John 19:31 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 19:31

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What a terrible, terrible thing! Crucifixion was bad enough. There were two thieves, bandits, murderers too, violent thieves. They had been free for some time. They were fit and healthy young men. The authorities had not succeeded in catching them we may assume. They always managed to escape. They wielded the sword effectively. What was crucifixion? It was a way of humiliating them. The people would see these glorified bandits nailed through hands and feet. That said something – you are disabled. You are going to die, of course, but even if you didn’t die you would be disabled. Your hands have been impaled. You will never be a swordsman again. You will never be a thief again. And your feet – you will never be fleet of foot. You are going to be hung in public, utterly disabled as a criminal. Not even in the back of their minds can anybody wonder at you and rather admire your skill and your boldness and so on. They will see you as a wrecked creature. And then if you don’t die quickly enough we will smash your legs. Break the legs? The Greek term actually is quite strong and it can be construed ‘smashing to splinters’ the legs. It was utter humiliation as well as suffering and punishment and death. And Christ, the perfect Son of God, between such thieves was subjected to exactly the same.Now the Romans would leave the bodies for weeks the experts tell us. They would leave them until the rotting was well advanced. But the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees couldn’t have that in Jerusalem. Especially it was the sabbath coming and it was a very special sabbath, a Passover sabbath and they were horrified because they were sticklers for the details of their ceremonial law, observing the tiniest niceties. What hypocrisy! Can’t you see it? They have shouted out and screamed for the murder of a man and yet they are most concerned that there should be no defilement, no ceremonial defilement. It is hypocrisy in its extreme form at Calvary.

Application

No Passion of Christ film or any other film could possibly portray the suffering and death of Christ on Calvary. And in fact I think it only takes away. Do you know that when that film came out there were Christian people the world over, many so-called leaders, and they said this is marvellous, this is wonderful, this will teach people. It doesn’t teach people. It takes away from the meaning of Calvary because you can only depict in this way the human sufferings, the physical sufferings. And the physical sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were, were just nothing, an immeasurably tiny part of his sufferings which were spiritual and in his soul, and the terrible desolation of separation from the Father in his experience as the God-man for us. This was the eternal weight of punishment. Imagine eternal punishment of all the millions and millions and millions of people who would ever be saved, focused and concentrated on Christ for six hours. Why that is impossible to conceive. We just have to bow our heads and say what he suffered for us is immeasurable. No amount of barbarity depicted in a play or in a film can anything like worthily represent that. It can only mislead people, putting them into a very physical attitude of the sufferings of Christ. These are high and these are holy things. Do the film makers not understand that half of the sufferings on Calvary were under cover of darkness to teach us that you cannot portray these things you can only describe them to some extent in words?

Let us be very careful that there is no hypocrisy in us, that we are not partial in our obedience to God’s law as they were. The Jewish leaders obeyed such things from the Old Testament to avoid ceremonial pollution and yet they would murder and carry out injustice freely. In a lesser way we can play the hypocrite. I hope there is nobody here who has desperate moral secret sins. We can be very scrupulous on some points and correct points of moral and ethical Christian conduct and indifferent to others. And that is just the germination of hypocrisy which will grow and grow and ruin our spiritual lives.

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John 19:31 Commentary and Bible Study