lord being “buffeted” straight after Gethsemane (<em><a href='B:540 12:7'>2Co 12:7</a></em> = <em><a href='B:470 26:67'>Mat 26:67</a></em>).</p><p>To fall on the face is used in the Old Testament to describe men like Abraham and Moses falling on their face in the visible presence of God, e.g. before an Angel (<em><a href='B:10 17:3'>Gen 17:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 16:4'>Num 16:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 22:31'>Num 22:31</a></em>). Yet there was no visible manifestation of God’s presence at this time; so we are to assume that the Lord Jesus intensely perceived the Father’s presence even though there was no visible sign of it. It could be that the Angel from Heaven strengthening the Lord had already appeared, but this appears to come&nbsp;<em>after</em>&nbsp;the Lord had fallen on His face.</p><p>The Lord had foreseen how He must be like the grain of the wheat (note the articles in the Greek) which must fall to the ground and die, and then arise in a glorious harvest (<em><a href='B:500 12:24'>Joh 12:24</a></em>). But soon after saying that, the Lord fell to the ground (same Greek words) in prayer and asked the Father if the cup might pass from Him (<em><a href='B:480 14:35'>Mar 14:35</a></em>). It seems to me that He fell to the ground in full reference to His earlier words, and asked desperately if this might be accepted as the falling to the earth of the grain of the wheat, i:e. Himself, which was vital for the harvest of the world. Don’t under-estimate the amount of internal debate which the Lord would have had about these matters. The spirit of Christ in the prophets testified Messiah’s sufferings “unto Christ" (<em><a href='B:670 1:11'>1Pe 1:11</a></em> RVmg:), but He still had to figure it all out. And this enabled an element of doubt, even though in the end He knew “all the things that were coming upon him" (<em><a href='B:500 18:4'>Joh 18:4</a></em>). To doubt is not to sin. Another Messianic Psalm had foretold: “In the multitude of my doubts within me, thy comforts delight my soul" (<em><a href='B:230 94:19'>Psa 94:19</a></em> RVmg:). This aspect heightens the agony of His final crisis, when He unexpectedly felt forsaken. </p>


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<p><em>Saying: Father, if You be willing, remove this cup from me- </em>This may not simply mean 'If it's possible, may I not have to die'. The Lord could have meant: 'If&nbsp;<em>it</em>-</p><p> some unrecorded possible alternative to the cross- is&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;possible, then let&nbsp;<em>this</em>&nbsp;cup pass'- as if to say 'If option A is possible, then let the cup of option B pass from me'. But He overrode this with a desire to be submissive to the Father's preferred will- which was for us to have a part in the greatest, most surpassing salvation, which required the death of the cross. </p><p>“Such&nbsp;<em>great</em>&nbsp;salvation" (<em><a href='B:650 2:3'>Heb 2:3</a></em>) might imply that a lesser salvation could have been achieved by Christ, but He achieved the greatest possible. "He is able also&nbsp;<em>to save them to the uttermost</em>&nbsp;that come unto God by him" (<em><a href='B:650 7:25'>Heb 7:25</a></em>) may be saying the same thing. Indeed, the&nbsp;<em>excellence</em>&nbsp;of our salvation in Christ is a major NT theme. It was typified by the way Esther interceded for Israel; she could have simply asked for her own life to be spared, but she asked for that of all Israel. And further, she has the courage (and we sense her reticence, how difficult it was for her) to ask the King yet another favour- that the Jews be allowed&nbsp;to slay their enemies for one more day, and also to hang Haman's sons (<em><a href='B:150 9:12'>Ezr 9:12</a></em>). She was achieving the maximum possible redemption for Israel rather than the minimum. Paul again seems to comment on this theme when he speaks of how Christ became obedient, "<em>even</em>&nbsp;to the death of the cross" (<em><a href='B:570 2:8'>Phi 2:8</a></em>), as if perhaps some kind of salvation could have been achieved without the death&nbsp;<em>of the cross</em>. Perhaps there was no theological necessity for Christ to die&nbsp;<em>such</em>&nbsp;a painful death; if so, doubtless this was in His mind in His agony in the garden.</p><p>The Lord had taught more than once that “with God all things are possible” (<em><a href='B:470 19:26'>Mat 19:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 9:23'>Mar 9:23</a></em>), and yet He inserts here a condition: “If it be possible”. He recognized that God’s plan was possible of fulfilment by any means, and yet He recognized that there was a condition to that. This issue is not really resoluble, at least not by any intellectual process. If, or rather when, we struggle with these issues, this balance between God’s ultimate possibility and the fact there appear to be terms and conditions attached- then we are there with the Lord in Gethsemane. But we need to note that it was God who was being pushed to the limit here as well- for literally all things are indeed possible to Him, and He could have saved the world any way He wished. In His allowing of this chosen method we see the degree to which the cross was indeed His plan that He so wanted to see worked out.</p><p><em>"</em>Let this cup pass" is interpreted in <em><a href='B:480 14:35'>Mar 14:35</a></em> as “That the hour might pass”. He saw the cup and His “hour” of death as the same thing. The challenging thing is that He invites us to drink His cup, to share in His final hour… even when He Himself found this so hard to drink.</p><p>Paul uses the same Greek term "from me" in describing how also three times he asked for the thorn in the flesh to “depart&nbsp;<em>from me</em>” (<em><a href='B:540 12:8'>2Co 12:8</a></em>). He saw his prayers and desires as a sharing in the Lord’s struggle in Gethsemane, just as we can too.</p><p><em>Nevertheless</em>-</p><p> The saying of these brief words lasted long enough for the disciples to fall asleep. “Could you not watch with Me for one hour?” (<em><a href='B:470 26:40'>Mat 26:40</a></em>) suggests not ‘even just for one hour’ but rather ‘We’ve been here an hour, and you couldn’t watch with me even for that short period of time’. So it took the Lord an hour to say the words recorded here, which can be spoken in a few seconds. We have a window here into the essence of prayer; the words can be spoken quickly, but saying with meaning can take far longer. There may well have been many minutes in between each word here. And doubtless He said the same words and repeated the ideas several times, which would explain the slight differences in wording at this point between the Gospel records.</p><p><em>Let not my will, but Yours be done</em>-</p><p> Trinitarians need to note that the Lord’s will was not totally the same as that of His Father.</p>


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<p><em>And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him</em></p><p>- See on <em><a href='B:230 80:15'>Psa 80:15</a></em>. The son of man was "made strong" by the Father through Angelic ministration, as happened after the wilderness temptations. The strengthening may have been in order to pray to the Father "more earnestly" in :44. "Strengthening" is <em>enischuo</em>, literally, to in-strength, to in-possible. The same word <em>ischuo</em> is used in the Lord's lament that at this time, Peter, James and John "could" not watch in prayer (<em><a href='B:470 26:40'>Mat 26:40</a></em>). They were not 'strong' because they had not allowed themselves to be 'strengthened'. To not make use of empowerment is therefore sinful. We have huge potential power available to us through the Holy Spirit, the direct succour of the Lord in our hearts (<em><a href='B:650 4:15-16'>Heb 4:15-16</a></em>). To claim that this is not available is a serious false teaching. </p>


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<p><em>And being in anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground</em>-</p><p>&nbsp; The mental intensity within His mind had physiological effects. His skin became thin and the sweat dropped as blobs. Only Luke the doctor notes this. This was the focus of a human mind upon God such as has never been seen. The shame is that the Lord's men drifted off to sleep whilst He was achieving it. What was He praying for? Perhaps there were no requests as such, but a mind locked in contact with the Father. For that is the essence of prayer. This is the strong crying and tears of <em><a href='B:650 5:7'>Heb 5:7</a></em>. The whole condition was enough to have killed Him of itself; it was indeed sorrow unto death (<em><a href='B:470 26:38'>Mat 26:38</a></em>). It would have left His skin very sensitive and thin- and that skin was now to be subjected to whipping, piercing and other abuse.</p>


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<p><em>And when he rose up from his prayer, he went to the disciples, and found them sleeping from sorrow</em></p><p>- See on <em><a href='B:480 14:72'>Mar 14:72</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:27'>Luk 22:27</a></em>. The manner of inspiration reflects how God sees His servants. Often the Spirit caused the Bible writers to portray God's children in an extremely positive way. Thus <em><a href='B:490 22:45'>Luk 22:45</a></em> says that the disciples fell asleep from sorrow, when in reality this was due to their lack of spiritual awareness and sense of spiritual urgency. Likewise, <em><a href='B:490 1:18'>Luk 1:18</a></em> records only a few (apparently harmless) of the many words which Zacharias doubtless said, not without strong disbelief, during the abnormally long time he remained in the temple. These examples illustrate how God looks so positively upon His children. </p><p><em>"</em>Comes… and finds" are the very words used of the Lord’s coming in judgment to ‘find’ the state of His people (<em><a href='B:470 21:19'>Mat 21:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 24:46'>Mat 24:46</a></em> “whom his Lord when He&nbsp;<em>comes</em>&nbsp;shall&nbsp;<em>find</em>&nbsp;so doing”; <em><a href='B:490 18:8'>Luk 18:8</a></em> “When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith…?”). And His ‘coming’ to the disciples found them asleep and unprepared. This was exactly the picture of <em><a href='B:480 13:36'>Mar 13:36</a></em> (and <em><a href='B:490 12:37'>Luk 12:37</a></em>), using the same Greek words: “Watch… lest coming suddenly, He find you sleeping”. We can be condemned in this life, as Peter was when he denied his Lord, and yet be saved out of it by repentance.</p>


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<p><em>And said to them: Why do you sleep? Get up and pray, so that you will not enter into temptation</em>-</p><p> Each statement of the apparently simple model prayer needs careful reflection. The Lord told the disciples in Gethsemane to earnestly pray the simple saying: “Pray not to fail in the test” (<em><a href='B:470 26:41'>Mat 26:41</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:490 6:13'>Luk 6:13</a></em>). The prayer that they could gabble mindlessly must be prayed with intense attention to every phrase. They presumably did pray as directed, but the Lord later warns them: “Why do you sleep? Get up and pray, so that you will not enter into temptation”. He intended them to keep on praying, as He spent an hour praying the same words; and not just rattle off a few words and think we have done our praying. Just as the tribulation of the last days seems to be conditional upon our faith, so the Lord may imply that entering into the time of trial or testing was avoidable by their prayer and faith. Again we see the final time of tribulation as reflective of the Lord’s sufferings, enabling the very last generation to identify with the Lord’s death so that they might share in His resurrection.</p><p>Without being ostentatious in the eyes of others, try to use a physical position in prayer which is conducive to concentration. There are Biblical examples of prayer standing, kneeling, sitting, sitting cross-legged, with hands uplifted... Remember how the Lord told the disciples to <em>rise</em> and pray; He could see that curled up as they were, they were more likely to nod off to sleep than intensely pray (<em><a href='B:490 22:46'>Luk 22:46</a></em>). He had already told them to pray (v. 40), and doubtless they had obediently started praying, but had fallen asleep while doing so. "<em>Rise</em> and pray" surely suggests: 'Come on men, I told you to pray, but you can't pray lounging around like that!'. And I would bet many of us need the same words.</p><p>How He prayed is an example of the Lord’s words being made flesh in His living. He taught His men to pray “Your will be done”; and in Gethsemane, He prayed those very words Himself, even though praying them meant an acceptance of crucifixion (<em><a href='B:470 26:52'>Mat 26:52</a></em>). In that same context, the Lord asks His men to pray that they enter not into temptation (<em><a href='B:490 22:46'>Luk 22:46</a></em>). He was asking them to pray His model prayer just as He was doing. His own example was to be their inspiration. I wonder too, in passing, whether the Lord’s request at that time that the cup of suffering pass from Him (<em><a href='B:480 14:35'>Mar 14:35</a></em>) was His way of praying not to be led into temptation- for perhaps He momentarily feared that He would finally spiritually stumble under the burden of the cross? This surely is the meaning of the hymn that speaks of living more nearly as we pray.</p><p>Each statement of the apparently simple model prayer needs careful reflection. The Lord told the disciples in Gethsemane to earnestly pray the simple saying: “Pray not to fail in the test” (<em><a href='B:470 26:41'>Mat 26:41</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:490 6:13'>Luk 6:13</a></em>). The prayer that they could gabble mindlessly must be prayed with intense attention to every phrase. They presumably did pray as directed, but the Lord later warns them: “Why do you sleep? Get up and pray, so that you will not enter into temptation”. He intended them to keep on praying, as He spent an hour praying the same words; and not just rattle off a few words and think we have done our praying. Just as the tribulation of the last days seems to be conditional upon our faith, so the Lord may imply that entering into the time of trial or testing was avoidable by their prayer and faith. Again we see the final time of tribulation as reflective of the Lord’s sufferings, enabling the very last generation to identify with the Lord’s death so that they might share in His resurrection.</p>


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<p><em>While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them-</em></p><p>This was a tacit recognition of the fanatic loyalty of the eleven; Judas reckoned that they could put up enough of a fight to require this great multitude.</p><p><em>He drew near to Jesus to kiss him</em>-</p><p> It could be that the crowd of armed men were still hidden, and he came alone to make this act of identification of Jesus- again suggesting that the crowd of hired hoods were unclear as to which one of the group of disciples was Jesus. This is why Mt. and Mk. say that after the kiss, "then came they"- Judas was alone when he first approached the Lord. Although the Lord later protests that He had been with 'them' in the temple teaching, presumably that comment was directed only at the leadership of the group. Or perhaps it was simply because in the darkness it was not clear who was who, and Judas needed to make the identification for that reason. He needed to be alone to make that identification- he would've been unable to do it if he had approached Jesus and the disciples with the crowd of men next to him.</p>


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<p><em>But Jesus said to him: Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?</em>-</p><p> This was not to merely point our irony. The Lord didn't waste His words on throwaway remarks. This was a last minute, desperate appeal for repentance. The Lord's desire for Judas' repentance speaks volumes of His basic love; there was no vindictiveness, just a desire for the man's salvation. He is the same with each of us, and we should be the same to those who abuse us.</p>


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<p><em>And when they that were about him saw what would follow, they said: Lord, shall we strike with the sword?</em>-</p><p> Peter asked if he should strike with the sword (Mt:) and then did so without waiting for a response. This is rather typical of us all. We assume Divine response, and thus play God.</p><p>Peter’s objection to the Lord’s going to die at Jerusalem surfaced several times. He wanted to build tents so that Jesus wouldn’t go down from the mountain to the strange <em>exodos</em> which the prophets declared. When he wanted to “smite with the sword” in the Garden, it was to get the Lord out of the cross. Peter was willing to suffer, to fight, to even die in what would have been a hopeless combat, outnumbered dozens to one. But he just didn’t want the cross to be the way. It is recorded that when Peter saw “what would follow” in the Garden, he wanted to start a fight in order to at least have some slim chance of avoiding that inevitable crucifixion which now looked so certain (<em><a href='B:490 22:49'>Luk 22:49</a></em>). He didn’t want the path of events to “follow” to that end. He again denied the connection between following and cross carrying. Later, the Lord told Peter in categoric terms that he personally was to follow Him to the death of the cross. And Peter turns around, sees John following, and gets side-tracked by the question of what the Lord thinks about John. As with us, quasi spiritual reasoning and issues were allowed to cloud and dilute the essential and terrifying truth- that we are called to bear Christ’s cross to the end.</p><p>An essay in unquestioning loyalty to the Lord and Master is found in <em><a href='B:490 22:49'>Luk 22:49</a></em>: "When they which were about him saw what would follow (i:e. arrest and attack), they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?". That grim-faced band of men standing in a protective circle around their Lord knew that they had no chance of victory against the mob with Judas, armed to the teeth as they were. Yet they were willing, to a man, to heroically sacrifice their lives- the inevitable result of starting a fight- as a token of loyalty to a man who humanly speaking was a lost cause, and whose demise seemed so unexpected to them compared to their hopes of a glorious Kingdom being established there and then:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And a certain one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear</em>-</p><p> Perhaps the detail is provided as backdrop for the Lord’s response- that whoever&nbsp;<em>takes</em>&nbsp;the sword shall perish by it (<em><a href='B:470 26:52'>Mat 26:52</a></em>). Peter did indeed take the sword- but by grace was saved from the consequence. He clearly aimed to strike off the man's head, but he ducked and Peter only caught his ear.</p><p>The material from Mark is about the same as in Matthew, but Luke and John add various details. Here is Matthew’s account of the arrest in the Garden, with the details from Luke 22 and John 18 (on which see commentary) added in square brackets:</p><p>“The hour is at hand and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise! Let us be going. He that betrays me is nearby. And while he yet spoke, Judas, one of the twelve, came; and with him a great crowd with swords and staves, from the chief priest and elders of the people. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying: Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he. Take him. [<em><a href='B:490 22:47-48'>Luk 22:47-48</a></em> He drew near to Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said to him: Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?] And immediately he came to Jesus, and said, Greetings, Rabbi; and kissed him. And Jesus said to him: Friend, do what you came to do. [Luke 22 And when they that were about him saw what would follow, they said: Lord, shall we strike with the sword?]. Then they came. [<em><a href='B:500 18:4-9'>Joh 18:4-9</a></em>&nbsp;Jesus knowing all the things that must come upon him, went forward and said to them: Whom do you seek? They answered him: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them: I am he (Judas, the one who betrayed him, was standing with them). When he said to them: I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them: Whom do you seek? And they said: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered: I told you that I am he. If therefore you seek me, let these go their way- that the word might be fulfilled which he spoke: Of those whom you have given me I lost not one]. [then they] laid hands on Jesus and took him. And one of those with Jesus [John 18 Simon Peter] stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear [John 18 his right ear. Now the servant's name was Malchus]. Then said Jesus to him: [No more of this <em><a href='B:490 22:51'>Luk 22:51</a></em>] Put away your sword into its place, [into its sheath, John 18] for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Do you think I cannot ask my Father and He shall, even now, send me more than twelve legions of Angels? [<em><a href='B:500 18:11'>Joh 18:11</a></em> The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?] [<em><a href='B:490 22:51'>Luk 22:51</a></em> And he touched his ear and healed him]. But how then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way? In that hour Jesus said to the mob: Have you come out as against a robber with swords and staves to seize me? I sat daily in the temple teaching and you did not take me. [Luke 22 But this is your hour, and the power of darkness]. But all this is happening so that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples left him and fled. [Luke 22 And they seized him and led him away, and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed from a distance]”.</p>


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<p><em>But Jesus said: No more of this! And he touched his ear and healed him</em>-</p><p> This is another example of where healings do not elicit faith. Judas and those men were so blindly committed to their path that even a plain miracle would not stop them. The Lord could have spoken the word, but He touched the man; another indication that He was totally in control and was giving His life rather than having it taken from Him.</p>


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<p><em>And Jesus said to the chief priests and captains of the temple and elders that had come against him: Have you come as against a robber, with swords and staves?</em>-</p><p> The same word used about Jesus and the disciples ‘going out’ from the Upper Room to Gethsemane (<em><a href='B:470 26:30'>Mat 26:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:1'>Joh 18:1</a></em>), and Jesus ‘going forth’ to meet the crowd of armed men who were coming against Him (<em><a href='B:500 18:4'>Joh 18:4</a></em>). The impression is given of a head-on meeting between the forces of light and darkness.</p>


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<p><em>When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness</em>-</p><p> The Lord was addressing the leadership of the group, who had sat daily in the temple over the past week and heard Him. They knew what He looked like, He had sat&nbsp;<em>pros humas,&nbsp;</em>"with you" (AV), not so much “with you” as ‘directly facing you’, sitting down in front of them and therefore at close range. Therefore the need for Judas to identify the Lord with a kiss, to prove “that same is He”, was because the mass of armed men didn’t know who He was, and had therefore not sat in the temple. Again we see the Lord recognizing that men are only who they are, the hired thugs were no more than hired thugs acting in ignorance; but the leaders who were present were the ones He wanted to address. This is confirmed by <em><a href='B:490 22:52'>Luk 22:52</a></em> stating that “Jesus said to the chief priests and captains of the temple and elders that had come against him: Have you come as against a robber, with swords and staves?”. The priests and elders were in that large crowd, and the Lord directly addresses them. So although He addressed “the multitudes”, His message was aimed at specific individuals within the crowd. This is true of much of Scripture; perhaps those parts we personally fail to understand are speaking to a particular group in need of that message, perhaps in a previous age, and it may not be as directly intended for us as it was to them. The correspondence between the narratives is detailed and deeply credible. Uninspired writers would surely not only contradict themselves, but lack this artless congruence between each other which we find in the inspired Gospel records. <em><a href='B:490 22:53'>Luk 22:53</a></em> adds that the Lord continued to say: “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness”. The sense is surely that in broad daylight they dared not lay hold on Him- they had to do it under cover of darkness, because they were of the darkness.</p>


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<p><em>And they seized him and led him away, and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed from a distance</em>-</p><p> There is great emphasis on the Lord being&nbsp;<em>led</em>&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:470 26:57'>Mat 26:57</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 27:2'>Mat 27:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 27:31'>Mat 27:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:16'>Mar 15:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:13'>Joh 18:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:28'>Joh 18:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:16'>Joh 19:16</a></em>). And notice how <em><a href='B:510 8:32'>Act 8:32</a></em> changes the quotation from Isaiah 53 to say that Christ was&nbsp;<em>led</em> (this isn't in the Hebrew text). His passivity is another indication that He was&nbsp;<em>giving</em>&nbsp;His life of His own volition, it wasn't being taken from Him. As noted on <em><a href='B:480 14:51'>Mar 14:51</a></em>, it seems that Peter was the young man who followed dressed in a linen cloth.</p><p>This is recorded in the same words by all three Synoptics. It impressed them all as perhaps typical of so much of their ‘following’ the Lord; it was a following, but far off from Him. His challenge to Peter had been to not just physically follow Him, but to pick up His cross and walk behind Him on His way to His cross (<em><a href='B:470 16:24'>Mat 16:24</a></em> s:w:). Following Jesus in the shadows and avoiding identification with Him was hardly the kind of following which He intended. Yet Peter recognized this, because his appeal for repentance describes his audience as likewise “afar off” (<em><a href='B:510 2:39'>Act 2:39</a></em> s:w:); he is asking them to make the conversion which he did, and he thereby considers his ‘following afar off’ as not really following at all, and being in a ‘far off from Christ’ position from which he repented and thereby ‘came near’ to Christ in conversion. The Greek words for ‘followed’ and ‘afar off’ are also used about how the few remaining disciples stood ‘afar off’ from Christ on the cross. The sense is perhaps that the Gospel writers recognized how far they were from co-crucifixion with Christ, and this sense is one we can identify with. And we are those likewise described in Ephesians as “far off” as Peter was, but are now likewise reconciled.</p>


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<p><em>And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat among them</em>-</p><p> Mt. <em>"</em>and sat with the officers". The presence of the definite article suggests that "the servants" [the Greek also means "officers"] are a group which has already been mentioned, and surely they are the "servants" who comprised the crowd of armed men who arrested Jesus in the Garden. The same word is used three times about them in <em><a href='B:500 18:3'>Joh 18:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:12'>Joh 18:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em>. The risk Peter was taking was considerable, seeing he had visibly been with the Lord in the Garden and had tried to kill one of the servants. We must give due weight to this- his devotion to his Lord was incomplete but all the same must be recognized for what it was as far as it was. So often those who aim higher than others in their spiritual devotions are those who fall the most publicly, and yet their devotion to their Lord should not be forgotten- for it is higher than the mass of other disciples.</p>&nbsp;<table border="1"><tr><td></p><p></td><td>Matthew</td><td>Mark</td><td>Luke</td><td>John</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Accusation 1</td><td>Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a maid came to him, saying: You also were with Jesus the Galilean.</td><td>And as Peter was downstairs in the courtyard, there came one of the maids of the high priest:&nbsp; And seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said: You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus!</td><td>And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat among them. And a certain maid seeing him as he sat in the light of the fire and looking earnestly upon him, said: This man also was with him.</td><td>Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest; and he entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest:&nbsp; But Peter was standing outside the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the maid who kept watch at the door. The maid keeping watch at the door said to Peter: Are you also one of this man's disciples?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Denial 1</td><td>But he denied before them all, saying: I do not know what you say.</td><td>But he denied it, saying: I neither know, nor understand what you say; and he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.</td><td>But he denied it, saying: Woman, I do not know him.</td><td>He said: I am not!</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Accusation 2</td><td>And when he went out to the entrance, another maid saw him and said to the bystanders: This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.</td><td>And the maid saw him and began again to say to them that stood by: This is one of them!</td><td>And after a little while another person saw him and said: You also are one of them.</td><td>Now the servants and the officers were standing there, having made a fire of coals. For it was cold, and they were warming themselves; and Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself... Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said to him: Are you also one of his disciples?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Denial 2</td><td>And again he denied with an oath: I do not know the man.</td><td>But he again denied it.</td><td>But Peter said: Man, I am not.</td><td>He denied and said: I am not!</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Accusation 3</td><td>And after a little while they that stood by came and said to Peter: Of a truth you also are one of them, for your dialect makes you known.</td><td>And after a little while, again they that stood by said to Peter: Of a truth you are one of them; for you are a Galilean.</td><td>And after the space of about one hour another confidently affirmed, saying: Of a truth, this man also was with him. For he is a Galilean.</td><td>One of the servants of the high priest, being a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said: Did I not see you in the garden with him?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Denial 3</td><td>Then he began to curse and to swear: I do not know the man! And immediately the cock crowed.</td><td>But he began to curse and to swear under oath: I do not know this man of whom you speak. And immediately the second time the cock crew</td><td>But Peter said: Man, I do not know what you say. And immediately, as he spoke, the cock crew.</td><td>&nbsp;Peter denied again; and immediately the cock crew.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peter's response 1</td><td>And Peter remembered the words which Jesus had said: Before the cock crows, you shall deny me three times.</td><td>And Peter remembered what Jesus had said to him: Before the cock crows twice, you shall deny me three times.</td><td>And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord that he had said to him: Before the cock crow this day, you shall deny me three times:&nbsp;</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peter goes out</td><td>And he went out and wept bitterly.</td><td>And as he thought upon it, he wept.</td><td>And he went out and wept bitterly.</td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>&nbsp;


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<p><em>And a certain maid seeing him as he sat in the light of the fire and looking earnestly upon him, said: This man also was with him</em>-</p><p> For the significance of the firelight, see on <em><a href='B:500 3:14-21'>Joh 3:14-21</a></em>. Gk. 'a servant girl', "one of the servant girls of the High Priest" (<em><a href='B:480 14:66'>Mar 14:66</a></em>). Her claim that "You also were with Jesus" may specifically refer to Peter's presence with Jesus in Gethsemane, for”&nbsp;the servants" of the High Priest had been there. Perhaps she was one of them. She describes Peter as being&nbsp;<em>meta&nbsp;</em>Jesus ["you were with Jesus"], and the same phrase&nbsp;<em>meta&nbsp;</em>Jesus is used to described the disciples being&nbsp;<em>meta </em>Jesus in Gethsemane (<em><a href='B:470 26:36'>Mat 26:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 26:51'>Mat 26:51</a></em>). Or since the Lord was a public figure in Jerusalem, it would be likely that Peter was known as one of those ever to be seen hanging around Him. <em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em> gives further information about her: "The maid keeping watch at the door said to Peter: Are you also one of this man's disciples? He said: I am not!". The only other time we read of a servant girl who was a door keeper is in <em><a href='B:510 12:16'>Act 12:16</a></em>, where the servant girl [s:w:] called Rhoda was the door keeper at the home of the disciples in Jerusalem, and is thrilled when she realizes that it is Peter knocking at the door asking her to let him in. Note that "door keeper" is likely a technical term, a kind of profession. This heightens the similarity between the two characters. The similarities with the scene in <em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em> are too strong to be passed off as unintentional; for here Peter has to have the door to the courtyard opened by the servant girl, and it is at the gate that she recognizes him. Peter's failure, his denials, were the basis of his successful appeals for Israel to follow his pattern of repentance. Thousands heard him make those appeals in Jerusalem, for if a few thousand were baptized in one day, we can be sure that many others heard the message and didn't act upon it. It's highly likely that that servant girl was in the crowd, and was one who responded. I suggest that Rhoda was that servant girl, converted by Peter's failure, repentance and experience of forgiveness. She converted from serving the Jewish High Priest to serving the Heavenly High Priest, the Lord Jesus; from being one of the crowd who went out to arrest Jesus, to being one who glorified His resurrection:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>But he denied it, saying- </em>Matthew stresses the denial was before them all. Peter was living out the scene of condemnation at the last day, where the verdict likewise will be manifest "before all". The Lord had used the same word in saying that whoever denied Him "before men" [cp. "before all"], He will deny before the Father at the last day (<em><a href='B:470 10:33'>Mat 10:33</a></em>). Peter appealed for Israel to repent on the basis that they had "denied" Christ (<em><a href='B:510 3:13-14'>Act 3:13-14</a></em> s:w:)- he is appealing for them to realize that they had done what he had done, and yet they could repent, convert and experience the same grace he had done. His appeal, made a stone's throw from where the denials were made and only 6 weeks later, was therefore so powerful. Peter likewise used his failure in his pastoral work with his converts, warning them that to even deny the Lord who redeemed us is the worst possible thing we can do (<em><a href='B:680 2:1'>2Pe 2:1</a></em>). Likewise <em><a href='B:690 2:22-23'>1Jn 2:22-23</a></em> speaks of denying Christ as being the characteristic of the AntiChrist. And John wrote in the context of the early church having Peter as its first leader, and John of course was fully aware of Peter's failure that night.</p><p>Peter in this life denied his Lord&nbsp;<em>in front of men</em>&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:470 26:70'>Mat 26:70</a></em>)- and the record of his failure intentionally looks back to the Lord's warning that whoever denies Him&nbsp;<em>before men&nbsp;</em>will be denied by Him at judgment day (<em><a href='B:470 10:33'>Mat 10:33</a></em>). He sinned, and in the court of Heaven was condemned. There is a passage in <em><a href='B:240 24:11-12'>Pro 24:11-12</a></em> which has a strange relevance to Peter's self-condemnation. Having spoken of those being led away to death (the very context of Peter's denial), we read: "If thou sayest, Behold we know not this man: doth not he that weigheth the hearts consider it? And shall not he render to every man according to his works?". This last phrase is quoted in <em><a href='B:730 22:12'>Rev 22:12</a></em> about the final judgment. Paul seems to consciously link Peter’s church hypocrisy and legalism with his earlier denials that he had ever known the Lord Jesus. He writes of how he had to reveal Peter’s denial of the Lord’s grace “before them all” (<em><a href='B:550 2:14'>Gal 2:14</a></em>), using the very same Greek phrase of <em><a href='B:470 26:70'>Mat 26:70</a></em>, where “before them all” Peter made the same essential denial. &nbsp;</p><p><em>Woman, I do not know him</em>-</p><p> Again, Peter was acting as the condemned, to whom the Lord will say "I know you not" (<em><a href='B:470 25:12'>Mat 25:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:25'>Luk 13:25</a></em>). The whole idea of ‘I don’t know Him’ must, sadly, be connected with the Lord’s words in <em><a href='B:470 7:23'>Mat 7:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 25:41'>Mat 25:41</a></em>, where He tells the rejected: “I never knew you”. By denying knowledge of the Saviour, Peter was effectively agreeing that the verdict of condemnation could appropriately be passed upon him:&nbsp; In one of his many allusions to the Gospels, Paul wrote that “If we deny him, he also will deny us” (<em><a href='B:620 2:12'>2Ti 2:12</a></em>). Peter in this life denied his Lord&nbsp;<em>in front of men</em>&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:470 26:70'>Mat 26:70</a></em>)- and the record of his failure intentionally looks back to the Lord’s warning that whoever denies Him&nbsp;<em>before men&nbsp;</em>will be denied by Him at judgment day (<em><a href='B:470 10:33'>Mat 10:33</a></em>). He sinned, and in the court of Heaven was condemned; and yet he could change the verdict by repentance.</p>


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<p><em>And after a little while another person saw him and said: You also are one of them. But Peter said: Man, I am not</em>-</p><p> John says that a group of men made the second accusation; see the parallel texts at the commentary on :55. Luke says that Peter replied to the second accusation [which Matthew says was made by a<em>&nbsp;</em><em>woman</em>] by saying “<em>Man</em>, I am not”. Clearly the accusations and denials were in groups- the second ‘denial’ involved a number of people [a man, a woman and plural men] making accusations and Peter denying them all. If we put together the various records of Peter’s three denials, it seems clear that a number of accusations were made, and he replied slightly differently each time. But there were three groups of accusations and denials. We can imagine the scene- there was a whole group of men and women present, all within earshot, and once one person made the accusation, others would’ve chimed in. But the account is stylized to group the denials in three groups, and Peter obviously perceived this after his final oath of denial. But in fact it seems that each denial was a series of separate denials. Indeed the tense of the verb “denied” suggests he kept on and on denying.</p>


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<p><em>And after the space of about one hour another confidently affirmed, saying: Of a truth, this man also was with him. For he is a Galilean</em>-</p><p> Matthew says it was a group of men, Mark says it was a maid; Luke says it was one individual who made the third accusation, and John says it was specifically a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off. The three episodes of accusation and denial were therefore each comprised of a series of accusations and a series of denials. This means that the Lord was being generous in saying that Peter would deny Him three times before the cock crowed. Each episode of denial contained many separate denials.</p>


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<p><em>But Peter said: Man, I do not know what you say. And immediately, as he spoke, the cock crew</em>-</p><p> The problem is that Mark says that the cock crowed after the first denial; and it is Mark who says that the Lord’s warning was that “Before the cock crows&nbsp;<em>twice</em>, you shall deny Me three times”. Matthew and the others seem to speak of only one cock crow. There are various solutions. One is that we give full weight to the fact we are dealing with three episodes or groups of denials. If the first ‘denial’ involved three separate denials, then this fulfilled the prediction that there would be three denials before the cock crew. And the third episode of denials occurred before the second cock crow, this fulfilling the Lord’s word as recorded by Mark “Before the cock crows&nbsp;<em>twice</em>, you shall deny Me three times”:&nbsp; Another is to go with the NIV footnotes on <em><a href='B:480 14:30'>Mar 14:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:72'>Mar 14:72</a></em>, which claim that earliest manuscripts omit the word “twice” and “second time”:&nbsp; Another textual approach is to reflect that the record of the cock crowing after the first denial (<em><a href='B:480 14:68'>Mar 14:68</a></em>) is omitted by most later translations after the AV. The text also could be suspect at that point. But I am distinctly uneasy at resolving apparent difficulties by claiming that verses are spurious and uninspired. Issues of translation, however, are of another order. I submit that <em><a href='B:480 14:72'>Mar 14:72</a></em> is capable of another translation. Most versions have to the effect that “Before the cock crows twice, you shall deny Me three times”. But it could equally be translated ‘You shall deny Me three times for each two crows of the cock’. This would make a total of six denials. I suggest therefore that there were three denials from Peter during the first denial episode, before the first crowing of the cock; then another one or two denials during the second denial episode, and then another one or two during the third denial episode- and then the cock crew a second time. Another possible reconstruction was offered by Michael Cortright:</p><p>First denial:&nbsp;</p><p>A girl at the door to the courtyard (<em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em>).</p><p>Second denial:&nbsp;</p><p>A servant girl, by the fire in the courtyard (<em><a href='B:470 26:69'>Mat 26:69</a></em>, <em><a href='B:480 14:66'>Mar 14:66</a></em>, <em><a href='B:490 22:56'>Luk 22:56</a></em>).</p><p>Third denial:&nbsp;</p><p>A man by the fire in the courtyard (<em><a href='B:490 22:58'>Luk 22:58</a></em>).</p><p>First crow:&nbsp;</p><p><em><a href='B:480 14:68'>Mar 14:68</a></em> (King James Version).</p><p>Fourth denial:&nbsp;</p><p>Another girl, at the gateway (<em><a href='B:470 26:71'>Mat 26:71</a></em>) or entryway (<em><a href='B:480 14:68-69'>Mar 14:68-69</a></em>).</p><p>Fifth denial:&nbsp;</p><p>Some anonymous (standing) people by the fire in the courtyard (<em><a href='B:470 26:73'>Mat 26:73</a></em>, <em><a href='B:480 14:70'>Mar 14:70</a></em>, <em><a href='B:500 18:25'>Joh 18:25</a></em>).</p><p>Sixth denial:&nbsp;</p><p>Another man who happens to be a male servant of the high priest (<em><a href='B:490 22:59'>Luk 22:59</a></em>, <em><a href='B:500 18:26'>Joh 18:26</a></em>).</p><p>Second crow:&nbsp;</p><p><em><a href='B:470 26:74'>Mat 26:74</a></em>, <em><a href='B:480 14:72'>Mar 14:72</a></em>, <em><a href='B:490 22:60'>Luk 22:60</a></em>, <em><a href='B:500 18:27'>Joh 18:27</a></em>.</p><p><em>And he went out and wept bitterly</em>-</p><p> There are connections between Peter’s position at this time and that of the rejected before the judgment seat. His bitter weeping connects most obviously with the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the rejected. He was ‘remaining outside’ of the Palace where the Lord was (<em><a href='B:470 26:29'>Mat 26:29</a></em> AV “sat without”). Yet the Greek&nbsp;<em>exo</em>&nbsp;translated “without” or “outside” is elsewhere used about the rejected being “cast out” (<em><a href='B:470 5:13'>Mat 5:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 13:48'>Mat 13:48</a></em>), ‘standing without’ with the door shut (<em><a href='B:490 13:25'>Luk 13:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:28'>Luk 13:28</a></em>), like a fruitless branch cast out into the fire (<em><a href='B:500 15:6'>Joh 15:6</a></em>). When we read that Peter “went out” from the Lord’s presence (<em><a href='B:470 26:75'>Mat 26:75</a></em>), the same Greek word is used. The oaths which Peter used would probably have included ‘Before God!’. He was anticipating the judgment seat: before God he admitted he did not know His Son. But in this life we can be condemned- and yet be reprieved through repentance. But remember that Judas likewise “went out” into the darkness. Judas is described as "standing with" those who ultimately crucified Jesus in <em><a href='B:500 18:5'>Joh 18:5</a></em>. Interestingly the same idea occurs in <em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em> where Peter is described as standing with essentially the same group; point being, that Judas and Peter in essence did the same thing, they both denied their Lord and stood with His enemies. But one repented real repentance, whereas the other couldn't muster the faith for this. Lesson: We all deny the Lord, but the two paths before us are those of either Peter or Judas. Peter of course is our pattern. Perhaps Peter was encouraged towards repentance by recalling that just hours before, the Lord had predicted that the disciples would weep [s:w:], but their sorrow would be turned to joy (<em><a href='B:500 16:20'>Joh 16:20</a></em>), in harmony with the Lord’s earlier teaching of blessedness for those who weep now. His weeping was intense, and he must’ve wondered how ever such weeping could be turned to joy. The only answer was that Jesus would have to die for Peter’s sin, be resurrected, forgive Peter and restore fellowship with him, even using him again in His service. It was upon this, then, that Peter desperately set his hope and faith- and it was rewarded.</p>


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<p><em>And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter- </em>The “day of <em>visitation</em>” is coming for us all (<em><a href='B:670 2:12'>1Pe 2:12</a></em>). The Greek is related to the word describing how after the denials, Christ turned and <em>looked</em> upon Peter (<em><a href='B:490 22:61'>Luk 22:61</a></em>). This was for him his day of judgment, which we must all pass through. He called down Divine curses <em>upon himself</em> if he knew Jesus of Nazareth- and thus brought the curse of God upon himself (the record of his cursing and swearing refers to this rather than to the use of expletives).</p><p><em>And Peter remembered the word of the Lord that he had said to him: Before the cock crow this day</em>-</p><p> "Peter remembered" the Lord's words.<em>&nbsp;</em>The letters of Peter urge his readers to “be mindful of the words which were spoken before” (<em><a href='B:680 3:2'>2Pe 3:2</a></em>). Yet this is evidently alluding to the frequent references to the disciples being slow to “remember” [s:w. “mindful”] the words which their Lord had “spoken before” (<em><a href='B:490 24:6'>Luk 24:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:8'>Luk 24:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 2:17'>Joh 2:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 2:22'>Joh 2:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:16'>Joh 12:16</a></em>). Indeed, the same word is used about Peter ‘remembering’ [s:w. “be mindful”] all too late, the words which his Lord had “spoken before” to him (<em><a href='B:470 26:75'>Mat 26:75</a></em>). So Peter was aware that his readers knew that he had not ‘remembered’ the words his Lord had “spoken before” to&nbsp;<em>him</em>-</p><p> and yet, knowing that, he exhorts his readers to ‘remember’ or ‘be mindful’ [s:w:] of words which had been previously spoken. His readers likely had memorized the Gospels by heart. And yet Peter asks them to learn from his mistake, not to be as slow to remember as the disciples had been, and he especially. This is the basis of powerful exhortation- a repentant life, not an appearance of sinlessness:&nbsp;See on <em><a href='B:680 1:12'>2Pe 1:12</a></em>.</p><p>Appreciating the extent of Peter's devotion to the Lord's words enables us to more fully enter into the man's spiritual and emotional tragedy when he denied the Lord. He paid no attention to His words of warning concerning Peter's own spiritual weakness. After that third cock crow, "Peter remembered <em>the word&nbsp;of</em> the Lord, <em>how</em>&nbsp;he had said unto him..." (<em><a href='B:490 22:61'>Luk 22:61</a></em>; "how" may refer to the physical manner in which Christ spoke to Peter, as well as to the content of his words):&nbsp; </p><p><em>You shall deny me three times</em>-</p><p> Pliny records how Christians were asked to make a threefold denial of Christ (<em>Epistles</em>&nbsp;10:97). It has been suggested that the account of Peter's threefold denials of Christ has been included in the Gospel records as an encouragement to those whose faith failed them that still there was a way back to restoration with the Lord Jesus, just as there had been for Peter. When Peter encourages his persecuted brethren to resist the "roaring lion" of Roman / Jewish persecution (<em><a href='B:670 5:8'>1Pe 5:8</a></em>), he is therefore to be seen as writing against a background in which he had actually failed the very test which his brethren were facing. Yet he can therefore even more powerfully encouraged them, because he had also experienced the Lord's restoring grace.</p>


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<p><em>And he went out and wept bitterly</em>-</p><p> Peter “went out” from the Lord. “Went out” is the language of Judas going out (<em><a href='B:500 13:30'>Joh 13:30</a></em> - in essence, Peter and Judas did the same thing at the same time). Other prototypes of the rejected likewise had gone out from the Lord. Cain ‘“went out” (<em><a href='B:10 4:16'>Gen 4:16</a></em>), as did Zedekiah in the judgment of Jerusalem (<em><a href='B:300 39:4'>Jer 39:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 52:7'>Jer 52:7</a></em>). Esau went out from the land of Canaan into Edom, slinking away from the face of his brother Jacob, sensing his righteousness and his own carnality (<em><a href='B:10 36:2-8'>Gen 36:2-8</a></em>). Yet Peter in this life “went out” from the Lord (<em><a href='B:480 14:68'>Mar 14:68</a></em>) and then some minutes later further “went out and wept bitterly” (<em><a href='B:490 22:62'>Luk 22:62</a></em>), living out the very figure of condemnation-&nbsp; and yet was able to repent and come back. In this life we can be judged, condemned, weep... but still repent of it and thereby change our eternal destiny. But at the final judgment: it will be just too late. That ‘judgment’ will be a detailed statement of the outcome of the ongoing investigative judgment which is going on right now. See on <em><a href='B:480 14:68'>Mar 14:68</a></em>.</p><p>here are connections between Peter’s position at this time and that of the rejected before the judgment seat. His bitter weeping connects most obviously with the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the rejected. He was ‘remaining outside’ of the Palace where the Lord was (<em><a href='B:470 26:29'>Mat 26:29</a></em> AV “sat without”). Yet the Greek&nbsp;<em>exo</em>&nbsp;translated “without” or “outside” is elsewhere used about the rejected being “cast out” (<em><a href='B:470 5:13'>Mat 5:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 13:48'>Mat 13:48</a></em>), ‘standing without’ with the door shut (<em><a href='B:490 13:25'>Luk 13:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:28'>Luk 13:28</a></em>), like a fruitless branch cast out into the fire (<em><a href='B:500 15:6'>Joh 15:6</a></em>). When we read that Peter “went out” from the Lord’s presence (<em><a href='B:470 26:75'>Mat 26:75</a></em>), the same Greek word is used. The oaths which Peter used would probably have included ‘Before God!’. He was anticipating the judgment seat: before God he admitted he did not know His Son. But in this life we can be condemned- and yet be reprieved through repentance. But remember that Judas likewise “went out” into the darkness. Judas is described as "standing with" those who ultimately crucified Jesus in <em><a href='B:500 18:5'>Joh 18:5</a></em>. Interestingly the same idea occurs in <em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em> where Peter is described as standing with essentially the same group; point being, that Judas and Peter in essence did the same thing, they both denied their Lord and stood with His enemies. But one repented real repentance, whereas the other couldn't muster the faith for this. Lesson: We all deny the Lord, but the two paths before us are those of either Peter or Judas. Peter of course is our pattern. Perhaps Peter was encouraged towards repentance by recalling that just hours before, the Lord had predicted that the disciples would weep [s:w:], but their sorrow would be turned to joy (<em><a href='B:500 16:20'>Joh 16:20</a></em>), in harmony with the Lord’s earlier teaching of blessedness for those who weep now. His weeping was intense, and he must’ve wondered how ever such weeping could be turned to joy. The only answer was that Jesus would have to die for Peter’s sin, be resurrected, forgive Peter and restore fellowship with him, even using him again in His service. It was upon this, then, that Peter desperately set his hope and faith- and it was rewarded.</p>


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<p><em>And the men that held Jesus mocked him and beat him</em>-</p><p> This was done by men who just minutes beforehand had been carefully upholding some isolated principles of Divine law and general legal integrity. Their appearance of culture vanished. They only could have been so crude and cruel if they first justified it in terms of their religion; spitting and beating would have been justified by them as the punishment due to a heretic. But here we see how they were justifying their own natural anger and jealousy by taking a tiny shard of Biblical precedent- for only in <em><a href='B:50 25:2'>Deu 25:2</a></em> do we have any justification for legal beating, and once it was finished, then there was to be no other punishment. The beating was to be on his back and not on his face; and there was no talk of spitting. But the Jews took that and used it to justify spitting in the Lord's<em> face</em>, beating Him with their fists and then further condemning Him to death. The only command to spit in the face of a man was if he refused to raise up children for his dead relative (<em><a href='B:50 25:9'>Deu 25:9</a></em>); but this was totally irrelevant to the Lord Jesus. He in any case was the ultimate example of a man who did build up His Father's house. There is anger in each of us, and religious people at times give full vent to that anger by justifying it as righteous anger, grabbing hold of the vague implication of some Bible verse and taking it way beyond the obvious meaning of the verse. In doing so, they are behaving no better than these the very worst of men who have ever lived, committing the worst ever crime ever committed in the cosmos. The face of Jesus shone at times with God's glory; He was the face of God to men. And they spat in that face, and beat it. The wonder was that the Lord had specifically foreseen this- He had predicted that they would spit at Him (<em><a href='B:480 10:34'>Mar 10:34</a></em>). He foresaw how they would fuel their anger against Him with their persuasion that He was a heretic:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And they blindfolded him and questioned him&nbsp;saying: Prophesy- who is he that struck you?</em>-</p><p> They had blindfolded Him, and were challenging Him to exercise the prophetic gift of discernment by saying the name of the soldier who had struck Him. We note that 'prophesy' is not to be understood solely as the prediction of future events. The fact is, the Lord did know who had struck Him. They were clearly alluding to the fact that the Jews had concluded the Lord was a false prophet and false Christ and were punishing Him as such. See on <em><a href='B:490 7:39'>Luk 7:39</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em>And many other things they spoke against him, reviling him</em>-</p><p> "Blaspheming"; this was exactly the charge the Lord was being crucified for (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 26:65'>Mat 26:65</a></em>), and so they blasphemed <em>Him</em>. We note how the Lord ahead of this had promised that all blasphemy against Him would be forgiven (<em><a href='B:490 12:10'>Luk 12:10</a></em>). Again, it seems the Lord foresaw these details of His death and sufferings; and forgave it ahead of time. </p>


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<p><em>And as soon as it was day, the assembly of the elders of the people was gathered together, both chief priests and scribes; and they led him away into their council, saying</em>-</p><p> They were careful to appear to obey their own laws and bylaws, whilst breaking God's law entirely. Again we have the impression of Psalms 2 being fulfilled, in the gathering together of Gentile powers against Messiah. The most orthodox and pious within Judaism were no more than Gentiles.</p>


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<p><em>If you are the Christ, tell us. But he said to them: If I tell you, you will not believe</em>-</p><p> The Lord had been careful in His ministry not to specifically claim to be Messiah. Rather He had left His personality, words and works to leave those who encountered Him with the conviction that He was indeed Messiah. To simply 'tell' people truth doesn't mean they will believe; the word must be made flesh. </p>


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<p><em>And if I ask you, you will not answer</em>-</p><p> As noted on :67, the Lord left individuals to be convicted in their own consciences. Formal telling and asking people will not elicit a response worth having; because the conviction is in their hearts. </p>


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<p><em>But from this time forward shall the Son of Man be seated at the right hand of the power of God</em>-</p><p> The allusion is clearly to Daniel's vision of the Son of Man coming in glory to judge the Gentile world. And the Lord is saying that those hyper religious Jews were effectively condemned Gentiles before God. But those men to whom He spoke died in their beds. Lifespans were short in first century Palestine, most males were dead by 40. Most of them wouldn't even have lived to experience the calamity of AD67-70. They will only therefore "see the Son of Man sitting..." at His return, when they are resurrected and see Him in His glory. And this will be of itself their condemnation- to see Him there enthroned in glory, and themselves not in His Kingdom. This was exactly His teaching to them in <em><a href='B:470 23:39'>Mat 23:39</a></em>: "You shall not see Me from this time forward, until you shall say: Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord". They will then bless Him- but all too tragically late.</p><p>At His trial, the Lord warned them that He would come again as judge (<em><a href='B:470 26:64-65'>Mat 26:64-65</a></em>), as if He realized that they were living out a foretaste of the final judgment. The thief likewise understood the Lord's presence as being the presence of the judge who would finally judge him (<em><a href='B:490 23:44'>Luk 23:44</a></em>). The cross divided men: there were women who followed and mourned insincerely, and the women who really followed. There were soldiers who gambled over the Lord's clothes, and one who really repented. There was a thief who repented and one who wouldn't. There were those who mocked and others who watched and believed.</p>


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<p><em>And they all said: Are you then the Son of God? And he said to them: You say that I am</em>-</p><p> <em>"</em>You say..." shows how the Lord sought to elicit confessions from men in their own words:&nbsp;The Lord’s sensitivity is revealed in how He comments upon the Jews’ question: “Art thou then the Son of God?”. He replies: “Ye say it because I am” (<em><a href='B:490 22:70'>Luk 22:70</a></em> RVmg:). The Lord perceived that men ask a question like that because subconsciously, they perceive the truth of the matter, and in their conscience, they already know the answer to their question. Perhaps for this reason He simply ceased answering their questions as the trial went on (<em><a href='B:490 23:9'>Luk 23:9</a></em>). He realized that the questions they asked were actually revealing the answers which were already written in their consciences. For a man of this psychological insight to have lived and died amidst and for such a primitive rabble is indeed amazing.</p>


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<p><em>And they said: What further testimony do we need? For we ourselves have heard it from his own mouth</em>-</p><p> They themselves thus became the witnesses responsible for the Lord's death. Again, legal procedure, which they had tried so carefully to follow, was made a mockery of. They began with a conviction of plotting to destroy the temple buildings, then turned that into an accusation that He was a "Christ, the Son of God", a rival to Caesar; and now they jump on the charge of blasphemy, for which they gave Him the death penalty. And yet the Jews had no legal power to execute people; they had to present their case to the Roman authorities. And blasphemy was not a capital offence under Roman law. Their careful attempts to follow legal integrity broke down in pathetic collapse, and thereby they condemned themselves. The same word,&nbsp;<em>blasphemeo</em>, is then used of how the Jews "reviled" or blasphemed the Lord as He hung on the cross (<em><a href='B:470 27:39'>Mat 27:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:65'>Luk 22:65</a></em>). They had earlier accused the Lord of blasphemy at least twice during His ministry (<em><a href='B:470 9:3'>Mat 9:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:36'>Joh 10:36</a></em> s:w:). So they should have thought of that earlier in the trial, seeing they themselves were the witnesses of that supposed crime. We are left with the impression of a judge and jury increasingly desperate to find the Lord guilty, progressively throwing their integrity and legalism to the winds in their obsession to make Him guilty of death. Little wonder that Pilate later remonstrated with them that Jesus was simply not legally guilty of any capital offence. But the more he made that point to them, the more they screamed for His death:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And the whole company of them rose and brought him before Pilate</em>-</p><p> Early in the morning, after an illegal night time trial. Their 'rising' may refer to a judge rising to give a verdict. They rose in condemnation of Him and went to Pilate to get the sentence carried out.</p><p>Israelites binding a man and delivering him over to Gentiles sounds very much like what Israel did to Samson. The Lord must’ve reflected how easily He likewise could have burst those bands and destroyed them all. The similarity with Samson is surely to remind us that He had those possibilities, but He was consciously choosing to give His life. The great paradox was that by accepting those bonds, He was thereby binding the strong man of sin and sin as manifested in the Jewish system (<em><a href='B:470 12:29'>Mat 12:29</a></em>):&nbsp; </p>


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<p><em>And they began to accuse him, saying: We found this man perverting our nation and forbidding giving tribute to Caesar, and saying that he is Christ a king</em>-</p><p> These were not the reasons for which they had condemned the Lord. The whole legal process was illogical and inconsistent from start to finish. The Lord had stated that tribute should be given to Caesar; no matter how well He had answered their earlier trick questions, they still decided He was guilty. He had also not stated that He was a king, except by implication; and He had carefully deconstructed any idea that He was in His lifetime a political king seeking His own kingdom.</p>


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<p><em>And Pilate asked him, saying: Are you the King of the Jews?- </em>Out of the various Jewish accusations against the Lord, this was the only one which directly affected the Romans, and was the technical reason for Pilate agreeing to the death penalty; it was this reason which was written over the Lord’s head on the cross. The irony of the situation must have rubbed hard upon the Lord; He was dying as the King of a people, not one of whom would openly show loyalty to Him. In any suffering we may have because of feeling utterly alone, betrayed, having lived life to no end, not being shown loyalty by those we expect it of- we are connected with the spirit of the cross.</p><p><em>And he answered them and said: You say it</em>-</p><p> Jesus before Pilate said just one word in Greek; translated "You say it". It is stressed there that Jesus said nothing else, so that Pilate marvelled at His silent self-control. Yet Paul speaks with pride of how the Lord Jesus "before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession" (<em><a href='B:610 6:13'>1Ti 6:13</a></em>). You'd expect him to be alluding to some major speech of Jesus. But it seems, reading his spirit, Paul's saying: 'Lord Jesus, your self-control, your strength of purpose, was great. I salute you, I hold you up to Timothy as the supreme example. Just one word. What a witness!'. &nbsp;As He witnessed in His ministry, so must we (<em><a href='B:520 2:19'>Rom 2:19</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:470 4:16'>Mat 4:16</a></em>). As He witnessed before Pilate, so must we witness (<em><a href='B:610 6:12-13'>1Ti 6:12-13</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em>And Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds: I find no fault in this man</em>-</p><p> We would have imagined that the talk of the Lord forbidding tribute to Caesar and proclaiming Himself a King would have led Pilate to at least pronounce some kind of guilty verdict. His insistence that there was "no fault in this man", especially as he was renowned for his lack of conscience, is all indication that he was deeply impressed with the Lord's righteousness, and even prepared to publicly defend it. According to John, it was only when the claim that Jesus was God's Son surfaced that Pilate felt the need to take the Lord aside to learn more. His reactions are very clear evidence of the Lord's self-evident righteousness and connection to the Father.</p>


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<p><em>But they were the more urgent, saying: He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee even to this place</em>-</p><p> We sense their increasing desperation as the evident righteousness and innocence of the Lord was testified to by the clearly troubled state of Pilate's conscience.</p>


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<p><em>But when Pilate heard it, he asked whether the man were a Galilean</em>-</p><p> Again we see Pilate's troubled conscience. He dearly wished to palm off responsibility for this case, and he pricks his ears up when he considers that the Lord is a Galilean.</p>


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<p><em>And when he knew that he was of Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem in those days</em>-</p><p> As noted on :6, this was a reflection of Pilate's desperate conscience. For it was his responsibility and not Herod's to deal with issues in Jerusalem, and it was down to him to authorize capital punishment and not Herod. So sending the Lord to Herod was a desperate attempt to get out of the situation.</p>


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<p><em>Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad. For he had for a long time been desirous to see him, because he had heard about him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by him</em>-</p><p> Yet Herod had earlier desired to kill the Lord (<em><a href='B:490 13:31'>Luk 13:31</a></em>). Again, we see the power of conscience at work in Herod; for he was more than fascinated by the Lord and wanted to personally hear His teaching and see His miracles. Instead of just passing the death sentence for a known trouble maker, these rulers were clearly aware that they were dealing with no ordinary case.</p>


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<p><em>So he questioned him at some length, but he made no answer</em>-</p><p> As noted on <em><a href='B:490 22:70'>Luk 22:70</a></em>, the Lord preferred to be silent because the answer was given within the consciences of the questioners. The Lord perceived that men ask their questions l because subconsciously, they perceive the truth of the matter, and in their conscience, they already know the answer to their questions. Perhaps for this reason He simply ceased answering their questions as the trial went on. He realized that the questions they asked were actually revealing the answers which were already written in their consciences. For a man of this psychological insight to have lived and died amidst and for such a primitive rabble is indeed amazing.</p>


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<p><em>And the chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him</em>-</p><p> 'Devil' means 'false accuser'; here we have established the major theme which will dominate the later New Testament- that the Jews and Judaism was the great satan / adversary, the embodiment of false accusation against the Lord and all those in Him. They "stood by" Herod, identifying themselves with Him rather than with the Messiah of Israel.</p>


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<p><em>And Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him, and dressing him in gorgeous apparel, sent him back to Pilate</em>-</p><p> We see here human nature at its most raw and primitive. That is one feature of the crucifixion accounts. They were also motivated by a desire to test His claims to royalty. He had made it clear that His Kingdom was not of this world; His teaching about the Kingdom, largely in the parables, was about life lived now under domination of the Father's principles. And yet they willingly overlooked that and focused on mocking Him as a king. We note that Babylon too is arrayed in purple as the Lord was (<em><a href='B:480 15:17'>Mar 15:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:730 17:4'>Rev 17:4</a></em> s:w:), making her a veritable anti-Christ, a fake imitation of Him.</p>


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<p><em>And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day. For before they had been enemies</em>-</p><p> This is phrased in terms of <em><a href='B:230 2:1-3'>Psa 2:1-3</a></em>, where Messiah's enemies were to unite together against Him. The psychology presented here is absolutely true to observed human experience; a common focus upon a perceived enemy creates an illusion of unity, which then evaporates once the common enemy is no more. The same idea is to be found in the descriptions in Revelation of Israel's enemies uniting against her in the last days and then self-destructing. The unity between Jew and Gentile was to become typical of how the early church were persecuted in the same way as their Lord, as they fellowshipped His sufferings. The enmity may have been related to how Pilate had slain those of Herod's jurisdiction when they were offering sacrifices in the temple, mixing their blood with the temple offerings (<em><a href='B:490 13:1-2'>Luk 13:1-2</a></em>). This shows Pilate's callous nature, and points up the power of the Lord Jesus in touching even a conscience like that. </p>


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<p><em>And Pilate called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people</em>-</p><p> This reflects the complete guilt of Jewry; from the common people through to their political and religious leadership. They too were "called together" against the Lord, just as Gentile power was united in Herod and Pilate.</p>


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<p><em>And said to them: You brought to me this man, as one that perverts the people; and I, having examined him before you, found no fault in this man concerning those things of which you accuse him</em>-</p><p> Pilate may have carefully chosen his word for "perverts". For it can also mean 'to bring again', specifically in repentance (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 27:3'>Mat 27:3</a></em> "brought again", <em><a href='B:510 3:26'>Act 3:26</a></em> and <em><a href='B:520 11:26'>Rom 11:26</a></em> "turning away" from sin). The Lord's mission was to turn Israel away from their sin. A man of Pilate's callousness was touched to insist time and again that the Lord was without fault. We should never therefore assume that anyone is beyond the reach of His spirit and personality. "No fault" is a phrase used three times by Pilate about the Lord (:4,14,22). This is one of Luke's tripilisms, designed so that illiterate people could remember it more easily.</p>


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<p><em>Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him</em>-</p><p> Again and again, the otherwise conscienceless Pilate stresses the Lord's innocence. Neither he nor Herod had any worry about murdering innocent men. But the Lord's death worried them when they came up close to Him. Such is His power even today. We should never therefore write off anyone as beyond the power of the Gospel which is in Him. Herod had once wanted to kill John the Baptist, but now, encountering the One whom John had testified of, he had to admit the man's innocence.</p>


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<p><em>I will therefore chastise him and release him</em>-</p><p> The crowd hated the Lord and wanted to see Him crucified. So they were coming to ask for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark. But Pilate is so desperate to get the Lord off, so screaming was his conscience, that he misread the situation and grasped at this tradition of releasing a prisoner, hoping the Jews would want their King released and not crucified. Actually his offer only fomented their passions the more. According to Luke here, Pilate attempted to take the decision out of their hands by saying that Jesus was to be the prisoner to be released; and this also had the effect of piquing their desire for His crucifixion the more. For nobody, especially a mob, likes to feel railroaded out of their desired outcome at the last moment.</p>


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<p><em>(For it was necessary for him to release one to them at the feast)</em>-</p><p> This word for "release" is used of how Paul could have been released or "let go" because after examination by the Romans, "there was no cause of death in me" (<em><a href='B:510 28:18'>Act 28:18</a></em>). Paul's trials are full of connection with those of the Lord, and Paul (like us) took special comfort in any similarity between the Lord's sufferings and his own. For this is indeed why we have such a mass of detail about the Lord's final sufferings- we are to see endless points of connection between His experiences and our own. And as Paul says, if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. It was to this process which we signed up to at baptism, in which we dedicated ourselves to a life of dying and living with Him. </p>


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<p><em>But they cried out all together, saying, Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas</em>-</p><p> Son of Abba, the father. This man was clearly an anti-Christ, a fake Christ, a man set up in appearance as the Christ, the son of God, when he was the very opposite. And Israel chose him. His similarity with the Lord is made even more interesting by the fact that some early manuscripts (such as the Caesarean, the Sinaitic Palimpsest and the Palestinian Syriac) here read ‘Jesus Barabbas’ (Referenced in Craig A. Evans, <em>Matthew (New Cambridge Bible Commentary) </em>(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 p:&nbsp;453:). The four gospel records only occasionally all record the same incident. When they do all mention the same thing, it seems that the Spirit intends us to see an especial significance in this. The fact that the crowd chose Barabbas rather than the Lord of glory is one of those aspects of the Passion which is recorded by all four writers. There is much information given about Barabbas, emphasizing the kind of criminal he was (<em><a href='B:470 27:16'>Mat 27:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:7'>Mar 15:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:19'>Luk 23:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>). That men would reject the righteousness of God, the Spotless Lamb of God, for such a man... this is the tragic story of our race and our nature. And it was the ecclesia of those days which made this dastard choice, and crucified the Lord Jesus. The same nature, the same blindness, is in us all. </p><p>They cried out "together", despite their individual pangs of conscience. We see here the power of group think and culture, leading individuals to behaviour and positions which are far beyond where they personally stand. No wonder we are warned to watch those groups with whom we identify and join.</p>


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<p><em>(One who had been cast into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder)</em>-</p><p> Both Barabbas and the thieves are described with the same Greek word, translated "robber" (<em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:27'>Mar 15:27</a></em>). The Lord uses the same word when He points out that His persecutors were treating him as a "robber" (<em><a href='B:470 26:55'>Mat 26:55</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:48'>Mar 14:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:52'>Luk 22:52</a></em>); He seems to be aware that what the experience He is going through is setting up Barabbas as a kind of inverse type of Himself, the true 'Son of the Father' (= 'Barabbas'). Those low, desperate men, the dregs of society, were types of us. Barabbas especially becomes a symbol of us all. According to Jewish tradition at the time (<em>Pesach</em> 8:6) “They may slaughter the Passover lamb…for one whom they [the authorities] have promised to release from prison". The Passover amnesty freed a man justly condemned to death- on account of the death of the lamb. We can imagine the relief and joy and almost unbelief of Barabbas, as he watched or reflected upon the crucifixion of Jesus- that he who rightfully should have been there on the cross, was delivered from such a death because of the cross of Christ. The image of condemned prisoners being released due to the death of Messiah is an undoubted Old Testament figure for our redemption from slavery. Some of the legal terms used in the NT for our redemption imply that Christ redeemed us from slavery through His death. And yet one could redeem a slave by oneself becoming a slave (<em><a href='B:530 6:20'>1Co 6:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 7:23'>1Co 7:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 3:13'>Gal 3:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 4:5'>Gal 4:5</a></em>). This is why the crucified Jesus is typified by the suffering servant / slave of Isaiah’s prophesies. And Paul seems to have risen up to something similar when he speaks of giving his body to be branded, i:e. becoming a slave (<em><a href='B:530 13:3'>1Co 13:3</a></em> Gk:). </p>


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<p><em>And Pilate spoke to them again, desiring to release Jesus</em>-</p><p> We see here Pilate's persuasion of the Lord's sinlessness; and how he discounted even the talk about the Lord seeking to stop tribute being given to Caesar and to start a revolution. Pilate knew that they had delivered Jesus to him from envy, and that there was no legitimate reason for the death sentence. I suggest he is not so much seeking to change their minds, but rather purposefully seeking to elicit from the Jews a clear statement that they wanted Him crucified. </p>


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<p><em>But they shouted, saying: Crucify, crucify him!</em>-</p><p> When people are pressed for a reason for their unreasonable positions and behaviours, they simply say the same thing again, but more loudly (in various ways). This is the classic example- they repeated their cry "Let Him be crucified!". Surely Pilate knew that they would respond like this, and I see him as stage managing the entire crowd, purposefully leading the crowd to cry out ever louder, in order to set the stage for his public washing of his hands. But he played this elaborate game because he had a conscience, and wanted to try to separate himself from the decision to crucify the Lord. </p>


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<p><em>And he said to them the third time: Why! What evil has this man done? I have found no cause of death in him. I will therefore punish him and release him</em>-</p><p> Pilate knew that they had delivered Jesus to him from envy, and that there was no legitimate reason for the death sentence:&nbsp; I suggest he is not so much seeking to change their minds, but rather purposefully seeking to elicit from the Jews a clear statement that they wanted Him crucified. "The third time" is another of Luke's tripilisms, a feature included in the record to enable the memorization of the gospels; and to emphasize the point, that even the callous Pilate really struggled to not allow the murder of an innocent and righteous man. Pilate's attempt to "just" punish the Lord was however only going to pique the wrath of the crowd, as they sensed the Lord's crucifixion slipping out of their grasp. And by saying this, Pilate was effectively robbing them of the choice as to which man should be released. So his desperate attempt to save the Lord only backfired upon him.</p>


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<p><em>But they were insistent with loud voices, asking that he might be crucified. And their voices prevailed</em>-</p><p> Where and how did<em> their </em>word prevail? Surely in the conscience of Pilate. The implication is that there was a struggle within him between their voice / word, and another word- that of God, made flesh in the man before him.</p>


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<p><em>And Pilate gave sentence that what they asked for should be done</em>-</p><p> The record here clearly states Pilate's responsibility; he gave sentence. We may excuse our misbehaviours on the basis that there would have been huge consequences if we had not... disfellowshipped that brother, rejected that sister. But our actions remain as they are. Circumstance will never be too overpowering that we have no option but to sin (<em><a href='B:230 125:3'>Psa 125:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 10:13'>1Co 10:13</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em>And he released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will</em>-</p><p>&nbsp; The delivering of the Lord to the will of the Jews is all written from a human perspective. For it was by the determinate will of God, and not of man, that the Lord was handed over to death; and He Himself gave over His life, it was not in fact taken from Him. We have here a parade example of how things may appear one way from a secular standpoint, when they are in fact quite different from heaven's perspective.</p><p>This handing over of the Lord to crucifixion was ultimately done by God, the "power" behind and through Pilate. There is an unmistakable Biblical link between the term "Son of God", the idea of God giving, and the death of the Lord Jesus. Whatever else this means, it clearly shows the pain to God in the death of His Son. Paul only uses "Son of God" 17 times- and every one is in connection with the death of the Lord. And often the usages occur together with the idea of God's <em>giving</em> of His Son to die- "He who did not spare His own son but gave him up for us all" (<em><a href='B:520 8:32'>Rom 8:32</a></em>). This sheds light on the otherwise strange use of another idea by Paul- that Jesus was 'handed over' to death (<em><a href='B:520 4:25'>Rom 4:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 2:20'>Gal 2:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 5:2'>Eph 5:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 5:25'>Eph 5:25</a></em>). It was the Father who ultimately 'handed over' His Son to death. The idea of God's Son being <em>sent</em> to redeem us from sin is perhaps John's equivalent (<em><a href='B:690 1:7'>1Jn 1:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a></em>). Jesus was the Son whom the Father sent "last of all" to receive fruit (<em><a href='B:480 12:6'>Mar 12:6</a></em>)- and it is reflection upon God's giving of His Son on the cross which surely should produce fruit in us. For we can no longer live passively before such outgiving love and self-sacrificial pain. And we are invited to perhaps review our understanding of two passages in this light: "When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son... to redeem" (<em><a href='B:550 4:4'>Gal 4:4</a></em>) and "God sending His son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for [a sin offering] condemned sin, in the flesh" (<em><a href='B:520 8:3'>Rom 8:3</a></em>). These verses would therefore speak specifically of what happened in the death of Christ on the cross, rather than of His birth. For it was in the cross rather than the virgin birth that we were redeemed and a sin offering made. It was on the cross that Jesus was above all in the exact likeness of sinful flesh, dying the death of a sinful criminal. The "likeness" of sinful flesh is explained by <em><a href='B:570 2:7'>Phi 2:7</a></em>, which uses the same word to describe how on the cross Jesus was made "in the likeness of men". We can now better understand why the Centurion was convicted by the sight of Christ's death to proclaim: "Truly this was the Son of God" (<em><a href='B:480 15:39'>Mar 15:39</a></em>).</p><p>Pilate's guilt here is plainly stated, especially as he himself realized he had the power to release the Lord. He delivered Him "to their will" (<em><a href='B:490 23:25'>Luk 23:25</a></em>), tacitly accepting that their will was stronger than his; although all this happened according to the will of the Father and Son. The Gospels carefully omit any record of Pilate pronouncing a judgment of condemnation upon the Lord, as was required and usual. He did not do so because of the deep weight of conscience within him.</p>


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<p><em>And when they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it after Jesus</em>-</p><p> Simon is a Greek name, and the names of his sons are Greco-Roman. The way he is described as “coming out of the field" (<em><a href='B:490 23:26'>Luk 23:26</a></em>) could imply that he was working, doing what was improper on a feast day, because he was a Gentile. It could be that he simply lived and worked near Jerusalem, he wasn’t a religious guy, and like Saul out looking for lost cattle, he was going some place else… until the Lord as it were arrested him with the message of the cross. </p><p>Cyrene was where there was a strongly orthodox Jewish community (cp. <em><a href='B:510 6:9'>Act 6:9</a></em>). Simon was probably dark skinned, a countryman, a simple man, who had perhaps come up to Jerusalem in his zeal to keep Passover. What a comfort it was to the Lord to see a black man carrying His cross; for He had earlier said that <em>all</em> His true followers would carry the cross behind Him (<em><a href='B:470 10:38'>Mat 10:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 16:24'>Mat 16:24</a></em>). The Hebrew writer seemed to see Simon as typical of us all when writing of how we must go out of the city with the Lord, "bearing his reproach" (<em><a href='B:650 13:12-13'>Heb 13:12-13</a></em>, probably using 'reproach' as a parallel to 'the cross'). He would have seen in Simon a prototype of all His future, suffering, humiliated followers; "impressed" by the predestined calling, almost against our will, to carry His cross (<em><a href='B:470 27:32'>Mat 27:32</a></em> RV mg:). And was it accident that this prototype was almost certainly a black man, when perhaps ultimately it may appear that a large proportion of the faithful body of the Lord Jesus will have been black people? If indeed Simon was a black Jew (cp. modern Falashas) who had come up to keep the Passover, it would have been annoying beyond words for him to be made unclean by the blood of the Lord, which was inevitably on the stake after His first attempt at bearing it after His flogging. Not to mention the shame for a zealous Jew in having to carry the cross of this Jesus of Nazareth. Yet it would seem that he was later converted, and he in turn converted his wife and son (<em><a href='B:480 15:21'>Mar 15:21</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:520 16:13'>Rom 16:13</a></em>). Mark rarely records proper nouns, but he makes a special effort to mention that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. It would therefore seem that these men were well known in the early church. Simon may be the "Simeon called Niger" ('the black one') of <em><a href='B:510 13:1'>Act 13:1</a></em>. He is listed there next to Lucius, who was also from Cyrene. The thief and the centurion were likewise converted, and the faith of Joseph, Nicodemus and probably others was brought out into the open by the cross. Like Samson, the Lord won victories even in His death. The spiritual turn-around in Simon is a type of what is experienced by all whom the Lord compels to carry His cross. He was passing by, going somewhere else, full of his own plans, going about to establish his own righteousness... and then, out of the blue, he was called to what he much later realized was the greatest honour a man could be called to: to accompany the Son of God and carry His cross, right to the end. We are left to imagine him plonking it down, as if to say to Jesus 'Now you've got to do the rest', and then slipping off into the crowd. </p><p>John says that the Lord went out bearing His cross. Luke says that Simon was asked to carry the hinder part of the cross behind Him. Matthew and Mark say Simon carried the cross. <em><a href='B:480 15:22'>Mar 15:22</a></em> (Gk:) says that the soldiers carried Jesus to Golgotha. J:B. Phillips renders it: "They got him to a place Golgotha". It would seem that the Lord collapsed, perhaps fainting. If He was crucified on an olive tree (excavations of crucified men suggest this is what was used), it would not have been simply because of the weight of the stake. Take a picture of Him lying there, with the face that was marred more than the children of men pressed into the hot dust of that Jerusalem street. And some human fool probably said something like 'Come on, get up' (doubtless with embellishments). If indeed He did faint, there would have been that sense of 'coming around', the "Where am I?”, the memory and consciousness flooding back. "Have I died and been resurrected?" No, as some nameless soldier kicked Him and told Him to get up. </p>


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<p><em>And a great crowd of the people followed him, and women mourned and wailed for him</em>-</p><p> As unworthy people wailed before Him on the cross (the Lord knew they would be condemned in the AD70 judgment rather than obey his words and flee the city), so they will wail (s:w:) before Him at the judgment (<em><a href='B:470 24:30'>Mat 24:30</a></em>). The cross and the judgment are definitely connected. Men's feelings at the cross are a foretaste of our feelings before the enthroned, glorified Lord. And hence there is a connection between the breaking of bread, the judgment, the crucifixion, self-examination... it all comes together.</p>


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<p>- see on <em><a href='B:490 7:9'>Luk 7:9</a></em>.</p><p><em>But Jesus turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children</em>-</p><p> He turned and spoke to the women. Luke as a doctor knew that suffering makes one self-centred. It is perhaps because of this that he especially seems to concentrate on the wonder of the way in which the Lord looked out of His own agony to be so concerned with that of others. A:D. Norris has commented (<em>The Gospel Of Mark</em>): "It is he who reports the Lord's prayer for Simon Peter (<em><a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a></em>); who recounts the Lord's sympathetic warning to the women of Jerusalem (<em><a href='B:490 23:27-31'>Luk 23:27-31</a></em>); and who speaks of the Lord's forgiveness for His crucifiers, and remission for the penitent thief (<em><a href='B:490 23:34'>Luk 23:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:43'>Luk 23:43</a></em>)".</p><p>Reflect for a moment upon the fact that the women wept, and amongst them were the Lord’s relatives (<em><a href='B:490 23:27'>Luk 23:27</a></em>). Lamentation for criminals on their way to die was not permitted in public. Suetonius (<em>Tiberius</em> 61) reports that “the relatives [of the crucified] were forbidden to go into mourning". Likewise Tacitus (<em>Annals </em>6:19), Philo (<em>In Flaccum </em>9,72) and Josephus (<em>Wars Of The Jews</em> 2:13:3,253). This is all quite some evidence, from a variety of writers. So why did they make this great sacrifice, take this great risk? The cross has power. Whether we feel it is impossible for us to be emotional, given our personality type, or whether we feel so lost in our own griefs that we cannot feel for Him there, somehow sustained reflection on the cross will lead us out of this. We will mourn, come what may. Yet the tragedy is that those women who risked so much didn’t necessarily maintain that level of commitment to the end. For the Lord had to tell them that they should weep for themselves given the calamity that would befall them and their children in AD70- for they would not listen to Him. </p>


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<p><em>For the days are coming in which they shall say: Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!</em>-</p><p> Josephus records that during the AD70 siege of Jerusalem, "one rich and noble woman, whose name was Mary, the daughter of Eleazar, being stripped of all she had, by the seditious, killed her own child, and dressed it, and ate part of it". In that day, the Lord's words would have been remembered. And this judgment would come upon those who had disobeyed the Lord's words to flee the city. The Lord is alluding to the curses for disobedience in <em><a href='B:50 28:53-57'>Deu 28:53-57</a></em>. Those women weeping for Him were in fact the disobedient who would be cursed. The emotion of a moment for the sake of the suffering Lord Jesus is simply not enough. We must challenge ourselves with this thought. The Lord is also quoting from the words of <em><a href='B:300 19:9'>Jer 19:9</a></em> about the sufferings which the Babylonian siege would bring upon Jerusalem. He had no problem in seeing the events of the Babylonian invasion as relevant to His day, and we likewise can see the large bulk of Old Testament material about Israel's historical sufferings as likewise coming true in the last days. Revelation presents those sufferings in language absolutely loaded with Old Testament allusion.</p>


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<p><em>Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall on us, and to the hills: Cover us</em>-</p><p> The Babylonian siege would be repeated in AD70 (<em><a href='B:350 10:8'>Hos 10:8</a></em>); and these words are quoted about the feelings of the impenitent within the land of Israel in the last days, when every prophetic word shall come to its climax (<em><a href='B:730 6:16'>Rev 6:16</a></em>). "Begin to say" could imply that the Lord was hopeful that they would repent. But Josephus says that during the AD70 siege "Hundreds of the Jews at the end of the siege hid themselves in subterranean recesses, and no less than 2000 were killed by being buried under the ruins of these hiding-places". In <em><a href='B:730 6:16'>Rev 6:16</a></em>, the desire for the hills to fall upon them was because they sense that the wrath of the once crucified Lamb is even greater. The Lamb for sinners slain also has anger; He saw through the tears of those women, and was warning them of the huge price to be paid for what they were doing to Him. </p>


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<p><em>For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?</em>-</p><p> He turned and spoke to the women on the walk to Golgotha; He looked out of His own agony to the needs of others. This is another theme of the cross. He was even thoughtful for weak Pilate (<em><a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a></em>); for the thief, for the forgiveness of those mocking soldiers, for His mother, for John, for those women lining the Via Dolorosa... And those women, He said, would be destroyed in the condemnation of Jerusalem in AD70. <em><a href='B:570 2:2-4'>Phi 2:2-4</a></em> makes the point that the essence of the cross is in the way the Lord's mind was so full of concern for <em>others</em> throughout the whole wretched process. The Lord's Bible-filled mind would have been aware of <em><a href='B:300 9:20-22'>Jer 9:20-22</a></em>, which prophesied special woe to women in the holocaust of AD70. Those women were condemned. Yet the Lord turned, in His desperate agony, to speak to them. I admit, as I must through every stage of the cross, that I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have bothered with them. But He made such effort to at least try to get them to change their minds. They were weeping for Him, but He knew they would not obey His command to leave Jerusalem when it would be surrounded by armies. Neither would their children. On a human level, they must have been so annoying. Young women (if they were alive in AD70 40 years later), probably passively in love with Him, moved to tears at His passion but with no regard for His words and the real implications of His cross. Yet still He tried for them, running the risk of cat calls of 'You can't carry your own cross but you can talk to the girls'. "If they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" is packed with allusion to O:T. Scriptures (<em><a href='B:330 17:24'>Eze 17:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 11:16'>Jer 11:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 11:19'>Jer 11:19</a></em>; Psalms 1; <em><a href='B:300 17:5-8'>Jer 17:5-8</a></em>). His preceding words to the women were likewise; his quotation from <em><a href='B:350 10:8'>Hos 10:8</a></em> is set in a context so appropriate to the situation He was in. If they did these things to Him, the green and healthy shoot, what would be done to the dry dead wood of Israel…? His concern was always with the sufferings others would experience rather than being lost in His own introspection. Without getting too deeply involved in the actual exposition, a simple lesson emerges: He was not so overpowered by the terrible physicality of His human situation that He ceased to be spiritually aware. His mind was full of the word, not just out of place quotations flooding His subconscious, but real awareness of the spirit of the Father's word and its' intensely personal relevance to Himself. In this He sets a matchless example. If the crossbeam was tied to the nape of the Lord’s neck, it would have been impossible for Him to turn round and talk, as it is specifically stated that He did. I would reconstruct that the Lord collapsed, and Simon was forced to carry the cross, whilst the Lord followed on, scarcely conscious. Before collapsing again, with the result that He was carried to the cross, He used His last and final energy at the time to speak to those women. He used His last bit of mental and physical strength to preach- to women whom He knew were not going to really respond. For He said they should weep for themselves, He knew they would not listen to His warning to flee Jerusalem in AD70. But such was His hopefulness for people, that He still made the effort to communicate rather than get lost within Himself and His own thoughts as I would have tended to. </p><p>The humility of Mary was the pattern for the Lord’s self-humiliation in the cross. Here above all we see the influence of Mary upon Jesus, an influence that would lead Him to and through the cross. Her idea of putting down the high and exalting the lowly (<em><a href='B:490 1:52'>Luk 1:52</a></em>) is picking up <em><a href='B:330 17:24'>Eze 17:24</a></em>: “I have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish”. And yet these very words of Ezekiel were quoted by the Lord in His time of dying. With reverence, we can follow where we are being led in our exploration and knowing of the mind of Christ. His dear mum had gone around the house singing her Magnificat. He realized that she felt the lowly who had been exalted [and perhaps in some unrecorded incident before her conception she had been recently humbled?]. And Jesus had realized her quotation of <em><a href='B:330 17:24'>Eze 17:24</a></em>. And He had perceived His linkage and connection with her, and how she saw all that was true of Him as in some way true of her, and vice versa. And now, in His final crisis, He takes comfort from the fact that like His dear mother, He the one who was now humbled, would be exalted. How many other trains of thought have been sparked in men’s minds by the childhood instructions of their mothers…?&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And two others, both criminals, were led out with him to be executed</em>-</p><p> <em><a href='B:470 27:38'>Mat 27:38</a></em> RV has a dramatic change of tense: “Then are there crucified with him…". Mark’s present tenses are also arresting: “plaiting…&nbsp; they clothe him… they smote…" (<em><a href='B:480 15:17'>Mar 15:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:19'>Mar 15:19</a></em> RV). Perhaps Mark is seeking consciously to make us imagine it all as going on before our eyes. Take just <em><a href='B:480 15:23-26'>Mar 15:23-26</a></em>: “They offered…&nbsp; they crucify…&nbsp; and part… casting lots… crucified… was written". These arresting changes are surely to encourage us to re-live it all. Mark speaks of “they crucify him", going on to say that “then are there two crucified with him" (<em><a href='B:480 15:38'>Mar 15:38</a></em> RV), whereas Luke records the act in the past tense. Significantly, very few actual details are given by the Gospel writers of both the scourging and the crucifixion. It could be that they felt it impossible to dwell upon these things; or it could be that they and their readers knew what was involved in these practices, and we are left to dwell upon them in our own imagination. We are intended to reconstruct in our own minds what may have happened… We have a solemn duty towards Him to do this. This is perhaps why the tenses change so dramatically in the records. </p>


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<p><em>And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left</em>-</p><p> Note the emphasis in the records on "unto", "to", "the place". They arrived. They stopped there. This was it. Golgotha possibly means 'The skull of Goliath'. In this case, we have opened up a detailed typological meaning to David's victory over Goliath. He was there as the Lord Jesus fighting sin, and then burying the head of Goliath, the 'man of sin', near Jerusalem:&nbsp; "Ephes-Dammim", where David killed Goliath, meaning 'border of blood' suggests 'Aceldama', the "field of blood". Goliath coming out to make his challenges at morning and evening&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:90 17:16'>1Sa 17:16</a></em>) coincided with the daily sacrifices which should have been offered at those times, with their reminder of sin and the need for dedication to God. The thoughtful Israelite must surely have seen in Goliath a personification of sin which the daily sacrifices could do nothing to overcome.</p><p>The crucified Christ is portrayed as King of criminals, King of the basest sort, enthroned between them, taking the place of their leader Barabbas, who ought to have been where the Lord was. Both Barabbas and the thieves are described with the same Greek word, translated "robber" (<em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:27'>Mar 15:27</a></em>). The Lord uses the same word when He points out that His persecutors were treating him as a "robber" (<em><a href='B:470 26:55'>Mat 26:55</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:48'>Mar 14:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:52'>Luk 22:52</a></em>); He seems to be aware that what the experience He is going through is setting up Barabbas as a kind of inverse type of Himself, the true 'Son of the Father' (= 'Barabbas'). </p><p>John’s Gospel has many references to Moses, as catalogued elsewhere. When John records the death of the Lord with two men either side of Him, he seems to do so with his mind on the record of Moses praying with Aaron and Hur on each side of him (<em><a href='B:20 17:12'>Exo 17:12</a></em>). John’s account in English reads: “They crucified him, and with him two others, on either side one” (<em><a href='B:500 19:18'>Joh 19:18</a></em>). Karl Delitzsch translated the Greek New Testament into Hebrew, and the Hebrew phrase he chose to use here is identical with that in <em><a href='B:20 17:12'>Exo 17:12</a></em>. Perhaps this explains why John alone of the Gospel writers doesn’t mention that the two men on either side of the Lord were in fact criminals- he calls them “two others” (<em><a href='B:500 19:18'>Joh 19:18</a></em>) and “… the legs of the first and of the other” (<em><a href='B:500 19:32'>Joh 19:32</a></em>). Thus John may’ve chosen to highlight simply how there were two men on either side of the Lord, in order to bring out the connection with the Moses scene.</p><p>It is likely that the Lord was crucified naked, thereby sharing the shame of Adam's nakedness. The <em>shame</em> of the cross is stressed (<em><a href='B:650 11:26'>Heb 11:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 12:2'>Heb 12:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 31:17'>Psa 31:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:6-7'>Psa 69:6-7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:12'>Psa 69:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:19-20'>Psa 69:19-20</a></em>). And we are to share those sufferings. There <em>must</em>, therefore, be an open standing up for what we believe in the eyes of a hostile world. Preaching, in this sense, is for all of us. And if we dodge this, we put the Son of God to a naked shame; we re-crucify Him naked, we shame Him again (<em><a href='B:650 6:6'>Heb 6:6</a></em>). He was crucified naked, and the sun went in for three hours. He must have been cold, very cold (<em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em>). Artemidorus Daldianus (<em>Oneirokritika </em>2:53) confirms that the Romans usually crucified victims naked. Melito of Sardis, writing in the 2nd century, writes of “his body naked and not even deemed worthy of a clothing that it might not be seen. Therefore the heavenly lights turned away and the day darkened in order that he might be hidden who was denuded upon the cross" (<em>On the Pasch</em> 97). The earliest portrayals of the crucified Jesus, on carved gems, feature Him naked. There is reason to think that the Jews put the Lord to the maximum possible shame and pain; therefore they may well have crucified Him naked. T. Mommsen <em>The Digest Of Justinian </em>48:20:6 reports that “the garments that the condemned person is wearing may not be demanded by the torturers"- the fact that they gambled for His clothes shows that the Lord was yet again treated illegally (quite a feature of the records) and to the maximum level of abuse. We not only get this impression from the Biblical record, but from a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon (<em><a href='B:490 2:12-20'>Luk 2:12-20</a></em>) which would have been well known to them, and which has a surprising number of similarities to the Lord’s life amongst the Jews (Susan Garrett lists several Greek words and phrases found in the Gospel of Mark which are identical to those in this section of the Wisdom of Solomon. It would seem that Mark was aware of this passage in the Wisdom of Solomon, and sought to show how throughout the Lord's ministry, and especially in His death, the Jews were seeking to apply it to Him in the way they treated Him. See Susan Garrett, <em>The Temptations Of Jesus In Mark's Gospel</em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 68):</p><p>“Let us lie in wait for the virtuous man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our breaches of the law an accuses us of playing false... he claims to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a son of the Lord. Before us he stands, a reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; His way of life is not like other men’s... in His opinion we are counterfeit…and boasts of having God as His father. let us see if what he says is true, let us observe what kind of end he himself will have. If the virtuous man is God’s son, God will take his part and rescue him from the clutches of his enemies<em>. Let us test him with cruelty and with torture, and thus explore this gentleness of His and put His endurance to the proof. Let us condemn him to a shameful death</em> since he will be looked after- we have his word for it".</p><p>The idea of the Lord being subjected to the maximum pain and mocking must, sadly, be applied to Seneca’s description of how some victims of crucifixion were nailed through their genitals (<em>Dialogi</em> 6:20:3). In this sense the paradox of Isaiah 53 would have come true- through losing His ability to bring forth children, the Lord brought forth a huge multitude of spiritual children world-wide. It’s an honour to be one of them. </p><p>Did they throw the die on top of His outer garment? Note the focus of the soldiers upon the dividing up of the clothes, whilst the Son of God played out the ultimate spiritual drama for human salvation just a metre or so away from them. And our pettiness is worked out all too often in sight of the same cross. As those miserable men argued over the clothes at the foot of the cross, so when Israel stood before the glory of Yahweh at Sinai, they still suffered “disputes" amongst themselves (<em><a href='B:20 24:18'>Exo 24:18</a></em> ( NIV) cp. <em><a href='B:650 12:29'>Heb 12:29</a></em>). So pressing and important do human pettinesses appear, despite the awesomeness of that bigger picture to which we stand related.</p><p>The sheer and utter reality of the crucifixion needs to be meditated upon just as much as the actual reality of the fact that Jesus actually existed. A Psalm foretold that Jesus at His death would be the song of the drunkards. Many Nazi exterminators took to drink. And it would seem almost inevitable that the soldiers who crucified Jesus went out drinking afterwards. Ernest Hemingway wrote a chilling fictional story of how those men went into a tavern late on that Friday evening. After drunkenly debating whether “Today is Friday", they decide that it really is Friday, and then tell how they nailed Him and lifted Him up. ''When the weight starts to pull on 'em, that's when it gets em... Ain't I seen ‘em? I seen plenty of 'em. I tell you, he was pretty good today". And that last phrase runs like a refrain through their drunken evening. Whether or not this is an accurate reconstruction isn't my point- we have a serious duty to seek to imagine what it might have been like. Both Nazi and Soviet executioners admit how vital it was to never look the man you were murdering in the face. It was why they put on a roughness which covered their real personalities. And the Lord’s executioners would have done the same. To look into His face, especially His eyes, dark with love and grief for His people, would have driven those men to either suicide or conversion. I imagine them stealing a look at His face, the face of this man who didn’t struggle with them but willingly laid Himself down on the wood. The cross struck an educated Greek as barbaric folly, a Roman citizen as sheer disgrace, and a Jew as God's curse. Yet Jesus turned the sign of disgrace into a sign of victory. Through it, He announced a radical revaluation of all values. He made it a symbol for a brave life, without fear even in the face of fatal risks; through struggle, suffering, death, in firm trust and hope in the goal of true freedom, life, humanity, eternal life. The offence, the sheer scandal, was turned into an amazing experience of salvation, the way of the cross into a possible way of life. The risen Christ was and is just as much a living reality. Suetonius records that Claudius expelled Jewish Christians from Rome because they were agitated by one Chrestus; i:e. Jesus the Christ. Yet the historian speaks as if He was actually alive and actively present in person. In essence, He was. All the volumes of confused theology, the senseless theories about the Trinity, would all have been avoided if only men had had the faith to believe that the man Jesus who really died and rose, both never sinned and was also indeed the Son of God. And that His achievement of perfection in human flesh was real. Yes it takes faith- and all the wrong theology was only an excuse for a lack of such faith.</p><p><table border="1"><tr><td></p><p></td><td></td></tr></table><p>Several crucifixion victims have been unearthed. One was nailed with nails 18c:m. long (7 inches). A piece of acacia word seems to have been inserted between the nail head and the flesh. <em>Did the Lord cry out in initial pain and shock?</em> Probably, as far as I can reconstruct it; for He would have had all the physical reflex reactions of any man. But yet I also sense that He didn't flinch as other men did. He came to offer His life, willingly; not grudgingly, resistantly give it up. He went through the panic of approaching the pain threshold. The nailing of the hands and feet just where the nerves were would have sent bolts of pain through the Lord's arms every time He moved or spoke. The pain would have been such that even with the eyelids closed, a penetrating red glare would have throbbed in the Lord’s vision. Hence the value and intensity of those words He did speak. The pulling up on the nails in the hands as the cross was lifted up would have been excruciating. The hands were nailed through the 'Destot gap', between the first and second row of wrist bones, touching an extra sensitive nerve which controls the movement of the thumb and signals receipt of pain. They would not have been nailed through the palms or the body would not have been supportable. It has been reconstructed that in order to breathe, the crucified would have had to pull up on his hands, lift the head for a breath, and then let the head subside. The sheer physical agony of it all cannot be minimized. Zenon Ziolkowski (<em>Spor O Calun</em>) discusses contemporary descriptions of the faces of the crucified, including Jehohanan the Zealot, whose crucifixion Josephus mentions. Their faces were renowned for being terribly distorted by pain. The Lord's face was marred more than that of any other, so much so that those who saw Him looked away (<em><a href='B:290 52:14'>Isa 52:14</a></em>). That prophecy may suggest that for the Lord, the crucifixion process hurt even more. We suggest later that He purposefully refused to take relief from pushing down on the 'seat', and thus died more painfully and quicker. Several of the unearthed victims were crucified on olive trees. So it was perhaps an olive tree which the Lord had to carry. He would have thought of this as He prayed among the olive trees of Gethsemane (perhaps they took it from that garden?). I would not have gone through with this. I would have chosen a lesser death and the achieving of a lesser salvation. I would have had more pity on myself. But the Lord of all did it <em>for me</em>, He became obedient <em>even</em> to death on a cross (<em><a href='B:570 2:8'>Phi 2:8</a></em>), as if He could have been obedient to a lesser death, but He chose this ultimately high level. I can only marvel at the Father's gentleness with us, that despite the ineffable trauma of death, the way He takes us is so much more gentle than how He allowed His only begotten to go. </p><p>Presumably there were many soldiers around. The temple guard which was seconded to the Jews (<em><a href='B:470 27:65'>Mat 27:65</a></em>) was doubtless there in full force, lest there be any attempt to save Jesus by the crowd or the disciples. And yet <em><a href='B:500 19:23'>Joh 19:23</a></em> suggests there were only four soldiers, each of whom received a part of His clothing. This must mean that there were four actually involved in the crucifixion: one for each hand and foot. He had signs of nails (plural) in His hands. We are left to meditate as to whether He was nailed hand over hand as tradition has it (which would have meant two very long nails were used); or both hands separately. </p><p>Despite much prior meditation, there perhaps dawned on the Lord some 'physical' realizations as to the nature of His crucified position: the utter impossibility of making the slightest change of position, especially when tormented by flies, the fact that the hands and feet had been pierced in the most sensitive areas; the fact that the arms were arranged in such a way so that the weight of the body hung only on the muscles, not on the bones and tendons. The smell of blood would have brought forth yelping dogs, circling birds of prey, flying insects…an incessant barrage of annoyances, things to distract the Lord’s mind. As we too also face. He would have realized that the whole process was designed to produce tension in every part of the body. All His body, every part of it, in every aspect, had to suffer (and He would have realized the significance of this, and seen <em>all</em> of us as suffering with Him). The muscles were all hopelessly overworked, cramps due to the malcirculation of blood would have created an overwhelming desire to move. All victims would have writhed and wriggled within the few millimetres’ leeway which they had, to avoid a splinter pushing into the back lacerated from flogging... But my sense is that the Lord somehow didn't do this. He didn't push down on the footrests for relief (see 54), He didn't take the pain killer, He didn't ask for a drink until the end, when presumably the others accepted. Every muscle in the body would have become locked after two hours or so. Every part of His body suffered, symbolic of how through His sufferings He was able to identify with every member of His spiritual body- for "we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones" (<em><a href='B:560 5:30'>Eph 5:30</a></em>). He had perhaps foreseen something of all this when He likened the killing of His body to the taking down of a tent / tabernacle- every bone and sinew, like every pole and canvass, had to be uprooted, 'taken down' (<em><a href='B:500 2:19'>Joh 2:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 2:21'>Joh 2:21</a></em>). </p><p>The moment of lifting the stake up vertical, probably amidst a renewed surge of abuse or cheering from the crowd, had been long foreseen and imagined by the Lord. "If, if I be <em>lifted up</em>..." (<em><a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a></em>). He foresaw the physical (and spiritual) details of the crucifixion process in such detail. Recall how He foresaw that moment of handing over to death. And yet still He asked for the cup to pass, still He panicked and felt forsaken. If the theory of the cross was so hard to actually live out in practice for the Lord, then how hard it must be for us. The Lord's descriptions of Himself as being 'lifted up' use a phrase which carried in Hebrew the idea of exaltation and glory. As He was lifted up physically, the ground swaying before His eyes, His mind fixed upon the Father and the forgiveness which He was making possible through His sacrifice, covered in blood and spittle, struggling for breath... He was 'lifted up' in glory and exaltation, to those who have open eyes to see and hearts to imagine and brains to comprehend. </p><p>Imagine yourself being crucified. Go through the stages in the process. The Lord invited us to do this when He asked us to figuratively crucify ourselves daily. Consider all the language of the sacrifices which pointed forward to the final, supreme act of the Lord: poured out, pierced, parted in pieces, beaten out; the rock smitten... and this is the process which we are going through, although the Father deals with us infinitely more gently than with His only Son. </p><p>It is one of the greatest internal proofs of inspiration that this climactic act is recorded by each of the Gospel writers as a participial or subordinate clause. The concentration is on the splitting up of the clothes, which happened, of course, after the impaling. It is as if the record at this point is from the perspective of the soldiers. Get the job done, and <em>then</em>, on with the important bit!- the dividing of the clothes! No human author would ever have written like this. It's rather like the way Mary thinks that the risen Lord is a gardener. There is something artless and utterly Divine about it all. The record is full of what I would call spiritual culture. It has the hallmark of the Divine. This may be why some of the 'obvious' fulfilments of prophecy aren't mentioned, e.g. <em><a href='B:290 53:7'>Isa 53:7</a></em> concerning the Lamb dumb before her shearers. Likewise there is no record of the faithful women weeping, or moaning as the body was taken down. </p>


text:
<p><em>And Jesus said: Father, forgive them. For they do not know what they do- </em>The Lord prayed that the soldiers would be forgiven [without repentance] because "they know not what they do". The fact He asked for their forgiveness shows that they were guilty of sin, although they were ignorant of it- and had therefore not repented. How could they repent of crucifying Christ while they were actually doing it? They may well have regretted doing what they were forced to do by reason of the circumstances in which they found themselves. Thus Christ knew that forgiveness was possible without specific repentance and forsaking. The reply 'But that only applies to sins of ignorance!' is irrelevant- Christ's attitude still disproves the hypothesis that forgiveness can <em>only</em> be granted if there is a forsaking of sin. See on <em><a href='B:510 3:17'>Act 3:17</a></em>.</p><p>Note the Lord's appreciation of the Fatherhood of God throughout His passion: <em><a href='B:490 22:42'>Luk 22:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 26:39'>Mat 26:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 26:42'>Mat 26:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 26:44'>Mat 26:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:34'>Luk 23:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:46'>Luk 23:46</a></em>. Throughout the Gospels, the Lord calls God His Father around 170 times (109 of them in John, as if he noticed this as especially significant). This was a real paradigm breaker for the Jews, who even from the 15 Old Testament references to God as Father, only understood His fatherhood in a national, not personal, sense. Yet the Son's relation to the Father has been passed on to us (<em><a href='B:480 14:36'>Mar 14:36</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:520 8:15'>Rom 8:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 4:6'>Gal 4:6</a></em>). The closeness of the Father to the Son, prefigured by that between Abraham and Isaac, is something to be wondered at:&nbsp; </p>&nbsp;<table border="1"><tr><td></p><p>The Seven Last Sayings Of Jesus From The Cross</td><td>Number of words in Greek</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>1."Father forgive them; for they know not what they do" (<em><a href='B:490 23:34'>Luk 23:34</a></em>) </td><td>12 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>2."Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (<em><a href='B:490 23:43'>Luk 23:43</a></em>) </td><td>9 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>3. "Woman behold thy son!... Behold thy mother!" (<em><a href='B:500 19:26'>Joh 19:26</a></em>) </td><td>4 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>4. "My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" (<em><a href='B:470 27:46'>Mat 27:46</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:34'>Mar 15:34</a></em>) </td><td>3 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>5. “I thirst" (<em><a href='B:500 19:28'>Joh 19:28</a></em>) </td><td>1 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>6. "It is finished" (<em><a href='B:500 19:30'>Joh 19:30</a></em>) </td><td>1 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>7. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (<em><a href='B:490 23:46'>Luk 23:46</a></em>) </td><td>8 </td><td></td></tr></table>&nbsp;<p>The pain and difficulty of speech in the position of crucifixion was such that it is apparent that the Lord meant us to hear and meditate upon the words He uttered from the cross. Perhaps it would have been far easier for Him to have prayed those words to Himself, within His own thoughts; but instead He made the effort to speak them out loud. The passion of the Lord's intercessions on the cross is matchless. He roared to God in His prayer, regardless of whether there was light or darkness (<em><a href='B:230 22:1-2'>Psa 22:1-2</a></em>). He reflected there that His prayer was offered to God "in an acceptable time" (<em><a href='B:230 69:13'>Psa 69:13</a></em>). And yet this very passage is taken up in <em><a href='B:540 6:2'>2Co 6:2</a></em> concerning the necessary vigour of <em>our</em> crying to God for salvation. That the intensity of the Lord's prayerfulness and seeking of God on the cross should be held up as our pattern: the very height of the ideal is wondrous. </p><p>It is worth noting that if the Lord's seven recorded utterances are placed in the conventional chronology, the number of words He actually spoke can be seen to steadily decrease until the final utterance (although it should be noted that in our reconstruction, saying 3 comes before no. 2). Not only does this serve to illustrate the intensity of effort wrung forth from our Lord in His final utterance, but we also sense that He found physically speaking increasingly difficult:&nbsp; </p><p>"Father forgive them" were the first words said by the Lord Jesus as He hung on the cross. It seems from the context that they were said soon after the cross was lifted up into a vertical position and dropped down into the hole prepared for it. Physically, this would have been the time of greatest shock and pain, as the body of Jesus came to rest with its full weight upon the nails, as they tore into the flesh and sinews of His hands and feet. As His nervous system began to fully react, He was in great pain and shock. And yet immediately His thoughts went to forgiving those who had brought this upon Him; and, as we hope to see, His thoughts were immediately with us, with the possibility of our salvation and forgiveness. In this we see a matchless example of being so concerned for the salvation of others, so taken up with a desire to show love to those who hate us, that the physicality of our own sufferings, however immediately and insistently they press, becomes totally relegated. </p><p>We must face up to a fundamental question: Who was it that the Lord was asking God to forgive? By eliminating who He did <em>not</em> pray for, we can come towards an answer. He did not pray for the world (<em><a href='B:500 17:9'>Joh 17:9</a></em>), which in the context seems to refer to the unrepentant Jewish world (cp. <em><a href='B:300 11:14'>Jer 11:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 5:8'>1Jn 5:8</a></em>) as well as the surrounding (Roman) world. </p><p>Forgiveness is related to repentance. There would seem little point in the Lord praying for the Roman soldiers to be forgiven. It would be rather like a believer praying for some youths to be forgiven for vandalizing a bus shelter; to what point would this be? Would such a prayer really lead them towards salvation? Would it be an appropriate thing to pray for? </p><p>Throughout the Acts, both Peter and Paul accuse the Jews of having crucified the Lord, even though the Roman soldiers physically did it. Peter even goes so far as to say that it was their <em>hands</em> which placed Jesus on the cross and nailed Him (<em><a href='B:510 2:23'>Act 2:23</a></em> - notice how their physical contact with the Lord's body is stressed in <em><a href='B:480 14:46'>Mar 14:46</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:53'>Mar 14:53</a></em>). The Roman hands which did this were effectively Jewish hands. Psalms 22, 69 outline in some detail the things done to Christ on the cross. Some were done by the Jews, others by the Romans. And yet the same pronoun "they" is used, as if these things were all done by the same group of people. This further suggests that the Spirit saw the actions of the Romans as being attributable to the Jews. There seems no reason to think that the Roman or Italian nation were held guilty by God for the part they played in the death of His Son. </p><p>The Jewish people generally were punished because they saw the Son of God coming to their vineyard, and yet they killed Him, despite recognizing who He was. "This is the heir", they recognized (<em><a href='B:470 21:38'>Mat 21:38</a></em>). Pilate <em>therefore</em>, because of the Jews, ordered the death of the Son of God (<em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:490 19:1'>Luk 19:1</a></em>). They must take full responsibility for it. The Roman soldiers set Christ at nought (<em><a href='B:490 23:11'>Luk 23:11</a></em>); but this very act (the same word is used) is counted to the Jews (<em><a href='B:510 4:11'>Act 4:11</a></em>). The Lord Jesus shouted out to them that He knew that they realized who He was: "Then cried Jesus in the temple as He taught, saying, You both know me, and you know from where I am" (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). His allusion to the memorial Name ("I am") suggests that He recognized that they knew His Divine origin and manifestation of His Father's Name. The Lord was responding to their claim that they did not think He was Messiah (<em><a href='B:500 7:27'>Joh 7:27</a></em>)- by saying 'You do know, deep inside, that I am He; but you won't face up to your conscience about it'. It was in this sense that Jesus frequently said in John's Gospel that the Jews did not know Him nor His Father. However, this does not mean that they did not recognize who He was. To "know" Christ in the Johannine sense is to believe in Him, not just to give Him cognizance. It would be a massive contradiction within the thinking of Jesus for Him to ask God to forgive the whole Jewish people <em>because</em> they didn't realize what they were doing. According to His parable of the men recognizing the heir and killing him, they did know, perfectly well, what they were doing. If indeed He was praying for the entire Jewish nation, His prayer went unanswered. He had said Himself that if the Jews did not repent and believe in Him, they would die in their sins; He said that an impressive three times (<em><a href='B:500 8:21'>Joh 8:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:24'>Joh 8:24</a></em>). </p><p>It seems that the Lord was in some way praying for those among the Jews who would later repent of what they had done. This suggestion must almost certainly have some truth about it because of the way Peter alludes to Christ's words: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". He seems to apply these words to the Jews, and uses them to encourage the Jews to repent and thereby take unto themselves the forgiveness which Christ's prayer had made possible: "And now, brethren, I wot that through (RV "in") ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers... repent ye <em>therefore</em>" (<em><a href='B:510 3:17'>Act 3:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 3:19'>Act 3:19</a></em> AV). Paul makes a similar allusion in <em><a href='B:510 13:26-27'>Act 13:26-27</a></em>: "Men and brothers, children of the stock of Abraham... they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers (cp. <em><a href='B:490 3:17'>Luk 3:17</a></em>), because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him”. </p><p>There is a clear principle throughout God's self-revelation that ignorance does not atone for sin. "Father forgive them <em>for</em> they know not what they do" therefore does not mean that their ignorance plus Christ's prayer equalled forgiveness and therefore salvation. We have to conclude that He was saying 'They don't <em>now</em> know what they are doing, please forgive them on account of my death, they'll repent and realize later'. Despite Peter's allusion to Christ's prayer for their forgiveness, Peter still asks the Jews to repent so that they could be forgiven and saved. Therefore Christ's prayer for their forgiveness was not offered or answered in the sense that they would be forgiven without repentance. That forgiveness was only granted in prospect. They had to 'claim' it by their own repentance. However, it is still wondrously true that Christ understood that God was willing to grant forgiveness to people in prospect, even though they had not actually repented. If God is willing to do this, to forgive in hope of future repentance in response to such great grace, how much more should we behave likewise to each other. And yet we struggle with this, even though we each have received such grace ourselves. </p><p>The Lord's death was fundamentally for the salvation of Israel. His prayer was gloriously answered in that soon afterwards, 8,000 Jews were baptized (<em><a href='B:510 2:41'>Act 2:41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:4'>Act 4:4</a></em>). Such is the power of anguished, heartfelt prayer for others- even when it seems there is no chance it will be heard. And such is the power of prayer for a third party. The Lord’s attitude was not that they simply had to decide. He prayed they would be converted. It only applies to us insofar as we unite ourselves with the Israel of God. That minority within Israel who were crucifying Christ in ignorance ("they know not what they do”) were the same category into which we fall. Christ praying on the cross for men to be forgiven ought to send the mind back to Isaiah 53, which prophesied that on the cross, the Christ would "justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities", be wounded for our transgressions, be bruised for our iniquities, make a sin offering for His seed, heal us through His stripes, achieve our peace with God through His chastisement, bear the sin of many, be numbered with the transgressors, be stricken "for the transgression of my people", and make "intercession for the transgressors". These are all broadly parallel statements. "The transgressors" are primarily "my people", Israel, who despised and rejected him (<em><a href='B:290 53:3'>Isa 53:3</a></em>). And yet they also refer to us, insofar as we become identified with Israel in order to be saved. The prophesy that Christ would make "intercession for the transgressors" in His time of dying was surely fulfilled when He prayed "Father forgive them". There seems no other real alternative. </p><p>And so we come to an awe-inspiring conclusion: the Lord was lifted up on the cross, and immediately His mind was full of us, all those who would repent and become the seed of Christ, full of our need, of the huge weight of all our sins. And He knew that through His death all that sin would be forgiven. It was by the Lord’s one act of righteousness, one act of obedience, that we are justified (<em><a href='B:520 5:18-19'>Rom 5:18-19</a></em>). He was obedient to the death of the cross (<em><a href='B:570 2:8'>Phi 2:8</a></em>); and yet <em><a href='B:650 5:8'>Heb 5:8</a></em> and <em><a href='B:570 2:8'>Phi 2:8</a></em> RV imply that He only became obedient whilst He was actually on the cross. Was it that there, whilst hanging there, He more deeply perceived that really, this was indeed the only way to meet our need- and therefore He made that one-off act of obedience in death which <em><a href='B:520 5:19'>Rom 5:19</a></em> speaks about. And that supreme love for us, that willingness to die “for us", is still part of His wonderful character; for there He “loved us" [the love of Christ and the cross are so often connected ideas], and yet He still has that same “love of Christ" for us today (<em><a href='B:520 8:35'>Rom 8:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 8:37'>Rom 8:37</a></em>). </p><p>As soon as the cross was lifted up, despite the sudden searing pain, His mind was fixed upon our desperate need: "Father forgive them". Each one of us who have now believed down through the subsequent years was forgiven then, in that moment, of all our sins we would ever commit. Through one act of righteousness [i:e. the cross], we were justified (<em><a href='B:520 5:18'>Rom 5:18</a></em> RV). There was such intensity of achievement in those moments of His death. Here on earth, on a mere speck of a planet in the outer suburbs of a galaxy that is only one of about a billion such galaxies in the observable universe, what happened on the cross determined the future of that universe. For all things both in heaven an in earth were reconcile by the blood of the cross. And yet throughout the Gospels Christ had taught that the Father would only forgive those who themselves live a forgiving life. Yet at that time we had not repented; "When we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly... God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us... when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son" (<em><a href='B:520 5:5-10'>Rom 5:5-10</a></em>). </p><p>Our Lord's prayer was heard; our sins, unrepented of, were forgiven, in prospect we were forgiven and saved. In the same way as Peter used the wonder of this to appeal to the Jews to repent, so we should heed the appeal. All our sins were forgiven as a result of that prayer; in prospect we were saved. God for the sake of that prayer of Christ forgave us all our sins then (<em><a href='B:560 4:32'>Eph 4:32</a></em>), the whole concept of sin was ended in prospect (<em><a href='B:340 9:24'>Dan 9:24</a></em>), one final sacrifice was offered for sins (<em><a href='B:650 10:12'>Heb 10:12</a></em>). The result of this is that we should repent, search ourselves and confess as many of our sins as possible, knowing they have been conquered. And we too should forgive each other in the same manner as we have been forgiven (<em><a href='B:560 4:32'>Eph 4:32</a></em>), not waiting for repentance, but learning the spirit of Christ and the attitude of our Father. </p><p>The extreme seriousness of our position prior to our reconciliation with God is easy to underestimate. We were "enemies... sinners". We have seen that "Father forgive them" refers to both us and the ignorant Jews who were crucifying Christ. And yet in the first instance, the "them" referred to the Roman soldiers; <em>they</em> crucified the Lord, they parted His garments; and it is in that context that He asked for "them" to be forgiven. There is a certain relevance of Christ's words to those ignorant soldiers. And yet we have seen that they really refer to us, to all those who will truly repent of their sins. It follows that those soldiers represent us, as the Jews who rejected and despised Christ in Isaiah 53 represent us too. Truly do we sing that "<em>We</em> held him as condemned by Heaven", albeit in ignorance. The roughness and ignorance of those soldiers typifies our life before baptism. If we continue sinning, we crucify again the son of God, this time not in ignorance. The consequences of that are almost too fearful to imagine. </p><p>Ignorance is no atonement for sin, as the Law taught. "Forgive them <em>for</em> they know not what they do" sounds as if Christ felt that He was the offering for ignorance, which was required for both rulers and ordinary Israelites (cp. how Peter and Paul describe both the rulers and ordinary people as "ignorant", implying they had a need for the ignorance offering of Christ, <em><a href='B:510 3:17'>Act 3:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 13:27'>Act 13:27</a></em>). Indeed, <em><a href='B:290 53:10'>Isa 53:10</a></em> NIV describes the Lord's death as a "guilt offering". And significantly, <em><a href='B:650 5:2'>Heb 5:2</a></em> describes Him as a good priest who can have compassion on those (i:e. us) who have sinned through ignorance and want reconciliation. As we come, progressively, to realize our sinfulness, we need to make a guilt offering. But that guilt offering has already been made, with the plea "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". </p><p>"Father forgive them" was uttered with His mind on all our future sins, He foresaw them all, He felt them upon Him, He saw they could not be forgiven without repentance, and yet He asked the Father to forgive them as sins of ignorance, believing that we would repent in the future. No wonder Peter and Paul use these words of the Lord as the basis of their appeal to Israel to repent! And if we appreciate them, we will be inspired to truly examine ourselves, to realize our secret sins, to search the word in order to reveal our sins to us, to ask God after the pattern of David to reveal our weakness to us, to truly confess our sins, knowing that each and every one of them was recognized by the Father and Son as Christ hung on the cross. Every one of them was a weight upon Christ, and every one of them was forgiven in the hope that we would later appreciate the wonder of such grace, and repent. This means that as with Israel in Acts 3, our repentance is what makes the cross of Christ powerful for us, it is what makes the victory of Christ all the greater if we accept it; for when we repent, "our unrighteousness commends God's righteousness", in the language of Romans. </p><p>In some sense, then, the Lord was aware of each of us and each of our sins as He hung there. "Forgive them" was wrung out of this deep appreciation. Just one word (in the Greek) expressed such intensity of appreciation of our need. It seems that as Christ hung on the cross He had a vision of the faithful. How this was achieved is hard to imagine, but it is not beyond the realms of Divine possibility that somehow Christ was made aware of each and every one of us, and each of our sins. Consider the following hints concerning the Lord's vision of His ecclesia on the cross: </p><p>- "<em>When </em>You shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed... he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied" (<em><a href='B:290 53:10-11'>Isa 53:10-11</a></em>). "<em>When</em>" would suggest that the Lord had some kind of vision of those He was offering Himself for, especially in their future, forgiven state.</p><p>- Psalms 22, 69 describe Christ on the cross foreseeing "the great congregation" gratefully and humbly eating in memory of Him (cp. the breaking of bread), serving Him, inheriting Zion and declaring His righteousness and His victory on the cross to others down the generations. Let us remember this as we break bread and witness to Him (<em><a href='B:230 22:30-31'>Psa 22:30-31</a></em>).</p><p>- On the cross the Lord saw all His bones, which represented the future members of His body (<em><a href='B:230 22:17'>Psa 22:17</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:560 5:30'>Eph 5:30</a></em>).</p><p>- The Lord prayed just before His passion in a way which would almost imply that He had some heightened awareness of the redeemed as a group: "…for them also which shall believe in me... that they also may be one".</p><p>- "For the joy that was set before him" the Lord endured the cross (<em><a href='B:650 12:2'>Heb 12:2</a></em>). "Set before" can imply a vision, as if He saw something in front of Him as He hung on the cross. The spirit of Christ in <em><a href='B:230 16:11'>Psa 16:11</a></em> describes the Lord looking forward to fullness of joy in God's Heavenly presence, because "at your right hand are pleasures for evermore". He is now at God's right hand interceding for us. Therefore we suggest that the joy set before Christ in vision as He hung on the cross was the joy of His future mediation for our sins as we repent of them and confess them in prayer. </p><p>The intensity of feeling behind those words of our Lord almost defies exhibition through the medium of human words or language. <em><a href='B:650 5:1-7'>Heb 5:1-7</a></em> describes the Lord on the cross as a priest offering up a guilt offering for our sins of ignorance. He did this, we are told, through "prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears". This must surely be a reference to "Father forgive them". Those were said with a real passion, with strong crying, with tears as He appreciated the extent of our sinfulness and offence of God. There is a connection between these words and those of <em><a href='B:520 8:26-27'>Rom 8:26-27</a></em>, which describes the Lord as our High Priest making intercession for us "with groanings". "Groanings" is surely the language of suffering and crucifixion. It is as if our Lord goes through it all again when He prays for our forgiveness, He has the same passion for us now as He did then. Think of how on the cross He had that overwhelming desire for our forgiveness despite His own physical pain. That same level of desire is with Him now. Surely we can respond by confessing our sins, by getting down to realistic self-examination, by rallying our faith to truly appreciate His mediation and the forgiveness that has been achieved, to believe that all our sins, past and future, have been conquered, and to therefore rise up to the challenge of doing all we can to live a life which is appropriate to such great salvation.</p>


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<p><em>And the people stood watching- </em>The other two were there, but the people all watched Jesus. He was lifted up, and He drew all men (all men's eyes, in the primary sense) unto Him (<em><a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a></em>). And the cross has that same magnetism today.</p><p><em>And the rulers also scoffed at him, saying: He saved others- </em>A tacit recognition that His healing miracles and the resurrection of Lazarus were undeniable. “He saved others" would have been a reference to Lazarus. His was a well-known case among the Jews (was Lazarus there? It would have been strange if He had not been). The Lord's mind would have choked at the memory of dear Lazarus, Martha, Mary, the now shattered family whom He had loved and still loved. </p><p><em>Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, His chosen!</em>-</p><p>&nbsp; All the emphasis on save <em>yourself</em> was a temptation for Him to forget <em>us</em>. He would have reflected that He was saving Himself and us by staying where He was; coming down from the cross wouldn't lead to salvation. What the flesh understands by salvation and what the spirit understands by it are vastly different.</p>


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<p><em>And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him offering vinegar, and saying</em>-</p><p> Matthew notes that the Lord refused to drink it after tasting it. The tenses imply that the offer was made continually. </p><p>To give strong drink to those ready to perish was a well-known custom at crucifixion. The fact victims survived two or three days was only because they were given drink. The Lord didn't simply refuse the pain killer. He took it, tasted it, and then refused it. Why did He first taste it? Surely He knew the custom, and He knew what it was. Various alternatives arise in the mind, each a source of devotional inspiration:</p><p>- Was it that His eyesight was damaged by the punches and He didn't see what it was until He tasted it? "When Jesus therefore saw his mother..." may suggest that He didn't initially recognize her. The Messianic Scriptures mention the affliction of eyesight in Messiah's final suffering. Early crucifixion art shows the Lord with His right eye damaged (as does the Turin shroud). The mucous membrane (the thin slippery tissues which lubricate the human body) would have dried so that “they rip layers of tissues from the eyes every time the pupil is moved or blinked" (C:M. Ward). </p><p>- Maybe He realized as He had the cup on His lips that they were giving this to Him in the spirit of <em><a href='B:300 23:15'>Jer 23:15</a></em>: to show that He was a false prophet. In this case, for the sake of His respect for the implications of Holy Scripture, He endured a far higher degree of pain.</p><p>- Another explanation is that He wanted to speak out loud, saying (several times?) "Father, forgive them", and to perhaps recite Psalms 22. He was so parched from thirst (He had lost body fluid in Gethsemane) that He knew He couldn't speak out loud without some liquid. The dehydration would have made His tongue thicken so that speech was eventually almost impossible. But He only drank enough to moisten His throat, not to deaden any pain. This shows the majestic self-mastery within the Lord; He knew just when to stop, even though it must have been so tempting to keep on drinking.</p><p>- Taking the pain killer would not have been a sin, neither would it have theologically damaged the atonement. Perhaps the Lord took it, as doubtless the others did, and then had the self-control to think better of it and give it back. Such was His devotion to the absolute height of identity with us. It makes His action all the more poignant if He first tasted and then refused, rather than just refusing outright. </p><p>He was <em>repeatedly</em> offered the pain killer, the tense implies. Men offering Him myrrh in (mock) homage would have sent His mind back to the story dear Mary had told Him about the wise men bringing myrrh. And inevitably her tortured mind would have gone back there too. But I have another suggestion. When we read that “someone" offered him a sponge with wine mixed with myrrh (<em><a href='B:480 15:36'>Mar 15:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 27:48'>Mat 27:48</a></em>), we recall the use of myrrh in preparing bodies for burial (<em><a href='B:480 14:3'>Mar 14:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:56'>Luk 23:56</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:3'>Joh 12:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:39'>Joh 19:39</a></em>). Pliny (<em>Natural History</em> 14:15:92,107) records: “The finest wine in early days was that spiced with the scent of myrrh… I also find that aromatic wine is constantly made from almost the same ingredient as perfumes, from myrrh". This alerts me to the real possibility that the unnamed bystander who did this was Mary Magdalene. Earlier she had anointed the Lord’s body with myrrh “to the burial". And now she has prepared the most expensive form of wine as some sort of pain killer. Perhaps the Lord was so touched by this that He accepted it, but didn’t drink it. His doing this is otherwise very hard to understand. Her love was on one hand inappropriate, and yet the Lord still accepted it, even though He couldn’t use it. He could have felt angry with her for tempting Him to the easier way. But He didn’t. And in so doing He showed her that the essence of the cross is that there is no easy way. The principles of all this are to be reflected in our cross carrying. </p><p>Another alternative presents itself from the Hebrew text of <em><a href='B:230 69:21'>Psa 69:21</a></em>: “They gave me also gall". The Hebrew can stand the translation ‘poison’ (see RSV). Given the extended, agitated torture of crucifixion, there was a custom for close friends to get close enough to the cross to lift up a poisonous substance which the crucified would lick, and thereby die quickly. It is just possible that a friend (or even his mother?) or a sympathetic soldier did this. Again, in this case it would seem that the Lord chose the highest level; our salvation would surely have been theologically achievable if He had taken it. But He chose to attain for us not only salvation, but “such <em>great </em>salvation" (<em><a href='B:650 2:3'>Heb 2:3</a></em>) by always taking the highest level. He became obedient not only to death, but “even the death of the cross".</p><p>One feels that the Lord would have been justified in accepting the pain killer that was offered Him in His final agony; but He refused it, it seems to me, in order to achieve the <em>greatest </em>salvation for us. He never once used what I have called the principle of Jephthah's vow. In the same spirit, some faithful men of old refused legitimate deliverance from torture so that they might obtain "a better resurrection" (<em><a href='B:650 11:35'>Heb 11:35</a></em>). The record of the cross is full of examples of where the Lord in physical terms rejected legitimate comforts in His final hours. Yet throughout His life, He was ever ready to concede to the weakness of those who would genuinely follow Him. The way He spoke about demons without giving His hearers a lecture about the folly of such belief is proof of this. He could have insisted, as we do, on the rejection of such superstitions. But this was not His way. I am not suggesting that <em>we</em> have the right to make such concessions in our preaching and baptizing. But He did:&nbsp; </p>


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<p><em>If you are the King of the Jews- </em>His claims to Kingship, and the claim of His placard, was a repeated jibe. It must have seemed so incongruous that this wretchedly suffering man actually thought Himself to be a King. "If... let him come down" may have been followed by a pause: is He going to do anything? In their hearts they must have known that He had had the ability to pull off this kind of thing. Those silent pauses must have been an agony for the Lord. There were probably many in that crowd half sympathetic to His wretched cause, who, on the surface, really might have believed if He had come down. But He had learned the lesson in the Galilee days, that impressive miracles didn't really instil faith (Pentecostals etc. still fail to realize this). </p><p>The mocking Jews fall strangely silent in the crucifixion accounts. The Lord had plainly foretold that when they had lifted up the Son of man, then they would know “that I am he", and would recognize His Divine Sonship (<em><a href='B:500 8:27'>Joh 8:27</a></em>). There was something about the vision of Christ crucified which convicted them of their folly and of the Divinity of God’s Son. And that power burns on today. </p><p><em>Save yourself</em>-</p><p> All the emphasis on save <em>yourself</em> was a temptation for Him to forget <em>us</em>. He would have reflected that He was saving Himself and us by staying where He was; coming down from the cross wouldn't lead to salvation. What the flesh understands by salvation and what the spirit understands by it are vastly different.</p>


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<p><em>And there was also a written notice above him: This is the King of the Jews</em>-</p><p> It was also written in Hebrew (Joh:), and putting together the gospel records, it said "This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews". Did Pilate write it in his own handwriting? Did they use the same ladder to place the inscription which Joseph later used to retrieve the body? Why do the records suggest that the inscription was placed after the stake had been erected? Was there initial resistance from the Jews? Was He impaled with the placard around His neck, and then the ladder was put up, and a soldier lifted it off and nailed it above His head? "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" written in Hebrew would have used words whose first letters created the sacred Name: YHWH. Perhaps this was why there was such opposition to it. "King of the Jews" would have been understood as a Messianic title. Either Pilate was sarcastic, or really believed it, or just wanted to provoke the Jews. In any case, somehow the Yahweh Name was linked with the Messiah: King of the Jews. The Name was declared in the Lord’s death, as He had foretold (<em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>). Forgiveness of sins is through baptism into the Name (<em><a href='B:510 2:38'>Act 2:38</a></em>), as even in OT times forgiveness was for the sake of the Name (<em><a href='B:230 79:9'>Psa 79:9</a></em>). And yet through the cross and blood of Christ is forgiveness made possible. His blood and death therefore was the supreme declaration of God’s Name; through His cross the grace and forgiveness, love, salvation and judgment implicit in the Name was all enabled and revealed in practice. <em><a href='B:230 22:22'>Psa 22:22</a></em> prophesied that “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation [<em>ekklesia</em>, LXX]". It was to us His brethren that the Name was declared; in the eyes of an unbelieving world, this was just another crucified man, a failure, a wannabe who never made it. But to us, it is the declaration of the Name. It was and is done in the midst of the ecclesia, as if the whole church from that day to this beholds it all at first hand. And our response is to in turn “Declare his righteousness" (<em><a href='B:230 22:31'>Psa 22:31</a></em>), in response to seeing the Name declared, we declare to Him…in lives of love for the brethren. For the Name was declared, that the love that was between the Father and Son might be in us:&nbsp; </p><p>It is possible to argue that "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" written in Hebrew would require the use of words, the first letters of which created the word YHWH:</p><p>y Jesus- Yeshua</p><p>h The Nazarene- Ha’Natzri [cp. “the sect of ‘The Nazarene(s)’, <em><a href='B:510 24:5'>Act 24:5</a></em>]</p><p>v and King- u’Melek</p><p>h of the Jews- Ha’Yehudim</p><p>giving the Yahweh Name:</p><p>hvhy</p><p>This is why the Jews minded it so strongly when the title was put up. Pilate’s retort “What I have written I have written" may well have been an oblique reference to ‘I am that I am’. It was his attempt to have the last laugh with the Jews who had manipulated him into crucifying a man against whom there was no real charge. It was as if the Lord suffered as He did with a placard above Him which effectively said: 'This is Yahweh'. The Name was declared there, as the Lord had foreseen (<em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>). The declaration of Yahweh’s Name to Moses in <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> thus becomes a foretaste of the Lord’s crucifixion. Some LXX versions render <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> as ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, <em>a man</em> full of mercy…’. In the crucifixion of the man Christ Jesus the essence of Yahweh was declared. And we, John says with reference to the cross, saw that glory, as it were cowering in the rock like Moses, <em>full</em> of grace and truth (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> RV). </p><p>There are other reasons for thinking that there was the supreme manifestation of Yahweh in the cross of His Son:</p><p>·&nbsp;It has been observed that the blood of the Passover Lamb on the lintels of the doors at the Exodus, three sides of a square, would have recalled the two repeated letters of ‘Yahweh’ (see above panel), as if His Name was manifested in the blood of the slain lamb. </p><p>·&nbsp;Yahweh laid on the Lord the iniquity of us all, as if He was present there when the soldiers laid the cross upon the Lord's shoulders (<em><a href='B:290 53:6'>Isa 53:6</a></em>). </p><p>·&nbsp;Yahweh had prophesied of what He would achieve through the crucified Christ: “I am, I am: He that blots out thy transgressions" (<em><a href='B:290 43:25'>Isa 43:25</a></em> LXX). He declares His Name as being supremely demonstrated in His forgiveness of our sins through and in the Lord’s cross. </p><p>·&nbsp;Jehovah-Jireh can mean “Yahweh will show Yah" (<em><a href='B:10 22:14'>Gen 22:14</a></em>), in eloquent prophecy of the crucifixion. There Yahweh was to be manifested supremely. </p><p>·&nbsp;Paul speaks of how the cross of Christ should humble us, so that no flesh should glory in God’s presence (<em><a href='B:530 1:29'>1Co 1:29</a></em>); as if God’s presence is found in the cross, before which we cannot have any form of pride. </p><p>·&nbsp;The LXX uses the word translated “propitiation" in the NT with reference to how God forgave / propitiated for Israel’s sins for His Name’s sake (<em><a href='B:20 32:14'>Exo 32:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 79:9'>Psa 79:9</a></em>). That propitiation was only for the sake of the Lord’s future death, which would be the propitiation God ultimately accepted. Having no past or future with Him, Yahweh could act as if His Son’s death had already occurred. But that death and forgiveness for “His name’s sake" were one and the same thing. The Son’s death was the expression of the Father’s Name. </p><p>·&nbsp;There was a Jewish tradition that the only time when the Yahweh Name could be pronounced was by the High Priest, when he sprinkled the blood of Israel's atonement on the altar. The Name was expressed in that blood. </p><p>·&nbsp; <em><a href='B:450 11:13'>Zec 11:13</a></em> speaks of Yahweh being priced at thirty shekels of silver by Israel. But these words are appropriated to the Lord in His time of betrayal. What men did to Him, they did to the Father. </p><p>-The Red Heifer was to be slain before the face of the priest, "as he watches" (<em><a href='B:40 19:3-5'>Num 19:3-5</a></em> NIV), pointing forward to the Lord's slaughter in the personal presence of the Father.</p><p>- The blood of the sin offering was to be sprinkled “before the LORD, before the veil" (<em><a href='B:30 4:6'>Lev 4:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 4:17'>Lev 4:17</a></em>). Yet the veil was a symbol of the flesh of the Lord Jesus at the time of His dying. At the time of the sprinkling of blood when the sin offering was made, the veil [the flesh of the Lord Jesus] was identifiable with Yahweh Himself. The blood of the offerings was poured out “before Yahweh" (<em><a href='B:30 4:15'>Lev 4:15</a></em> etc:), pointing forward to how God Himself, from so physically far away, “came down" so that the blood shedding of His Son was done as it were in His presence. And who is to say that the theophany that afternoon, of earthquake and thick darkness, was not the personal presence of Yahweh, hovering above crucifixion hill? Over the mercy seat (a symbol of the Lord Jesus in Hebrews), between the cherubim where the blood was sprinkled, “there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee" (<em><a href='B:20 25:22'>Exo 25:22</a></em>). There we see the essence of God, and there in the cross we hear the essential word and message of God made flesh. </p><p>· The smitten rock was an evident type of the Lord’s smiting on the cross. And yet in Deuteronomy especially it is made clear that Israel were to understand Yahweh as their rock. And yet “that rock was Christ". God Himself said that he would stand upon the rock as it was smitten- presumably fulfilled by the Angel standing or hovering above / upon the rock, while Moses smote it. And yet again it is Yahweh who is described as smiting the rock in Psalms 78 and <em><a href='B:290 48:21'>Isa 48:21</a></em>. He was with Christ, directly identified with Him, at the very same time as He ‘smote’ Him.</p>&nbsp;<p><em><a href='B:490 22:36'>Luk 22:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:38'>Luk 22:38</a></em> record that the inscription on the cross was “also" written- connecting with how the soldiers “also" mocked Him. The inscription was intended as another mockery; but it was a vital part in declaring God’s glory. The incident is typical of how those things which seem the most negative and unspiritual are used by the Father to His and our glory in the end. </p>


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<p><em>And one of the criminals that hung there hurled insults at him, saying: Are not you the Christ? Save yourself and us</em>-</p><p> The man believed Jesus was Christ, but he understood the Messiah as offering immediate salvation. And the Lord's whole teaching was that the Kingdom was about delayed gratification, coming to its full term in the future establishment of His Kingdom at His return and the resurrection of the dead. We learn from this that mere acceptance that Jesus of Nazareth was someone special, even very special, is no guarantee of salvation. It is His message, the word which was made flesh in Him, which has to be obediently believed.</p>


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<p><em>But the other answered, and rebuking him said: Do you not even fear God, seeing you have the same judgment?</em>-</p><p> The thieves had the same judgment as the Lord Jesus; death on a cross. It was God who needed to be feared, rather than asking favours of Jesus as Messiah. And yet the second thief clearly believed the Lord was God's Son who would return as judge to establish His Kingdom. He displays therefore a fine appreciation of the relationship between the Father and Son. He urges the first thief to not ask favours of the dying Jesus, but to instead "fear God", appreciating that His Son was sharing in their deaths, and yet in the power of God would resurrect, and return in glory to judge men and establish His Kingdom. </p>


text:
<p><em>But we indeed justly. For we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong</em>-</p><p> The cross is capable of interpretation as some kind of judgment seat or throne. And significantly, there are men on the right hand and left of the Lord, one rejected, the other gloriously accepted. It is possible to translate the repentant thief as telling the other: “Do you not fear God <em>when</em> you stand condemned?". Before Jesus crucified, we all stand condemned. And he stresses that “we are condemned justly" (<em><a href='B:490 23:41'>Luk 23:41</a></em>), for it was evident to all that here hung a just / righteous man. He, there, the just hanging for the unjust, convicts us of sin. Somehow the repentant thief came to know Jesus in the deepest possible sense. Truly could he address him as “Lord", perceiving already how the cross had made Him “Lord and Christ". The thief knew that judgment day was coming, and asked to be remembered for good there. He was surely alluding to <em><a href='B:230 106:4'>Psa 106:4</a></em>: “Remember me, Lord, in the course of favouring your people. Visit me with your salvation". And this connection between the cross and the judgment was evidently impressed upon the thief. Doubtless he also had in mind the desperate plea of Joseph: “Have me in remembrance when…" you come into your position of power (<em><a href='B:10 40:14'>Gen 40:14</a></em> RV). The thief had perhaps meditated upon the implications of the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come". He saw it as now being certain because of the cross- “when you come in your Kingdom…". And yet he felt as if he was in prospect already there before the coming King, as he hung there before Him on the cross.</p>


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<p><em>And he said: Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom</em>-</p><p> Note the Joseph allusions- in prison with two malefactors (one good and one bad?) as Christ on the cross with two thieves (one good, one bad). "Remember me when it shall be well with thee" (<em><a href='B:10 40:14'>Gen 40:14</a></em>) = "Remember me".</p>


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<p><em>And he said to him: Truly, I can say to you today right now, that you will indeed be with me in Paradise</em>-</p><p> "Luke elsewhere uses "today" to refer to immediate salvation (<em><a href='B:490 2:11'>Luk 2:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 4:21'>Luk 4:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 5:26'>Luk 5:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:32'>Luk 13:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 19:9'>Luk 19:9</a></em>); "Luke's Gospel, then, insists that salvation is not simply a radically future experience but a thing of the present". Always in the OT, “I say unto you this day" was used as a Hebraism to bring home the utter solemnity of some great truth (e.g. <em><a href='B:50 4:26'>Deu 4:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 4:39'>Deu 4:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 8:19'>Deu 8:19</a></em>). </p><p>The thieves (and Barabbas) would have been tried along with Jesus; they would have been present at His trial. Roman law required that the death penalty be executed the same day as it was given. The crucifixion being quite early in the day, it seems almost certain that the four cases to be tried that day would all have been heard in the same room. The behaviour of the Lord must have really given those other three something to reflect on. An interesting point comes out of the Greek text of <em><a href='B:490 23:39'>Luk 23:39</a></em>: "One of the criminals who were <em>suspended</em> reviled him" (Diaglott). Ancient paintings show the thieves tied by cords to the crosses, not nailed as was Christ. <em>Hanging</em> on a tree became an idiom for crucifixion, even if nails were actually used (<em><a href='B:50 21:23'>Deu 21:23</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:550 3:13'>Gal 3:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 5:30'>Act 5:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 10:39'>Act 10:39</a></em>). If this were so, we see the development of a theme: that the whole ingenuity of man was pitted against the Father and Son. Christ was nailed, not tied; the tomb was sealed and guarded; the legal process was manipulated; the Lord was flogged as well as crucified. </p><p>It is all too easy for us to see the thief on the cross as a pawn in the game of the Lord's crucifixion. But there is real New Testament evidence that we are to see in Him our personal representative. Thus Paul challenges us to be "co- crucified" with Christ (<em><a href='B:520 6:6'>Rom 6:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 2:20'>Gal 2:20</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:530 11:1'>1Co 11:1</a></em>). To be crucified together with Christ immediately sends the imaginative mind to the thief on the cross- the one who was literally crucified together with Christ. It is doubtful if the Spirit in Paul would speak of 'co- crucifixion' without deliberate reference back to the thief. Our Lord matched the idea of the word "Kingdom" in the thief's plea with the word "paradise". Occurring only three times in the New Testament, it is hard to resist the conclusion that in <em><a href='B:730 2:7'>Rev 2:7</a></em>, our Lord's mind was back in the agonizing conversation with the thief: "To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God". It was to the thief on the cross, some years earlier, that Christ had made the same promise of paradise. It may be significant that <em><a href='B:730 2:7'>Rev 2:7</a></em> was specifically addressed to those who were zealous by nature, hating laxity, yet who had left their first love. The thief may well have been a 'zealot' who had once turned to Christ, but whose real faith had slipped away. But to any who overcome, the same promise of paradise is made. </p><p>It has often been pointed out that the brief words of the thief encompass all the basic beliefs of the One Faith. He believed in the sinfulness of man, the supreme righteousness of Christ, salvation by grace, the second coming and judgment seat of Christ, and the Kingdom. Yet not only did he believe those things as abstract principles. As he beheld, at close range, the sufferings of God's peerless son, the reality of those principles really came home to him. Perhaps he was a slave who had committed a relatively petty crime, but as a slave he had to be crucified. All prisoners and most condemned men feel keenly their relative innocence and the unfairness of it all. But with quite some pain he gasped: “…and we indeed justly". He came to deeply understand the basic principles, and appreciate their personal bearing to himself. He knew the basic principles of the true Gospel, but it was his co- crucifixion with Christ that made him grasp hold of them for dear life. Job too went through the same process, thanks to his typical suffering together with Christ: "I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you" (<em><a href='B:220 42:5'>Job 42:5</a></em>). And us? The thief, not to say Job, represents us. If we are truly co- crucified with Christ, the basic elements of our faith will not be just a dry doctrinal skeleton. The coming of the Kingdom, the doctrine of judgment and the atonement, these will be all we live for! For they were all the thief had to live for, during his hours of co- crucifixion:&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>It is possible that the thief had a really deep Bible knowledge. “Remember me when you come in your Kingdom" is almost certainly reference to <em><a href='B:10 40:14'>Gen 40:14</a></em>, where Joseph desperately and pathetically asks: “But think on me when it shall be well with you...". Joseph went on to say “…here also have I done nothing that they should out me into the dungeon" (<em><a href='B:10 40:15'>Gen 40:15</a></em>). This is very much the spirit of “This man hath done nothing amiss...". It could be that when he asks to be remembered for good, he had in mind Abigail's words: that when David returned in glory in his Kingdom, "my Lord, then remember thine handmaid". This was prefaced by her asking: "Forgive the trespass of your handmaid... a man is risen to pursue you, and to seek your soul: but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord your God: and the souls of your enemies, them shall he sling out" (<em><a href='B:90 25:29-31'>1Sa 25:29-31</a></em>). And David's response was marvellously similar to that of the Lord to the thief: "Go up in peace to your house; see, I have hearkened to your voice, and have accepted your person" (<em><a href='B:90 25:35'>1Sa 25:35</a></em>). It would seem that the thief saw in David a type of the Lord, and saw in Abigail's words exactly the attitude he fain would have. And the Lord accepted this. </p><p>It is recorded in the other Gospels that both the thieves "railed on" Christ, joining in with the crowd to "cast the same in his teeth" (<em><a href='B:470 27:44'>Mat 27:44</a></em>). We must see the words of the repentant thief in Luke 23 against this background. There he was, knowing the truth, having fallen away, now facing his death. In his self- centeredness, he grew bitter against the one he knew to be his saviour. Despite the difficulty and pain which speaking whilst crucified involved, he made the effort to lambaste his saviour, as well as he knew how. But as he watched the Lord's silent response, sensing the deep spiritual communion with the Father which was then happening, he experienced a wave of even greater anger and remorse- this time, against himself. 'I could have made it, I could have repented, but now it's too late. I've added insult to injury, I've blasphemed and mocked my only possible saviour, in this my hour of desperate need'. So he fell silent, whilst (we may infer) the other thief kept up his insults and selfish pleas for immediate salvation. And he watched the suffering saviour, literally from the corner of his eye. Remember, the thieves were crucified next to Jesus. Indeed one wonders whether the other thief had also once been a believer when he says “Art not thou the Christ?" (<em><a href='B:490 23:39'>Luk 23:39</a></em> RV). </p><p>Such was the holiness, the supreme righteousness of the Lord, that the thought grew within him: 'Perhaps even now, while I've got life, I could ask for forgiveness, and a place in the Kingdom?' We can be sure that he grappled within himself with this thought, before ever presenting it verbally to Jesus. He would have seen the Lord's demeanour under trial, and the beauty and graciousness of His character and essential being must have made a deep impact upon the thief. When he speaks about Jesus having "done nothing amiss", he is repeating what he had heard hours before (<em><a href='B:480 14:56'>Mar 14:56</a></em>); and the Lord's confident words of <em><a href='B:470 23:23'>Mat 23:23</a></em> were still ringing in his ears when he spoke of wanting mercy when this crucified man came again in glory to establish His Kingdom (cp. <em><a href='B:490 23:42'>Luk 23:42</a></em>). And yet this perceptive man had just blasphemed Jesus with all the vicious vitriol he knew ("cast the same in his teeth" is the forerunner of 'a kick in the teeth'). It was supreme faith in and appreciation of the love and mercy of Christ which led him to make his request. I see the very fact he could make that request as a wonderful triumph of human faith over the weakness of human flesh when afflicted. That request was born out of a healthy fear of God. Before speaking to Jesus, he rebuked the other thief: "Don't you fear God…?" (<em><a href='B:490 23:40'>Luk 23:40</a></em>). Appreciating the enormity of his sin, the repentant thief had come to fear God, to imagine the day of judgment and condemnation of sin. We dare to imagine the nervous tone of voice in which he then spoke to Jesus: "Lord, remember me (i:e. for good) when you come into your Kingdom" (<em><a href='B:490 23:42'>Luk 23:42</a></em>). He was pleading for acceptance at the day of judgment, provoked to do so by a fear of God's coming judgments. This was surely a spiritual pinnacle. The pain of his own sufferings, coupled with his close observation of the supreme holiness of Christ as he hung on the cross, had led him to appreciate his own sinfulness, and had inspired one of the greatest levels of faith in the mercy of Christ which mankind has reached. And so he received the ultimate assurance: You <em>will</em> be with me, in the Kingdom. The question of where the comma should be placed becomes irrelevant when we imagine how the Lord would have gasped for each word. There would, as it were, have been a comma between each word. </p><p>The thief was confident, in faith, that he would be heard. But how he would have hung upon every one of the quiet words which the Lord muttered in response, travelling over the few metres which separated them. "Verily I say unto thee this day: with me shalt thou be in Paradise" (Rotherham). We believe that to have been the emphasis in His words. 'Yes, I can really tell you, here and now, you will be in the Kingdom!'. Think of the spiritual ecstasy which would have come over the thief! God had caused him to triumph in Christ! He, the lowest sinner, had entered the highest rank of saints- those who have been directly assured that they will be in the Kingdom. Daniel, the disciples and Paul seem the only others in this category- along with the thief. </p><p>Crucifixion was a slow death. Mercifully, our Lord died abnormally quickly. Remember how Pilate "marvelled that he were already dead". Normally men lingered in agony for days before death. The thief lived a little longer. He would have seen Christ's death, "the lonely cry, the anguish keen"; the men taking the body from the cross. We can infer that he was still conscious when the soldiers broke his legs- if he was obviously dead, they would not have bothered. "But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already..." (<em><a href='B:500 19:33'>Joh 19:33</a></em>) seems to imply this. The reason for breaking the legs was to stop the criminal having any chance of running away. Surely, amidst the waves of his pulsating pain, he would have marvelled at the way in which Christ was truly the lamb of God, seeing that "not a bone of him (was) broken". There he was, assured of the mercy of the Lord at judgment day, hanging on the cross, in physical agony which it is hard for us to enter into. In some ways, he continues to be a type of us. Whether we are dying of cancer, crippled with arthritis, emotionally trapped in a painful relationship, chained to a demanding job, we too can have every assurance of the Lord's mercy. "To him that overcomes", He has promised the paradise of the Kingdom, just as He did to the thief:&nbsp; </p><p>But like the repentant thief, our mind must be full of the vision of our dying saviour, triumphing in His holiness, freely confessing our sin and the justice of God's condemnation of it, thrilling with the certainty of our Hope- of being in the Kingdom with Christ. Not for the repentant thief the increasing bitterness of the other man. As his bitterness grew, so the serenity and hope, and anticipation and joyful expectancy of the Kingdom rapidly increased for our crucified brother. The bitterness and disillusion of the world should not be ours, as the pain rages within and around us. Ours should be the strength and (somehow, amidst it all) <em>peace </em>of Christ's example. And the thief is alluded to later on in the NT as a symbol of us all. The Lord’s promise to him that he would ‘be with him’ is the very language of <em><a href='B:540 5:8'>2Co 5:8</a></em> and <em><a href='B:590 4:17'>1Th 4:17</a></em> about us all. </p><p><em>And they divided up his clothes by casting lots</em>-</p><p> Note the focus of the soldiers upon the dividing up of the clothes, whilst the Son of God played out the ultimate spiritual drama for human salvation just a metre or so away from them. And our pettiness is worked out all too often in sight of the same cross. As those miserable men argued over the clothes at the foot of the cross, so when Israel stood before the glory of Yahweh at Sinai, they still suffered “disputes" amongst themselves (<em><a href='B:20 24:2'>Exo 24:2</a></em> NIV cp. <em><a href='B:650 12:29'>Heb 12:29</a></em>). So pressing and important do human pettinesses appear, despite the awesomeness of that bigger picture to which we stand related.</p><p>There seems to have been something unusual about the Lord’s outer garment. The same Greek word <em>chiton</em> used in <em><a href='B:500 19:23-24'>Joh 19:23-24</a></em> is that used in the LXX of <em><a href='B:10 37:3'>Gen 37:3</a></em> to describe Joseph’s coat of many pieces. Josephus (<em>Antiquities</em> 3:7:4,161) uses the word for the tunic of the High Priest, which was likewise not to be rent (<em><a href='B:30 21:10'>Lev 21:10</a></em>). The Lord in His time of dying is thus set up as High Priest, gaining forgiveness for His people, to ‘come out’ of the grave as on the day of Atonement, pronouncing the forgiveness gained, and bidding His people spread that good news world-wide. The robe was not to be torn, <em>schizein</em>. There was to be no schism in it. Ahijah tore his garment into twelve pieces to symbolize the division of Israel (<em><a href='B:110 11:30-31'>1Ki 11:30-31</a></em>). The Lord’s coat being unrent may therefore be another reflection of how His death brought about unity amongst His people (<em><a href='B:500 11:52'>Joh 11:52</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21-22'>Joh 17:21-22</a></em>). Before Him, there, we simply cannot be divided amongst ourselves. Likewise the net through which the Lord gathers His people was unbroken (<em><a href='B:500 21:11'>Joh 21:11</a></em>). Note how all these references are in John- as if he perceived this theme of unity through the cross. </p>


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<p><em>And it was now about the sixth hour; and a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour</em>-</p><p> The way the sun was eclipsed at the Lord’s death is recorded in terms which clearly contrast with the prevailing view that at the demise of the emperors, the light of the sun was eclipsed. Both Plutarch (Caesar, 69:4) and Josephus (Antiquities 14:12:3,409) speak of eclipses of the sun at the death of Julius Caesar. The Lord Jesus in His death is thus being proclaimed as the true Caesar. Likewise Cassius Dio <em>History</em> 51:17:5) claims that at the fall of Alexandria to the Romans, “the disembodied spirits of the dead were made visible”. Similar claims were made for other Roman victories. And yet this is clearly put into context by the record that around the Lord’s victory, the graves were opened and the dead actually came forth. &nbsp; </p>


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<p><em>The sun's light failing; and the veil of the temple was torn in the middle</em>-</p><p> The way into the most holy was now open to all, the veil torn from top to bottom because this was done by God. The High Priest's garments had been torn by him, and now the veil itself was open. Judaism was effectively over. Direct fellowship with God was now made possible through the Lord's death. We note by contrast how the same word is used to describe how the Lord's garment was <em>not</em> rent (<em><a href='B:500 19:24'>Joh 19:24</a></em>). The rending of the veil is clearly alluded to in <em><a href='B:650 9:3'>Heb 9:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 10:19'>Heb 10:19</a></em>; but as noted there, we must have boldness to enter in to the holiest. We all now are to act as the High Priest, going into the very presence of God for the same of others.</p>


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<p>And Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last-</p><p> These were the final words of the Lord Jesus. It must surely be significant that this final statement addresses God as &quot;Father&quot;, just as the first of His seven last sayings did (&quot;Father forgive them&quot;). He used the same title in His agony in the garden (<a href='B:490 22:42'>Lk. 22:42</a>; <a href='B:470 26:39-44'>Mt. 26:39,42,44</a>). Putting those four passages together we can visualize the prostrate figure: &quot;Father... Father... Father... Father&quot; . Evidently the Fatherhood of God was something which the Lord found extremely appealing and comforting. We have seen that if we place the seven last sayings of Christ chronologically, we find that the number of words Christ uttered runs 12-9-4-3-1-1-8. We have suggested that this indicates that Christ found speaking increasingly difficult on the cross. This final cry therefore involved supreme effort, every word was meaningful, and surely our Lord intended us to closely meditate upon the implication of every valuable word He uttered here.</p><p>There can be no doubt that the Lord Jesus was not just saying something like 'Well, that's it, my life force is going back to you, Father'. We need to pause for a moment to consider exactly what we mean by the spirit of man. It is perfectly true that often, the spirit refers to the life force and / or the mind, and the soul refers to the physical body. However, this is not true in every case. Sometimes the soul basically means 'you / me, the whole person in every sense'. The soul and spirit are therefore interchangeable in this sense. The spirit / mind is the fundamental person, the soul, in that sense. The spirit which returns to God does not always refer to merely the life force; it can refer to the mind and personality too. Likewise the Spirit of God is not just naked power, but power that expresses His Spirit / mind. When the Lord Jesus commended His Spirit to the Father, He was offering Him not just the life force which is in every animal and plant, but His character and personality too, the result of the supreme spiritual effort made throughout His life.</p><p>The Lord Jesus commended His spirit to the Father's hands. The Greek translated &quot;commend&quot; means literally to place beside, to lay down beside. The Lord Jesus had a sense that His character would not be forgotten by the Father, it would take it's place beside the Father as it were, as He later would physically. This is not, of course, to give any support to the notion of disembodied spirits. Existence can only be in an animate, bodily sense. Yet the word &quot;commend&quot; in the Greek does suggest that Christ felt that the place He would soon take beside the Father was due to the fact that His spirit / mind had found acceptance with Him first. The Father's hands no doubt is an idiom for His care, His preservation (cp. Mt. 4:6). Christ was taking comfort in the fact that His character, those endless minutes of spiritual effort, of struggle to develop and preserve a spiritual mind, would surely not be forgotten, it would be preserved in the Father's hands.</p><p>We can go too far in reacting against the apostate dogma of the immortality of the soul. Whilst this is an evidently false doctrine, it is equally untrue that the Father forgets His children between the point they die and the resurrection. Therefore God thinks of Abraham as if he is still alive, speaking of &quot;those things which be not as though they were&quot; (<a href='B:520 4:16-17'>Rom. 4:16,17</a>). God is the God of Abraham here and now, even though Abraham is dead and unconscious, because &quot;he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all (His people) live unto him&quot; (<a href='B:490 20:36-37'>Lk. 20:36,37</a>). Because the dead are unconscious, because our memories of them fade and distort, we tend to think subconsciously (and even doctrinally, according to some lectures on the state of the dead) that this is how God too sees the dead saints. But &quot;all live unto him&quot;, the souls under the altar cry out to Him for vengeance; in other words, His constant, detailed awareness of their characters provokes Him to act in world affairs even now (<a href='B:730 6:9'>Rev. 6:9</a>; <a href='B:730 20:4'>20:4</a>). The Heavenly Jerusalem with which we are associated in Christ is composed of &quot;the spirits (characters) of just men made perfect&quot; (<a href='B:650 12:23'>Heb. 12:23</a>). As we strive to develop a spiritual character now, our spirit becomes associated with those pleasing characters (&quot;spirits&quot;) who reached a level of spiritual completion (&quot;perfection&quot;) and were then absorbed into God's consciousness.</p><p>The hands of God are also connected with the Angels, the means by which God performs His actions. Moses' hands being upheld by the hands of others can be seen as a type of the Lord Jesus being sustained by Angelic hands on the cross, connecting with the Messianic prophecy of Gen. 49:24 concerning the hands of Messiah being strengthened for His mediation by the hands of God. Throughout Scripture, God's hands are associated with His creative work in the natural creation (e.g. <a href='B:230 8:6'>Ps. 8:6</a>; <a href='B:230 95:5'>95:5</a>; <a href='B:650 1:10'>Heb. 1:10</a>)- work which was and is performed through the Angels. The Lord Jesus was aware of the Angels in His final agony; He was painfully aware that they were at His command to lessen the physical torment (Mt. 26:53). And yet He seems to have felt their absence when He complained that His God (His Angel?) had forsaken Him- or so He felt. Perhaps He felt that His spirit / mind was not being taken care of by them, that His mental being was being placed beside the Father, in the company of the surrounding Angels. Our struggle to remain aware of Angelic presence in the midst of intense pain and trial should surely be inspired by this; in His very last words, our Lord was demonstrating His awareness of His relationship to the Angels, and His belief that although they seemed so distant from Him in His agony, yet surely He believed that ultimately they would take care of Him.</p><p>There were several times in the Lord's ministry when He chose to escape from death. This adds significance to the fact that finally the Lord gave up His life rather than having it taken from Him. By His Divine power, He passed through the crowd who sought to throw Him over a cliff (<a href='B:490 4:29'>Lk. 4:29</a>). Several times the Lord withdrew from an area that opposed Him because He knew they sought to kill Him (<a href='B:480 3:7'>Mk. 3:7</a>; <a href='B:480 7:24'>7:24</a>; <a href='B:480 9:30'>9:30</a>; <a href='B:500 4:1-3'>Jn. 4:1-3</a>; <a href='B:500 7:19'>7:1-9</a>; <a href='B:500 10:40'>10:40</a>); and He almost goes into hiding from His persecutors for a while until the final reappearance in Jerusalem (Jn. 11:54). What all this means is that He could likewise have avoided His final death; but He chose not to, and in this sense He willingly gave His life rather than had it taken from Him. The death of human beings can be seen as a result of physical processes over which they have no control. They are killed, often against their will, or disease takes hold of them and eventually forces them to a point where they breathe their last. There is never a conscious giving up of the last breath as an act of the will. Death either occurs in a state of semi-consciousness or unexpectedly, in a moment. We usually, in the final analysis, cling to life at all costs, throwing our feeble best into the fight we have no chance to win. Truly did Dylan Thomas observe that men do not &quot;go gentle into that good night&quot; but &quot;'rage, rage against the dying of the light&quot;. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was altogether different- and the death of the thieves next to Him would have highlighted this. It is so often emphasized that He gave His life for us:</p><p>&quot;Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures&quot; in itself suggests that the death of Christ was an act of the will</p><p>Christ gave His flesh for us (<a href='B:500 6:51'>Jn. 6:51</a>)</p><p>Moses and Elijah spoke of the cross as &quot;the Exodus which he should accomplish at Jerusalem&quot; (<a href='B:490 9:31'>Lk. 9:31</a>)- He would accomplish it to Himself, the Greek suggests.</p><p>The breaking of bread (a highly conscious act) recalls how Christ gave His body for us (<a href='B:490 22:19'>Lk. 22:19</a>)</p><p>Christ's death was the result of His obedience to God's command to die on a cross (<a href='B:570 2:8'>Phil. 2:8</a>)</p><p>Christ poured out His soul unto death as a conscious act performed to enable our redemption (<a href='B:290 53:12'>Is. 53:12</a>). Materially, this may refer to the way in which every respiration of the Lord would have scraped His sensitive skin against the rough wood, so that there would have been constant blood flow from His back. This was sometimes a cause of death through crucifixion: blood loss through repeated agitation of the wounds by lifting up the body to breathe and exhale. In this sense He poured out His soul unto death. Muscle cramps would have tended to fix the muscles and make respiration difficult without a wilful yanking of the body weight upwards on the wounded nerves. </p><p>&quot;Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends&quot; (<a href='B:500 15:13'>Jn. 15:13</a>)</p><p>The Lord was at great pains to emphasize this aspect of His death, saying the same thing time and again: &quot; I lay down my life for the sheep...therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life...no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself...this commandment have I received of my Father&quot; (<a href='B:500 10:15-18'>Jn. 10:15-18</a>).</p><p>The death of Christ was therefore a conscious act of giving, it was not simply a result of being murdered by the Jews or Roman soldiers. No man took Christ's life from Him, He laid it down of Himself, i.e. of His own will. It is therefore apparent that Christ's death was not solely a physical result of being impaled on the stake. The fact He died abnormally quickly is proof enough of this. And it explains why the centurion when he saw how the Lord so cried out was by this fact persuaded that He was the Son of God (<a href='B:480 15:39'>Mk. 15:39</a>). That last outbreathing, that death as an act of the will, was something henomenal. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that Christ was in a position to give His life at a certain point in time chosen by Himself. &quot;He poured out his soul unto death&quot; (<a href='B:290 53:12'>Is. 53:12</a>) suggests that the actual point of His death was a result of mental activity within the mind of the Lord Jesus. He was the servant who &quot;makes himself an offering for sin&quot; (<a href='B:290 53:10'>Is. 53:10</a>). Physically this would be explicable by the way in which His life of intense physical and mental trauma had resulted in Him coming to an early death, quite probably through heart-related problems. &quot;My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death&quot; (<a href='B:470 26:38'>Mt. 26:38</a>) suggests that the mental agony in the garden almost killed the Lord Jesus. Such was the intensity of His mind in His final suffering for us. Such was His awareness of our need, of the problem of our sins, and the majesty of God's righteousness. In the physical agony of crucifixion, it was only His will to live which kept Him alive. He was therefore able to keep Himself alive until He had said what He wanted to, and then He was able to consciously give His life for our sins, to offer Himself, as both sacrifice and priest, to the Heavenly Sanctuary. This means that Christ did not just hang on the stake waiting to die, and the process of death was mercifully speeded up by the Father. Every moment there was necessary for the perfecting of His character, making Him perfect through suffering, and once He knew He had reached that point of total spiritual completeness, He was able to give up His life as a conscious act of love for us and sacrificial dedication to the Father. The strength of will power which enabled Him to give up His life force at a specific time is something to be marvelled at. Occasionally we glimpse it in His ministry; the way He sent the people away, walked through the crowds who wanted to kill Him (<a href='B:490 4:30'>Lk. 4:30</a>; <a href='B:500 8:59'>Jn. 8:59</a>; <a href='B:500 10:39'>10:39</a>), spellbound His would-be arresters, &quot;suffered no man to follow him&quot; (<a href='B:480 5:37'>Mk. 5:37</a>)- His strength of will and personality shines through.</p><p>The Lord Jesus 'commended' His spirit to the Father. The Greek para-tithemi means literally to place or lay down beside. Tithemi is the same word translated &quot;lay down&quot; when we read of Christ laying down His life for us. It is the word used to describe the palsied man being laid down at the feet of Jesus (<a href='B:490 5:18'>Lk. 5:18</a>), or the laying of a foundation stone (<a href='B:530 3:11'>1 Cor. 3:11</a>). It is also translated to bow down. The point at which Christ laid down His life, bowing down before the Father, was therefore when He commended His spirit to the Father. When Christ &quot;yielded up the spirit&quot; (<a href='B:470 27:50'>Mt. 27:50</a>), He was commending His spirit to God, laying down His life for us. The Greek for &quot;yielded up&quot; is para-didomi, to yield or give beside, and is evidently related in meaning to para-tithemi, to commend, to lay down beside.</p><p>So the idea of Christ giving Himself for us therefore refers to that final moment of giving up, yielding, laying down His breath for us. Paul was evidently moved by this; he marvelled at how Christ &quot;gave himself for me&quot; (<a href='B:550 2:20'>Gal. 2:20</a>), using the same word as in <a href='B:500 19:30'>Jn. 19:30</a> concerning him giving up His spirit. And we can enter into that sense or marvel and wonder. Paul again alludes to this in <a href='B:560 5:2'>Eph. 5:2</a>: &quot;Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour&quot;. And therefore, Paul goes on, fornication, covetousness, foolish talking etc. should not even be named amongst us, &quot;but rather giving of thanks&quot; (<a href='B:560 5:3-4'>Eph. 5:3,4</a>). That wondrous moment when Christ reached such self-control as to give His life for us, to breathe out His last breath for us as an act of the will, that moment was evidently deep within the mind of Paul. Because of it we should find ample inspiration to &quot;walk in love&quot; towards each other, to be so full of praise for this that we have no time to even speak about the sins to which are earthly nature is so prone. These are high ideals indeed, yet in Paul (another sin-stricken human) they began to be realized. They really can be realized in our lives, we truly can begin to appreciate the intensity of that yielding up, that laying down of the life spirit of our Lord Jesus- and therefore and thereby we will find the inspiration to respond in a life of true love for each other. </p><p>The same word crops up later in the chapter: &quot;Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it&quot; (<a href='B:560 5:25'>Eph. 5:25</a>). Now this is high, heavenly, indeed. Husbands are asked to consider the intensity of that moment when Christ, rigid with self-control, gave up His life for us, breathing His last as a controlled act of the will. And the Spirit through Paul asks husbands to reflect this in their daily lives, in the petty day by day situation of life. No wonder he asks wives to deeply respect their husbands if they at least try to rise up to this spirit (<a href='B:560 5:33'>Eph. 5:33</a>). Real meditation upon the implications of all this, the very height of the challenge, will surely do more good to a marriage than any amount of counselling and reading of human words.</p><p>Another thought arises from <a href='B:560 5:25-26'>Eph. 5:25,26</a>. The Lord gave Himself for us in that final breath, &quot;that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing (laver, baptismal bath) of water by the word&quot;. This is the language of <a href='B:630 3:5'>Tit. 3:5</a> concerning baptism and spiritual regeneration. Is it too much to believe that the Lord in His final moments had visions of men and women being baptized into His triumphant death, being regenerated by His Spirit / word, and thereby being saved?</p><p>The Father loved the Son because He laid down His life in this way; there was an upwelling of love within the soul of Almighty God as He beheld it (<a href='B:500 10:17'>Jn. 10:17</a>). And ditto for all those who try to enter into the spirit of laying down their lives after the pattern of our Lord's final moment. But well before His death, our Lord could speak of how &quot;I lay down my life&quot; (<a href='B:500 10:17'>Jn. 10:17</a>); His whole life was a laying down of His innermost spirit, His final outbreathing was a summation of His daily attitude. He saw His death as the baptism with which He must be baptized (<a href='B:490 12:50'>Lk. 12:50</a> cp. <a href='B:520 6:3-4'>Rom. 6:3,4</a>; <a href='B:580 2:10-12'>Col. 2:10-12</a>, His 'baptism-unto-death' Gk.); and yet He spoke of the baptism with which He was being baptized in an ongoing sense (<a href='B:470 20:22'>Mt. 20:22</a>). In this same vein, <a href='B:230 69:8-9'>Ps. 69:8,9</a> is a prophecy about the final sufferings of the Lord in crucifixion, and yet these verses are elsewhere quoted about the experiences of His ministry. And &quot;they hated me without a cause&quot; (<a href='B:230 69:4'>Ps. 69:4</a>) was true throughout the Lord's life (<a href='B:500 15:25'>Jn. 15:25</a>) as well as particularly in His death. The Lord spoke of the manna as being a symbol of His body, which He would give on the cross. He described the gift of that bread, that figure of His sacrifice, as not only bread that would come from Heaven but more accurately as bread that is coming down , and had been throughout His life (<a href='B:500 6:50-51'>Jn. 6:50,51</a> Gk.). The spirit of life-giving which there was in His death was shown all through His life.</p><p>The fact the Lord died not just because events overtook Him and happened to Him is perhaps reflected in Paul's speaking in Rom. 6 of &quot;the death that he died… the life that he liveth&quot;. He died a death; he Himself died it; and yet just as truly, He lived a life. He didn't just let events happen to Him. He was not mastered in His life by human lusts and selfish desires; He was in that sense the only ultimately free person. When He &quot;bowed his head&quot;, the same Greek is used as in <a href='B:470 8:20'>Mt. 8:20</a>: &quot;The Son of man has no place to lay / bow his head&quot;. It was as if He only lay His head down, giving out His life, when He knew it was time to rest from a day's work well done. He lived a surpassingly free life, and freely gave that life up; it was not taken from Him.</p><p>That we should be called to imitate our Lord in this should truly fill us with a sense of highness, that we should be called to such a high challenge. <a href='B:690 3:16'>1 Jn. 3:16</a> takes us even further in this wondrous story: &quot;Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren&quot;. So intensely was God in Christ on the cross that in a sense He too laid down His life for us, He bowed down for us, laid Himself before our feet as that palsied man was laid before (same word) Jesus. In that final cry from the cross we perceive God's love for us. We perceive the humility of God, fantastic concept that that is. No wonder then that we should lay down our lives for each other. No wonder than that we must achieve a true humility in service to each other. Christ (and God, in Him) laid down His life for us while we were yet sinners. We too, therefore, should not be put off from laying down our lives for each other because we feel our brethren are spiritually weak. This is the very essence of laying down our lives for each other; we are to replicate the laying down of the life of Christ for us while we were weak in our giving of our innermost being for our weak brethren. We are truly at the very boundary of human words to express these things. We must, we must respond in practice. And the wonder of it all is that in this final, supreme moment of self-giving, the Lord was identifying with apostate Israel, of whom it had been prophesied: &quot;She hath given up the spirit; her sun is gone down while it was yet day: she hath been ashamed&quot; (<a href='B:300 15:9'>Jer. 15:9</a> - all crucifixion language).</p><p>It seems likely that Peter was at the cross, and therefore his letters are packed with allusions to it. What he saw there had a lifelong impact upon him. He makes at least two allusions to the words of Christ on the cross, and bids us enter into the spirit of it. &quot;Hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps... who... when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously&quot; (<a href='B:670 2:21-23'>1 Pet. 2:21-23</a>). This is the same word as used about Christ commending His spirit to God in that final agony. We really are bidden enter into His example and follow Him. Christ overcame the temptation to react wrongly to His sufferings by instead committing Himself to God. This idea of laying Himself down for us was what enabled Him not to get bitter. The antidote to our own bitterness is likewise to enter into this spirit of laying down our lives.</p><p><a href='B:670 4:13-19'>1 Pet. 4:13-19</a> likewise invites us to enter into Christ's final sufferings: &quot;Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings... let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer (cp. the two thieves next to Jesus on the cross)... yet if any man suffer as a Christian (i.e. with Christ), let him not be ashamed (as Christ &quot;despised the shame&quot; on the cross, <a href='B:650 12:2'>Heb. 12:2</a>) ...wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God (as Christ did, <a href='B:510 2:23'>Acts 2:23</a>; <a href='B:290 53:10'>Is. 53:10</a>; <a href='B:490 22:22'>Lk. 22:22</a>) commit the keeping of their souls (same word as Christ commending His spirit to God) to him in well doing, as unto a faithful creator&quot;. We really are bidden enter into His example and follow Him. I want to stress this point. The sufferings of Christ are so deep that we can shy away from them, gaping in incomprehension at the records without grasping this sense that we really are invited to enter in to them. It has been suggested that since the Lord's last words were &quot;Father into thy hands I commend my spirit&quot;, His first words on resurrecting would have been a continuation of the <a href='B:230 31:5'>Psalm 31:5</a> which He had quoted: &quot;Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth&quot;. But this verse was the usual evening prayer of Jews in the first century. It could well be that the Lord had prayed those words every evening of His mortal life, and said the rest of the verse each time He awoke. In this we see yet again that the cross was a living out of patterns and attitudes which He had already developed during His life. It also needs to be noted that David didn't say <a href='B:230 31:52'>Ps. 31:5</a> on his deathbed, but rather it was an expression of his desire to commit his soul to the Father in gratefulness and praise. There was something of this in the mind of Jesus at His end.</p>


text:
<p><em>And when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying: Certainly, this was a righteous man</em>-</p><p> He said it twice: "This was a righteous man (Lk:), "truly this man was the son of God" (Mk:). And he might well have added in his own thoughts: “And I’ve crucified him". The Lord died through an act of utter self-control; consciously breathing out His last breath in the form of the words "Father into your hands I commit my spirit". He gave His life, it was not taken from Him (<em><a href='B:500 10:18'>Joh 10:18</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p><em>And all the crowds that came together to this sight, when they saw the things that were done, returned, striking their breasts</em>-</p><p>&nbsp;Contemplation of the death of the Lord Jesus is intended to stimulate our self-examination and self-knowledge. Those who saw it "smote upon their breasts" (<em><a href='B:490 23:48'>Luk 23:48</a></em>), an idiom only used elsewhere for true penitence and realization of personal sinfulness (<em><a href='B:490 18:13'>Luk 18:13</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:470 27:5'>Mat 27:5</a></em>. The whole structure of the records of the crucifixion are to emphasize how the cross is essentially about human response to it; nothing else elicits from humanity a response like the cross does. People 'beheld... the sight' (<em><a href='B:490 23:48'>Luk 23:48</a></em>) - the verb <em>theoreo </em>and the noun <em>theoria&nbsp;here</em> suggest that people 'theorized', what they saw inevitably made them think out a response. See on <em><a href='B:480 15:33'>Mar 15:33</a></em>.</p><p>The disciples kept changing the subject whenever the Lord started speaking about His death. As He hung in ultimate triumph and suffering on the cross, men came and looked, and turned away again (<em><a href='B:290 53:3'>Isa 53:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:48'>Luk 23:48</a></em>). The spiritual intensity of it couldn't be sustained in their minds, as it cannot easily be in ours. The more we break bread, the more we try to reconstruct Golgotha's awful scene, the more we realize this. </p><p>Those who beheld the cross “beat their breasts", Luke records. The only other occurrence of this phrase is again in Luke, concerning how the desperate, sin-convicted publican likewise beat his breast before God in contrition (<em><a href='B:490 18:13'>Luk 18:13</a></em>). Does this not suggest that those breast-beaters were doing so because “that sight" convicted them of their own sinfulness? Their “return" to their homes uses the Greek word usually translated ‘to repent’. The cross inspired their repentance. The records of the crucifixion are framed to focus upon the response of individuals to the cross. The response of those who beat their breasts is very similar to that of the Centurion: </p><p><table border="1"><tr><td></p><p>Centurion </td><td>Crowds</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Having seen</td><td>Having observed</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Happening</td><td>Happenings</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Was glorifying</td><td>Returned / repented</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Saying</td><td>Striking breasts</td><td></td></tr></table>&nbsp;<p>The parallel is between his glorifying God, and their returning / repenting. The need for repentance is a strong theme in Luke (<em><a href='B:490 10:13'>Luk 10:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 11:32'>Luk 11:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:3'>Luk 13:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:5'>Luk 13:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 15:7'>Luk 15:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 15:10'>Luk 15:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 16:30'>Luk 16:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 17:3-4'>Luk 17:3-4</a></em>)- as if he perceived that the ultimate motivation to repentance was in the cross. The apocryphal <em>Acts of Pilate </em>4:5 claims that “all the crowds who were gathered together for the observation of this…returned striking their breasts and weeping awful tears". And yet the record of the cross also leads to faith, not only conviction of our desperation (<em><a href='B:500 19:35'>Joh 19:35</a></em>, “these things" = the record of the cross).</p><p>Appreciation of the cross will create unity between us; a common sense of failure, and yet also a common appreciation of the utter grace which we have been invited to behold and actually taste of. "All the people that <em>came together</em> to that sight" (<em><a href='B:490 23:48'>Luk 23:48</a></em>) uses a word which really means to bond together in close association. This is the effect of the cross. Those who stared in wonder, yearning for a deeper appreciation, were somehow bound together by their experience of the cross. </p><p>The people 'coming together to that sight' might imply that the crowd which was milling around came clustering around the cross once the Lord uttered His final cries and so evidently died. The women also beheld His dead corpse from afar. This seems to be encouraging us to imagine the picture of the Lord just at that point; the dead body on the cross, the victory achieved. It was only at this stage that the curse of Deuteronomy 21 came into effect: "cursed (Heb. a curse; the Hebrew is <em>always</em> translated this way) is every one that hangeth on a tree" (<em><a href='B:50 21:22-23'>Deu 21:22-23</a></em>). These words have been misunderstood as meaning that the Lord as a living being was under one of the Law's curses of condemnation. This cannot be. It must be remembered that crucifixion was a Roman, not Jewish method. The Deuteronomy passage was not written with reference to crucifixion, but rather to the custom of displaying the already dead body of a sinner on a pole as a witness and warning (cp. the display of Saul's body). Sin brought the curse; and so every sinful person who died for their sin was bearing the curse of God. They were to be buried quickly as a sign of God taking no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The Lord died the death of a sinner; He bore our sins, and therefore our curse (<em><a href='B:550 3:13-14'>Gal 3:13-14</a></em>). Every condemned sinner whose body had been displayed had been a type of the sinless Son of God. He was exhibited there for one or two hours (until Joseph got the permission to take the body), totally, totally united with sinful man. And then, because God had no pleasure in this condemnation of sin, the body was taken and buried. Smiting the breast connects with the sinner smiting his breast in repentance (<em><a href='B:470 11:17'>Mat 11:17</a></em> RVmg:). The thoughts of many hearts are revealed by meditation on the cross (<em><a href='B:490 2:35'>Luk 2:35</a></em>). It leads us to repentance. The prophecy that the Jews would look on His they pierced and mourn in repentance may have had an incipient fulfilment at the crucifixion.</p>


text:
<p><em>And all his acquaintances, and the women that had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things</em>-</p><p> The connection is between following the Lord in the easier times, at the height of His popularity in Galilee; and also following Him when all seems hopeless, and there seems absolutely no human advantage from identity with Him. Mark's reference to "many" women coming up to Jerusalem in support of Him would suggest that He may have had more female supporters than male. John says that the women were standing at the cross. To show such sympathy for the crucified could lead to their own arrest and crucifixion. They were perhaps asked by the Lord to draw back from Him. Or perhaps they are pictured here just before they summoned the courage to walk out across the no man's land between the crowd and the cross, to show their open devotion to the Lord.</p><p>It was only close family members who could beg for the body of the crucified. The way Joseph of Arimathaea is described as doing this is juxtaposed straight after the description of the Lord’s natural family standing afar off from Him (<em><a href='B:490 23:49'>Luk 23:49</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:52'>Luk 23:52</a></em>). The effect of the cross had brought forth a new family in that the Lord had now broken all His natural ties, not least with His beloved mother. </p>


text:
<p><em>And a man named Joseph, who was a member of the Council, a good and righteous man</em>-</p><p> He was 'also' a disciple (Mt:), in God's eyes, in the same category as the women disciples who were so public about their discipleship (<em><a href='B:470 27:56'>Mat 27:56</a></em>). Whilst secret discipleship is not the Lord's intention, and He will arrange circumstances so that we 'come out' publicly, it is not for us to say that He doesn't count secret disciples as also His disciples, just as He did Joseph.</p>


text:
<p><em>(He had not consented to their decision and deed), a man of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews, who was looking for the kingdom of God</em>-</p><p> The entire Sanhedrin had unanimously agreed to the deed, but Joseph's internal lack of agreement was noted by the Father and this apparently weak man now comes out openly, and is spoken of so highly in the inspired record.</p>


text:
<p><em>This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus</em>-</p><p> Remember that it was only close family members who could beg for the body of the crucified. </p><p>Joseph is now showing his open affinity with this crucified man. At that time, he didn't firmly believe in the resurrection. For sheer <em>love</em> of this crucified man, he was willing to sacrifice his standing in society, his economic position, risk his life, grovel before the hated Pilate to beg (Lk:), crave (Mk:) the body. This was something which only the close relatives of the crucified could presume to do. But he felt already that new relationship to the Lord, and whether or not He would ever be raised he wanted to show openly to the world his connection with Him, come what may. This was the effect of the Lord’s death upon him. </p><p>The text records that the Jews desired Pilate for the death of Jesus; but the very same Greek words are used to describe how Joseph desired Pilate to let him have the body of Jesus (<em><a href='B:470 27:58'>Mat 27:58</a></em>)- as if to show how Joseph openly undid his request for the crucifixion, by requesting the body. It is twice stressed that Joseph was on the Sanhedrin council. So was Nicodemus (<em><a href='B:500 3:2'>Joh 3:2</a></em>). Yet the whole council unanimously voted for the crucifixion (<em><a href='B:480 14:64'>Mar 14:64</a></em>). "The whole Sanhedrin" (<em><a href='B:480 15:1'>Mar 15:1</a></em> NIV) agreed the High Priests' plan of action. They <em>all</em> interrogated Him and “the whole multitude of them" led Jesus to Pilate (<em><a href='B:490 22:66'>Luk 22:66</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:70'>Luk 22:70</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:1'>Luk 23:1</a></em>). This is some emphasis. Joseph “was not in agreement" with them, we are told, but it seems this was a position held within his own conscience; indeed, “many” of the elders actually believed in Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>). It was only the actual cross which brought faith into the open. “You shall not be in agreement with the wicked as an unjust witness" (<em><a href='B:20 23:1'>Exo 23:1</a></em>) probably tore out his heart. It may be that these men weren't present and that the Jews broke their own law, that the death sentence must be unanimously agreed. However, I have an intuitive sense (and nothing more) that these men voted for the Lord's death; and that they went along with the discussion in which " all" the council were involved, as to which incidents in His life they could remember for which they could condemn Him (<em><a href='B:480 14:55'>Mar 14:55</a></em>). They may not have consented to what was done in their hearts, but they still went along with it all on the surface. <em><a href='B:510 13:28-29'>Act 13:28-29</a></em> is at pains, almost, to associate Joseph, Nicodemus and the rest of the Sanhedrin: "<em>They</em> have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though <em>they</em> found no cause of death in him, yet desired <em>they</em> Pilate that He should be slain... <em>they</em> took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre".</p><p>They were secret disciples, fearing the loss of standing among the Jews. It was only after the Lord's death that they came out in the open. It seems to me that they voted for the Son of God to die. But in His grace, the Father emphasizes in the record that Joseph was a good man, and a just; a disciple, although secretly. The grace of God shines through the whole record. Thus only Matthew speaks about the suicide of Judas; the other three records are silent. A human god would inevitably have stressed that the betrayer of His Son went out in shame and took his own life. But the God of all grace is higher than reflecting vindictiveness in His word. </p><p>If the Lord died at 3p:m. and sunset was at 6p:m:, there were only three hours for Joseph to find Pilate, gain a hearing, make his request, for Pilate to verify that the body was dead, and then for Nicodemus to buy the spices and for the burial to be done. Joseph and Nicodemus must have decided almost immediately what they were going to do. And the lesson for us: Beholding the cross makes us see what we ought to do, it becomes urgently apparent, and then we give our all, with the spirit of 'nothing else matters', to achieve it as far as we can. But we can enter into their thoughts: I wish I'd done more for Him while He was alive, and now, even now, because of the pressure of time, I just can't bury and honour this body as I'd like to. All these things are against me. The self hate and loathing and regret would have arisen within them, mixed with that love and devotion to the Lord of all grace. And there would have been an earnest desire for God to accept what little they could do, with time, the surrounding world, the Jewish culture, the unchangeable past, and their own present natures, all militating against the height of devotion they fain would show.</p><p>John gives the additional detail about the concern that Jesus might not be fully dead, and the piercing of His side. It is difficult to tell if a body is dead or not. But there was something about the Lord's corpse which somehow shone forth the message that He had given up His life. " He that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe" (<em><a href='B:500 19:35'>Joh 19:35</a></em>). Do we not get the sense here of a man, even under inspiration, grasping for adequate words and finding there are none? This is an experience beyond the paradigm of verbal description. The description of blood and water flowing has raised the question as to whether the Lord had been fasting, or had emptied His bowels in Gethsemane, before the crucifixion. It has been suggested that for this to have happened the Lord would have been pierced from the right hand side above the fifth rib, piercing the right auricle of the heart (from which the blood came) and also the pericardium, from where the serum came which appeared like water. However there are critics of these suggestions, which leaves the possibility that the flow of blood and water was in fact a miracle- hence John’s insistence that yes, he actually saw this happen. And he says that he records it so that we might believe. The implication is that meditation upon the cross is what inspires faith, as well as conviction of sin and repentance. The way the Lord’s blood flowed out from His heart is highly evocative of powerful lessons. He gave out from the very core and foundation of His being. We may serve God in good deeds, in writing books, in labouring for Him, without any real demand being made on our innermost self. The challenge of the cross is to give from the very centre and fountain of our life, our very selves, our person, our most vital soul. </p>


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<p><em>And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb that was hewn in stone, where never man had yet been laid</em>-</p><p> Luke's record that Joseph himself took the body down invites us to imagine him using a ladder, perhaps that used to place the title. He identified himself with the crucified Lord, and laid Him where his own body should be laid. He lived out the essence of baptism. However, <em><a href='B:510 13:29'>Act 13:29</a></em> suggests that the Roman soldiers on behalf of Jewish people (i:e. Joseph) took the body down; Pilate "commanded the body to be delivered", implying he gave a command to underlings. So in what sense did <em>Joseph</em> take the body down and wrap it? Are we to imagine him humbling himself before the crowd to assist those soldiers in the physical act of taking the nails out and lowering the body down? Or it could be that he attracted so much attention to himself and had to humble himself so much to ask the soldiers to do it, that it was effectively as if he did it. But there is no reason to think that he himself didn’t walk out in that no man’s land between the crowd and the cross and humble himself to take it down, hearing the gasp from the crowd as he touched the blood and dead body which would make him unclean for the feast. His act was a tremendous mental sacrifice as well as a social and physical one. He is described as "honourable", literally 'well-formed / bodied', as if to emphasis his deportment befitting a leader of men. But he humbled himself before that stake. "He took it down" may imply that the stake was left standing. Or was it laid backwards and lowered down horizontal, with Joseph's anxious hands guiding it down? His contact with the body meant that he couldn't keep the Passover (<em><a href='B:40 9:9-10'>Num 9:9-10</a></em>). The people would have watched incredulous as one of the leaders of Israel openly showed his preference for the crucified Nazarene as opposed to keeping the Mosaic Law. The phobia for cleanliness at Passover time would have meant that everyone was extremely sensitive to what Joseph did.</p>


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<p><em>And it was the day of the preparation; and the Sabbath drew on</em>-</p><p> Businesses would have been closing. John records that Joseph bought a huge amount of spices, more than what was used to bury the Caesars. The cost would have been huge. To raise the cash he would surely have needed to capitalize his own possessions. And he did all this as business was closing. He gave all in response to the Lord's death, without, it seems, any hope of future personal reward or resurrection.</p>


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<p><em>And the women, who had come with him out of Galilee, followed and saw the tomb, and how his body was laid</em>-</p><p> It is worth putting together two passages, both from Luke: “The women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after…” (<em><a href='B:490 23:55'>Luk 23:55</a></em>); and <em><a href='B:510 13:30-31'>Act 13:30-31</a></em>: “God raised him from the dead and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses”. Surely Paul and Luke have in mind here the ministering women. They had followed from Galilee to Jerusalem, the risen Lord had appeared to a woman first of all, and now those women were witnessing to the people. Perhaps <em><a href='B:530 15:3-7'>1Co 15:3-7</a></em> is relevant here, where we read that the Lord appeared after His resurrection to the twelve, and yet on another occasion to “all the apostles”- perhaps referring to the group that included the women. An empty tomb was no proof that Jesus of Nazareth had risen- unless there were witnesses there present at that empty tomb who could testify also that it was in that very tomb that Jesus had been laid. And only women, not men, were witnesses of this. The Greek world placed great emphasis upon sight- “Eyes are surer witnesses than ears”, Heraclitus said. They related to the past visually; for a group of people to be eyewitnesses was considered conclusive. Hence the enormous significance of the way in which the Gospels repeatedly make the women the subjects of verbs of seeing (<em><a href='B:470 27:55'>Mat 27:55</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:40'>Mar 15:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:49'>Luk 23:49</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:55'>Luk 23:55</a></em>). They were the eyewitnesses.</p><p>The women who stood afar off and watched in helplessness and hopelessness and lack of comprehension <em>also followed</em> the Lord (:49) and ministered to Him in the Galilee days. Their standing there like that was still reckoned to them as active following and ministry to Him. They also serve, who merely stand and wait.</p>


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<p><em>And they returned and prepared spices and ointments. And on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment</em>-</p><p> The point is surely that this was the last Sabbath which needed to be kept. For the Lord's death had now ended the old covenant, the veil had been torn down. But they were ignorant of all that, and yet they were still loyally committed to the Lord Jesus, despite lacking full understanding. This is both comfort to ourselves, and also a lesson in tolerance towards others who likewise misunderstand aspects of the Lord's sacrifice but still love Him.</p>


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<p><em>And on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared</em>-</p><p> The language hints very much at a new creation beginning. And yet it began in darkness, not only literally, but also in the darkness of the disciples' disappointment, misunderstanding and weak faith. From all this, great light was to arise:&nbsp;</p><p>Mary came seeking the Lord early in the morning… and this inevitably takes our minds to some OT passages which speak of doing just this:</p><p>- “O God, thou <em>art</em> my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;&nbsp;to see thy power and thy glory” (<em><a href='B:230 63:1-2'>Psa 63:1-2</a></em>). The resurrection of Jesus showed clearly both the power (<em><a href='B:540 13:4'>2Co 13:4</a></em>) and glory (<em><a href='B:520 6:4'>Rom 6:4</a></em>) of the Father. For Mary, life without her Lord was a dry and thirsty land. This was why she went to the grave early that morning. She was simply aching for Him. And she had well learnt the Lord’s teaching, that her brother’s resurrection had been associated with the glory of the Father (<em><a href='B:500 11:40'>Joh 11:40</a></em>). She went early to the tomb to seek the Father’s glory- so the allusion to Psalms 63 implies. She was the one person who had actually believed in advance the Lord’s teaching about resurrection. And yet even she was confused- half her brain perceived it all and believed it, and was rewarded by being the first to see the risen Lord; and yet another part of her brain was simply overcome with grief, believing that the gardener had somehow removed the body some place else. And our own highest heights of spiritual perception are likewise shrouded by such humanity too.</p><p>- “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (<em><a href='B:240 8:17'>Pro 8:17</a></em>) is written in the first instance of wisdom. And yet the Lord Jesus has “wisdom” as one of His titles (<em><a href='B:470 12:42'>Mat 12:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 1:24'>1Co 1:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 1:30'>1Co 1:30</a></em>). Mary sat at the Lord’s feet to hear His wisdom; to her, she showed in practice what it means to comprehend Jesus as “the wisdom of God”. She anxiously heard His words. And thus she sought Him early…because she so wanted to hear His wisdom again. Of course, she loved Him. But that love was rooted in respect and almost an addiction to His wisdom. It was this that she loved about Him, and it was this which led her to the grave early. And it was this which led her to the honour of being the first to see the risen Jesus.</p><p>- “Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for thee; the desire of <em>our</em> soul <em>is</em> to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (<em><a href='B:290 26:8-9'>Isa 26:8-9</a></em>) makes the same connection between seeking the Lord early, and loving His words. &nbsp; </p>


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<p><em>And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb</em>-</p><p> The Angel descended and did this before the women arrived; for on the way, they had worried about how they would roll the stone away, but when they got there, they found it done already (<em><a href='B:480 16:2'>Mar 16:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 16:4'>Mar 16:4</a></em>). Women unable to roll away a stone recalls the scene when Rachel and her girls were unable to roll the stone away from the well until Jacob did it (<em><a href='B:10 29:3'>Gen 29:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 29:10'>Gen 29:10</a></em>). The idea would therefore be that the Lord's tomb was in fact a well of living water which would flow for God's people after and on account of His resurrection; and this idea is elsewhere stated specifically by the Lord in John's Gospel:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And they entered in, and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus</em>-</p><p> The first reference to "the Lord Jesus"; His resurrection declared Him as Lord and Christ. They had observed where the body was laid, and so their surprise is the more understandable. </p>


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<p><em>And it came to pass, while they were wondering about this, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel</em>-</p><p> Their "wondering" was reflective of their lack of faith and understanding, and they are gently rebuked for it in :5. They should have assumed that now on the third day, His body indeed would not be there as He had predicted. We get the impression that this was the first time they had seen the Angels; the Angel sitting on the stone in <em><a href='B:470 28:2'>Mat 28:2</a></em> was therefore invisible to them, and his words to them of <em><a href='B:470 28:5'>Mat 28:5</a></em> were perhaps at this point, rather than at the point of entry into the tomb. </p>


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<p><em>And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them: Why do you seek the living among the dead?</em>-</p><p> The women had come to anoint the Lord's dead body, with apparently no expectation that He would indeed rise the third day as He had predicted. And yet the Angel generously counts this to them (Mt. 'I know / perceive / accept / count it') as if they were actively looking for Jesus. Their obvious error- that they assumed Him to still be dead- is not rebuked because the good news is simply so much greater. The resurrection records are full of such imputed righteousness. <em><a href='B:490 24:5'>Luk 24:5</a></em> enquires why they are 'seeking the living amongst the dead'. They were not seeking the living- they had come to anoint a dead body. Yet they are graciously counted as seeking Jesus as if they were seeking for a living person. John's record has the Lord asking Mary&nbsp;<em>whom</em>&nbsp;she is 'seeking', and this is how John's Gospel opens, with the Lord enquiring of His followers&nbsp;<em>whom</em>&nbsp;they were seeking (<em><a href='B:500 1:38'>Joh 1:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:15'>Joh 20:15</a></em>). This question as to the Lord's identity echoes down to us, for we too can feel a devotion and identity with the idea of 'Jesus' without perceiving that He really is alive and active. The Lord counted righteousness to them, they are commended by the Angels for ‘seeking the Lord’- even though that seeking was deep in their subconscious. Yet the record notices that even incipient faith and understanding in those women, and counts it to them. Would that we would be so generous in our perception of others. The weeping, helpless standing afar off at the cross are described as still following the Lord Jesus and ministering to Him, as they did in the happier Galilee days (<em><a href='B:480 15:41'>Mar 15:41</a></em>). Their essential spirit was understood and credited to them, even though their actions seemed to belie this. Likewise our essential desires are read as our prayers, even if the words we use seem quite different.</p><p>Meetings with two separate Angels didn't make the women understand; now two Angels appear together and tell them the same words as the other Angels had said.</p>


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<p><em>He is not here, but is risen! Remember in what way he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee</em>-</p><p> After He rose, the Angels pointed out this sense to His men: “…remember <em>how</em> [the Greek sense is: ‘with what urgency’] he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man <em>must</em> be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again" (<em><a href='B:490 24:6-7'>Luk 24:6-7</a></em> AV). Like us, they heard and saw the compulsion, that Messianic <em>must</em>, but didn’t really appreciate it. The Lord was no fatalist, simply reflecting that what was to be ‘must’ be. Rather He meant that it ‘must’ be and therefore He strove to fulfil it. There was no fatalistic compulsion about the cross- for He need not have gone through with it. But He ‘must’ do so for the sake of that indescribable compulsion to save us, to glorify Yahweh’s Name, which He felt within Him. He reminded the two on the way to Emmaus: “<em>Ought </em>[s:w. ‘must’] <em>not </em>Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" (<em><a href='B:490 24:26'>Luk 24:26</a></em>). And consider <em><a href='B:650 2:17'>Heb 2:17</a></em>: “Wherefore in all things it <em>behoved him </em>to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people". It was in His death that the Lord’s blood acted as a reconciliation for the sins of the people- an evident reference to the ritual of the day of atonement, which the same writer shows spoke so eloquently of the cross. And yet he was “behoved" to do this, it was an obligation He felt intrinsic within His very being. The same word occurs later: “And by reason hereof he <em>ought</em>, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man takes this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ..." (<em><a href='B:650 5:3-5'>Heb 5:3-5</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:480 14:49'>Mar 14:49</a></em>.</p>


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<p>- see on&nbsp; <em><a href='B:470 27:26'>Mat 27:26</a></em>.</p><p><em>Saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again</em>-</p><p> The Angels quoted the Lord's words, perhaps because they had been watching and listening to Him throughout His ministry. The reference seems to specifically be to the Lord's words of <em><a href='B:480 9:31'>Mar 9:31</a></em>, which the disciples had not understood because of their own obsession with who should be the greatest.</p>


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<p><em>And they remembered his words</em>-</p><p> if the reference is to <em><a href='B:480 9:31-35'>Mar 9:31-35</a></em>, they would have recalled how their lack of belief in and understanding of the Lord's words was because of their own obsession with who was to be the greatest amongst them. </p>


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<p><em>And returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the others</em>-</p><p> <em><a href='B:480 16:7-8'>Mar 16:7-8</a></em> says that initially their fear was so great that they were resolved not to tell anyone anything, i:e. to be disobedient to the commission to tell their brethren the good news. And so according to Matthew the Lord Himself intervenes to urge them to go tell their brethren. </p>


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<p><em>Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles</em>-</p><p> Most of the references to Joanna occur within Luke’s writings, and the central placement given to her in the passage in <em><a href='B:490 24:9-10'>Luk 24:9-10</a></em>. It would seem that Luke had an especial interest in chronicling the women who went with Jesus- his material accounts for two of the four parables that feature women (<em><a href='B:490 15:8-10'>Luk 15:8-10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 18:1-14'>Luk 18:1-14</a></em>), and he has seven passages / incidents where women are central (<em><a href='B:490 7:11-17'>Luk 7:11-17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 7:36-50'>Luk 7:36-50</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 8:1-3'>Luk 8:1-3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 10:38-42'>Luk 10:38-42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 11:27-28'>Luk 11:27-28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 13:10-17'>Luk 13:10-17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:27-31'>Luk 23:27-31</a></em>). And it is Luke alone who gives the impression that the Lord was not followed around Palestine by twelve men alone, but by a further group of ministering women. See on <em><a href='B:490 8:2'>Luk 8:2</a></em>. </p>


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<p><em>And these words appeared in their sight as idle talk, and they disbelieved them</em>-</p><p> There is a strong theme in the Gospels that the disciples repeatedly disbelieved the news of the resurrection. And yet they were appealing for people to believe the message of the Lord's resurrection and be baptized into it. But they made that appeal on the basis of their own weakness and slowness to believe. "Idle talk" means literally the talk of the crazy. They assumed this was a story of the once demon-possessed Mary Magdalene, an outcome of her previous mental disturbance. When the Lord had so clearly foretold His resurrection. Luke is pointing out their own disbelief, implying it was almost to the point of blasphemy.</p><p>Each of the Gospel writers brings out a sense of inadequacy about themselves or the disciples, this self-criticism, in different ways. Luke’s account of the rich man in the parable of Luke 16 has several consciously-inserted connections with how he later describes the disciples: </p><p><table border="1"><tr><td></p><p>Luke 16</td><td>Luke 24</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Disbelief in the face of meeting the resurrected man (<em><a href='B:490 16:31'>Luk 16:31</a></em>)</td><td>“They did not believe…slow of heart to believe” (<em><a href='B:490 24:11'>Luk 24:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:25'>Luk 24:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:41'>Luk 24:41</a></em>)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Double mention of Moses and the prophets as proofs of resurrection (<em><a href='B:490 16:29'>Luk 16:29</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 16:31'>Luk 16:31</a></em>)</td><td>Ditto in <em><a href='B:490 24:27'>Luk 24:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:44'>Luk 24:44</a></em></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>“Should rise from the dead” (<em><a href='B:490 16:31'>Luk 16:31</a></em>)</td><td>“Should rise from the dead” (<em><a href='B:490 24:46'>Luk 24:46</a></em>)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>“They will repent” (<em><a href='B:490 16:30'>Luk 16:30</a></em>)</td><td>Forgiveness of sins was to be preached because of Christ’s resurrection, as Luke brings out in <em><a href='B:510 2:38'>Act 2:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 3:19'>Act 3:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:22'>Act 8:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 17:30'>Act 17:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 26:20'>Act 26:20</a></em>. </td><td></td></tr></table><p>Thus the tragedy and foolishness of the rich man in the parable is seen by Luke as applying to the disciples in their disbelief of the resurrection. And yet the purpose of Luke’s Gospel, as all the Gospels, was to proclaim the need for belief in the resurrection. </p>


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<p><em>But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he departed to his home, wondering about what had happened</em>-</p><p> Peter and John went to the tomb after having first of all disbelieved Mary Magdalene (<em><a href='B:490 24:11'>Luk 24:11</a></em>). "Myrrh... glues linen to the body not less firmly than lead" (Leon Morris, <em>John</em> p. 736). The fact the cloths were neatly placed as they were was therefore a powerful evidence that the Lord had risen, and not been extricated from the cloths by any human effort. </p><p>The various records all use the same word for how Peter, John and Mary all 'stooped down' (<em><a href='B:500 20:5'>Joh 20:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:11'>Joh 20:11</a></em>) at this time; as if bowing before the resurrected Lord.</p>


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<p><em>And two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem</em>-</p><p> Seven miles would have taken just over two hours to walk. The conversation would likely not have been very long, as the Lord was not walking with them the whole time. One of them was Cleopas (:18); and it could be assumed from :34 that the other was Peter, although perhaps an unrecorded appearance to Peter is there referred to. However I prefer to think this Cleopas is the same "Clopas" of <em><a href='B:500 19:25'>Joh 19:25</a></em> whose wife Mary stood by the cross. The other unnamed disciple would then refer to Mary his wife.</p>


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<p><em>And they discussed with each other about all the things which had happened</em>-</p><p> "Happened" translates a Greek word which means literally 'to walk together', just as they were doing; the idea is that they recognized that there was a meeting together of various threads, and they were struggling to understand what all the coincidences meant. The Lord had plainly stated His death and resurrection, and this alone made sense of the things they were noticing; but they failed to make the obvious connections. It was only when the Lord 'walked with them' that everything became clear.</p>


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<p><em>And it came to pass, while they talked and questioned together, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them</em>-</p><p> As noted on :14, there is a play on ideas here. Whilst they perceived how the various recent events 'walked together', the Lord Himself walked together with them. The lively intellectual dialogue suggested by "talked and questioned together" was likely between Cleopas and his wife Mary (see on :13); a great pattern for Christian marriage.</p>


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<p><em>But their eyes were kept from recognizing him</em>-</p><p> It seems that the eyes of the women were likewise kept from seeing the Angel seated on the stone in <em><a href='B:470 27:2'>Mat 27:2</a></em>. The blinding and opening of eyes is typically in response to whether a person themselves wishes to open or close their eyes. They did not perceive the Lord because they didn't want to; and were confirmed in that attitude. "Kept" is too mild; the Greek is usually used of violent 'taking hold' or arrest of a person, especially of the Lord Jesus and His preachers by the Jews. perhaps we are to assume that it was the Jewish mindset which likewise had taken hold of their mental outlook and was stopping them from seeing the obvious fulfilment of the Lord's words.</p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: What communications are these you have one with another as you walk? And they stood still, looking sad</em>-</p><p> Being challenged with this question stopped them in their tracks. And the Lord so often used, and uses, questions- in order to likewise stop us in our tracks, as we come to self-realization. The Lord's questions were rhetorical, because He wanted to elicit self-understanding. "Looking sad" is a word only found elsewhere about the Jewish orthodox in <em><a href='B:470 6:16'>Mat 6:16</a></em>. As noted on :16, their eyes, their worldview and outlook, were influenced by them, they looked like them; and so refused to perceive the Lord.</p>


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<p><em>And one of them, named Cleopas, answering said to him: Do you live alone in Jerusalem, and therefore do not know the things which have happened there recently?</em>-</p><p> The zeal of Mary to be an obedient witness is remarkable. All Jerusalem knew the story of the risen Jesus still on “the third day” after His death- only someone totally cut off from society would have not heard this news, as Cleopas commented (<em><a href='B:490 24:18'>Luk 24:18</a></em> Gk:). If the whole of Jerusalem knew the story about the resurrected Jesus on the third day after His death, and the male disciples were evidently still nervous and doubtful about everything, it must be that this tremendous spread of the news had been achieved by Mary and the women. &nbsp;</p><p>Even after His resurrection, in His moment of glory and triumph, the Lord appeared in very ordinary working clothes, so that He appeared as a gardener. The disciples who met Him on the Emmaus road asked whether He ‘lived alone’ and therefore was ignorant of the news of the city about the death of Jesus (<em><a href='B:490 24:18'>Luk 24:18</a></em> RV). The only people who lived alone, outside of the extended family, were drop outs or weirdos. It was almost a rude thing for them to ask a stranger. The fact was, the Lord appeared so very ordinary, even like a lower class social outcast type. And this was the exalted Son of God. We gasp at His humility, but also at His earnest passion to remind His followers of their common bond with Him, even in His exaltation. </p>


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<p><em>And he said to them: What things? And they told him the things concerning Jesus the Nazarene, that he was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people</em>-</p><p> So often, if not always, the Lord's questions are to elicit self knowledge from us. "The things concerning Jesus..." is a term Luke's record will later use as a definition of the Gospel (<em><a href='B:510 8:12'>Act 8:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 19:8'>Act 19:8</a></em>). And the Lord will go on to expound to them "the things concerning" Himself (:27). But they knew these "things concerning" Him. They knew, but did not believe the reality of "the things" they knew. This progression from knowledge to belief is the essence of our conversion and reconversion.</p>


text:
<p><em>And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him</em>-</p><p> Even at that early stage it was clear to all that the responsibility for the Lord's death was with the Jews and not the Romans. The very words for "delivered up to be crucified" were several times on the Lord's lips, predicting His fate. But He had always continued with the prediction that then after three days, He would rise again (:7; <em><a href='B:470 20:15'>Mat 20:15</a></em>). They were repeating His words but had subconsciously removed the idea of resurrection from them. All was in place for the penny to drop- in realizing that now, after three days, the Lord had indeed risen and appeared. </p>


text:
<p><em>But we had hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel. Moreover besides all this, it is now the third day since these things came to pass</em>-</p><p> When the night seems darkest, dawn often breaks. And so it was again here; the passing of three days meant they assumed that His body had now decomposed. When in fact the passing of those three days meant that now was the time to expect His predicted resurrection.</p><p>The two on the way to Emmaus commented that they thought Christ would have “redeemed” Israel (<em><a href='B:490 24:21'>Luk 24:21</a></em>). A:D. Norris makes a powerful case for one of those two being Peter (<em>Peter: Fisher Of Men</em> p:109). The only other time the Greek word is used is (again?) by Peter in <em><a href='B:670 1:18-19'>1Pe 1:18-19</a></em>, where he reassures his weary sheep that “Ye were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ”- as if to say ‘it’s really all wonderfully true! I too doubted it, as you know. But I know now that it is true; even I was redeemed, from the shame of those denials, and so much else. Believe it with me!’. After all the Lord had taught about salvation, the eloquent and yet simple explanation of salvation in the Kingdom through His death, Peter and the others thought that His cross (“precious blood”) hadn’t brought redemption. How weak their understanding was, how slow they were. And Peter again is gently prodding from his own example and pattern of growth: ‘Can’t you see the reality of it all? Or are you still as inexplicably slow to see it all as I was?’. &nbsp;</p><p>The disciples on the road to Emmaus were like Nicodemus. They made a great commitment to tell a stranger that they had believed in Jesus of Nazareth and His words about resurrection (<em><a href='B:490 24:19-21'>Luk 24:19-21</a></em>). Remember how at that very time, the disciples locked themselves indoors for fear of the Jews. They said what they did and took the ‘chance’ they did, without believing Jesus would rise. They were motivated by the cross to simply stand up and be counted, with no hope of future reward.</p><p>The Jewish public looked for Jesus to release them from Roman bondage; but He patiently and repeatedly explained that His Kingdom was not of this world, rather would it come in a political sense at His second coming; and the essence of the Kingdom and liberation He preached was spiritual and internal, rather than physical and external. Yet the disciples didn't get it- they thought Jesus would've redeemed Israel there and then (<em><a href='B:490 24:21'>Luk 24:21</a></em>). Their total lack of attention to the Lord's words is brought out by their lament that now was "the third day" after His death- when this ought to have been the very day they were looking for His resurrection!</p>


text:
<p><em>Further, certain women of our company amazed us, having been early at the tomb</em>-</p><p> The disciples were "astonished" (<em><a href='B:490 24:22'>Luk 24:22</a></em>) and "marvelled" (<em><a href='B:490 24:12'>Luk 24:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:41'>Luk 24:41</a></em>). The same two Greek words recur together in <em><a href='B:510 2:7'>Act 2:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 2:12'>Act 2:12</a></em>, describing how the crowd to whom the disciples preached soon afterwards were likewise "amazed and marvelled". Perhaps this was how and why the disciples (and Peter especially) could achieve such a rapport with that crowd- because they had experienced those very same feelings when their faith and understanding was so weak.</p>


text:
<p><em>And when they did not find his body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive</em>-</p><p> The women said they had seen "a vision of Angels" rather than actual Angels (<em><a href='B:490 24:23'>Luk 24:23</a></em>). They like the disciples later (<em><a href='B:490 24:37'>Luk 24:37</a></em>) wished to spiritualize everything rather than face the fact that the real Christ had risen in concrete and actual reality. The theological tendency to spiritualize the person of the Lord Jesus likewise has its psychological roots in a difficulty in believing the wonderful literal truths of the Lord's resurrection, current personal existence, and His literal return.</p>


text:
<p><em>And some of them that were with us went to the tomb, and found it even as the women had said. But him they saw not</em>-</p><p> Luke stresses that they had failed to believe the chosen witnesses of the Lord's resurrection; they were caught up in the secular spirit of their age, which refused to accept female testimony. And all this paves the way to the commission for them, the one time disbelievers and doubters without excuse, to go out and tell the world to believe in the Lord's resurrection, warning that there was going to be condemnation for those who disbelieved their message (<em><a href='B:480 16:16'>Mar 16:16</a></em>). Their appeal to men was therefore on the basis that they themselves had so miserably failed to believe. We note too that the claim that John saw and believed (<em><a href='B:500 20:8'>Joh 20:8</a></em>) was perhaps only momentary faith that then dwindled; or maybe the idea was that he only later believed:&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p><em>And he said to them: O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!</em>-</p><p> The Lord by contrast had been of quick understanding in spiritual things (<em><a href='B:290 11:3'>Isa 11:3</a></em>). Their slowness was inexcusable; it was related to a "hardness" of heart (<em><a href='B:480 16:14'>Mar 16:14</a></em>). They ought to have connected the events experienced not simply with the Lord's own predictions, but with the words in "all" the prophetic scriptures about the sufferings and resurrection of Messiah. We might be inclined to think that it is a tall order to discern these things in "all" the prophets. But the Lord expected it of His men. Misunderstanding and blindness to the things of God's word are therefore presented here as worthy of rebuke by the Lord Jesus. Our insistence that 'I just didn't see it' is not of itself an excuse. This should provide us every motivation in our Bible reading. The Father and Son are eager to reveal themselves to us. We are asked to have active minds, ever sensitive to the implications of God's words; just as we would be to the words of the 'other' in any human relationship. </p>


text:
<p><em>Was it not necessary that the Christ suffer these things and so enter into his glory?</em>-</p><p> The idea of a suffering Messiah is somewhat veiled in the Old Testament, we might think. But the Lord expected them to see the obvious necessity of what had happened; that glory could only be entered through suffering. We note that the Lord felt He had 'entered glory' even before His ascension. And yet there is not a word about this in the historical account of His resurrection. </p>


text:
<p><em>And beginning from Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them from all the scriptures, the things concerning himself</em>-</p><p> This way of beginning in the prophets and explaining the "things concerning" the Lord Jesus was copied by Philip (<em><a href='B:510 8:35'>Act 8:35</a></em>). Luke, who also wrote Acts, is seeking to develop the idea of a continuity of witness between the Lord and all those in Him. "The things concerning" the Lord Jesus were the same things taught by Philip (<em><a href='B:510 8:12'>Act 8:12</a></em>). "He interpreted for them" may be seen as an act of His grace; for He has just implied that they were unreasonably slow to have interpreted the prophets; He had expected them to interpret them as pointing to the things of His sufferings and resurrection. And so He does it for them here. </p>


text:
<p><em>And they drew near to the village where they were going, and he made as though he would go further</em>-</p><p> We recall how the Lord appeared as if He would have walked past the suffering disciples in the boat, and how He surely pretended to be asleep in the midst of a storm in another boat. He has this style to this day, not responding immediately to requests, or appearing to be distant- in order to pique our desire for Him. And so it worked here; they responded by desperately urging Him to abide with them, to eat with them in their home- the ultimate sign of spiritual fellowship and acceptance. But this was provoked by His apparent distance from them and appearance of wanting to go away from them.</p>


text:
<p><em>And they urged him, saying: Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent. And he went in to stay with them</em>-</p><p> This is all very much the language of John's gospel about the Lord wanting to abide with people. We also have here presented the ideal image of a house church, with the Lord welcomed in and abiding through His Spirit. The Comforter passages assure us that the Lord's presence is just as much with us through His Spirit as it was in physical terms. </p>


text:
<p><em>And it came to pass, when he had sat down with them to eat, he took the bread, and blessing and breaking it, he gave to them</em>-</p><p> This is framed in the language of the breaking of bread service. It leads us to conclude that the 'breaking of bread' was simply an eating together; for to share food together at the same table was a religious act. Likewise Paul's sharing of food with his fellow passengers during the storm of Acts 27 is presented as a breaking of bread. Clearly the table was open to all, and was devoid of the fences placed around it by later Christian development. </p>


text:
<p><em>And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight</em>-</p><p> The opening of their eyes is not to be taken as meaning that it was not their fault that they failed to perceive Him. For they are upbraided for being so slow of perception; but that hardness of heart (<em><a href='B:480 16:14'>Mar 16:14</a></em>) was confirmed, as Pharaoh’s was, by the Lord hardening their hearts. And that was only removed by grace. </p><p>He was recognized by the Emmaus disciples in the way that He broke bread. The way He handled the loaf, His mannerisms, His way of speaking and choice of language, were evidently the same after His resurrection as before (<em><a href='B:490 24:30-31'>Luk 24:30-31</a></em>). The Lord is the same today as yesterday:&nbsp;</p>


text:
<p><em>And they said to each other: Was not our heart burning within us, while he spoke to us on the road, while he opened up the scriptures to us?</em>-</p><p> Their hearts were burning, on fire, with the unexpressed sense that this just might be the Lord. The opening of their eyes is paralleled here with the opening of the Old Testament scriptures. But academic understanding, the gift of hearing correct interpretation, left their eyes still closed, although their hearts / minds were on fire. It was still by grace that their eyes were opened to the real implications of all that wonderful Biblical exposition; that of itself did not open their eyes. There still had to be that higher hand, that other element.</p>


text:
<p><em>And they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven gathered together, and those that were with them</em>-</p><p> Note that the great commission to preach which follows was first given to “the eleven and those with him”, i:e. the women. <em><a href='B:510 1:13-14'>Act 1:13-14</a></em> speaks of “the eleven and the women”- the same two groups. The great commission was not therefore solely given to the eleven. Their finding the "eleven" there rather precludes the otherwise attractive suggestion of Lightfoot and A:D. Norris that one of the two on the road to Emmaus was Peter. Likewise the two were told that the Lord had appeared to Peter (:34).</p>


text:
<p><em>Saying: The Lord has indeed risen, and has appeared to Simon!</em></p><p>- See on <em><a href='B:470 17:1'>Mat 17:1</a></em>. The graciously unrecorded appearing of the risen Lord to Peter (<em><a href='B:530 15:5'>1Co 15:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:34'>Luk 24:34</a></em>) may have involved the Lord simply appearing to Him, without words. It was simply the assurance that was there in the look on the face of the Lord. It was not until the meeting by the lake in Galilee in John 21 that the Lord raised Peter's denials with him. And this sets us an example in when and how to deal with issues. There is a time and place, and not always at first meeting. </p>


text:
<p><em>And they told the things that had happened on the road, and how he was known to them by the breaking of the bread</em>-</p><p> The Lord held the memorial meeting as a keeping of a Passover, and yet He changed some elements of it. In like manner He was made known to the disciples “in the breaking of bread", perhaps because it was usual for the host to say the blessing before the meal, and yet Jesus the stranger, the guest, presumed to lead the prayer. We have established here the idea of the Lord's special manifestation at the breaking of bread meeting. He was and still is known to us in the breaking of bread:&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p><em>And as they spoke these things, he stood in the midst of them, and said to them: Peace to you!</em>-</p><p> The Lord was aware of their sense of guilt over deserting Him, and in not perceiving the obvious necessity of His resurrection. His first word to them was therefore an assurance of "peace", a term usually used in the Bible in the context of peace with God through forgiveness. </p>


text:
<p><em>But they were terrified and afraid, and supposed that they saw a ghost</em>-</p><p> Yet again they are presented as lacking in faith and discernment; even the two who had just met the Lord in their own home. They preferred to think of Him as some disembodied spirit rather than face up to the amazing truth that He was before them in real, bodily, personal form. The theological tendencies towards belief in disembodied existence and the spiritualizing of the Lord's resurrection are likewise reflections of a basic lack of faith in the most challenging of realities; that the body of Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and He exist now in a personal form, and shall likewise return.</p>


text:
<p><em>And he said to them: Why are you disturbed? And why do questions arise in your heart?</em>-</p><p> "Questions" is literally 'reasonings'. 'It could be this, might be that... who knows for sure' is therefore exposed as at times an excuse for lack of faith in challenging realities. Noting this is not to say that all things Biblical are clear and capable of simplistic explanation. Rather is it a caveat against dodging the requirement of simple faith by complex reasoning. We think of the Lord's criticism of "the depths of satan as they speak" noted on <em><a href='B:730 2:24'>Rev 2:24</a></em>. The disciples likely had considered all manner of conspiracy theories and wild possibilities, rather than face up to the simple requirements of faith. They had likewise been "disturbed" when they saw the Lord walking on the water and had again concluded it was a ghost (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 14:26'>Mat 14:26</a></em>). They were intended to have learned from that failure, just as we too are taught by our failures and are expected to build upon them for greater tests yet to come. The Lord had urged them not to be "troubled" (s:w. "disturbed") in <em><a href='B:500 14:1'>Joh 14:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:27'>Joh 14:27</a></em>. He is now enquiring why those words of His had been ignored by them. </p>


text:
<p><em>See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see! For a ghost has not flesh and bones, as you see me having</em></p><p>- See on <em><a href='B:530 5:5'>1Co 5:5</a></em>. He is concerned at their excusing their lack of faith in Him by their various wrong ideas about disembodied existence. Here we see how theological error, such as belief in ghosts or an immortal soul, leads us away from simple faith. </p><p>Note that whilst flesh and <em>blood</em> cannot inherit the Kingdom, the risen, immortal&nbsp;Lord Jesus described Himself as flesh and <em>bones.</em> In fact, we find that "flesh and bones" &nbsp; are often paralleled (<em><a href='B:10 2:23'>Gen 2:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:220 10:11'>Job 10:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:220 33:21'>Job 33:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 38:3'>Psa 38:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:240 14:30'>Pro 14:30</a></em>), and simply mean 'the person', or as the Lord put it on that occasion, "I myself". We ourselves will be in the Kingdom, with similar personalities we have now [that's a very challenging thought of itself]. "Flesh" doesn't necessarily have to refer, in every instance, to something condemned. Who we are now is who we will essentially be in the eternity of God's Kingdom. Let's not allow any idea that somehow our flesh / basic being is so awful that actually, the essential "I myself" will be dissolved beneath the wrath of God at the judgment. The Lord is "the saviour of the body" and will also save our "spirit" at the last day; so that we, albeit with spirit rather than blood energizing us, will live eternally. Understanding things this way enables us to perceive more forcefully the eternal importance of who we develop into as persons, right now. The Buddhist belief that we will ultimately not exist, that such 'Nirvana' is the most wonderful thing to hope for, appears at first hearing a strange 'hope' to be shared by millions of followers. But actually, it's the same essential psychology as that behind the idea that 'I' will not exist in the Kingdom of God, I will be given a new body, person and character. It's actually saying the same- I won't exist. And it's rooted in a terribly low self-image, a dis-ease with ourselves, a lack of acceptance of ourselves as the persons whom God made us and develops us into. Whilst of course our natures will be changed, so that we can be immortal, it is <em>we</em> who will be saved; our body will be resurrected, made new, and our spirit "saved" in that day, reunited with our renewed and immortal bodies. We have eternal life in the sense that who we are now, in spiritual terms, is who we will eternally be. Our spirit, the essential us, is in this sense immortal; it’s remembered with the Lord. In this sense, not even death itself, nor time itself, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ (<em><a href='B:520 8:35-39'>Rom 8:35-39</a></em>). Just as we still love someone after they have died, remembering as they do who they were and still are to us, so it is with the love of God for the essential us. Hence <em><a href='B:670 3:4'>1Pe 3:4</a></em> speaks of how a “gentle and calm disposition” or spirit is in fact “imperishable” (NAB)- because that spirit of character will be eternally remembered. This is why personality and character, rather than physical works, are of such ultimate and paramount importance. How we speak now is in a way, how we will eternally speak- I think that's the idea of <em><a href='B:240 12:19'>Pro 12:19</a></em>: "The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment". Our "way" of life and being is how we will eternally be- and for me that solves the enigma of <em><a href='B:240 12:28'>Pro 12:28</a></em>: "In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death". In Jeremiah 18, God likens Himself to a potter working with us the clay. We can resist how He wants us to be, and He can make us into something else... we are soft clay until the 'firing'; and the day of firing is surely the day of judgment. The implication is that in this life we are soft clay; but the day of judgment will set us hard as the persons we have become, or have been made into, in this life. </p><p>The disciples thought the resurrected Christ was a spirit, a ghost. They returned to their old superstitions. Yet He didn’t respond by lecturing them about the death state or that all existence is only bodily, much as He could have done. Instead He adopted for a moment their position and reasoned from it: “A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me have”. The essence of His concern was their doubt in Him and His resurrection, rather than their return to wrong superstitions.</p>


text:
<p><em>And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet</em>-</p><p> He wanted them to handle Him; and John opens his letters in <em><a href='B:690 1:1-4'>1Jn 1:1-4</a></em> by saying that this was exactly what they had done. Their reticence to touch Him was perhaps due to their sense that by doing so they would have to jettison all beliefs in ghosts and disembodied existence. We too can refuse to even consider evidence because too much is at stake if it is true.</p>


text:
<p><em>And while they still disbelieved for joy and wondered, he said to them: Have you here anything to eat?</em>-</p><p> The disciples are described as sleeping for sorrow, not believing for joy. Both their unbelief and their sorrow and failure to support the Lord in His time of need are not really excusable by either sorrow nor joy. And yet the Lord generously imputes these excuses to His men, such is His love for them. They are described as being “glad” when they saw the risen Lord (<em><a href='B:500 20:20'>Joh 20:20</a></em>). Yet actually they didn’t believe at that time- for <em><a href='B:490 24:41'>Luk 24:41</a></em> generously says that they “believed not for joy”. And they assumed that Jesus was a phantom, not the actual, concrete, bodily Jesus. Placing the records together doesn’t give a very positive image of the disciples at this time. And yet the record is so positive about them. The disciples are said not to have believed "for joy" (<em><a href='B:490 24:41'>Luk 24:41</a></em>). But the Lord upbraided them for their arrant foolishness and plain unbelief. They slept, we are told, “for sorrow”- when they should have stayed awake as commanded. </p><p>One hallmark of the spiritual way of life is an indomitably <em>positive spirit</em>. Not a simplistic naivety, blindly hoping for the best in an almost fatalistic way. But as the Father and Son are so essentially positive, so will we be, if we absorb something of His Spirit:&nbsp; Thus the disciples are said not to have believed "for joy". But the Lord upbraided them for their arrant foolishness and plain unbelief.</p><p>Joy isn't really a cause for disbelief. It's the grace in the inspired record which makes that excuse for them. They preferred to spiritualize everything, as many do today, rather than face the actual implications of a Lord who is for real. They accepted it was Jesus, and yet they still disbelieved. Note in this context how the women said they had seen "a vision of Angels" rather than actual Angels (<em><a href='B:490 24:23'>Luk 24:23</a></em>).</p><p>This incident of eating was to yet again reassure them that He was for real. Note how later on, by the sea of Tiberias, Jesus again ate before them- He had to keep repeating Himself to get it home to them, that He was for real. If those men, who had heard the many predictions of resurrection from the lips of the Lord Himself, found it hard to believe He was for real when He stood before them- how understandably hard it is for us to grasp that He is for real.</p>


text:
<p><em>And they gave him a piece of a boiled fish</em>-</p><p> Eating fish was something which they had likely seen Him do in their days together in Galilee. There was a continuity between His mortal life and His immortal life. The same Jesus who walked the streets of Galilee shall come again, and be essentially the same. For immortality does not swallow up basic personality; it is that which is in fact saved.</p>


text:
<p><em>And he took it and ate before them</em>-</p><p> Taking and eating before the disciples is the very language of the last supper (<em><a href='B:470 26:26'>Mat 26:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 11:24'>1Co 11:24</a></em>). He was replicating both the last supper and the meal He had just had with the two in Emmaus. Eating together was a sign of acceptance and religious fellowship; the Lord was and is demonstrating that He accepts us in that He shares food with us. The form of that food is not important; here He uses fish rather than bread.</p>


text:
<p><em>And he said to them: These are my words which I spoke to you while I was yet with you, that all things necessary be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me</em>-</p><p> As the resurrected Lord stood before the disciples, he says: “These are my words which I spoke to you”, and goes on to say that His resurrection had been predicted throughout the Old Testament words of God. He had made both His words and the words of God into flesh as He stood there. His words were as it were of the same nature as the words of the Old Testament about Him. He didn’t say ‘Look everyone, I’ve risen!’. He just stood there, reminded them of the words of the prophets, and His own words, and said “These are my words”. He was so powerfully and completely the word made flesh. </p>


text:
<p><em>Then opened he their mind so that they might understand the scriptures</em>-</p><p> He had already opened the Scriptures to the two from Emmaus, and had opened their eyes. Now He does that to the whole group, and therefore does this a second time to the two from Emmaus.</p>&nbsp;<p>Prophecy does not have to refer to specific, lexical statements; it can refer to the spirit and implication behind the recorded words. Thus "the Scriptures" prophesied Christ's resurrection after three days (<em><a href='B:490 24:45'>Luk 24:45</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 15:3-4'>1Co 15:3-4</a></em>); but nowhere is this explicitly prophesied. It is implied in the spirit behind the types, e.g. of Jonah and <em><a href='B:10 22:4'>Gen 22:4</a></em>. So as 'prophecy' is not just the words but the spirit behind them, so prayer is not just the words, but the spirit in the man's heart who prays, even if the words come out wrong. See on <em><a href='B:510 10:4'>Act 10:4</a></em>. </p><p><em>And he said to them: Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day</em>-</p><p> This may be the rubric He used; quoting various Old Testament passages ["Thus it is written"] and then explaining how they meant that the Christ should suffer and rise again. This is how our teaching should also proceed; quoting the actual text of Scripture and then offering interpretation of the words read. </p>


text:
<p><em>And he said to them: Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day-</em></p><p> This may be the rubric He used; quoting various Old Testament passages [&quot;Thus it is written&quot;] and then explaining how they meant that the Christ should suffer and rise again. This is how our teaching should also proceed; quoting the actual text of Scripture and then offering interpretation of the words read.</p>


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<p><em>And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem</em></p><p>- See on <em><a href='B:510 10:35-36'>Act 10:35-36</a></em>. The parallel record to the preaching commissions of Mark 16 and Matthew 28 is found in <em><a href='B:490 24:45-47'>Luk 24:45-47</a></em>. There we read how the Lord explained to the disciples that their preaching of the Gospel "among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" was foretold in the Psalms and prophets. So the Bible student asks: <em>Where</em>&nbsp;in the Psalms and prophets? The Lord spoke as if the prophecies about this were copious. There do not seem to be any specific prophecies which speak of the twelve spreading the Gospel from Jerusalem in the first century. Instead we read of the Gospel being spread from Jerusalem <em>in the Kingdom</em>, and often the phrase "all nations" occurs in a Kingdom context, describing how "all nations" will come to worship Christ at Jerusalem (<em><a href='B:230 22:27'>Psa 22:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 67:2'>Psa 67:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 72:11'>Psa 72:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 72:17'>Psa 72:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 82:8'>Psa 82:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 86:9'>Psa 86:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 117:1'>Psa 117:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 2:2'>Isa 2:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 66:18-20'>Isa 66:18-20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 3:17'>Jer 3:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:340 7:14'>Dan 7:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:440 2:7'>Hag 2:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:450 8:23'>Zec 8:23</a></em>). This selection of "Psalms and prophets" is impressive. Yet the Lord Jesus clearly interpreted these future Kingdom passages as having relevance to the world-wide spreading of the Gospel. "All nations" also occurs in many passages exhorting us to praise Yahweh among all the nations of this world. The reason for this is that God's glory is so great it should be declared as far as possible by us. <em><a href='B:130 16:24-25'>1Ch 16:24-25</a></em> is typical of many such verses: "Declare his glory among the heathen; his marvellous works among all nations. <em>For</em>&nbsp;great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised... for all the gods of the people are idols". World-wide preaching is therefore an aspect of our praise of Yahweh, and as such it is a spiritual work which is timeless. Because the Kingdom is to spread world-wide, we should therefore spread the Good News of this coming Kingdom world-wide. In prospect- and no more than that, let it be noted- the Kingdom has been established in that Christ has all power in Heaven and earth (<em><a href='B:470 28:18'>Mat 28:18</a></em>). This is the language of <em><a href='B:340 7:14'>Dan 7:14</a></em> concerning the future Kingdom. The believer must live the Kingdom life now, as far as possible (<em><a href='B:520 13:12-13'>Rom 13:12-13</a></em>). In the Kingdom, we will be spreading the Gospel throughout this planet. In this life too we should live in the spirit of the Kingdom in this regard.</p><p>The preaching of the Gospel was prophesied as <em>beginning</em>&nbsp;at Jerusalem, Jesus said. If this world-wide preaching abruptly finished at the end of the first century, to begin&nbsp;again at Jerusalem in the Kingdom, surely this would be prophesied in the Old Testament? The impression one gets from the Old Testament passages listed above is that the Gospel would begin to spread from Jerusalem, and would <em>go on&nbsp;spreading</em> until the full establishment of the Kingdom. This explains why Christ's command to get up and go world-wide with the Gospel stands for all time. The command to preach to "all nations" would ring bells in Jewish minds with the promises to Abraham, concerning the blessing of forgiveness to come upon "all nations" through Messiah (<em><a href='B:10 18:18'>Gen 18:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 22:18'>Gen 22:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 26:4'>Gen 26:4</a></em>). Therefore God's people are to preach the Gospel of forgiveness in Christ to "all nations”. The offer of sharing in that blessing did not close at the end of the first century. Putting the "all nations" of the Abrahamic promises together with Christ's preaching commission leads to a simple conclusion: The Hope of Israel now applies to all nations; so go and tell this good news to all nations.</p><p>Luke uses the same word translated ‘preach’ in both Luke and the Acts [although the other Gospels use it only once]. In Luke we find the word in <em><a href='B:490 1:19'>Luk 1:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 2:10'>Luk 2:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 3:18'>Luk 3:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 4:18'>Luk 4:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 4:43'>Luk 4:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 7:22'>Luk 7:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 8:1'>Luk 8:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 9:6'>Luk 9:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 16:16'>Luk 16:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 20:1'>Luk 20:1</a></em>; and in Acts, in <em><a href='B:510 5:42'>Act 5:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:4'>Act 8:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:12'>Act 8:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:25'>Act 8:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:35'>Act 8:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:40'>Act 8:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 10:36'>Act 10:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 11:20'>Act 11:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 13:32'>Act 13:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 14:7'>Act 14:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 14:15'>Act 14:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 14:21'>Act 14:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 15:35'>Act 15:35</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 16:10'>Act 16:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 17:18'>Act 17:18</a></em>. Luke clearly saw the early ecclesia as preaching the same message as Jesus and the apostles; they continued what was essentially a shared witness. This means that we too are to see in the Lord and the twelve as they walked around Galilee the basis for our witness; we are continuing their work, with just the same message and range of responses to it. <em><a href='B:490 24:47'>Luk 24:47</a></em> concludes the Gospel with the command to go and preach remission of sins, continuing the work of the Lord Himself, who began His ministry with the proclamation of remission (<em><a href='B:490 4:18'>Luk 4:18</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:490 1:77'>Luk 1:77</a></em>). Acts stresses that the believers did just this; they preached remission of sins [s:w:] in Jesus’ Name, whose representatives they were: <em><a href='B:510 2:38'>Act 2:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 5:31'>Act 5:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 10:43'>Act 10:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 13:38'>Act 13:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 26:18'>Act 26:18</a></em>. &nbsp;See on <em><a href='B:510 1:1'>Act 1:1</a></em>.</p><p>As the Lord appeals to all nations, so should we. The prophecies which He interpreted as referring to the church spreading the Gospel world-wide are specifically described as prophecies about Him personally (<em><a href='B:490 24:44'>Luk 24:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 24:47'>Luk 24:47</a></em>: "All things which were written in the prophets and in the psalms, concerning <em>me</em>... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached..."). Thus the preachers of the Gospel would personally manifest Christ; which accounts for the special sense of His presence which they experience as they do this work (<em><a href='B:470 28:20'>Mat 28:20</a></em>).</p><p>Such is the power of our preaching, the possibility which our words of witness give to our hearers. We have such power invested in us! If we are slack to use it, the Lord’s glory is limited, and the salvation of others disabled. As if to bring this home, the New Testament quotes several passages evidently prophetic of the future Kingdom as having their fulfilment in the preaching of the Gospel today:</p><p>- <em><a href='B:290 2:2-4'>Isa 2:2-4</a></em> (the word of Yahweh <em>will</em> go out from Jerusalem) = the ecclesia’s witness to the world today, “beginning at Jerusalem” (<em><a href='B:490 24:47'>Luk 24:47</a></em>). This, the Lord said, was in fulfilment of the OT prophets- and He could only be referring to those like Isaiah.</p><p>- <em><a href='B:370 9:11-12'>Amo 9:11-12</a></em> had its fulfilment in the work of preaching to the Gentiles (<em><a href='B:510 15:13-18'>Act 15:13-18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 26:16-18'>Act 26:16-18</a></em>).</p><p>- Likewise <em><a href='B:290 54:12'>Isa 54:12</a></em> = <em><a href='B:550 4:27'>Gal 4:27</a></em>; we extend the joy of the Kingdom to our hearers.</p><p>- <em><a href='B:290 52:7'>Isa 52:7</a></em> = <em><a href='B:520 10:15'>Rom 10:15</a></em>.</p><p>- <em><a href='B:290 11:10'>Isa 11:10</a></em> = <em><a href='B:520 15:12'>Rom 15:12</a></em>.</p><p>The apparent inappropriacy or lack of context of these quotations need not worry us. It is not that they have no future fulfilment They evidently will have, at the Lord’s second coming. But God sees that which shall be as already happening; His perspective is outside of our kind of time. The ecclesia’s preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom to the world is effectively a spreading of the Kingdom to them; in that those who respond properly will ultimately be in God’s Kingdom. But God sees through that gap between their response and the final establishment of the Kingdom; He invites us to see it as if we have spread the Kingdom to them. As we present the Gospel to men and women of all races, we are enabling the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham. The more we preach, the more glorious is their fulfilment This is the power of our Gospel and the preaching of it. Let’s not treat it as something ordinary or optional or to be fitted in to our spare time.</p>


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<p>- see on <em><a href='B:490 1:45'>Luk 1:45</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 5:32'>Act 5:32</a></em>.</p><p><em>You are witnesses of these things</em>-</p><p> He died and rose as the representative of all men; and therefore this good news should be preached to all kinds and all races of people. Men from all nations were in prospect sprinkled by His blood (<em><a href='B:290 52:15'>Isa 52:15</a></em>); and therefore we must extend the knowledge of this to all men, both in our collective and personal witness. <em><a href='B:490 24:48'>Luk 24:48</a></em> simply comments that the disciples were witnesses to the resurrection and the fact that forgiveness and salvation was therefore potentially available to all men. The parallel records in Mt. and Mk. say that they were told to go out and witness to the resurrection world-wide. Putting them together it is apparent that if we are truly witnesses of the resurrection in our own faith, then part and parcel of this is to take this witness out into our own little worlds. </p><p>Matthew and Mark record how the Lord told the disciples to go world-wide with the message of His death and resurrection; He commanded them to do this. Luke’s account is different. He reminds them of His death and resurrection, and simply adds: “And you are witnesses of these things”. Not ‘you <em>will be</em>, I’m telling you to be, witnesses…’. The very fact of having seen and known them was of itself an imperative to bear witness to them. This is the outgoing power of the cross:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em>And I will send to you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high</em>-</p><p> John's record shows that they disobeyed this, returning to Galilee in disillusion, where the Lord met them again. The disciples then returned from Galilee to Jerusalem and were given the great commission again, as recorded in Matthew and Luke. The sending of what the Father promised refers to the Comforter, the abiding presence of the Lord Jesus in the hearts of His people, to such an extent that His physical absence is more than compensated for by this very real sense of His presence. Being clothed with heavenly power refers to the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, given to the disciples to help them take the Gospel to all the world. This is why the implication is that once they had received them, they were not to remain in Jerusalem, but to leave the city and go into all the world. The clothing with miraculous power was the first century manifestation of the gift of the Comforter, but the Comforter was and is a gift for all time.</p>


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<p><em>And he led them out until they were as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them</em>-</p><p> Whilst the disciples went from Bethany to the mount of Olives and there met the Angels, the point of ascension was from Bethany. It has been argued that Bethany counts as part of the mount of Olives, but checking out a map will indicate that this is a forced and desperate claim. He ascended from Bethany; and the next we know we read of them being told by Angels on the mount of Olives that the Lord shall return (<em><a href='B:510 1:12'>Act 1:12</a></em>). I suggest they hurried the two miles to the highest point nearby to watch His slow ascent into Heaven. He is therefore pictured in the house church at Bethany, and ascending from there, with hands raised in blessing upon His church, as the High Priest of the new Israel (<em><a href='B:30 9:22'>Lev 9:22</a></em>). </p>


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<p><em>And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven</em>-</p><p> The blessing would likely have been that of <em><a href='B:40 6:23'>Num 6:23</a></em>, with uplifted hands (:50). And He ascended with those uplifted hands, still uttering blessing upon them. This is how He was to be imagined in Heaven, blessing us, His wondering but obedient people. He died on the cross with hands likewise uplifted, so we are invited to see Him living out the spirit of His death for us even in His ascension and subsequent heavenly glory. </p>


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<p><em>And they did homage to him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy</em>-</p><p> Humanly speaking, they would have felt sad at His departure. But they had great joy. This is in exact fulfilment of the promise of the Comforter; that His physical departure would be more than compensated for by the gift of His spirit in their hearts which would result in His joy being within them. At His physical departure, this blessing was given to them. </p>


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<p><em>And were continually in the temple, praising God</em>-</p><p> They continued to hold the wrong idea that the temple was somehow the sacred space where God was to be praised. Their misunderstandings did not however mean that they were not legitimately in fellowship with the Father and Son. We have noted elsewhere that Luke's concluding words are connected with words at the opening of his gospel (see on :47). And here we have a clear connection with Anna, who was continually in the temple praising God (<em><a href='B:490 2:37'>Luk 2:37</a></em>). That woman is presented as representative of the disciples at this point, and thereby of the entire body of Christ, who are to be continually occupied in God's house with His service, based upon our experience of His Son.</p>


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<p><em>In the beginning-</em></p><p> John's Gospel expresses the same truths as the other Gospels, but in more spiritual and abstract terms. He chooses to record the Lord's more enigmatic and spiritual words, whereas the synoptics tend to record His more plain speaking. The Gospel records are transcripts of how men like John taught the Gospel message. John's Gospel was clearly aimed by him at Jewish people who were under the influence of pagan ideas and concepts which later morphed into Gnosticism. He uses the very terms they used, but redefines them. This takes some getting used to, and we are handicapped by not knowing the full range of terms he was seeking to redefine and reposition in a Christian context.</p><p>&quot;The beginning&quot; refers to the beginning of the Lord's ministry, both later in John (<a href='B:500 2:11'>Jn. 2:11<a href='B:500 2:11'>; <a href='B:500 8:25'>8:25</a> &quot;the same I said unto you from the beginning&quot;; <a href='B:500 15:27'>15:27</a> &quot;You have been with me from the beginning&quot;; <a href='B:500 16:4'>16:4</a> &quot;These things I did not tell you at the beginning&quot;; also <a href='B:690 1:1'>1 Jn. 1:1</a>; <a href='B:690 2:7'>2:7</a>,<a href='B:690 2:13-14'>13,14</a>,<a href='B:690 2:24'>24</a>; <a href='B:690 3:11'>3:11</a>); and in the other Gospels too (&quot;The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus&quot;, <a href='B:480 1:1'>Mk. 1:1</a>; &quot;[we] who from the beginning were eyewitnesses&quot;, <a href='B:490 1:2'>Lk. 1:2</a>). But there can be no doubt that the allusion is to the creation at the beginning of the physical world; but John is to use that in order to describe the huge power unleashed through the Spirit in the creation of a new world, a world of persons reborn, what Paul later terms the &quot;new creation&quot; (<a href='B:540 5:17'>2 Cor. 5:17</a>).</p><p>The Comforter passages make it clear that the disciples were to witness as Christ to this world exactly because they had been with the Lord from the beginning. John's gospel is his obedience to that. And so he explains that he is recounting how things were from the beginning off the Lord's ministry. And Luke does the same, writing that he too was a witness from the beginning and is therefore testifying to what he had seen (<a href='B:490 1:2'>Lk. 1:2</a>).</p><p>But just as the Lord's words can be read on various levels, so the ideas of John's Gospel can be. &quot;The beginning&quot; translates a noun, arche, a word which can just as comfortably be translated 'the chief one'. And indeed it is translated similarly at times throughout the New Testament- &quot;magistrate&quot;, &quot;corner&quot;, &quot;prince&quot; etc. The ultimate &quot;beginning&quot;, arche, chief one, was of course the Lord Jesus.<a href='B:580 1:18'> Col. 1:18</a> is clear: &quot;Who is the beginning [arche], the firstborn from the dead&quot;, of the new creation, the world of persons created in and through Him. So in the beginning, in the Lord Jesus, was the word, the logos, the message preached which had perfect congruence with His person. John's later writings also call Him &quot;the beginning&quot; (<a href='B:730 1:8'>Rev. 1:8</a>; <a href='B:730 3:14'>3:14</a>; <a href='B:730 21:6'>21:6</a>; <a href='B:730 22:13'>22:13</a>).</p><p>The whole prologue is set out as a hymn. The New Testament is full of very high adoration for the Lord Jesus. Since those words and phrases were chosen under the inspiration of God, His Father, we would be better advised to stick with them rather than try to invent our own terms and analogies in order to express His greatness. The structure of the original text of the prologue to John's Gospel regarding the word, and also <a href='B:570 2:9-11'>Phil. 2:9-11</a> regarding the exaltation of Jesus, are arranged in such a way that they appear to be hymns which were sung by the believers. Pliny the Younger (Epistle 10.96.7) writes of the Christians &quot;singing hymns to Christ as to a god&quot;; surely he had in mind these passages. It can often be that we adopt the very position falsely ascribed to us by our critics; and perhaps that's what happened here. The critics of early Christianity wrongly claimed that the Christians thought of Jesus as God; and this eventually became their position for the most part, although it was not originally. </p><p>Was the Word- </p><p>The essential logos of the Gospel is the message of Christ crucified. There in the cross is the kernel of everything; there was the &quot;beginning&quot; of the new creation. John later speaks of the Lord Jesus as being the 'faithful martyr' in His death, and thereby being &quot;the beginning [saw] of the [new] creation of God&quot; (<a href='B:730 3:14'>Rev. 3:14</a>). The beginning was not only at the beginning of the Lord's ministry; the essential beginning of the new creation was when the blood and water came out of His side.  Yahweh Himself was totally bound up in the death of His Son. God was there with Him and in Him, to the extent that He was in Christ there, reconciling the world unto Himself. In this sense, the logos of Christ and the death of the cross &quot;was God&quot;. There the Father &quot;was with&quot; the Son [see notes under <a href='B:500 16:25'>16:25</a>,<a href='B:500 16:32'>32</a>].</p><p>In Hebrew thought, it was quite common to speak of God as having an intention which was then fulfilled. Indeed, this kind of thing is found in the literature and epics of other Semitic languages. Thus the Exodus record records God's commands regarding the tabernacle, and then Moses' fulfilment of them. The prologue to John speaks of God's logos, His word or intention, coming to &quot;flesh&quot; in the Lord Jesus. This is classic Hebrew thinking, albeit written in Greek. We will demonstrate below that in Hebrew thought, a representative can be spoken of as being the person who sent them, or whom they represent. Thus the Hebrew way of reading <a href='B:500 1:1-14'>John 1:1-14</a> would never come anywhere near interpreting it as meaning that 'Jesus is God'. This is a result of not reading the passage against its Hebrew background.</p><p> </p><p>&quot;The word&quot;</p><p>Just look at the many times this phrase occurs in the Gospel records. It doesn't mean 'the whole Bible'. It means clearly enough and without any dispute 'the Gospel message' (e.g. <a href='B:480 2:2'>Mk. 2:2</a>; <a href='B:480 4:33'>4:33</a>; <a href='B:480 16:20'>16:20</a>; <a href='B:490 3:2'>Lk. 3:2</a>; <a href='B:500 12:48'>Jn. 12:48</a>; <a href='B:500 14:24'>14:24</a>; <a href='B:510 4:4'>Acts 4:4</a>; <a href='B:510 11:19'>11:19</a>). The Gospel was preached to Abraham in that it comprises the promises to Him and their fulfilment in Jesus (<a href='B:550 3:8'>Gal. 3:8</a>). That word of promise was &quot;made flesh&quot; in Jesus; &quot;the word of the oath&quot; of the new covenant, of the promises made to Abraham, &quot;maketh the son&quot; (<a href='B:650 7:28'>Heb. 7:28</a>). This is just another way of saying that the word– of the promises, of the Gospel- was made flesh in Jesus. Note how in <a href='B:520 9:6-9'>Rom. 9:6,9</a> &quot;the word&quot; is called &quot;the word of promise&quot;- those made to Abraham. The same Greek words translated 'Word' and 'made' occur together in <a href='B:530 15:54'>1 Cor. 15:54</a> - where we read of the word [AV &quot; saying&quot; ] of the Old Testament prophets being 'made' true by being fulfilled [AV &quot; be brought to pass&quot; ]. The word of the promises was made flesh, it was fulfilled, in Jesus. The 'word was made flesh', in one sense, in that the Lord Jesus was &quot; made...of the seed of David according to the flesh&quot; (<a href='B:520 1:3'>Rom. 1:3</a>)- i.e. God's word of promise to David was fulfilled in the fleshly person of Jesus. The Greek words for &quot; made&quot; and &quot; flesh&quot; only occur together in these two places - as if <a href='B:520 1:3'>Rom. 1:3</a> is interpreting <a href='B:500 1:14'>Jn. 1:14</a> for us. But note the admission of a leading theologian: &quot;Neither the fourth Gospel nor Hebrews ever speaks of the eternal Word…in terms which compel us to regard it as a person&quot;(1).</p><p>&quot; In the beginning was the word&quot;</p><p>John's Gospel tends to repeat the ideas of the other gospel records but in more spiritual terms. Matthew and Luke begin their accounts of the message by giving the genealogies of Jesus, explaining that His birth was the fulfilment, the 'making flesh', of the promises to Abraham and David. And Mark begins by defining his &quot;beginning of the gospel&quot; as the fact that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophets. John is really doing the same, in essence. But he is using more spiritual language. In the beginning was the word- the word of promise, the word of prophecy, all through the Old Testament. And that word was &quot;made flesh&quot; in Jesus, and on account of that word, all things in the new creation had and would come into being. Whilst John is written in Greek, clearly enough Hebrew thought is behind the words. &quot;The Hebrew term debarim [words] can also mean 'history'&quot; (2). The whole salvation history of God, from the promise in Eden onwards, was about the Lord Jesus and was made flesh in His life and death.</p><p>Luke's prologue states that he was an &quot;eyewitness and minister of the word…from the beginning&quot;; he refers to the word of the Gospel that later became flesh in Jesus. John's prologue is so similar: &quot;That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld…the word of life&quot; (<a href='B:690 1:1'>1 Jn. 1:1</a> RV). <a href='B:500 1:14'>Jn. 1:14</a> matched this with: &quot;The word was made flesh, and we beheld his glory&quot;. John 6 shows how John seeks to present Jesus Himself as the words which give eternal life if eaten / digested (Jn. 6:63). And some commented: &quot;This is a hard saying, who can hear him?&quot; (<a href='B:500 6:60'>Jn. 6:60</a> RVmg.), as if to present Jesus the person as the embodiment of His sayings / words.</p><p>Jesus was the word of God shown in a real, live person. All the principles which Old Testament history had taught, the symbology of the law, the outworking of the types of history, all this was now living and speaking in a person. Luke's Gospel makes the same point as John's but in a different way. Over 90% of Luke's Greek is taken from the Septuagint. All the time he is consciously and unconsciously alluding to the Old Testament as having its fulfilment in the things of Jesus. As an example of unconscious allusion, consider <a href='B:490 1:27'>Lk. 1:27</a>: &quot;A virgin betrothed to a man&quot;. This is right out of <a href='B:50 22:23'>Dt. 22:23</a> LXX &quot;If there be a virgin betrothed to a man…&quot;. The context is quite different, but the wording is the same. And in many other cases, Luke picks up phraseology from the LXX apparently without attention to the context. He saw the whole of the OT as having its fulfilment in the story of Jesus. He introduces his Gospel record as an account &quot;of those matters which have been fulfilled&quot; (<a href='B:490 1:1'>Lk. 1:1</a> RV). And &quot;those matters&quot; he defines in <a href='B:490 1:2'>Lk. 1:2</a> as the things of &quot;the word&quot;. The RV especially shows his stress on the theme of fulfilment (<a href='B:490 1:20'>Lk. 1:20</a>, <a href='B:490 1:23'>23</a>, <a href='B:490 1:37'>37</a>, <a href='B:490 1:45'>45</a>, <a href='B:490 1:54-55'>54, 55</a>, <a href='B:490 1:57'>57</a>, <a href='B:490 1:70'>70</a>). In essence he is introducing his Gospel just as John does.</p><p>In passing, it is interesting to reflect upon the Lord's comment that where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He is in their midst. For this evidently alludes to a Rabbinic saying preserved in the Mishnah (Aboth 3.2) that &quot;If two sit together and study Torah [the first five books of Moses], the divine presence rests between them&quot;. The Lord was likening Himself (His 'Name') to the Torah, the Old Testament word of God; and His presence would be felt if that Law was studied as it ought to be.</p><p>In confirmation of all this, it has been observed that &quot; The numerical use of logos in the Johannine writings overwhelmingly favours &quot; message&quot; (some 25 times), not a personified word; and elsewhere in the NT the use of &quot; word&quot; with genitival complement also support the message motif: &quot; word of God&quot; ...&quot; word of the Kingdom&quot; ...&quot; word of the cross&quot; &quot; (3). So our equation of &quot; the word&quot; with the essence of the Gospel message rather than Jesus personally is in harmony with other occurrences of logos. That said, there evidently is a personification of sorts going on. Personifications of the word of God weren't uncommon in the literature of the time. Thus Wisdom of Solomon 18:15 speaks of how &quot;Thine all powerful word leaped from heaven down from the royal throne&quot;. Because &quot;for the Hebrew the word once spoken has a kind of substantive existence of its own&quot; (4) , e.g. a blessing or curse had a kind of life of their own, it's not surprising that logos is personified.</p><p>One way of understanding the prologue in Jn. 1 is to consider how it is interpreted in the prologue we find in John's first epistle. It appears that John's Gospel was the standard text for a group of converts that grew up around him; John then wrote his epistles in order to correct wrong interpretations of his Gospel record that were being introduced by itinerant false teachers into the house churches which he had founded. For example, &quot; God so loved the world...&quot; (<a href='B:500 3:16'>Jn. 3:16</a>) seems to have been misunderstood by the false prophets against whom John was contending, to mean that a believer can be of the world. Hence <a href='B:690 2:16'>1 Jn. 2:16</a> warns the brethren that they cannot 'love the world' in the sense of having worldly behaviour and desires. On the other hand, John saw the faithful churches to whom he was writing as those who had been faithful to the Gospel he had preached to them, as outlined in the Gospel of John. He had recorded there the promise that &quot; You will know the truth&quot; (<a href='B:500 8:32'>Jn. 8:32</a>), and he writes in his letters to a community &quot; who have come to know the truth&quot; (<a href='B:700 1:1'>2 Jn. 1</a>), i.e. who had fulfilled and obeyed the Gospel of Jesus which he had preached to them initially. This thesis is explained at length in Raymond Brown(5) .</p><p>With this in mind, it appears that the prologue of 1 Jn. is a conscious allusion to and clarification of that of Jn. 1. Consider the following links:</p><p>In the beginning was the word</p><p>What was from the beginning</p><p>The word was with God</p><p>The eternal life which was with [Gk. in the presence of] God</p><p>In [the word] was life</p><p>The word of life</p><p>The life was the light of men</p><p>God is light</p><p>The light shines in darkness</p><p>In Him there is no darkness at all</p><p>The word became flesh</p><p>This life was revealed</p><p>And dwelt amongst us</p><p>and was manifested to us</p><p>We beheld his glory</p><p>What we looked at</p><p>Of his fullness we have all received</p><p>The fellowship which we have is with</p><p>Through Jesus Christ</p><p>the Father and with his son</p><p>The only Son of God</p><p>Jesus Christ</p><p> </p><p>You will note that the parallel for &quot;the word&quot; of Jn. 1 is 'the life' in 1 Jn. 1, the life which Jesus lived, the type of life which is lived by the Father in Heaven. That word was made flesh (<a href='B:500 1:14'>Jn. 1:14</a>) in the sense that this life was revealed to us in the life and death of Jesus. So the word becoming flesh has nothing to do with a pre-existent Jesus physically coming down from Heaven and being born of Mary. It could well be that the evident links between the prologue to John's Gospel and the prologue to his epistle are because he is correcting a misunderstanding that had arisen about the prologue to his Gospel. 1 Jn. 1:2 spells it out clearly- it was the impersonal &quot;eternal life&quot; which was &quot;with the Father&quot;, and it was this which &quot;became flesh&quot; in a form that had been personally touched and handled by John in the personal body of the Lord Jesus. And perhaps it is in the context of incipient trinitarianism that John warns that those who deny that Jesus was &quot;in the flesh&quot; are actually antiChrist.</p><p>Notes</p><p>(1) G.B. Caird, Christ For Us Today (London: SCM, 1968) p. 79.</p><p>(2) Oscar Cullmann, The Christology Of The New Testament (London: SCM, 1971) p. 261.</p><p>(3) Raymond Brown, The Epistles of John (Garden City: Doubleday, 1982) p. 164.</p><p>(4) C.H. Dodd, The Interpretation Of The Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1960) p. 264.</p><p>(5) The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979) and in his The Epistles of John (Garden City: Doubleday, 1982). These are lengthy and at times difficult reads, and I can't agree with all the conclusions, and yet I'd heartily recommend them to serious Bible students. One pleasing feature of his writings is his frequent admission that Trinitarian theology is an interpretation of what the NT writers, especially John, actually wrote- and they themselves didn't have the trinity in mind when they wrote as they did. He comments on the hymn of Phil. 2 about Christ taking the &quot;form of God&quot;: &quot;Many scholars today doubt that &quot;being in the form of God&quot; and &quot;accepting the form of a servant&quot; refers to incarnation&quot; [The Community Of The Beloved Disciple p. 46].</p><p>And the word was towards God, and the word was Divine- That is a strictly correct translation. The word of the Gospel, which is epitomized in the life and person of the mortal Lord Jesus, was Divine. John is writing for Jews, whose supreme focus upon God led them to ignore the possibility of His deep manifestation in other persons or things. John is emphasizing that the message of the Gospel, the life and person of His Son, is the essence of Him. To believe in God meant to believe the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. To reject that was to reject God Himself.</p><p>Not believing in God and not believing in His word of the Gospel are paralleled in <a href='B:690 5:10'>1 Jn. 5:10</a>. God is His word. The word &quot;is&quot; God in that God is so identified with His word. David parallels trusting in God and trusting in His word (<a href='B:230 56:3-4'>Ps. 56:3,4</a>). He learnt this, perhaps, through the experience of his sin with Bathsheba. For in that matter, David &quot;despised the commandment (word) of the Lord... you despised me&quot; (<a href='B:100 19:9-10'>2 Sam. 12:9,10</a>). David learnt that his attitude to God's word was his attitude to God- for the word of God, in that sense, was and is God. By our words we personally will be condemned or justified- because we too 'are' our words. When Samuel told Eli of the prophetic vision which he had received, Eli commented: &quot;It is the Lord&quot; (<a href='B:90 3:18'>1 Sam. 3:18</a>). He meant 'It is the word of the Lord'; but he saw God as effectively His word. &quot;The word&quot;, the &quot;word of the Kingdom&quot;, &quot;the Gospel&quot;, &quot;the word of God&quot; are all parallel expressions throughout the Gospels. The records of the parable of the sower speak of both &quot;the word of God&quot; (<a href='B:490 8:11-150'>Lk. 8:11-15</a>) and &quot;the word of the Kingdom&quot; (<a href='B:470 13:19'>Mt. 13:19</a>). The word / Gospel of God refers to the message which is about God, just as the &quot;word of the Kingdom&quot; means the word which is about the Kingdom, rather than suggesting that the word is one and the same as the Kingdom. &quot;The gospel of God&quot; means the Gospel which is about God, not the Gospel which is God Himself in person (<a href='B:520 1:1'>Rom. 1:1</a>; <a href='B:520 15:16'>15:16</a>; <a href='B:540 11:7'>2 Cor. 11:7</a>; <a href='B:590 2:2'>1 Thess. 2:2</a>,<a href='B:590 2:8-9'>8,9</a>; <a href='B:670 4:17'>1 Pet. 4:17</a>). So, the word of God, the word which was God, the Gospel of God, was made flesh in Jesus. &quot;The word of Jesus&quot; and &quot;the word of God&quot; are interchangeable (<a href='B:510 19:10'>Acts 19:10</a> cp. <a href='B:510 19:20'>20</a>; <a href='B:590 1:8'>1 Thess. 1:8</a> cp. <a href='B:590 2:13'>2:13</a>); as is &quot;the word of the Gospel&quot; and &quot;the word of Jesus&quot; (<a href='B:510 15:7'>Acts 15:7</a> cp. <a href='B:510 15:35'>35</a>). The word wasn't directly equivalent to Jesus; He manifested the word, He showed us by His life and words and personality what the Kingdom was like, what God is like; for the word which He &quot;became&quot; was about God, and about the Kingdom. He was the entire Gospel, of God and of His Kingdom, made flesh. He could speak of His words abiding in us (<a href='B:500 15:7'>Jn. 15:7</a>), and yet make this parallel to He personally abiding in us (Jn. 15:4,5; 14:20). &quot;The word was God&quot; can't mean that the word is identical with God- for the word &quot;was with God&quot;, or &quot;was in God's presence&quot;. The NEB therefore renders: &quot;What God was, the Word was&quot;. G.B. Caird suggests the translation: &quot;In the beginning was a purpose, a purpose in the mind of God, a purpose which was God's own being&quot; (1). </p><p>In the person of Jesus, there was an uncanny and never before, never again experienced congruence between a human being and his words. And our witness should be modelled on His pattern- we should be the living embodiment of the doctrines we preach. The message or word of Jesus was far more than the words that He spoke from His lips. In one sense, He revealed to the disciples everything that He had heard from the Father (<a href='B:500 15:15'>Jn. 15:15</a>); and yet in another, more literal sense, He lamented that there was much more He could tell them in words, but they weren't able to bear it (<a href='B:500 16:12'>Jn. 16:12</a>). His person and character, which they would spend the rest of their lives reflecting upon, was the 'word' of God in flesh to its supremacy; but this doesn't necessarily mean that they heard all the literal words of God drop from the lips of Jesus. I have shown elsewhere that both the Father and Son use language, or words, very differently to how we normally do. The manifestation of God in Christ was not only a matter of the Christ speaking the right words about God. For as He said, His men couldn't have handled that in its entirety. The fullness of manifestation of the word was in His life, His character, and above all in His death, which Jn. 1:14 may be specifically referring to in speaking of how John himself beheld the glory of the word being made flesh. It seems to me that many of us need to learn these things in our hearts; for our preaching has so often been a matter of literal words, Bible lectures, seminars, flaunting our correct exposition of Bible passages and themes. When the essential witness must be of a life lived, a making flesh of the word which is God. To ignore this will lead us into literalistic definitions of literal words, arguments about statements of faith, endless additions of words and clauses to clarify other words...whereas &quot; the word&quot; which the Lord Jesus manifested was not merely human words. There was far more to it than that. It was and is and must ever be a word made flesh. This is why nothing can replace personal witness and personal, one on one teaching as the way that conversions are really made. And yet increasingly we tend to try to use media to preach- TV, CDs, internet, video, tapes etc. There is nothing personally 'live' in all this; there can be no communication of truths through their incarnation in our own personalities. And yet this was how God communicated with us in His Son; and how we too reveal His word in flesh to others.</p><p>&quot;The word was God&quot;. The words of the Lord Jesus were the words which He had 'heard' from the Father. But this doesn't mean that He was a mere fax machine, relaying literal words which the Father whispered in His ear to a listening world. When the disciples finally grasped something of the real measure of Jesus, they gasped: &quot;You do not even need that a person ask you questions!&quot; (Jn. 16:30). They had previously treated Jesus as a Rabbi, of whom questions were asked by his disciples and then cleverly answered by him. They finally perceived that here was more than a Jewish Rabbi. They came to that conclusion, they imply, not by asking Him questions comprised of words and hearing the cleverly ordered words that comprised His answers. The words He spoke and manifested were of an altogether higher quality and nature than mere lexical items strung together. Here was none other than the Son of God, the Word made flesh in person. And this, of course, was why the unbelieving Jews just didn't understand the literal words which He spoke. They asked Him to speak plainly to them (Jn. 10:24); and the Lord's response was that their underlying problem was not with His language, but with the simple fact that they did not believe that He, the carpenter from Nazareth, was the Son of God. Is it going too far to suggest that all intellectual failure to understand the teaching of Jesus is rooted in a simple lack of faith and perception of Him as a person? </p><p>As the word of God, the message of God in flesh, Jesus was God's agent, and as such could be counted as God, although He was not God Himself in person. P. Borgen brings this out in an article 'God's Agent In The Fourth Gospel' (2). He quotes the halakic or legal principle of the rabbis, that &quot;An agent is the like the one who sent him&quot;, and quotes the Babylonian Talmud Qiddushin 43a: &quot;He ranks as his master's own person&quot;. This, therefore, was how those in the 1st century who understood Jesus to be God's agent would have understood Him. John Robinson, one time Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, observed that popular Christianity &quot;says simply that Jesus was God, in such a way that the terms 'Christ' and 'God' are interchangeable. But nowhere in Biblical usage is this so. The New Testament says that Jesus was the Word of God, it says that God was in Christ, it says that Jesus is the Son of God; but it does not say that Jesus was God, simply like that&quot;(3). And he goes on to apply this good sense to an analysis of the phrase &quot;the word was God&quot; in John 1. He argues that this translation is untenable because: &quot;In Greek this [translation &quot;the word was God&quot;] would most naturally be represented by 'God' with the article, not theos but ho theos. Equally, St. John is not saying that Jesus is a 'divine' man… that would be theios. The NEB, I believe, gets the sense pretty exactly with its rendering, 'And what God was, the Word was'. In other words, if one looked at Jesus, one saw God&quot;- in the sense that His perfect character reflected that of the Father (4). The lack of article [&quot;the] before &quot;God&quot; is significant. &quot;In omitting the article before theos, the author intends to say that the Logos is not actually God but only... a divine emanation&quot; (5).</p><p>Notes</p><p>(1) G.B. Caird, The Language And Imagery Of The Bible (London: Duckworth, 1988) p. 102. </p><p>(2) In Religions In Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 1968) pp. 137-148.</p><p>(3) John Robinson, Honest To God (London: S.C.M., 1963) p. 70.</p><p>(4) Ibid p. 71.</p><p>(5) Oscar Cullmann, The Christology Of The New Testament (London: S.C.M., 1971) p. 266. </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 1:2'>Joh 1:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>This existed, in the beginning, with God</em>-</p><p> The word, not the Lord personally, existed in the beginning with God. As noted above, the essence of the Gospel was not made up by God at the time of Jesus, as John's Jewish audience tended to think. His purpose in His Son had been from the beginning; in whatever way one wants to read "the beginning". Be it the beginning of the Christian message or the beginning of creation. God is not making up His story as He goes along, as it were. That was the typical Jewish objection to the Gospel; that it is something new, and they preferred to stay with what they considered to be the original. The point is that the original essence of God was the things concerning His Son and His Kingdom.</p><p>The Hebrew idea of being "with" someone can carry the idea of being 'in their presence'. <em><a href='B:120 5:1-2'>2Ki 5:1-2</a></em> speak of how Naaman was "with" his master, and the RVmg. gives "before" or 'in the presence of' as a translation of this idiom. He is paralleled in the record with the maid who was "before" (RVmg:) her mistress, Naaman's wife. When we read that the word was "with" God, the idea is that the word was always before God, in His presence, in His perspective. Applied to an abstract idea like the logos, surely the idea is that God always had this plan for a Son before Him, in His presence / perspective.</p><p>The idea of a “word” being “with” God or even another person has an Old Testament background. Job comments: “Yet these things you have concealed in your heart, I know that this is with you" <em><a href='B:220 10:13'>Job 10:13</a></em>; NIV “in your mind”). Similarly <em><a href='B:220 23:13-14'>Job 23:13-14</a></em>: "What his soul desires, that he does, for he performs what is appointed for me, and many such decrees are with him". God’s essential plans are therefore ‘with Him’, in this figure of speech. When those plans are revealed in words, i:e. they are openly verbalized, it would be true to say: "I will instruct you in the power of God; what is with the Almighty I will not conceal" (<em><a href='B:220 27:11'>Job 27:11</a></em>). Wisdom, personified as a woman, was “with God” before creation- it was not ‘with’ the sea, but it was ‘with’ God (<em><a href='B:220 28:14'>Job 28:14</a></em>). To hold a plan in one's own mind is to have it ‘with’ them. The Hebrew text of <em><a href='B:10 40:14'>Gen 40:14</a></em> bears this out, when Joseph is begged: “Remember me with yourself”. So for the essential purpose of God in His Son to be ‘with’ Him does not in any sense imply that a person was literally ‘with’ God in Heaven. Note the parallel between the word of God and the work of God in <em><a href='B:230 106:13'>Psa 106:13</a></em>: “They soon forgot his works; they waited not for his counsel”. Whatever God says / plans comes to concrete fulfilment; and the idea of a Son was always in His mind. That word became flesh, became real and actual, in the person of Jesus.</p><p>The basic idea in John 1 is repeated in Proverbs 8. In the beginning, there was a logos / word / intention with the Father. His ‘idea’ of having a Son was not thought up at the last minute, as some sort of expediency in order to cope with the unexpected problem of human sin, as some of the critics and false teachers of the first century taught. In fact, it wouldn’t be going too far to say that John actually has Proverbs 8 in mind when speaking about the logos being in the beginning with the Father. <em><a href='B:240 8:22-31'>Pro 8:22-31</a></em> (ASV) reads: “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth; While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the beginning of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there: When he set a circle upon the face of the deep, When he made firm the skies above, When the fountains of the deep became strong, When he gave to the sea its bound, That the waters should not transgress his commandment, When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I was by him, as a master workman; And I was daily his delight, Rejoicing always before him, Rejoicing in his habitable earth; And my delight was with the sons of men”.</p><p>The key issue is whether “wisdom” in Proverbs is in fact the Lord Jesus personally. A brief glance at Proverbs surely indicates that wisdom is being personified as a woman. Wisdom in Proverbs stands at the gates and invites men to come listen to her. She dwells with prudence (<em><a href='B:240 8:12'>Pro 8:12</a></em>), and in Solomon’s time cried out to men as they entered the city (<em><a href='B:240 8:1-3'>Pro 8:1-3</a></em>). None of these things are intended to be taken literally. “Wisdom” is wisdom- albeit personified. Wisdom was “possessed” by God- and yet the Hebrew word translated “possessed” is defined by Strong as meaning ‘to create’. When God started His “way” or path with men, He had principles and purpose. He didn’t make up His principles as He went along. And this was what was being said by John’s first century critics. Therefore John alluded to Proverbs 8 in explaining that the essential purpose of the Father was all summarized and epitomized in the person of His Son; and that logos was created / conceived by the Father from the very beginning. Note that <em><a href='B:240 8:24-25'>Pro 8:24-25</a></em> describes wisdom as being “brought forth” by the Father from the beginning. Again, God as it were hatched a plan. Even if we were to equate wisdom with Jesus personally, He was still created / brought forth from the Father. Somewhat different to the false Trinitarian notion of an ‘uncreate’ Jesus who ‘eternally existed’. Wisdom was the “master workman” (<em><a href='B:240 8:30'>Pro 8:30</a></em>), or ‘the one trusted / believed in’ (Heb:)- in the sense that all of God’s natural creation was made according to and reflective of the principles of “wisdom”. John’s allusion to Proverbs 8 shows that this “wisdom” was above all to be embodied and epitomized in God’s Son. From this it follows that the whole of the natural creation was designed with the Lord Jesus in mind. Somehow it speaks of Him; will be used by Him; and will in some sense be liberated and redeemed by Him from “the bondage of corruption” to share the glorious liberty of us God’s children (<em><a href='B:520 8:21-24'>Rom 8:21-24</a></em>). And perhaps this is why we sense that the Son of God was strangely at peace with the natural creation around Him, and could so effortlessly extract deep spiritual lessons from the birds, flowers and clouds around Him. “Then I was by Heb. toward him” (<em><a href='B:240 8:30'>Pro 8:30</a></em>) is the idea behind the Greek text of <em><a href='B:500 1:1'>Joh 1:1</a></em>: “The word was toward God”. It wasn’t Jesus personally who was with God or God-ward; it was the word / wisdom /&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;which was, and this was then “made flesh” in the person of the Lord Jesus. And this&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;was the "wisdom" in Proverbs.</p><p>We’ve demonstrated that John’s Gospel begins with the idea that the “word” of God in the Old Testament was made flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus. But John actually continues that theme throughout his Gospel. He continually refers to things which the Jews saw symbols of the Torah- and applies them to Jesus. Examples include the bread / manna and water, and also light. The Assumption of Moses speaks of the Torah as “the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world”- and this is exactly the language of <em><a href='B:500 1:9'>Joh 1:9</a></em> about Christ. Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to discover that nearly all the phrases used in the prologue to John’s Gospel are alluding to what Jewish writers had said about the “Wisdom of God”, especially in Proverbs and the apocryphal writings known as the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus (1). And they understood “Wisdom” to primarily refer to the Torah. For example, <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em> RVmg. states that the Lord Jesus as the word made flesh “tabernacled amongst us”. Yet <em>Sir_24:8</em> speaks of Wisdom ‘tabernacling’ amongst Israel:&nbsp;<em>Skenoo</em>, the verb ‘to tabernacle’, is of course related to the noun skene, the tabernacle. As Israel lived in tents in the wilderness, God too came and lived with them in a tent- called the tabernacle, the tent where God could be met. The idea was that God wasn’t so far from them, He chose to come and be like them- they lived in tents, so He too lived in a tent. He didn't build a huge house or palace to live in- because that's not how His people lived. He ‘tented’ in a tent like them. This pointed forward to the genuine humanity of the Lord Jesus; for the human condition is likened to a tent in <em><a href='B:540 5:1'>2Co 5:1</a></em>. So rather than proving that ‘Jesus was God’, this whole prologue to John’s Gospel actually proves otherwise.</p><p>The language of pre-existence was applied by the Jews to the Torah and Wisdom, and so when John demonstrates that the ultimate Wisdom / Torah / logos / word which was from the beginning has now been fulfilled in and effectively replaced by Jesus, he’s going to reference that same ‘pre-existence’ language to make his point. As an example, the Mishnah stated (Aboth Nathan) that “Before the world was made the Torah was written and lay in the bosom of God” (2). John’s desire is that his fellow Jews quit these fanciful ideas and realize that right now, in Heaven, the Son of God is in the bosom of the Father (<em><a href='B:500 1:18'>Joh 1:18</a></em>). He right now is the word-made-flesh. The uninspired Jewish writings spoke of the descent and re-ascent of Wisdom (1 Enoch 42; 4 <em><a href='B:150 5:9'>Ezr 5:9</a></em>; Ezra 2 Bar. 48:36; 3 Enoch <em><a href='B:500 5:12'>Joh 5:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:3'>Joh 6:3</a></em>), and Philo especially connects Wisdom and the Logos. It seems that these wrong Jewish ideas found their ways into Christianity, and were taken over and wrongly applied to Jesus. Indeed I would go so far as to argue that John's 'Logos' passage in <em><a href='B:500 1:1-14'>Joh 1:1-14</a></em> is in fact a deconstruction of those wrong ideas; he alludes to them and corrects them, just as Moses alluded to incorrect pagan myths of creation and shows a confused Israel in the wilderness what the true story actually was:&nbsp;</p><p>________________________________________</p><p>Notes</p><p>(1) This is shown at great length throughout Rendel Harris,&nbsp;<em>The Origin of The Prologue To St. John’s Gospel</em>&nbsp;(Cambridge: C:U:P:, 1917):&nbsp;</p><p>(2) Cited in C:H. Dodd,&nbsp;<em>The Interpretation Of The Fourth Gospel</em>&nbsp;(Cambridge: C:U:P:, 1953) p. 86.</p>


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<p><em>All things created came into existence on account of it; and without it nothing created came into existence- </em></p><p>The &quot;it&quot; can as well be translated &quot;him&quot;. Speaking of the logos as a person was quite common amongst the Jews- and they in no way understood that God could have any other god in existence or equal with Him. One of the most thorough surveys of the logos theme concludes: &quot;It is an error to see in such personifications an approach to personalisation. Nowhere either in the Bible or in the extra-canonical literature of the Jews is the word of God a personal agent&quot; (1). It was the apostate Jew Philo who began to speak of the logos as &quot;the second God, who is his logos... God's firstborn, the logos&quot; (2). And it was this interpretation which obviously came to influence Christians desperate for justification of their idea of a Divine Jesus; but such justification is simply not to be found in God's word. All talk of a &quot;second God&quot; is utterly unBiblical.</p><p>However, whilst in a sense the logos was God's word, plan and intent personified, it became actual flesh / concrete reality in the person of Jesus. That God created and accomplished the physical creation by His word was an obvious Old Testament doctrine (<a href='B:290 55:11'>Is. 55:11</a>). By the time John was writing his Gospel [somewhat later than the others], the idea of believers being a new creation in Christ would have been developed in the early ecclesia (<a href='B:540 5:17'>2 Cor. 5:17</a> etc.). The Greek translated &quot;made by…&quot; occurs often in John's Gospel. It clearly describes how the Gospel of the Lord Jesus 'made' new men and women; lives were transformed into something new. The phrase is used in the immediate context of John 1: &quot;to become ['be made'] the sons of God&quot; (<a href='B:500 1:12'>1:12</a>), in that grace and truth came ['were made'] by Jesus (<a href='B:500 1:17'>1:17</a>). &quot;All things&quot; therefore refers to the &quot;all things&quot; of the new creation. Note how Jesus came unto &quot;his own things&quot; (1:11 N.I.V.), i.e. to the Jewish people. &quot;All things&quot; which were made by him therefore comfortably refers to the &quot;all things&quot; of the new creation- which is just how Paul uses the phrase (<a href='B:560 1:10'>Eph. 1:10</a>,<a href='B:560 1:22'>22</a>; <a href='B:560 4:10'>4:10</a>; <a href='B:580 1:16-20'>Col. 1:16-20</a>). Quite simply all of us, in &quot;all things&quot; of our spiritual experience, owe them all to God's word of promise and it's fulfilment in Christ. This is how totally central are the promises to Abraham! &quot;All things were made by him&quot;!</p><p>Consider other occurrences of &quot;made by&quot; in John's Gospel:</p><p><a href='B:500 4:14'>4:14</a> The water of the life of Jesus shall be ['made'] in the believer &quot;a well of water springing up into everlasting life&quot;</p><p><a href='B:500 5:9'>5:9</a>,<a href='B:500 5:14'>14</a> the lame man &quot;was made&quot; whole</p><p><a href='B:500 10:16'>10:16</a> the believers shall be made (RV 'shall become') one flock</p><p><a href='B:500 12:36'>12:36</a> may be ['made'], RV 'become', &quot;the children of light&quot;</p><p><a href='B:500 15:8'>15:8</a> So shall ye be ['made'] my disciples</p><p><a href='B:500 16:20'>16:20</a> Your sorrow shall be turned ['made'] into joy.</p><p>All these examples speak of the creative power of the Lord Jesus in human lives, through the agency of the Spirit. This Spirit was poured out as a result of His sacrifice. The very same Greek words are used in <a href='B:500 19:36'>19:36</a> [cp. <a href='B:490 24:21'>Lk. 24:21</a>] in describing the cross: &quot;These things were done [s.w. 'made']&quot;. All things of the new creation were made on account of His cross. </p><p>&quot;Apart from him not a thing came to be&quot; (<a href='B:500 1:3'>Jn. 1:3</a>) is a phrase repeated by the Lord Jesus in <a href='B:500 15:5'>Jn. 15:5</a>, where He says that &quot;apart from me&quot; we can bring forth no spiritual fruit. The things that came into being in <a href='B:500 1:3'>Jn. 1:3</a> would therefore appear to be the things of the new life enabled and empowered in Christ. In this sense Jesus can be described as the creator of a &quot;new creation&quot; (<a href='B:540 5:17'>2 Cor. 5:17</a>), a new world, but a world of persons. The allusion is indeed to the power unleashed at the natural creation but the reference is not to that, but to the new world of believers in Christ. But in practice, it is the word of the Gospel, the message of Jesus, which brings this about in the lives of those who hear and respond to it. We are born again by the word, the &quot;seed&quot; of the living God (<a href='B:670 1:23'>1 Pet. 1:23</a> RV mg.). In this arresting, shocking analogy, the &quot;word&quot; of the Gospel, the word which was made flesh in the person of Jesus, is likened to the seed or sperm of God. We were begotten again by &quot;the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creations&quot; (<a href='B:660 1:18'>James 1:18</a>). In God's word, in all that is revealed in it of the person of our Lord Jesus, we come face to face with the imperative which there is in what we know of Him to be like Him. In this feature of God's word, as it is in the Bible record and therefore and thereby as it is in and of His Son, we have the ultimate creative power, the dynamism so desperately needed by humanity, to transform our otherwise shapeless and formless lives. And in a multitude of lives, &quot;All things were made by him&quot;. As the Lord Jesus was sent into this world, so are we. We evidently didn't personally 'pre-exist'; and so we cannot reason that He did because He was sent by the Father. 'Sending' in Scripture can refer to being commissioned to speak forth God's word (<a href='B:290 48:16'>Is. 48:16</a>; <a href='B:300 7:25'>Jer. 7:25</a>; <a href='B:330 3:4-5'>Ez. 3:4,5</a>; <a href='B:450 2:8-11'>Zech. 2:8-11</a>). Thus God is often described as sending forth His prophets. We too must allow ourselves to be sent forth as our Lord was, making the word of the Gospel flesh in us as it was in Him. For like Him, we personally are the message which we preach. The word of God / the Gospel is as seed (<a href='B:670 1:23'>1 Pet. 1:23</a>); and yet we believers end our probations as seed falling into the ground, which then rises again in resurrection to be given a body and to eternally grow into the unique type of person which we are now developing (<a href='B:530 15:38'>1 Cor. 15:38</a>). The good seed which is sown is interpreted by the Lord both as the word of God (<a href='B:490 8:11'>Lk. 8:11</a>), and as &quot;the children of the Kingdom&quot; (<a href='B:470 13:38'>Mt. 13:38</a>). This means that the word of the Gospel becomes flesh in us as it did in our Lord. The word of the Gospel is not, therefore, merely dry theoretical propositions; it elicits a life and a person. We will be changed; not just physically, but we will each be given our own, unique 'body', as Paul puts it. There will be eternal continuity between who we now become, and who we grow into throughout eternity. This is the amazing power of the word of the Gospel; for this is the seed, which transforms the essential you and me into a seed which will rise up to great things in God's future Kingdom. In all this, the Lord was and is our pattern. &quot;All things were made by him&quot;.</p>


