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  VOL 3 - CHRIST CRUCIFIED
  by Klaas Schilder
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Schilder's meditation on Christ's crucifixion and its cosmic significance,
covering the crucifixion scene, suffering and mockery on Golgotha,
substitutionary death, separation from God, and burial, emphasizing the paradox
of divine justice and mercy at the cross.

  Chapters: 30

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.2. Translator Note
    2. 00.3. Foreword (Reprint)
    3. 00.4. Foreword (Original)
    4. 00.5. Preface
    5. 00.6. e-Sword Module Prepared by BibleSupport.com
    6. 01. Chapter 1: Christ Being Cast Outside of the Gates
    7. 02. Chapter 2: Christ’s Right of Requisition Completely Denied
    8. 03. Chapter 3: Christ’s Last Ministration of the Word
    9. 04. Chapter 4: Christ on Golgotha
   10. 05. Chapter 5: Christ Not Repelling His Judge
   11. 06. Chapter 6: Christ Under the Catastrophic Curse
   12. 07. Chapter 7: Christ Isolating Himself in the Catastrophic Curse
   13. 08. Chapter 8: Christ Among the Bandits
   14. 09. Chapter 9: Christ Disrobed
   15. 10. Chapter 10: Christ’s Supreme Title
   16. 11. Chapter 11: Christ Suffering the Mockery of Hell
   17. 12. Chapter 12: Christ’s Paradoxical Plague and His Forgotten Chapter
   18. 13. Chapter 13: Christ’s Super-Paradoxical “Amen”
   19. 14. Chapter 14: Christ Confronting the Dead Judas With the Dead Scoundrel
   20. 15. Chapter 15: Christ Substituting Himself
   21. 16. Chapter 16: Christ Exlex in the Darkness: Christ Outside of the Gates of God
   22. 17. Chapter 17: Christ Thrust Away But Not Separated From God
   23. 18. Chapter 18: Christ Adapting Himself To His Death
   24. 19. Chapter 19: Christ in the Justification
   25. 20. Chapter 20: Christ Goes Out: God Goes On
   26. 21. Chapter 21: Christ Passing Out and On
   27. 22. Chapter 22: Christ as Melchizedek’s Antitype Summoned Against Levi
   28. 23. Chapter 23: Christ Proclaimed by the Church of the Advent
   29. 24. Chapter 24: Christ Apparently Motionless
   30. 25. Chapter 25: Christ Buried

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.2. TRANSLATOR NOTE
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Translator Note

Many of the merits and none of the defects of this translation are owing to Dr.
Henry Beets, who carefully read and edited the manuscript.

—The Translator.


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  CHAPTER 2: 00.3. FOREWORD (REPRINT)
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Foreword When Dr. Klass Schilder’s ‘Lenten trilogy’ first made its appearance in
English nearly forty years ago, it was immediately welcomed by evangelicals of
all denominations as a work of outstanding merit. In fact, it was found to be
without equal in modern literature. In treating the events which led up to the
crucifixion, Schilder brings the reader into touch with the spiritual and
temporal forces which converged during the Passion Week. He is careful to keep
Christ central, and blends in a masterful way this culmination of our Lord’s
earthly life with historical facts and psychological realities. With these
dimensions so beautifully intertwined, the offices of Christ as Prophet, Priest,
and King are seen in the light of God’s goodness to Israel and gracious
provision for man’s redemption.

These volumes, treating as they do Christ’s sufferings, trial, and crucifixion,
should not be confined to a pastor’s bookshelf. Preachers, of course, should
have them and read them repeatedly. However, what Klaas Schilder has said can be
read and enjoyed by laypeople as well. This writer hopes that Dr. Schilder’s
books will find their way into many Christian homes and bring blessing and
enrichment to those who will take the time to master their teaching.

Cyril J. Barber Author, The Minister’s Library


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  CHAPTER 3: 00.4. FOREWORD (ORIGINAL)
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Foreword THIS volume completes Dr. Schilder’s Trilogy on the Passion of our
blessed Lord.

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.”

All manner of men.

All kinds of people. In many different lands. This statement of our Lord still
rings through time with ever increasing force.

It is proclaimed by tongue, by pen and by brush of all those who love Him, and
who look for His appearing.

Professor Schilder as an orator lifts up the Christ and draws men unto Him. As a
pen-artist he pictures the Lord as One altogether lovely and much to be desired.
This particular volume has to do with Christ in the deepest agony of His
suffering. He went into the valley of death, but came out as the Victor over
Satan and his hosts, leading a great company of sons and daughters to the glory
of salvation here, and everlasting life hereafter. Christ in His Suffering, and
Christ on Trial, the two volumes already published, enjoyed a fine welcome. The
publishers now offer the last volume in this trilogy to the English speaking
world. In our day the forces of darkness and light are pitted against each other
in more definite battle array than ever before. But, strange to say, the
brotherhood of believers, the ecumenic character of Christendom, looms larger
than ever before.

Men and women of all lands cling closer to the Cross and to the wounded side of
the Crucified One than in days of national quietude and material prosperity.

There is an inner conviction and a strong faith that after all Jesus is THE
PILOT of the vessel which carries His chosen ones.

Dr. Schilder, in this monumental trilogy, has rendered a real service to the
Christian Church.

Grand Rapids, Mich.HENRY BEETS, LL.D.


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  CHAPTER 4: 00.5. PREFACE
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Preface

IT is a source of great pleasure and of gratitude to Him, the preaching of Whose
name is the most beautiful task on earth, for me to know that this work, which I
greatly enjoyed writing, is appearing now in English translation.

Acknowledging a sense of great gratitude to those who took the initiative in
promoting this translation, and to those who devoted painstaking care to it, I
express the wish that the work also in the large English-speaking world to which
it is now made available, may, with the blessing of God, keep that confession
alive of which Charles Hodge gave this epitome: “Christ saves us as our Priest”;
and: “Christ saves us as a Sacrifice”—a confession which induced him, a learned
man, to pray, in the words of Toplady’s precious hymn.

Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the
double cure, Save from guilt and make me pure.

K. SCHILDER Kampen, September 3, 1937.


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  CHAPTER 5: 00.6. E-SWORD MODULE PREPARED BY BIBLESUPPORT.COM
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  CHAPTER 6: 01. CHAPTER 1: CHRIST BEING CAST OUTSIDE OF THE GATES
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C H A P T E R O N E Christ Being Cast Outside of the Gates And they took
Jesus,and led him away.And he bearing his cross went forth into a place coiled
the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha. —John 19:16-17.

CHRIST is sinking deeper, ever deeper, into His passion. We saw Him made an
exlex:[1] that is, one whom men have thrust outside of the sphere of law.
Thereupon He was sentenced to death: He was condemned. But now He plunges even
deeper into the shaft of humiliation. He is about to be accursed. For He goes
now to be put to death on the cross, and “accursed is everyone, that hangeth on
the tree.” We shall be compelled to return to that curse, and to the meaning of
the word itself, several times during the course of this book. Much of its
significance must for the time being be postponed. The thing we want to discuss
now, as Jesus Christ goes out to the place of curse, is the awful weight of the
justice of God which puts upon Christ a burden which to our mind is a superhuman
one. This burden God places upon Him in order that He may reach out from this
maze of sin, from this knot of human falsehood, from these skeins of
arbitrariness and injustice, in which He has become entangled and been taken
captive thus far — may reach out, we say, to the firm hand of His God in order
to submit to His justice, painful as it may be. He must submit to His justice
now, to the one justice of God. That, and nothing else, He must do. For we can
truly say that from the human side there is nothing but injustice here. We have
seen that before,[1] and shall say nothing about it now. However, there is a
difference between one kind of injustice and another. The world knows of a kind
of injustice which, terrible though it may be, nevertheless is characterized by
a certain consistency and pattern; obstinately it draws up its own program and
never lets itself be deflected from the logic it has first chosen. But there is
also an injustice which can hardly be said to be characterized by any
consistency or pattern. In this kind of injustice logic is quite lacking; it
gives no one an opportunity to know what it is all about.

[1]In the several chapters ofChrist on Trial,the preceding (second) volume of
this trilogy.

It is this second kind of injustice which accrued to Jesus. Must we take time to
prove that? Surely not, for that has become obvious again and again as we
followed the pathetic maze of the trial. But there is one thing which we want to
emphasize particularly now. This one thing is precisely a question of pattern,
of consistency, of inherent logic. We mean the sequence of the several states of
justice in which the people placed Christ on public display, or are still to
place Him. This is that sequence of events: first, Christ the exlex. Thereupon,
Christ condemned. Finally, Christ accursed. Now this sequence of events in the
trial of Christ is essentially and even from a purely human point of view sheer
nonsense. We use the word seriously — we mean that the logic of this course of
events is outright nonsense. There is no logic in it, and, observed precisely
from the human point of view, there is neither rhyme nor reason in it. That
conclusion comes very naturally. For, after all, it is only after a person has
been condemned first, and accursed afterwards, that he can, at the end of his
trial, be placed outside of the sphere of the law, outside of the “gates” of
justice. Plainly, a person can be an exlex only when the law has exhausted
itself in reference to him. This is a person’s right, for everyone is born in a
context of law. And this is also the prerogative of law. It need not give up its
task before it has exhausted itself; until then it need not give its province,
its status, its prerogative of meting out punishment and of concluding cases to
any other. Obviously, then, the exlex cannot be proclaimed that until the end of
the trial. That is as plain as day.

Condemnation, then, legal condemnation is quite impossible except in a context
of law. In order to condemn anyone all the machinery of the legal structure must
be set in motion against a person. Condemnation can indeed be defined as a
mobilization of the machinery of law against a guilty party. And if the curse is
to be added to the condemnation, if, considered negatively, even the least
privileges which the law still gives its worst enemies are denied, and if,
considered positively, the condemned person is to be made the victim of every
method of perdition which the law can possibly heap upon one, then, and then
only, can the guilty one be constituted a curse and regarded as standing outside
of the province of law. The law has nothing further to add to an accursed party
who has been condemned first of all by the powerful but pure pressure of the
law. All that the law can add after that is the confirmation and the complete
execution of its final statement, as well by negative as by positive means. The
law which as the exacting principle and as the exacting force has pronounced its
judgment is satisfied then; the thirst of the law is quenched then by the
condemned blood. This would as a matter of fact be the course of all condemned
people in the world, and this would be the end of the whole matter, if all the
laws which obtain in human society did not in a certain sense contain an element
of grace. Does that statement, possibly, surprise anyone? If so, we do well to
remember that it is a Biblical idea, which we sometimes pass over too rapidly.
On the whole we are thoroughly convinced that the law is opposed to us, that it
condemns, and curses, and protests against us; but we too often forget that the
law nevertheless is characterized by an element of grace.

Indeed, the law has a twofold grace in it: a negative grace inasmuch as it does
not place the full burden of its wrath upon us while we are here below; and a
positive grace to the extent that it never, here on earth, isolates anyone from
the dispensation and purpose of the grace of God.

Those are two separate concepts. We must study each one of them more
specifically. In the first place, the law which God gives men, puts in the
language of men, writes with a human pen into a human book, can never in its
expression completely embody or exhaust the unmixed concept of the wrath of God.
Moreover, it cannot in its execution completely administer the whole wrath of
God. Now as far as the expression of the law is concerned it can never, being
phrased in human language as it is, be as powerful as God Himself. What is true
of the law is also true of God’s written Word, and of all forms of revelation.
Revelation is true and genuine, but it is not complete, is not exhaustive; it
cannot express everything contained in the depths of God’s being. Just as all
Scripture is revelation but God Himself always remains richer than His spoken
Word, just so the word of the law, which, as we know, also belongs to God’s
revelation, merely approximates and never reaches the completeness of the
essence of God Himself. God’s wrath is more terrible than the law can define.
What holds true of the Gospel terms of redemption also holds true of the legal
terms of condemnation: they say a great deal, they tell the truth, but they do
not tell the whole truth. So much for the word of the law. What now in reference
to the deed of the law. The law, we know, also determines the penalty, assigns
the punishment, and, even here on earth, administers the penalty. But all the
penalty which the law can effect here below, terrible as it may be, is never so
terrible as it can be. It can be as terrible as it is in hell. But hell is not
realized on the earth. The chasms which the wrath of God will some day open
there are deeper and darker than any into which the law can plunge us while we
are on earth. Therefore the law in this world is always limited, limited by
itself, in its threats and also in the active administration of God’s wrath.
That is the first point which bears on the situation with which we are dealing
here. There is a second point. We said that the law in this dispensation is
never independent of the dispensing and the purpose of grace. The proclaiming of
the law is an act of grace. Yes, it is an act of judgment, but it is first of
all an act of grace. The fact that the law makes its threatenings heard is an
expression of grace. Indeed, it is also an expression of judgment, but it is
first of all an expression of grace.[1] For the law comes into a world which,
even where special grace has not achieved a domain for itself, nevertheless
lives by common grace. No single, practical execution of a penalty taking place
in the world by human agency, human words, and human instruments can ever
isolate itself from the common grace which is active in the world. If it should
ever happen that someone in some far corner of the world should be annihilated
by the full energy of wrath inherent in the Lawgiver, an exhaustive effluence of
the vengeance dwelling in the heart of God, we would find that the world would
burst, would fly apart in that particular corner. At that point the world would
begin to be rent in twain. For wherever the waves of the wrath of God beat
against the head of a sinner on earth, that wave meets with the resistance of
common grace. True, the wave of wrath will overcome the grace. That is natural.
For who could hope to thwart God’s wrath and who could think that the weaker
element — the common grace — could resist the stronger and definitive element —
the eternal power and love of justice. Yes, indeed, the wave of wrath will break
through the resistance of common grace. But it is also true that the wave of
wrath is tempered by it. It was God’s own will that this should be so. Perhaps
we can make the matter clearer to each other by the use of a figure. You have
seen the sun. You know that its rays are weakened by the atmosphere. Light is
mitigated by it and loses some of its radiance because of it; moreover, shadows
are also tempered by it and lose something of their undesirable darkness because
of it. Or, to make it more vivid, think of the heavenly bodies which are not
surrounded by an atmosphere. You know that worlds not surrounded by an
atmosphere send out untempered rays, and that there, consequently, the rays
which are dispatched are far more penetrating and the shadows much darker than
they are on earth. From this, now, you can glean some sense of the difference
between hell and earth. Here we are surrounded by the atmosphere of common
grace; here, therefore, the rays of God’s love are tempered, and the waves of
God’s wrath are mitigated also. There is not a single form of execution on earth
which gives full expression to the exacting hunger of the justice of the chief
Author of the law. For example, Christ could not punish the Antichrist in this
world and at this time as He could the sinner who is to be beaten with the
fewest stripes in hell.[2] Accordingly, we do well to keep these two thoughts in
mind. First, the law, as the Word of God, can never give complete expression to
its legal will. Second, this world, as the stage and workroom of common grace,
can never satisfy the hunger of God’s exacting justice completely, nor perfectly
execute the justice of His will. Remembering those two things, you will catch a
faint glimpse of the terrible significance of the word curse. And then you will
also understand why the justice which God has proclaimed among the people of
special revelation can make someone an exlex even on this earth.

[1] Think of “the vicious circle,”Christ on Trial,pp. (Chapter 3) 58 ff.,
(Chapter 6) 126 ff., (Chapter 7) 153 ff., (Chapter 27) 514 ff.

[2]Luke 12:47-48. That we must consider now. Readers of Christ on Trial will
perhaps feel inclined to say: But now you are contradicting what you said in the
other book. For there we did indeed say that God does not acknowledge, He does
not recognize, He does not know, the exlex. Yes, we said that. And we insist
that it is so.[3] There is no conflict whatever between these two contentions.
God does not recognize the exlex, and the law of God in Israel shows us the
exlex. The first thesis — God does not know the exlex — is one which speaks of
God Himself. If we study the justice of God, as it exists in Him, as He knows
and experiences it in the depths of His being, as it cries out aloud for
satisfaction from His profound abysses and as it is carried out in hell, we must
say: There is not a single thing, there is not a single person, there is not a
single phenomenon which from God’s point of view is not connected with the law
of God. Hell, we know, is the place where God exercises His justice to the
fullest extent and where not the slightest remnant of common grace resists the
penetrating rays of His wrath. But the situation changes when we look upon it as
it is here on earth. In this world, as we stated above, the law and the wrath of
God cannot express themselves fully nor find those forms which completely embody
God’s most exacting wrath. Here on earth, consequently, there is a certain
unconsumable, a certain inexpressible and unadministrable, remnant of wrath. The
thunders of wrath which cause us to tremble now, or of which we dream in our
boldest probings or dogmatic speculations must always be such as to leave room
for a more awful thunder which has never yet been heard in earthly sounds; there
is, to the apprehension of faith, always a wrath which cannot be executed by the
instruments of punishment and of torture which this world has been able to forge
and set in motion.

[3.] SeeChrist on Trial, pp. (Chapter 9) 185 f., (Chapter 22) 421. This
unconsumed remnant of wrath it is which is acknowledged in Israel by the concept
of curse, and by the concept of the exlex which is its corollary. Hence the
curse operates in the realm of special grace; precisely there, in the realm of
special revelation. Therefore the curse is operative in Israel. O sublime
majesty of God, O majesty of the God of the Word, terrible art Thou. Who can
stand before Thee? When men, when the judges, when the priests of Israel
pronounce the curse, then the curse is their strongest gesture. But it is also
the weakest thing they can do. For those who curse and make the criminal an
exlex are saying: Lord, we can go no farther; we have reached the limits of our
law. No profounder judgment is possible to us and yet we know, O God, that we
have not gone far enough, that Thou canst see and say things more profoundly,
that Thou wouldst punish further. Lord, here is the candidate for the torment of
hell; we can go no farther . . . Surely, it is a sad day for the ministers of
justice in God’s theocratic country when they must utter such things to God and
man.

Hence when someone in Israel is first of all condemned, then accursed, and
finally made an exlex, nothing is being done in conflict with the austere
proclamation of hell according to which, as we said, the exlex is not known. For
the exlex in Israel, who has been made exlex after having been condemned and
accursed, embodies in his dumb death this very preaching of hell. We can say
that He is being pushed in hell’s direction, but that the hands of the judge do
not reach quite far enough. The people, the judges, and those who maintain the
laws among the people of revelation, all cry out to God: We can do no more to
this object of wrath. Nothing that can be conceived by the human mind and
carried out by human instruments can now be done to Him. Therefore we say that
He is an exlex. We transfer Him to the Lord. Let the birds feed on Him, the
children play with His tattered clothing, and the wolves feed on His corpse, for
He that hangeth on a tree is a curse to the Lord.

Therefore the exlex in Israel — that is as long as Israel is faithful to itself
and to its Lawgiver — is not an invention of the judges who, like Pilate and the
others, overlook the law, but it is an acknowledgment of the judges, an
acknowledgment of the fact that their appreciation of the law and their
execution of the law is imperfect; it is an acknowledgment of the fact that
God’s thunders are sublimer and His punishments more perfect in the other world.
There, in that other world, the law is expressed not in human phraseology but by
an unrestrained effluence of God’s wrath, without a hint of the restraint of
common grace.

We can understand, therefore, why the concept of the exlex was introduced into
the law in Israel; in the law, that is, that they first had to put a condemned
man to death and after that hang him upon the tree. The hanging on the tree
embodied a curse, the curse of Jahweh. In Israel, consequently, a course was
followed which was diametrically opposed to the one pursued in the presence of
Pilate, of Herod, of Caiaphas, and Annas. God’s word took a different course. In
the presence of the judges the sequence of events was such that each of the four
first made Christ an exlex, then a condemned man (by agreeing with Pilate), and
then an accursed man, when they proceeded to hang Him on the cross. For these
all do indeed curse Him. That becomes apparent from a correspondence between the
narrative of John and the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels tell us that
the military leaders of Rome led Jesus to the place of curse which was Golgotha,
but John emphasizes the fact that it was the high priests who led Jesus away.[1]
They did the supervising and pointed out the way: “We have a law and according
to our law He must be put to death” And Pilate had held them to that word.

[1] The chief priests are discussed inJohn 19:15, and the 16th verse also
mentions them. Compare Nebe,op. cif., p. 166.

Those are the stages followed by the judges: exlex, condemnation, and curse.
That is what Pilate, and Herod, and the Sanhedrin, all of whom have abandoned
God’s Word and no longer tremble before the concept of the exlex,[2] wish. Now
this course of events is in diametrical opposition to the Word of God and the
Law as these were entrusted to Israel. Had the course of the law which God had
given by revelation been followed, the sequence of events would have been
different: first the condemnation, then the curse (the deed), and finally the
proclamation of the exlex. The second is the course things should have taken —
that is what God would have wished in every case from every human being. Note
the adjectives: every case and every human being.

[2] SeeChrist in His Suffering,Chapter 11, pp. 169 ff., 173 ff.

Learn to tremble, O man, before the great day of Golgotha. We return to our
point of departure. We say: now the Christ must be very careful to keep the
legal action of God carefully distinguished from the crooked activity of the
people, even of His own people. And what distinction does He make? Pay close
attention. He sees very clearly that what God would forbid and prevent in any
other case, for any other human being, God is Himself now doing to Him. The
sequence of events which God would characterize as a violation of the law if
followed in the case of the meanest slave, of Achan the thief, of the sons of
Rizpah, of Korah and his band, or anyone, God Himself approves of in the trial
of the Saviour. Exlex first, then condemnation, and finally the curse. He was an
exlex already. His doom has been sealed. Now He goes to the cross — and accursed
is every one that hangs upon the tree, that is cast “outside of the gate.” This
is a sad day. God’s sequence of events is always different from that of Jesus’
judges, but today He appropriates and accepts their own program of activity. Why
did these judges of Jesus begin with the idea of the exlex? Because they had
themselves as judges first of all abandoned the law. Now God accompanies them.
The least among the accursed of Abraham’s lost children has more right than
Jesus to be legally condemned in terms of the law and in virtue of the voice of
the law and not until then to be condemned and hanged as a curse. God grants His
Son less than that. Even the sons of Saul, whom Rizpah wanted to keep from
becoming exlex, were treated genuinely, that is, according to the logic of the
Word of God. Put to death first, and then made a curse. Mary, afflicted mother,
is God less concerned about your Son than about the sons of Rizpah? Who will
help us out of this bewildering maze? Who will give us the key to the
explanation? Judge of Israel, must not Christ Jesus be treated as the least of
earth’s disgraced ones are treated: condemnation first, the curse next, the
exlex only then — abandoned to the God vengeance only then? Lord, this world is
a topsy-turvy world; the whole of the legal structure is turned upside down in
dealing with Thy Son. He became an exlex at His first entrance into the
courthouse, and was that at every stage which followed. Of course, on the part
of Pilate and of Herod and of Caiaphas and of them all, this was a sin. But can
we say that God imitates this wickedness? Is such evil compatible with God’s
holy justice? Can the God of truth triumph through such crooked transactions?

Yes, God answers. These things must take place thus in this unique hour, in
reference to this unique defendant. God’s justice was poured out through the
funnel of men’s crooked dealings. The key to the explanation lies contained in a
single word. That word is Suretyship. All these things must happen thus because
the Christ, who is suffering here as the Surety, had to suffer the sorrow of
being an exlex not after but before His death. Be very cautious now, be very
careful, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. However, do not
be silent about what the Scriptures teach you. And the Scriptures teach us that
Christ is taking up His cross here as the Surety, and that as the Surety He goes
to the place of curse as a condemned man. As the Surety Christ now comes to pay
the debt which His people have made. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.
Now a part of that chastisement which brings our peace was that we in this
world, overagainst this earth, and overagainst common grace become exlex. Every
sinner must know that the punishment which he has earned is always more terrible
than the modes of penalty and the words of punishment that obtain on earth. And
after that the pain and penalty of hell awaits him. After that — that is, after
his death. But if the Christ also were to suffer the pain of hell after His
bodily death, He could not be our Mediator. For the mediatorship must not only
repay God but it must completely settle for God’s wrath. The indebtedness must
be completely stricken. There must be an end, there must be finality, when the
Mediator pays God, in the stead of His own. Without that there could be no It is
finished.

Therefore the torment of hell, the penalty of hell, the infinite, the
incomparable pain which comes to all others who die outside of God after death,
must accrue to Christ before He dies. The whole mystery of the descent into
hell, as it is regarded, among others, by the Heidelberg Catechism, is based on
that thought; and the same concept is emphasized in the fifth and sixth Lord’s
Days of this Catechism. There, too, we confess that the Mediator who is to truly
redeem us must consciously experience in His earthly life, before His death,
before His departure from the world and from the circumference of time, that
which the lost human being will suffer after his death and on the other side of
this bourne. Before the Mediator can say “It is finished,” the eternal
punishment, the eternal, perfect expression of an unrestrained and unbounded
wrath of God must be endured and left behind. Not after His death, understand,
but before His death. Not in the other world, but in this world. Not when He has
been hurled from this earth, outside of “our” domain — the domain of the vicious
circle, and of common grace — but here in our world, in our life, in our earthly
home of common grace and of “common” wrath.

We expect to say more of these things later in this book when we reach the dark
chapter of Christ’s suffering in hell and of His fourth utterance on the cross:
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” But if we may be allowed to
anticipate a little of that now we shall do so simply to free Christ exlex from
the caricatured versions of Israel’s and of Pilate’s vitiation of law, and to
teach our soul that both the idea and its realization finds its rightful place
only in the true course of justice in which God — our God — punishes the Surety
— our Surety — and makes Him to be sin for us.

Rejoice, O my soul! What man had intended for evil, God turned into good. In all
other trials it may, from God’s point of view, be an atrocity if anyone becomes
an exlex before he is condemned and accursed, but in this hour of the Surety
that very thing happened in accordance with God’s holy logic. “What is truth?”
This is truth. “What is justice?” This is justice. The lawgiver opens and closes
the doors of law according to His good pleasure and that in the last analysis is
simply the end of the matter.

You ask what the chief Lawgiver would teach us at this time? He teaches us the
obligation of the Surety to be the exlex, fully conscious of its implications
while here in His human life. Just as Christ suffered the pain of hell before
His bodily death, fully conscious the while of all of it, so also He suffered
the pain of the exlex, the misery of which had always been depicted by the Word
in Israel as the beginning, the first phase of the transition to the
condemnation of hell. This, too, He must suffer during His life, before His
death, and with a full consciousness of all of its import.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, with all thy strength. Out of the chaos of the
illogical ideas of those who violate the law He builds the cosmos of the ideas
of the Logos according to His justice. In this the greatness of Christ is
preached to us. Our second volume[1] is really explained by the third, even
though the third lay contained in the second. For now it appears that Christ’s
descent into hell — which must be taken to mean His suffering of the pain of
hell — did not impinge upon Jesus suddenly, mechanically, without a gradual
transition, when, on the cross, He had the assured feeling that He has been
forsaken of God. No, that descent into hell was a gradual, an “organic” — alas,
our pathetically inadequate language — development, growing out of the day of
His death. The passion of hell therefore was a slow but certain process. The
descent into hell? That begins in the presence of Annas, when Jesus is struck on
the cheek. Then Christ had already been made the exlex. Then He knew that these
people could go no farther. He knew that they had done their utmost to Him. A
servant struck Him: He felt His cheeks being struck by God. He knew with perfect
certainty that He was a child of hell. For now He was the exlex who — you will
remember — was thrust outside of the door of the domain of thought and activity
in Israel, and was in God’s name pushed into the no man’s land of hell and
condemnation. He was the exlex — the sheer outcast . . . Jesus is caught between
two worlds: the world of human law and human punishment can do nothing further
about him; and the world in which God exhausts His laws and perfectly satisfies
them has not yet consumed Him. He is brought to no man’s land — between two
fronts: the front of men and the front of God, the front of this world and that
of the other. And no man’s land is also every man’s land — anyone may do to the
exlex what he wishes.

[1]Christ on Trial.

Christ, then, knew He was the exlex already at the time of the preliminary
hearing. That was at the very beginning. That is saving nothing about what
follows. In all that followed Christ remained the exlex. He felt the same cruel
pain of being an outcast as He stood before the Sanhedrin, before Herod, and
also before Pilate. And now Christ is being led to the workshop of the curse.
They press the cross upon His shoulders; He had better carry that Himself. Each
step which He takes now is taken with a full consciousness that He is condemned,
that He is condemned of God, that God has already forsaken Him, that God is
awaiting Him with the untempered pains of hell. To go on, however, God’s
program, God’s sequence of events, has not yet been announced. As we ponder
that, we get a better insight into the necessity of the fact that Christ has to
accomplish His departure in Jerusalem. Faith is willing to acknowledge also the
place in which Jesus dies. He gives up His life in Jerusalem, the city which was
entrusted with the Word of revelation. This, too, is not a mere accident, not a
disconnected particular. He could die in no other place, because in no other
place could he recognize in the crooked transactions of people who are making
Him an exlex the holy sequence, the sacred program, of the God who is making Him
an exlex.

We must consider that fact now. First of all we note the city of Jerusalem. Even
though the Saviour was condemned by Pilate, and even though the law of Rome cast
Him out of center and suburb of the world, Jesus may not forget for a single
instant that He must stand and fall in the country, the city, of Israel. He must
reduce the wicked dealings of the heathen in reference to Himself to the
straight ways of the God of Israel. But how is He to find His God in these, and
how is He to understand God’s language, if He does not read the Word and live by
it, if He does not always keep the law of Israel clearly before His spirit? He
may not allow the roll of the book of Israel, the Scriptures, to recede from His
awareness. For Israel is still the people of revelation; Jerusalem is still the
“holy city.” This city, and this road, and the via dolorosa also are still
subsidiary parts of the sacred inheritance in which special revelation makes
itself known. The plan of Jerusalem is something more than a mere topographical
thing; it is the plan of the ecclesiastical city. It will be that until God
sends out the apostles by means of the Spirit to preach and to baptize in front
of the rent veil of the temple.

Obviously, now, if Christ separates the disorganization of this human legal
process from Jerusalem, and from the sacred roll of law, He is lost. For — as we
said — the people are putting the concept of His being the exlex in the wrong
place. They have wrenched the proper sequence of events apart. That which had to
come last, the exlex, they placed at the very beginning. The heathen did this,
yes, but also the Jews who have abandoned the word of God. Observed from the
human point of view, therefore, the carrying out of the concept of Christ-exlex,
precisely because it was placed at the very beginning, was an act of
superficiality. In such an act one can detect only the flippancy of men, and
none of the seriousness of God. And if Christ should explain the people in terms
of the people now, without reference to the Word of Jahweh, His status as the
exlex will not be able to depress Him. On the contrary, He will then simply be
able, over-against God, to appeal to this fact, saying: I caused them no
difficulty, no hard work. Lord, my God, I am therefore not affected by it in the
least. The indigestible food of the laws of Thy kingdom they have converted into
easily digested bread. They began with the concept of the exlex, and they should
have ended with it. Then the fact that he had been made an exlex prematurely, an
untimely exlex, would have been the apology of the accused over-against His
judges. Then God would not have been acknowledged in the present, in the naked
facts of this historical day. But Christ did not say that. He was not allowed to
find an excuse for Himself in the crookedness of the human procedure. He who
would be the Surety may not look for excuses. He who must descend into hell
today must not appeal to the higher court of the morrow. Nor was He allowed to
explain the people in terms of the people nor the particular day in terms of the
particular day. Had he not fiercely protested against that very thing Himself?
No, let the Christ Himself first of all bear the burdens which He places upon
the shoulders of others. Let Him look at everything which overtakes Him in the
holy city in the light of the sacred Word of Revelation which still lies exposed
in that city and still awaits Him only. For the Word of Revelation is indeed
still in Jerusalem, and it is presenting one request: Keep me clearly in mind.
Am I still an integral part of your experience? Am I? And if Christ does this,
two things become clear to Him, become fixed in His spirit, draw the blood out
of Him, very terrible, but in righteousness. Those two things are these: first,
that the passion of the exlex is the beginning of the descent into hell; and,
second, that He must die outside of the city gates within which He has been
declared an exlex. This in reference to the first consideration. Only among the
people of revelation is the exlex one who has been surrendered to hell. Wherever
else the concept is used, the exlex is a foolish figment of the human
imagination, an act of robbery committed against the law and against its awful
tension. Everywhere else — save in the legal system of Israel’s God. There to
the extent that the Word is being faithfully followed, the exlex first
experienced what the law had in it to inflict, and only after that was
humiliated beyond the point which human language can express and the deed which
human beings can execute. Everywhere in the world the placing in pillory of the
exlex by human beings is an evasive attempt to escape from the law, and a
closing the ears to the thunder of the law. But in Israel the Word of Revelation
says this: When our ears are tingling with the thunder of the law, and man can
go no farther, then the condemned person is the exlex. In Israel, consequently,
the exlex has not been segregated from the pressure of law, but has been
subjected to a more than human tension. That is why Jesus dies in the city of
the Word. True, His judges have freed themselves from the pressure, but He
personally, as the accused, must feel that extra-human tension. Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, you are still necessary. They cannot get along without you. You are
the only city in which Christ can stand under the pressure of the Word. You are
the only city in which He as the accused can overcome the sin of the judges. You
are the only city in which He — the Author of the sermon on the mount! — cannot
derive an excuse before God from the sins of men in an effort to escape from the
awful pressure of hell upon Him.

You are the only city in which He cannot today appeal to tomorrow, before the
higher Judge. For the highest Judge was present in the room. Here Christ is
directly bound to the Word, here He softly whispers to Himself: Away with all
self-defense by means of an appeal to their superficiality, for thus it is meet
for me to fulfill all righteousness. So much for the first consideration. Now
the second. Jesus sees Himself being rejected and thrown outside of the gates of
Jerusalem. This circumstance, too, He must relate to the laws of the people of
Israel. Again the consideration holds true that Jerusalem does not just happen
to be the city in which the history of the passion takes place. It is the only
place in which the Lamb of God could die outside of the gates, in which He could
die as one unclean and accursed before the Lord God.

We mentioned the Lamb of God. That is a name which Christ puts into relationship
with the law of sacrifice of — Israel. That law of sacrifice, that Word of God,
which declares that Christ is the exlex, is also the only law which can proclaim
that He is the sacrificial Lamb. The sacrificial Lamb — are there any priests in
the neighborhood? Yes, indeed. We have pointed out already[1] that, as John
tells us, it is the high priests who take the lead in the matter of this day’s
execution. After all, they have cast Christ outside of the city gates. We said
just a moment ago that we could not do without Jerusalem. Well, we cannot do
without the priests either.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 29: p. 540 f. and p. 546; also this volume, Chapter
1: p. 22.

We cannot do without the priests. Now for the first time Christ’s being taken
out, Christ’s being led away, becomes a sharply delineated, separate moment in
the passion of Christ. All of the gospels tell us that He went forth, that He
was led out of doors, that He was thrust outside of the city gates. Now if
Christ places this act of rejection into relationship with the place where it
happened, He will say to Himself: I am being thrust outside of the domain of
sacred words and works. Exlex, yes, and exile also. Outside of the law and
outside of the country! No, no one may segregate the gospel narrative of their
leading Jesus outside of the gate from the dogmatic statement: “For the bodies
of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest
for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might
sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate’[2](Hebrews
13:11-12). The writer of these words is recalling a regulation stipulated in
Leviticus 16:27. There we are told that the flesh and skins of the bullocks and
goats offered for a sin offering had to be brought without the camp. Obviously,
the body of these beasts which were slain for a sacrifice is “done away with as
unclean, and there is no more fellowship between the people in the camp and the
sin laden sacrificial animal”[2] Now this stipulation of law centuries ago fixed
in the minds of all, — and in reference to Christ — that that which was brought
without the gates, without the camp, might no longer be regarded as clean.
Because it is unclean it does not belong in the fellowship of the clean.

[2] Grosheide,De Brief aan de Hebreeuwen en de Brief van Jakobus, A’dam,
Bottenburg, 1927, p. 381. Can you feel now how grievously Jesus is being
humiliated here? So often we human beings think: well, presently the pain and
humiliation will begin, presently — when the nails are driven through His hands.
We like to make everything very gory at once, and nothing but the shedding of
blood can excite our interest. But for Christ Jesus the moment in which He had
to pass through the gate, His back to the temple, was the equivalent of a
scourging from heaven. And all those “mean” things which we said on purpose in
Christ on Trial about the Jews who were too “sensitive” to enter a pagan house,
well — we need not retract them here but we ought to remember now that God is
fully agreeing with those Jews today. We must understand very well that both God
and Satan are whispering this message into Jesus’ ear: “They were quite right,
however; you do not belong in the city which is holy. They were quite right, for
God Himself is casting you outside of it. He preserves Jerusalem as the domain
of holiness, and adds that you are not worthy of the city.” Let your thoughts
pause here for a moment; otherwise they will hurry on — on the via dolorosa.
Thinking is very dangerous here. Close your eyes for a moment, and repeat the
words of Paul: He is made sin. Then go on. Then you will appreciate that it is
not heresy to say that God and the devil are together whispering into Jesus’
ear. Then you will believe that God drives Jesus outside of the gates, the very
gates which He had entered not so long ago, exalted, riding on the foal of an
ass. Now you will believe that even that Jewish pride which hit upon the idea of
an Akeldama (in which, as we observed, their passion for distinctiveness was
carried out to the limit) is being employed against Christ by God Himself in His
legal action at this time. God will punish the Jews for it; but meanwhile He
will put Jesus to death by it. Yes, indeed He is made sin for us. Hence He is
cut off and cast out.

What we have here is a sin-offering. Now please do not begin singing a Latin
aria just now: agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Latin is a kind of distant
thing, and rather unreal for those who attend Roman Catholic churches as well as
for those who, for aesthetic reasons, avoid churches. No, first go to the
priests, look at the blood and filth; look upon the entrails which have been
burned. The Scriptures would take you to that point. Sin offerings are after all
as ugly as death itself. They are instinct with the curse. One must not sing the
word “curse” in a strange language, but must say it in one’s own. God wants us
to do that; if we do not, it does not affect us. Accordingly, we say again: This
is the sin-offering. Please step out of the neighborhood, for He is unclean. He
has been made sin.

Now let Him carry His cross, for who is to help the utmost exlex. Via dolorosa —
people pronounce that beautiful word — Latin again — with a quivering voice. But
the angels say: There is a stench here. No wonder, for the road leads outside of
the gate. And Christ is now being cast into fellowship with that which is
unclean. That which is unclean and is thrown outside of the camp — why hesitate
to say it — that is thrown on the dung hill. Do you start at the word? That does
not matter; we ought to be startled today. Dare anyone think the word is
unbiblical, unbecoming, or irreverent? Then he does not know his Bible. For the
Bible itself teaches that the dunghill is a symbol of hell, and that the place
where men throw filthy and unclean things, when seen in a prophetic light, is a
symbol of the darkness of hell. In the days of Judah’s faithful kings, Josiah
appointed the dale of Hinnom, a place which had first been used by the
idolatrous worship of Moloch as a dung-hill. This he did intentionally. And the
spirit of prophecy made a symbol of this place, a symbol of uncleanness first
and of hell afterwards (Jeremiah 7:31-32; Isaiah 66:24).[1] [1] See myWat is de
Hel?Kampen, J. H. Kok, 2nd ed., p. 29 ff.

Hence we are following a Biblical course by placing things in the connections we
have outlined. The dunghill and the Latin aria are unlike each other, but the
dogma of Christ’s suretyship cannot get along without the vernacular which
Scripture uses to point the sin-offering outside the gate. Therefore we conclude
that the descent into hell would not have been possible to the spirit of Christ,
which responds genuinely to all things, inside of the walls of Jerusalem.
Nothing comes by chance. Golgotha had to be located outside of the city walls.
Only by going forth outside of the gate, only by being accompanied by the fugue
of the wrath of the Judge of heaven, who expressed His vengeance in Israel’s
law, could Jesus perfectly regard Himself as descending into hell, as
experiencing the curse, as consciously being the exlex. Only in that way can He
really know that He is the scapegoat who, laden with sins, died, and washed away
our uncleanness in His blood. Day of atonement—Good Friday.

Accordingly, we are compelled by heaven itself to sing psalms on the way which
leads upward, or downward—how shall we put it today?—to the dunghill of the
world and the galleries of hell. Does anyone feel like saying, I cannot do that;
or another, It seems to me that it is not fitting? The latter sins worse than
the former. Be that as it may. Our noble thoughts and our good taste and our
humane feeling and even our self-respect, must pause to consider the blunt
description: Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his
reproach (Hebrews 13). Every system of dogmatics which refuses to accept the
satisfaction of Christ is doing injustice to this text. It refuses to go outside
of the gate. It pulls up its nose at the dunghill of God’s universe, and
consequently it can never get itself to see that God’s angels are today turning
away from the filth of our sin. However, the disciple of Calvin, apprehended by
the Scriptures, knows that the phrase “without the gates” is related to the
concepts of hell, and is permeated with the stench of hell. He refuses to have
the foulness of his sins blown away from him by the gust of humanism. He wants
to discover himself at the dunghill of the world Without the gate, without the
gate. He will rest in Christ who suffered all this for him, and endured it all
for him. And accordingly he does not want to forget that this was the dunghill
of filth, or that the path thitherward was his own path. Now this has become a
strange history. We paused to observe the human chaos, and found that everything
was out of its place. Consequently only the cursing word of God kept Jesus
standing erect and brought Him back to the straight course. The chaos of men
which had turned the program topsy-turvy did not perturb His thinking. He saw
the cosmos of God’s justice rising, and He stumbled on, a hero. He went to
Golgotha and courageously strode outside of the gates. He knew that men had
thrust Him outside of the sphere of Mosaic law, but in spite of them this was
the way by which He returned to it.

We can say that a beautiful irony characterizes the moment in which Pilate uses
the key of Rome to open the gate of Jerusalem in order to bring something which
stank to the dunghill of the world. Did the pilfering devils probably hurry to
the scene? If so, their game was lost from the very beginning, for He who was
chased from the inheritance of Moses was explained only in the light of Moses’
own law. He who was prematurely made an exlex was now according to right and
justice made an exlex over-against His God at God’s own perfect time. All that
men turned upside down God again turned right side up. And in saying that we are
saying nothing yet of what we called the “forgotten chapter.”[1] At the time we
observed that the forgotten chapter was the priesthood of Christ. Now note the
beautiful irony again. The high priests cast Jesus outside of the gate and
thereby in spite of themselves minister the preparation of God’s last sacrifice.
The sacrifice for sin. O Noah, you have seen them hammering on the ark they
scorned. O Jesus, you have seen them working on the despised offer. They test
the Lamb, and find it wanting. They say it is not a Lamb which can serve as the
sacrifice. But in spite of themselves they must perform upon Him all that they
ever did to the scapegoat. And inasmuch as He is willing to enter upon His
death, and to take the cross upon Himself, He is, besides being the scapegoat,
also the Passover Lamb in meekness.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 23: pp. 427 f. 432 ff.

Now the Saviour goes outside of the gate humiliated, degraded. But whoever has
seen God, as He saw God, will raise a hymn of thanksgiving to Him: Lift up your
heads. O ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, that the sacrifice
may go out. And every oppressed soul who sees no exit within the gates and no
entrance outside of the gates, should pause here and read a marvelous truth
about suretyship and satisfaction and atonement. Until he has done that he
should not go farther on the way—the way of Christ as He emerges from His
suffering.


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  CHAPTER 7: 02. CHAPTER 2: CHRIST’S RIGHT OF REQUISITION COMPLETELY DENIED
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C H A P T E R T W O Christ’s Right of Requisition Completely Denied And as they
came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear
his cross. —Matthew 27:32. IN the Heidelberg Catechism the church confesses it
to be the will of God that His Christians “be instructed not by dumb images but
by the living preaching of His Word.”

If ever the emphasis of this statement is to impress our conscience it must be
now as Christ takes the way to Golgotha, the via dolorosa. The Roman Catholic
church against which the statement of the Catechism was directed in the first
place has, so to speak, placed a row of images along both sides of the via
dolorosa. Some of these are dumb images and some of them are speaking images,
some are fixed and some are moveable, some are such as are found regularly in
all Roman Catholic churches—the well known ‘‘stations” of the cross—and some of
them arc more or less legendary in character. And Romish poets and parish
preachers, each in their own manner, thereupon proceed to give the commentary or
illustration of these. So it goes: illustration upon illustration, commentary
upon commentary.

Now it would certainly be arrogance in us if we were to maintain that the basic
fault, the characteristic fault in Christian thinking which has conceived and
drawn up all these images had entirely been kept out of the domain of
Protestantism. On the contrary, the Protestant spirit also, even the orthodox
spirit, has never completely emancipated itself from this characteristically
human tendency towards concrete representation. The longing to give external
shape and form to spiritual things which accounts for all these images moves
every human spirit. But the incentive which causes these to arise is not one
conceived entirely by the Spirit, the Spirit of God, and it is one which “gives
expression only to that which it has heard.”

Therefore we must take special pains beforehand to arm ourselves against this
danger, and to set ourselves against it. We must be on guard also as we study
Simon of Cyrene on the road which leads from the gate of Jerusalem to the hill
of the cross. We must be on guard against this yearning for concrete
representation as we pause to consider Simon, who had to meet Jesus of Nazareth,
and who bore the cross for Him. Simon of Cyrene — after that dark Friday he has
always been included in that rather long, time-honored procession which the
“edifying imagination”—the author of those images just referred to—likes to
present as walking behind the cross-bearing Christ. In that procession there are
others who accompany Him; there are the women of whom the Bible itself speaks,
and who are therefore in no sense legendary; but there is also that long series
of persons created by fiction among whom Veronica is especially prominent. All
these according to the Christian, or better, according to the erstwhile
Christian narratives of the memorabilia of the Great Friday, formed a part of
the procession that followed Jesus. For it has long been the custom to surround
the somewhat colorless picture of Christ in isolation with a rather dazzling
frame. Veronica is the one who with her kerchief dried the bleeding and
perspiring face of Christ —and as a sad reward always preserved in that kerchief
an impression of the bleeding face. But that is but a legend, someone says. Pass
on to a more beneficial message. But—and that is why we mention it here—that
very remark indicates the direction which the old Christian fantasy wanted to
pursue (or it did have a purpose in mind). It wanted to put Christ, our
cross-bearer, in a congenial setting of warm and solacing sympathy. Erring
Christian feeling wanted to burn incense for the Jesus who was thought unworthy
of a sweet smelling offering by the priests of His own people. This took place
some time after the reading of Paul’s letters, and in this way Simon of Cyrene
was also given a place in that congenial surrounding of sympathy which was
created for Jesus. He became involved in it, and he did not know himself how
this happened to take place. See how good, how amiable it is that sons of the
same Christian house dwell in unity with Jesus, there where the ardor of love is
never extinguished. The fragrance of love cannot but influence everyone, just as
the oil which dripped from Simon’s head saturated his beard and workman’s
clothes. Blessed be Simon: he bore the cross of Jesus.

You see that they want to explain Simon’s bearing of the cross in two ways; or,
better, they wish to derive a double conclusion from it. First, that the piteous
Jesus certainly was in a most miserable situation. You can see that: He could
not even carry His cross any farther. Second, that just at the right time a few
sweet drops of consolation were poured into Jesus’ bitter cup of passion,
solacing drops prepared by the love of Simon of Cyrene, and by those others whom
history or imagination has placed in His retinue. All these others came after
him. After him— if you stumble over that detail, we will do something to change
it. You should not make such trivial criticisms.

What these people want to do is to see in the assumed or protested love of Simon
of Cyrene a kind of continuation of the anointing with which Mary served Christ
in the beginning of the passion week as a preparation for His burial. Broken
alabaster boxes are well worth preserving; you can always squeeze a little more
out of them. Besides, Judas is dead; he cannot spoil such ministrations with his
calculating criticism. Musicians and poets and preachers consequently whisper
soft words of comfort into the ears of the suffering Christ Jesus. They would
indeed have helped Him in the anxiousness of His death if they had not been born
too late. They tell Him: Have a little patience, Jesus, for the same love which
gave you the foal of an ass on the basis of your own right of requisition when
you came to ride triumphantly into the city, still surrounds you. The same
willingness to serve which on the basis of your own right of requisition
prepared a room in which you might eat the Passover and prepare the first holy
supper is still here and would serve you again. Look, look yonder, the father of
two Christian sons is putting his shoulder to your cross.

Nevertheless, we would posit certain other ideas overagainst these. In the first
place we would turn that very carefully developed picture of the “service” of
Simon of Cyrene and the drift of the narrative of the other incidents
surrounding him in a different direction, by the matter-of-fact remark that we
know preciously little about the man, and about the service he performed. And to
that we would add that the appearance of Simon of Cyrene in no sense constitutes
a hiatus, a pause, in the suffering of Christ. On the contrary, that which the
Saviour experienced because of Simon of Cyrene aggravated His suffering, and
made His humiliation more conspicuous to the eyes of men.

Yes, we know very little about the person of Simon of Cyrene. The Bible tells us
that as the sad procession proceeded on the way of death, it did not take very
long before the cross of Jesus, and that by the compulsion of the Roman
soldiers, was laid upon a man who just happened to step out of the field, a man
called Simon of Cyrene. We are told in old books that there was a regulation
which had it that a man who was condemned to be crucified, as a general rule,
had to carry his own cross. Whether this regulation stipulated that the whole,
heavy cross had to be carried by the condemned person, or only the crossbeam, or
possibly only the vertical beam, we cannot say. As a matter of fact, the exact
shape of the cross is unknown. Three opinions are defended. The one opinion has
it that the cross formed the figure X; the other maintains that it had the shape
of a T, the third defends the position usually taken — and the one which seems
the most plausible — namely, that the cross had the form of the figure †. But we
shall say nothing further about this particular. It becomes apparent that Christ
could no longer support the cross. If we remember the physical and spiritual
exhaustion which must have been His as a result not only of the night which had
just passed, but also of the preliminary scourging, and of the whole of the
fatiguing and exhausting suffering which ravaged His body in those last hours,
we can easily understand that He could not support the burden. And we remember
the condition of His physical exhaustion again as we think of the fact that the
Saviour is the one who died first of the three crucified together.

There are some who think of a further particular in this connection. They
suggest that for a definite reason the high priests thought it unwise to have
Jesus bear His own cross. These drove their legal formalism so far that they
took exception to having a son of Abraham supporting a burden on a day of the
feast, for the law of the Sabbath, which also applied to feast days, forbade the
bearing of burdens at such times. To this hypothesis another is generally added:
namely, that the murderers crucified with Jesus did not bear their own crosses.
It is possible, they say, that the vertical pillar had already been placed in
the ground for them beforehand. After all, their execution was not an unexpected
one. But that of Jesus was an unexpected one, and the cross of Jesus, because of
the haste which had characterized the trial throughout, still had to be
specially brought to the place of execution. What shall we say of these things?
The other possibility might also hold: namely, that the execution of the others
was advanced somewhat now that Jesus was to be executed. We have not the
necessary information to decide definitely which construction is correct. It
seems to us that the explanation just presented is a highly unlikely one. Be
these things as they may, the fact is that Simon, who was just returning from
the field, is coerced by the soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus. It may be
that this took place very close to the gate of the city. The Bible tells us that
this man came out of Cyrene. Cyrene is one of the most prominent places in
Lybia, of the so-called Lybia Cyrenaica which lay off the north coast of Africa.
We know that the city of Cyrene maintained all kinds of relations with
Jerusalem. Business relations were maintained between Cyrene and the Jews.
Besides, we know that for some time a large number of Jews had been living in
Cyrene. Many Jews had emigrated to Lybia during the reign of Ptolomy I; in
addition, many Jews had gone there from Alexandria. To some extent these Jews in
the alien land had remained faithful to the religion of their forefathers; but,
on the other hand, many were absorbed by the heathen culture.

Who, now, was Simon? Was he a Jew who had come to Jerusalem with the special
intent of celebrating the Passover? We remember, for instance, that on the day
of Pentecost many religious Jews had come from Lybia also. Or was he one of
those many farmers who after they had made a neat little sum in the foreign
country, had come to spend their last days in the shadow of David’s grave, and
of the temple of the fathers? That is possible, but such comfortably retired
folk as a general rule are well advanced in years, and who would constrain an
old man to carry the heavy cross? Can it be that the man was neither a Jew, nor
a relative of the Jews, but an out and out heathen, who had unwittingly strayed
into the company of all those celebrating Jews, but who had nothing to do with
the celebration, the temple, or the Jewish customs?

You see that there are several possibilities. All of these have their defenders.
But there is another question. What did Simon intend to do? One says that he was
a Jew, living in Jerusalem, and just returning from his labor in the field in
order to buy or sell something in the city. No, another scornfully replies, he
was coming from his work this early in the morning, because he wanted to
celebrate the feast; and he still had to make all kinds of preparations for the
Passover meal. True, protests a third, but the man does not give you an
impression of such piety, for he was coming from the field, and must have been
working on that field. And that on the feast day—Sabbath desecrater! Now, now,
interrupts a fourth, you must not take that so seriously. It may be that he had
not even worked in the field. It is possible that the word translated field
should be translated estate. He had not been working, but had simply gone on
this off-day to see how things were getting along on his “villa.” And this
opinion, in turn, is supported by a fifth contender who maintains that even
clothes, on which the earmarks of field work were plainly perceptible, are not
convincing evidence of the fact that he had desecrated the law of the Sabbath on
the feast day. For in the case of many a well-circumscribed instance the work of
the Sabbath day or the feast day might still be so extensive that one could not
possibly appear in his “Sunday-best,” if you will forgive us for the
anachronism.[1] [1] See Strack-Billerbeck,Kommentaar,II, pp. 828, 829.

Thus the opinions differ. However, there are many who think they have a rather
good reason for thinking that Simon of Cyrene was indeed a pagan. “If the
supposition to the effect that of all those people in that neighborhood at the
time Simon was selected because he was a stranger, as was very likely obvious
from his color — a stranger, lest the people be offended — we can deduce from it
that Simon was not a Jew, but an alien, very likely a Moor.”[2] [2]
Grosheide,Kommentaar op Mattkeus, p. 348.

How little, how very little, therefore, we know of Simon’s past. The same is
true of his future. The same erstwhile Christian legends to which we referred a
while ago probably account for the rumor that he later became a Christian. We
do, however, have to acknowledge that this notion is more than an edifying
guess. The Bible tells us that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. Now
the special mention of these two names points to the fact that these persons
were well known and were men of good repute in the circle of the Christians. Of
good repute, we say, for there is not a single reason to identify this Alexander
with the heretic named in Acts 19:33, or in 1 Timothy 1:20, or in 2 Timothy
4:14. And Rufus is doubtless the same man whom Paul names in Romans 16:13 and
whom he graciously greets. According to this interpretation, then, the two sons
of Simon must have occupied a place of honor in the Christian church. And that
makes the supposition that Simon embraced the faith or, at least, that he was
not antagonistic to it, a plausible one.

Nevertheless we must not blink at the fact that the person of Simon, even though
we regard him as the father of those two well known Christians, remains hidden
in obscurity. He is shrouded in the same kind of darkness as are those two
others whose services were claimed during the passion week of Christ. We pointed
those out before. In the first volume of this work[1] we have seen that a
request came to a man to let the Saviour use his colt in order that He might
ride into the city on it, and that a similar requisitory request came to the
family who had to prepare the room of the Passover for Jesus. Of these people,
too, we knew very little. We were not even sure that they were friends of Jesus;
it might also have been that they were just in a general sense sympathetic to
Christ and His disciples. Very often the Bible lets the people who surround
Christ stand in semi-obscurity in order to keep the limelight full on Christ
Himself. Indeed, it is even their duty to stay in the dark. For His sake. And is
ours the right, then, because of our avid longing for a treasury of Christian
legend, to give a greater amount of credence to things which God has
intentionally left unrevealed than these things actually deserve? Surely, that
is just another way of “kicking against the pricks.” No, let us be on guard
against soiling and defiling the way of Christ’s worst and most extreme
necessity with our vain fantasies. Good Friday is too good for guess work.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,pp. 106 (Chapter 7) and 150 (Chapter 10).

Yes, there is a great difference between the Christian imagination of old times,
as it worked out its ideas in directions suggested above, on the one hand, and
the astonishing fantasies of the so-called religio-historical school, on the
other.[2] At bottom all of those fantasies, let them differ from each other as
much as they may, are a sinful activity, for they oppose an erotic or
esthetic[3] emphasis to the account of the most bloody reality.

We do not know Simon, and we will never know him. Whether he lived on a “villa,”
was a farmer or a peasant, was of the black race or of the brown, whether he
lived in Jerusalem or merely tarried there, whether he took the cross upon his
shoulders willingly or resisted the coercion of the soldiers—these are all
things we do not know, and we do not wish to act as though we knew them.

[2] These have made Simon of Cyrene the image of Kurenaios. This is the Greek
name for Bostes, who is a charioteer, who bears a sickle in his hand, and,
accordingly, is supposed to be returning from the field. This, as you see at
once, is a figure borrowed from the astronomical world.

[3] There are still others who think of Simon of Cyrene as a symbol of the Greek
Hercules.

What, then, do we know with certainty? We can answer that question the moment we
fasten our thoughts again upon the main thing; that is, upon Christ, the Man of
sorrows Himself, In this matter our thoughts have a resting place in the Greek
word which is used in the text of the gospel by way of indicating that the
soldiers compelled Simon to bear the cross of Jesus. The word which the gospel
uses in this connection is found only twice in the New Testament. In both cases
it can be translated as a coercive demand made upon a subordinate by an
authority of the government or at least by someone who regards himself as a
superior. The Greek word used comes from the Persian. It is derived from the
renowned postal service of the earlier Persians. In the interest of a speedy
disposition of the mails these Persians demanded that men and horses be claimed
at any time for carrying the post from one stage to another. From that origin
the word began to be used for broader activities. Later it is used for all kinds
of requisitory activity by the government such as even we know it in connection
with the mobilization of troops and the requisition of property in time of war.
It can also refer to the statute labor of feudal times. Christ Himself uses the
word in a related sense when in St. MatthewMatthew 5:41 He speaks of people who
compel another to go a mile with them. And it is in this sense that Simon of
Cyrene is required by the military hand of Rome to give his services. That is
about as much as we know with certainty. It may be that this strongly suggestive
word points to the fact that Simon was an alien. Especially if we remember that
the chief priests, as we observed, were a part of the procession, and were
partly in command of it. It is very likely that this coercion upon which they
insist would not apply to a Jew but to a colored man. He would be good enough
for that. Be that as it may, the element of a coercive request, of requisition
on the part of the government, is definitely connoted by the word used. And if
we cling to that it will become evident to us how deeply this humiliation cuts
into the passion of Christ Jesus.

Requisition, we know, is a demand by the government, a demand made upon a
person’s property, upon his time, upon his will, or upon his person. And we
remember that the account of Jesus’ passion began with the phenomenon of
requisition. We have already recalled that fact. In passing we mentioned that
Christ, in the full consciousness of the fact that He was the King of the city
and the absolute owner of everything in it, exercised the right of laying
claim—no milder phrase will do—to the foal of an ass first, and a room in which
to keep the Passover next. Yes, in Jerusalem. That was the place of the great
king who came to you in the name of the Lord, and who knew that. There,
Jerusalem, your King came, and He knew that He was the King before God. There
your King came; and also as a prophet He troubled Himself by that public
requisition of the foal of an ass to vividly demonstrate the prerogatives of a
king. Those of you who recall what we said before[1] about the “necessary
circumlocution” which Christ described by way of impressing His prerogative of
requisition upon the consciousness of the people and by way of demanding an
unconditional acknowledgment of that right, will feel at once that this
particular is of great significance in the passion story. For now a stark
contrast is set up between the beginning of the passion week and its tragic
conclusion. The very gate out of which Jesus is being thrown at present is the
same through which, not very long ago, He triumphantly entered into the city on
the foal of an ass which He had claimed. Jerusalem—the song echoed in His
soul—thy King cometh. The same city which no longer thinks Him worthy of a place
within its walls once had to offer Him a room in which He could institute His
holy supper. It had to offer Him the place which was to be the birthplace of His
world-vanquishing work, of the formation of the church, of the conquest of the
pseudo-religion and pseudo-culture of paganism and Judaism. For that is what the
place would become by means of the liturgy of the Christian supper.
Jerusalem—the song echoed in His soul—thy Priest cometh. Judas found the room
very small, and altogether too peaceful. But He heard storms in the offing:
storms of Pentecost, reformations, thunderings, trumpetings, and the sound of
many instruments. Yes, those were His two acts of requisition. They had
presented themselves to Him. At the time He had felt very strong. These acts of
requisition were functions of His Messianic consciousness. In the first of them
Christ asserted Himself as the king (remember the foal of the ass); but in the
second the message of His kingship was developed in a priestly direction. As the
High Priest of the confession which gives everything it has to give, He demanded
the room of the Passover, in order that in it He might give away the holy supper
for all of God’s defeated people.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,especially Chapter 7: p. 100.

Draw the threads together now. Here are two acts of requisition, the one kingly,
the other priestly. The conclusion of both was that by means of them He
displayed Himself to His people as the Priest-King, as the fulfillment of that
Joshua who, according to the word of Zechariah, was the type of Christ Himself.

Joshua, the Priest-King,—do you remember that still? We paused not long ago[2]
to study the fact that Christ knew Himself to be the fulfillment of the prophecy
of Zechariah 6. In the prophetic vision the faithful Joshua stood as a priest
and king at the same time, and as such the type of the Christ of God. Now this
Christ, whose last labor of passion again and again was determined by the
prophecy of Zechariah,[3] saw and recognized Himselfas the Priest-King, and saw
Himself as such before His name was coupled with that of Barabbas on one and the
same ballot. Moreover, in the full consciousness that He was the true and the
complete Priest-King Christ made His demands during the last week of His
passion. He did this fully aware of the fact that as such He was being
completely faithful to the trend of prophecy. He did not make His requisitions
according to the cruel law of Saul, who made his demands for purposes of
personal aggrandizement. Nor did He insist upon His requests according to the
wicked notions of David, who thought himself a sultan as he passionately
proceeded to count the people. Nor did Christ make His demands according to the
display of power characteristic of Solomon whose taxing of the people displeased
them greatly. Nor, for the matter of that, were His requests made according to
the tyranny of Zedekiah, David’s last king, who tyrannized slaves and made his
requisitions without any tempering of mercy. For Jesus knew that His royal
requisitions demanded much, but that His priestly love first of all gave much.
Jerusalem, what more could you demand? He made His first request in order to be
the master of all as a king. He made His second request by way of asking for a
place in which He might wash His disciples’ feet. Was there ever such harmonious
requisition? Is this not a paradoxical requisition? Is this something different,
O Jerusalem, from what Zechariah wanted: king, commander, priest, chief servant
of all, and all these united in one person? True, He made His demands and
insisted upon them, but He also gave His life, gave His blood, gave His soul,
and gave Himself as a ransom for many. He felt free to make His demands upon His
people, but He also endured the demands which God makes upon His people,
shouldered the burden of them Himself, and as the Surety and Mediator of all
bore their myriad burdens.

[2]Christ on Trial, Chapter 23: p. 428 ff.

[3] We referred to that prophecy repeatedly inChrist in His Suffering,and also
inChrist on Trial.

Such is the account of His harmonious requisition. What remnant remains of that
royal, of that priestly, glory? Look, the long fingers of priests are pointing,
and the strong arms of soldiers are seizing a man upon whose day and body they
laid claim in order that he might bear the cross of Jesus. The king of the whole
world, He who is the peculiar and the unique Priest is here, but the paganism
(of the soldiers), and the Judaism (of the priests), make their demands on Him,
over His head, and without Him. The royal sun is rising sluggishly in the
distance. Caesar “Augustus” lays claim upon the whole world, and the Son of
David, the Joshua of Zechariah’s nightly vision, can only look on. Such is the
vision of the day and such is the judgment of the night and day. Caesar Augustus
makes his demands, makes them very brutally, and right in the presence of the
king of righteousness. The priests of Aaron are a part of the procession and
they say: Just lay claim upon the time and energy of that man. Caesar demands;
hence they call him Lord and God.[1] He demands his royal services. Demands are
violently made on the way of the cross; but the whole demand proceeds from the
idea that Jesus Christ may make no demand, that He is not a Lord, that He is a
condemned slave. No royal services for Him, and no honorary services for Him,
and that is the end of it. Never did human aid ever humiliate so profoundly as
did the help given by Simon of Cyrene. Claudia—do you still remember?[2]—is a
very friendly woman, but she does Him an injustice. Simon is the last aide, but
he humiliates Him. The whole of His display of peace between a priesthood and a
king’s authority, the whole of His perfect reconciliation of the antithesis of
giving and taking all, as these were preached in His two acts of requisition,
are covered up and are swallowed up in this procession. Hardened soldiers curse
and pedantic priests make pedantic gestures. They have rings on their fingers,
helmets on their heads. And the Joshua of prophecy holds His peace.

[1]Christ in His Suffering, Chapter: 13, p. 220;Christ on Trial,Chapter 17: pp.
331-332.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 25, especially p. 481 ff. This is another instance of
negation. Not one drop of myrrh falls on Jesus’ cloak, the cloak of shame. Just
let those fragments of Mary’s alabaster box lie where they fell. Humiliation
here, sheer humiliation! Only the curse operates here. The Priest-King of
Zechariah 6 is now being negated in the presence of the devils. One cannot do a
king a greater injustice than by making the subject of all concepts of
requisition the object of need.

Now we greet Thee, Son of David, in Thy terrible shame. When David by reason of
his fleshly longing for requisition— that denial of his theocratic office—turned
away from the oppressive pestilential wind which moved over his densely
populated country—a fragment of the world then, but it had to become the church
again — he, with the extreme fastidiousness of an Ornan, did not want to demand
but wanted to pay for the place where the sacrifice was to be offered up, as
well as for the flesh of the animal to be sacrificed. In this also—for
repentance makes one very sensitive—the repentance of his heart becomes
manifest. He knew again that the theocratic prince might never take unless he
also gave. But here, O great Son of David, Thy remunerating offer, which Thou
with Thine own blood art compensating for and presenting to Thy God and to His
people, is being totally forgotten. For Thou art a slave in the eyes of men.
Thou art a pauper, a pariah, who cannot even accomplish His empty death in the
ordinary manner of slaves. How could such a death ever be adequate to a task
designed to bless? That is what Thy sensitive ear can hear them asking. Pagans
are making demands upon those whose royal services Thou as a king mightest
demand. And that is part of being in the form of a slave.

Moreover, who does not think in this connection of the name which Christ would
have, the name of Kurios. He wants to be called the Kurios, the Lord, the Owner
of His own, the Chief-Requisitioner. Well, Simon of Cyrene will bite his lips to
pieces before He can say to such a Jesus: My Kurios, my God. Simon of Cyrene—was
he a pagan? Was he a Jew or a relative of a Jew come from a foreign land? I do
not know, but I do know that he was either one or the other. And therefore we
can say that the requisition of this man in this manner for this work was a
molesting of the Spirit by Satan.

Only a few more weeks will pass, and the Holy Spirit will 011 the day of
Pentecost demand the life and soul and spirit of Jews, of the relatives of Jews,
and of the most outlying pagans for Christ Jesus. Then He will deliberately
fetch His Jews, His pious men, and will bring them to the stage of Pentecost. He
will even fetch His own from Lybia and God will call those living on the most
distant shores of far away seas. Simon of Cyrene, together with all Lybians and
all the pious men of Cyrene. But before the Holy Spirit proclaims Christ Jesus’
right of requisition over Simon of Cyrene on the feast of Pentecost, Satan
brings him next to Jesus’ bloody and repulsive nakedness. It is necessary that a
pagan be present here, or someone standing afar off, to see with his eyes and at
close range the deplorable state of Christ the exlex. This is Satan’s way of
attempting to put a dead fly in the ointment of Pentecost prepared by the spirit
of Christ, in order that the feast of Christ might be spoiled by that one man
who could not acclimate himself to the repulsive experience which he has had and
which he has felt in his own flesh. If you or I had had to take upon ourselves
the cross of a slave, wounded to the point of bleeding and that on a hot, summer
mid-afternoon, would we then, several weeks later have announced to all the
devils and to all the angels and to all men: This is my Lord and my God. Alas,
what a sacrifice Jesus must give for His royal and priestly right of
requisition, for that right which He exercised at the beginning of this same
week. Accordingly, we shall not inquire—as so many do—what reward Simon of
Cyrene was given. We shall not ask whether Simon’s reward in heaven was very
great because he bore the cross of Jesus. No, we shall not even ask whether his
grace-given remuneration was the conquest of his heart by the Crucified One who
looked upon him, and with His eyes probably penetrated deeply into Simon’s soul.
We do not know, and we do not want to know. Of what concern is Simon to us
unless our most poverty-stricken One some day greet him in the eternal
tabernacles. It is not ours to judge. But this we would still say to ourselves.
If we are to bear Jesus’ cross today, we will have to do it in a way different
from Simon’s when he was compelled to bear it. There is but one who may exercise
the privilege of requisition, and make it binding upon us. He is the Saviour,
the Crucified Himself. It was a part of His humiliation that He might not make
demands, that the double- edged sword of God’s sublime mockery was exerted
against Simon before his own eyes, bidding him to help Jesus for a moment. No,
we shall not thank Simon who bore the cross for Jesus; we shall thank only
Christ Jesus who endured the suffering caused by Simon. Without resistance He
bore this act of usurpation on the part of His cruel enemy. Not Simon, who bears
the cross, but Jesus, who gives it up, is our Lamb, standing dumb over-against
him who demands it. All of Jesus’ official right is being denied to His very
face, and thus He endured. Great will be His reward in heaven. As for Simon, and
you, and I? Great will be our reward in heaven, great will be the reward of
grace if only we will open our eyes and acknowledge Jesus as the One person in
heaven who has the right of requisition. Losing this right, He achieved it for
Himself for all time and eternity. There are those, we read in the Scripture,
who have entertained angels unawares. Thus did Simon of Cyrene on this day
unwittingly entertain the great Angel of Jahweh, thus did he accompany the
faithful Messenger of God on His way to the cross.

Hence we see the clouds breaking behind this spectacle of sheer affliction. He
who bears the cross today, and who even had to be released from this task, will
soon be establishing His throne and His chair upon the stars. To His own He will
say: You have clothed and fed me, given me to drink, visited me, and you have
borne my cross. And they all will answer: Lord, when did we clothe and feed
Thee, when give Thee to drink, visit Thee, and bear Thy cross? We know nothing
about that. By our sins we placed the cross upon Thee, merely placed it upon
Thee. But, looking around Him, He will say: These who have done the will of my
Father, these have visited and fed me, and these have borne my cross. May I
therefore on this day fulfill the remnants of the suffering of Jesus with a holy
reverence and with simplicity of heart. My name may not be Simon, but I am the
spiritual father of Alexander and of Rufus. And on the via dolorosa where my
sweat mocks all the kerchiefs of Veronica, He will be my Surety, great in
concealment. He demanded everything of me today, because He first gave
everything to me. But say no more now, for I dare not utter a word about my work
for Him. O God, I must first go and see. Thou dost demand my days, my nights,
and my eyes, so that I may go and see what it is that Thou dost first require of
Him. Father, Thy requisition presses upon Him. Thou dost oppress Him sorely, but
as Thou doest so, Thine eye is fixed upon me. I hear Thy threat: Thou, miserable
one, thou hast done this to Him. The soldiers of Rome, and the priests of the
Jews are very saints as compared with me when I think of this. They constrained
Simon—a Moor, some say. By means of my sins I constrained my Lord and my God to
bear my cross. He bears it, I bear it, yet not I, but Christ bears it for me. I
have not the foal of an ass to offer Him, I cannot give Him a room in which to
keep the Passover, but He lays claim on my heart: He would keep the Holy Supper.
“Now Joshua had filthy garments.” He came from Simon’s field, and had drawn the
furrows deeply. But be still. I know very well that filth can be of various
kinds.


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  CHAPTER 8: 03. CHAPTER 3: CHRIST’S LAST MINISTRATION OF THE WORD
========================================================================

C H A P T E R T H R E E Christ’s Last Ministration of the Word And there
followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and
lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not
for me but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are
coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that
never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to
the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us, For if they do these
things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry. —Luke 23:27-31.

NOW we are to study Christ’s last and final ministration of the Word. Some would
call it His ultima ratio. It was a strange hour, and the place was most
inappropriate for a service of the Word. Hence the discourse was very short.
Nevertheless it was a ministration of the Word. He who was speaking always made
His short addresses count heavily; as heavily as the ministry of the Word.
Besides, the Word He spoke was public. Moreover, He spoke from the Scriptures.
The procession moved on farther along the road. Suddenly Jesus saw a commotion
among the people. He heard terse words. A soldier snapped at another: Go to it:
have at him. A priest spoke in a tempered and modulated voice. The cross was
suddenly taken from His shoulder, and placed upon another man. You know his
name; it was Simon of Cyrene.

Even if we have appreciated only the smallest part of the truth in our preceding
chapter, we can feel free now to say that Jesus felt a piercing pain. He heard
Himself defied. Yes, I am referring to what happened to Simon. I say that He was
being defied. By whom? By men? But, from all outward appearances, these were not
unfriendly to Him. Besides, He heard the sobbing of women; and Simon of Cyrene
did accept the burden of the cross. Well, then, by whom was He defied? What is
it that makes Him dare to speak of defiance now? Be still, for He hears Himself
being defied in the presence of God. But let us keep things from running
together, and not mistake our words. He heard Himself being mocked by God.[1]
For if Christ related the right of requisition which the Roman soldiers and the
priests of Aaron had usurped to His own privileges as a King and to His own
right of requisition, we can be sure that everything we mentioned in our
preceding chapter not only pained Him far more grievously than we can state but
also that He referred all those things to God Himself. Aha, God says to Him,
Thou art the very one who rode into the city on a requisitioned colt, saying:
Here am I, the owner of beasts of burden, of houses, of the clothes of citizens,
and after a while, of the clothes of the priests also. Art Thou the same who
established a memorial for Thyself at the Holy Supper in a requisitioned room?
But I, saith the Lord, am making Thee to be sin; I take away from Thee all Thy
rights of requisition. Thou must pay me, Thy God, for Thy requisitioned colt,
and for Thy requisitioned room. Pay me the last cent. Give me my wages.

[1] For the difference between mockery and defiance, seeChrist on Trial, Chapter
9: p. 182 ff,

Then Jesus felt Himself repulsed. God pushed Him aside. A cross had just been
taken from His shoulder. O God, put another in its place at once, a cross as
heavy as—as heavy as—the Word. Yes, Christ, Thou art outside of the gate here,
Thou art enroute to the dunghill of the world.[2] Do not let this seem strange
to Thee. Do not think it odd that the Lord is giving Thy honor to another, for,
in the last analysis, there is but One to whom all toll must be paid. He is the
Chief Requisitioner. His name is Lord of Lords.

[2] See Chapter 1, page 32.

Indeed, this was very tragic. It excited a greater and a more painful
astonishment than the soldiers’ mockery of Him as a frustrated king. This
suffering was worse than that of the crown of thorns, of the gorgeous robe, and
of the reed. This was worse, for now it was God who mocked Him. Did Jesus
succumb? Did He fall back from God’s presence? Did He lose His Messianic
consciousness, which, in God, had confirmed Him in His requisition? Did He say:
Father, Judge, I am indeed the dry wood which will never again in all eternity
bear any fruit. Did He Himself prove to be the accursed fig tree?

No, no, He did not recede, He did not fall back. Listen to Him, as He praises
Himself: I am the green tree; I am the green tree; praise is becoming to me.
“Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commendeth.”
Would anyone chide Him with those words? But, remember that He is talking in the
face of this fundamental statement: I am the green wood of Israel; I have not
lost my right as a king. If the green wood is to be hewn down in the garden of
Israel today that garden will undergo the same experience which is undergone in
any garden where huge trees, which first stood in their “Eden,” are made to
fall. My fall will be the fall of everyone. If they abuse Me Who am the green
wood, the dry wood will be destroyed with Me in my fall. They will quickly
gather it up, and burn it in an oven. Accordingly, Christ knows Himself to be
the green tree, the tree of life in the Paradise of Eden. Perhaps you wonder why
we refer to Eden here. We do so because we are thinking of the prophet Ezekiel
in connection with this statement of Christ. Ezekiel sees the “mighty” of the
earth; he compares these crown-bearers of the nations with trees that have been
planted in a Paradise of “God,” the Father of creation.[1] Proud, imposing trees
they are, things of beauty in the garden of God, they have been planted in Eden,
the Eden of God. Common grace[2] and the culture which issues from it have given
these beautiful trees a rich soil in which to flourish. The healthful waters on
which the trees must feed have been hidden deep in the ground. Hence, when such
trees are chopped down, the whole of Lebanon laments the fact. Then God spreads
a curtain of crepe over the world. The fall of such trees means the same to God
as the devastation of the natural Eden.[3] And this is being said only of the
Eden of common grace, the beautiful parks which have been meted out according to
the architecture of our natural life.

[1] Ezekiel 31; see chapter 28.

[2] “God,” not “Lord” (Jahweh).

[3]Ezekiel 31:15-16.

Today, however, Christ—even on the way which leads Him outside of the gate, and
leads Him up to the boundary line of the dunghill of the whole world—is still,
as He Himself sees it, standing on holy ground. He is walking within the
confines of special grace. He is the green tree in Eden, the beautiful park
which has been meted out by the architecture of the God of all grace and of all
comfort. The soil of this holy ground has not yet been given up to devastation.
This is not an “Eden” of nature, but is still an “Eden” of grace. Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, as the holy city, as the institute, you are the headquarters of all
the chariots of Israel, and of all their horsemen. And as the holy garden, as
“Eden,” as the organism, you are the beautiful park, the forest of God’s
magnificent trees. Your name is “the garden of Eden.” That is your name not in
terms of nature, but in terms of grace and of the Word. It happens, however,
that the great, the one, the flourishing, the green tree of that “garden of
Eden,” is being hewn down today. That tree is the tree of life. It is the green
tree. Hence God will spread a curtain of mourning over the mountain of Zion.
Lebanon will weep because of the fall of this one tree. The fastnesses of the
earth will tremble at its impact with the ground. The architects of the city
(the institute) will say to themselves: We are removing an obstacle. As a matter
of fact they are taking the cornerstone away. Hence their building will crumble
to ruins. The keepers of God’s garden, of the Eden of God’s people of revelation
(the organism) will say: We are taking the parasite out of our beautiful park;
now all the trees can flourish again. But their trees are dead already; never
will life reanimate them. Now that the one tree whose beauty induced the Owner
to preserve the garden from destruction has been felled, only the dry and rotted
wood is left. What can the Lord of the garden do with all these stumps? He will
abandon the garden, and cast the dead pieces into the oven. The judgment will
begin at the place of this one, green, uprooted tree. The judgment! The days are
coming in which they shall say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never
bare, and blessed be the garden which is fruitful no longer, blessed be Eden,
also the Eden of nature, to which God has locked the door. For what we, Christ’s
murderers bear, is but the generation of vipers, and does not deserve to live.
Even if the stump could live, there would be no fruit, for that on which it
feeds has disappeared. God withdraws the nutritious waters that flowed beneath
our barren soil. We have only the dry trees left, the bare branches: just so
much kindling for the oven. That which our garden still produces is but the
hot-house plants of Asmodeus,[1] the poisonous plants of hell. Jerusalem is
blessed not because of her children, but because of her barrenness, for she has
put her great Child to death.

[1] The Hebrew name for the chief of the demons; seeTob 3:8andTob 6:14.

Frankly now, this statement sounds like foolishness, coming at this hour and
spoken by this mouth, does it not? Yes, indeed, “foolishness and offense”
Gamaliel would say, and his pupil, a certain Saul, will repeat it until his
death. The statement is sheer foolishness and offense. For Jesus Christ never
fears great folly. He cannot do without it; with it Paul would have nothing to
say. On the other hand, however, can you say that the statement contains
anything but Messianic self-consciousness? God mocks Him. God has the devils
tear His requisition-papers to pieces; the fragments twirl about His cloak of
mockery. Nevertheless Christ knows that the God who mocks Him will take Him
seriously; He knows that this day is not a ludus angelicus, a game of the angels
bent on pleasure, but the drama of all the worlds. He is so convinced of this
that He lays claim to the whole world, saying: Here is the one important thing.

How did this all happen? Whence this astonishing word, spoken from this dull
procession. This is how it happened. As Jesus went on the way to the cross, the
“daughters of Jerusalem” accompanied Him. Now these were not the well known
Galilean women, for they, prompted by their love, had constantly followed Jesus
and we see them standing at a distance later. They brought up the rear, or, if
you will, fetched a large compass around the master. Nor were these “daughters
of Jerusalem,” as some suppose, women from Judea or Galilee in general. The name
“Jerusalem” does not designate the whole of Israel. No, these are the women of
Jerusalem, the ladies of the “great city.”

Now we know that women of the big city know how to resort to tears. They know
what is meant by weeping, and especially what is meant by sentimental love. They
have read the beautiful statement in the Bible which says that the daughters of
Jerusalem must be told that there is a bride who is sick with love. This message
does not escape them. The theme of “the sick with love” grips them. However,
even though they are fond of discussing this theme without asking whether they
can excite a genuine love, they cannot evaluate these things correctly. Just
when people are sick with love and just where the energies of love—in its
sublime manner—can flourish wholesomely they cannot exactly say. Love seems to
them to be a beautiful adventure and, accordingly, being sick with love also
charms them. For the rest everything is rather vague. But who in matters of love
looks for learned definitions? These women have heard it said, and that by very
interesting men, that definitions have no place here. And with that they can
heartily agree.

Consequently, there is much work to be done by these ladies of the big city.
There is a great prophet. No one can deny that He is aflame with love. That He
is sick today is also obvious enough. This moves the women to follow Him. Many
prophets of the inner chamber[1] have comforted them. Everything is vague here.
That is just the point. There is a love, and it is sick. Just what health is . .
. well, that is a different matter . . . Come, sisters, let us weep. Someone
with a vague love is sick. Who would not weep!

[1]Christ in His Suffering.Chapter 19,p. 339;Christ on Trial,Chapter 2, p. 33.

They weep. Such weeping always causes a commotion in the world. Thus the day has
brought to pass the sorrows of the daughters of Jerusalem.

We suggest that you do not busy yourself too much about those learned
dissertations which try to find out whether their sorrow was genuine or not.
Roman Catholics even ask whether it was “natural” or “supernatural.” Other
Christians evaluate these tears by consulting their list of the “marks of grace”
and then—as is their way—still grope in the dark. Do not emulate them. The
daughters of Jerusalem are many. Among them are those whom God has predestined
for the joy of His Pentecost. Who can say what preparatory grace is
accomplishing in their soul at this time? There are also among them those who
will not hold out against the fire of Pentecost, and these “daughters” will be
sick, will continue, that is, to live in death. But Christ, as He ministers His
word, addresses them all as daughters of the holy city. He still calls the city
by its own name; He faithfully administers God’s Word to it; He points it to the
connection between this day and the great day of days, and also to the
connection between His own fruitful death-travail, and their fruitless labor.

Daughters of Jerusalem, ye who have no future, who are the last children of a
barren city, weep not for me. Such is Christ’s pure reaction. It is a reaction
which is good for all. For everyone. The true and the false is mingled in the
weeping of these women. Among them are those who pour out their hearts as though
they were in the presence of God. But there are also falsetto voices among them.
Jesus hears their lamenting. Now the word “lamenting” has nothing repulsive in
it. Lamentation is a technical term: it was the gesture of mourning which,
together with all of its ceremonies, was the custom with the Jews whenever death
cast its shadows upon them. The Jews had mourning women; they even hired them.
These knew how to weep, and had the time to weep. The Jews liked to use people
who had the time to do things. For the synagogue they hired ten visitors, whose
duty it was to visit the synagogue; ten of them, the required minimum, and these
ten are people who “have time for such things”; they are the opus operatum. Just
so the Jewish rulers proceed to hire mourners, people who understand the art of
weeping, and who have time to do it, the opus operatum[1] Jesus, who had always
opposed the idea of the opus operatum, now also opposes these mercenary,
insincere mourners. When they caused a tumult in this or that house, Jesus more
than once drove them out. He who would purge temples, must go on from the
temples into the houses.

[1] A piece of work, generally religious, which is sufficient to itself, which,
once done, has no further purpose. It satisfies those who would save themselves
by works mechanically dispatched.

Today, however, He does not have to drive people out any longer; nor does He
have to distinguish between the true and the false. He has the same message for
all. What else has He, but the ministry of the Word?

He gives what He has. He presents God’s Word. But, in order to minister the
Word, He must first purge Himself of their tears. For their weeping is not what
it should be. It seems to us that the meaning of those who would relate this
episode to the Talmud is too far-fetched. These interpreters point to the fact
that the Talmud forbade the mourning of the death of someone who had been
condemned by the Sanhedrin. Consequently, they regard the weeping of the women
as a protest against the government. This is altogether incredible. Even if the
sound of mourning was intended as a note of protest, would that have justified
it and made it pleasing to God? Whoever does not put the death of Jesus into
relationship with the crises of his own life has lost himself, though he weep
never so much. Hence Jesus—looking neither to the right nor to the left—turns
abruptly around and says to the women: Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves
and for your children. To these words He adds a discourse. The discourse is long
enough for one whose back has been scourged, whose every step brings Him nearer
His death; and it is brief enough for One who has so comprehensive a view of all
things of time and of eternity as He has.

We can discover the true meaning of this statement of Christ only if we find its
place in the history of the passion. We have already mentioned the fact that
this statement is a public statement; it is a public ministration of the Word.
The day of Pentecost has not yet come; hence that is not the reason for which He
must address Himself to the people of the city. After He pronounced this short
discourse, He never again made any public address. He did not speak to the
public from the cross, for His seven utterances from Golgotha were not directed
to the people in general. After His resurrection, too, Christ never once used
His human tongue to direct a public address to the people at large. The
discourses of Jesus, the Son of David, have an end. Does that not make you
tremble? If this is the last public discourse which Christ Jesus pronounced on
earth, we may be sure that this statement was for God (to whom a thousand years
are as one day) immediately bound up with the forthcoming public discourse which
Christ will address to the community which is in the world. You ask what the
scene of that forthcoming public address will be? That will be on the last day,
when the world will quake, and when everything that is said here will be
completely fulfilled. Then the sound of lamentation will be addressed to the
mountains demanding that these fall on them, and to the hills asking that they
cover them. That will be when man will desire to live no more, nor any womb to
give birth. This public statement of Christ was a threatening one, and He who
pronounced it was a broken Man. Nevertheless He was highly exalted. The full
expression of the Messianic consciousness, the full strength of Jesus’ sinless
soul is in it. Is He harmed by it? He is harmed by everything. And yet by
nothing. He is very sound; the simplest word is the best here. God and Satan are
here, inciting these women to tears. The Lord incites them; such is the Biblical
language. Satan incites them also; that, too, is Biblical language. God compels
them to follow Jesus; He makes them weep their tears. God wants to try His Son.
Satan constrains them to follow Jesus; he makes them weep their tears; he wants
to tempt the Son. He would wrench the steadfast Soul loose from its
steadfastness. Well, nothing human is strange to Jesus. We may as well admit
that it is not easy for any human being to be unaffected by tears which another
human being sheds for him. It is not easy, when tears begin to fall, to give
expression boldly and emphatically to that well-known, dignified statement of
office-bearers, to that stately first and final predication of the ministration
of the word, to the effect that the people must look beyond the minister, and
beyond the speaker who is at the same time the complainant. Tears of the
audience and spectators are a temptation to the office-bearer of God. Let
everyone weep for himself. Let him not stop at the speaker who excites the
tears, but let him look beyond the speaker. That is easy to say, but is it as
easy to mean? Those of us who know ourselves will immediately say that it is
not. But Christ, who is our Surety, never lets Himself be thrust outside of the
official sphere, from which alone He may acknowledge His God. We see Him as
Prophet, as King, and as Priest. Let us not tire of seeing Him again as He is in
this three-fold office. For whoever thinks this spectacle tiresome is one whose
“knowledge” is not prompted by “love.” In other words, he becomes puffed up. And
nowhere does such pride express itself as foolishly as on the via dolorosa.

We said that Christ is a Prophet here. Hardly dismissed by the judge, He
addresses a discourse to the crowd. The transition from the second volume to the
third volume of this work really is an astonishing one. The note of silence was
very prominent in our second volume. As a matter of fact, the whole of it was
dominated by this motive: But Jesus held His peace. At times He made a
statement, but for the most part His speaking was subordinated to His silence.
But now, as soon as we have been allowed to penetrate the third part of Christ’s
passion, something else impresses us forcibly. The dominant motive now is not
“Jesus held His peace.” Now He speaks. He speaks in the ministration of the
Word. He speaks His seven utterances from the cross. He cries aloud. He cries
with a loud voice. Crying with a loud voice He gives up the ghost. Who can say
that this is not prophecy? We must give this fact even more careful attention
when we observe again that Christ does His speaking out of the Scripture. “You
and your children”; that is the language of the Bible. From the days of Abraham
the phrase has been repeated again and again. You and your children. Thereupon,
Christ speaks of that distant, nearby day in which they shall say to the
mountains, “Fall on us,” and to the hills, “Cover us.” Who is there that does
not recognize in this Hosea 10:8 : “And they shall go into the holes of the
rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory
of His majesty.” And who could fail, when he hears the words “daughters of
Jerusalem” to remember the cadences of the Song of Solomon.[1] Certainly, then,
if Christ during His last hours still speaks from the Scriptures, He remains the
Prophet. Then He is being obedient to His prophetic office as a man also. If
ever a Prophet of God was tempted to keep the moment which he was experiencing
before his own mind and before the minds of others, and to accentuate that
moment at the expense of God’s one continuous work, it was He, the Prophet of
our confession, Christ Jesus. All of His humanity, His nerves, His heart, His
scourged back, cries aloud: It is good to weep for me. The moment is a horrible
one; in this broken flesh the world is breaking. Listen, you can hear it
breaking, you can hear it cracking in God’s universe. Weep for me, for by my
fall God causes the heathen to tremble. No, His prophetic spirit masters His
flesh, puts it into service; His prophetic spirit makes the flesh subservient to
the laws of the eternal Spirit. In this way He immediately links His own
specific moment with the chain of the “times and seasons” of God. Although
though His tongue cleaves to the roof of His mouth because of the thirst He
suffers, it immediately gives voice to the whole of the Scriptures again. His
discourse includes the whole of prophecy, and in this He is being God’s official
minister.

[1] We do not mean to say that Christ is intentionally quoting from the Song of
Solomon.

We can say, then, that a great compassion characterizes Christ’s prophecy at
this time. We can put the truth this way: The announcement of the devastation,
of the conquest of the vicious circle, the circle of natural life, concerning
which we heard Christ speak in our second volume,[2] is now being transferred
from the “intimate” judgment hall to the public domain of the via dolorosa. If
Jesus Christ had uttered His royal word, His word of life, in the judgment hall
alone, it would never have reached the people to whom He was sent. True, He had,
before this time, repeatedly testified to that people that He was the Messiah
whom they, whom “this generation,” would see as He came in glory. But today He
relates His coming in glory to this particular moment. “This generation” now
witnesses the day of His final dissolution. But this generation will also see
that in His dissolution He also dissolves. “From now on ye shall see”—with that
statement He admonishes the Sanhedrin and with that statement He now addresses
the masses. He is taking His final prophecy out of seclusion and making it a
worldwide proclamation. Now He lets the people, the many, see that He is
breaking the cycle of natural life on this day.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 7, especially p. 139. As He does so He thrusts—Jews,
do you see how terribly logical He is?—the mourning women away from His own
death bed. For we must know that these women of the great city are pushing Jesus
into the circle, the daily circle of life’s funeral march; they weep for Him
just as they weep for “a” son of man. But Jesus manifests Himself as “the” Son
of man. He shows that His day is the day of the whole world. From now on, from
this hour on, judgment will break over the heads of all. He reveals Himself now,
not as a man who can be compared with any other, but as the One, who has His own
peculiar essence, as the one green tree in a forest of dry trees. He shows them
how He is loosing judgment upon them, how condemnation is breaking overhead. All
because of Him. He laughs about that foolish pairing of names which had been
drawn up some time ago,[1] even though a trio[2] of names now defies Him in His
spirit. Judgment now comes upon Him. What judgment? Is it the wrath of Rome,
which will devastate the city of David after a while? No, it is not that; or,
better, it is not that alone. Christ shows us (see Matthew 24), that “the day of
the Lord” is one day; therefore He organically relates the wailing and weeping
for the downfall of Jerusalem to the last judgment day. Thus Christ speaks to
His people, administering God’s word. He speaks to those who are still His
own[3] in a plain, adequate way. There is not the hint of a maschil[4] in His
discourse. The manifest character of revelation characterizes the whole of His
final ministering of God’s word. He raises His head high above the disdain of
men. He sees Himself and His cross as a power sufficient to darken the sun. Thus
He enters into communion with the swarm of grasshoppers of whom Joel, the
prophet, spoke. Just as Joel—how nervous that prophet was—saw the beginning of
the judgment day in the plague of grasshoppers of his time—the insects darkened
the sun—and just as Joel saw the fiery chariots of Jahweh at the head of the
cloud of grasshoppers, so Christ now announces: The God of the grasshoppers
darkens the sun before Me now; soon darkness will impinge upon the city and upon
the temple. God’s fiery chariots are drawing Me to Golgotha. He hastens to set
up my cross as a stumbling block to the Jews. Simon, I can go on; the Lord is
with Me, Him will I fear. Did you want to help me, O man? But who can hope to
move the heavy wheels of God’s chariots when they are standing still? And who
can put his hand to the spokes if the chariots are hastening on?

[] Jesus-Barabbus. SeeChrist on Trial, Chapter 24, p. 455 ff.

[2] His, and those of the two murderers.

[3]John 1:11.

[4]SeeChrist on Trial,Chapter 4, p. 81 ff. This is beautiful prophecy, is it
not? Satan, thou hast sent the women in pursuit of Jesus; Thou wantedst to see
whether He would remain true to Himself. It is true, is it not, that He very
frequently drove the mourners away when He had to fight death, and had to make
of a death-bed the work-room of His life? Thou wouldst like to know whether He
will let them weep for Him today. This is His answer, Satan. He drove the women
away again.

He remained true to Himself. For this Jesus has now seen the way of the cross as
the work-room of His life. The way of the cross is a work-room rather than the
death-bed of Jairus’ daughter. He purged the atmosphere which was contaminated
by the women. He did not thank them, not even now when they gave Him their
tears.[1] Alas for Him if He had done that!

[1] This interpretation is not at all like that of P. G. Groenen,op. cit.,p.445,
who says: “The Saviour, consequently, recognizes the noble disposition (of the
weeping women), and as a reward He speaks to them lovingly.” Surely this is a
typical Roman Catholic attitude of mind.

Then His prophecy would have been lost with Him in that shedding of tears which
has drowned so many good words. The women weep; and tears always dim the eyes of
men. But Jesus’ eye is not dimmed, neither by blood, nor by sweat, nor by tears.
He knows that these women are weeping only for “Jesus.” The masses have no eyes
with which to weep for “Christ.” And “Jesus” does not wish tears which are wept
for a “Jesus” who has been separated from the “Christ.” He does not because of
pity for Himself wrench Himself apart. For Himself He has no pity. His person is
one person; it is undivided. That one person governs His two natures. His will
is one. The pity of men cannot harm or wound Him. He is conscious of Himself,
but He never stops there as human pity does. And now it is my turn. And yours.
For He has driven the women away. It is our turn. This His prophecy is sounded
everywhere. As Jesus, He does not want to be lamented; He wants to be believed
as Jesus Christ. We listen to Bach’s Passion of St. Matthew, and to its closing
chorus: “Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder.” As often as that chorus is being
sung, as often as the singers run through the piece, and the ladies of “the
great city” have their ermines handed to them, Jesus stands at the rear of the
hall and says: Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children; for
the days will come in which those who have not wept because of me shall call
upon the mountains and the hills to take away the sight of God and to protect
them from the wrath of God. What shall we say to these women? We may as well be
honest: Jesus also stands in many a church. He stands in many an orthodox
church, in which the preacher by a “beautiful” sermon has caused tears to fall
here and there. He has described rather than prophesied; his is a church in
which “Jesus” was pictured, and Christ was not proclaimed.

We may also honor the Saviour-Messiah as King on this occasion. The word which
Jesus directs to the people on this day is a reference to what the people
themselves have said. We remember that Pilate once asked: Shall I crucify your
King? Shall his blood be upon you? Then the people had replied: His blood be
upon us and our children. This King is here now, and He says: My blood shall be
upon you and upon your children. Time will come when you cannot endure your
children because you will pronounce the name “lost son” proleptically (very
different from prophetically) in referring to your child. The travail of My
death will never still the travail of your birth-pangs. The day of My death will
make your maternity chambers a funeral grotto. You will know this, and will say
this, and will sigh because of it. You are taking the true Life out of your
midst. Hence you will be unable to live after a while, unless you repent. In
that day you will seek out death, and will not be able to find him. Your delight
will be a burden to you, and each new child a brutal martyrdom. You want to be a
community. And as a community you said: We shall purge ourselves of the blood of
the Nazarene; we shall cut this piece of Jesus’ flesh out of our common body; we
shall safeguard ourselves and our children against this accursed individualist.
But now you will not have the strength for a community life, for you will be
unable to bear children. You will praise the barren as the blessed among you,
because you cannot achieve a community of fellowship any longer, nor build a
community any farther. Your sin will divide every man against every other after
a while, the father against the child, the man against the woman. Your sin will
be the disintegrating influence which will break up the form of the community
and will make it an impossible conglomeration of antipodes, a concussion of
reciprocally repulsive elements. And this basic denial of life, this piercing
scream accompanying the sundered community will culminate in your absolute
death. Judgment, dread, the fear of the Lord — in those forms My royal blood
will be upon you and upon your children. The King knows Himself; that much you
can hear. Not for one moment is He dependent upon His subordinates. He does not
use the tears of men to justify Himself in the eyes of others. He even wrenches
the crown of the martyrs off His own head. He does not wish the tears in which
the impotent opponents protest against the overbearing vindicators of the right
of revolution. He does not use their complaints to divide His judges from their
subordinates, and to assert Himself overagainst the people. This King asks for
no Totenklage, neither before nor after His death. No muted tramp, no mourning
weeds, No funeral dirge His body needs. For His kingdom is not dependent upon
men. His royal majesty remains purely itself in its self-manifestation.

Consequently He is also able to discriminate nicely between the true and the
false weeping of men. When His mother begins to weep later, He dries her tears;
her sadness is in conformity with God. But these tears are impersonal, and He
sends the weeping crowd only to the temple, and to the Word of prophecy. This
message is good for all: it is a last admonition. When love and faith weep
together, He gives the mother a son, a son whom she has not borne. For the
spiritual fellowship which is born of the Spirit of Christ dominates nature. By
sheer Spirit it binds mother and son together, even though the same blood does
not course in their veins: Woman, see thy son; son, see thy mother. But where
faith is lacking, and love is not active, Christ tells the mothers: Woman, thou
art no longer able to see thy son; son, never again wilt thou find thy mother.
Woman, thou wilt not even bear a son in thy thoughts, for thou regardest thyself
as very blessed when thou no longer needest to bear Abraham’s children, because
he will certainly refuse to acknowledge them, now that thou hast refused this,
his great, Child.

Thus the Spirit of Christ governs the bonds of flesh and blood also. That Spirit
governs blood and nature, the synthetic and the antithetic, binding and loosing.
But always the Spirit will govern. He ties new fetters: Woman, see thy son. That
is synthesis, a joining together. He tears old fetters apart: Woman, thou hast
no son, thou dost not want him, thou dost even reject him in thy thoughts. That
is antithesis.

Thus does Christ as a king break the vicious circle of life: from now on they
shall see Him as the life-giving Spirit and not as the living soul. They shall
see Him positive and negative, binding together and loosing, organizing and
disrupting. As the life-giving Spirit He will become manifest to all nations.
For His Spirit constrains the blood, and constrains His posterity. His Spirit
robs Abraham’s oppressed but impenitent mothers of their fleshly children, and
by His will calls into life children who are full-grown men. These He calls into
life in Abraham’s oppressed and yet, in Him, comforted widows. Woman, lose thy
son. Woman, see thy son. Son, leave thy mother. Son, see thy mother. Spirit,
constrain the dust, for he who would weep in Jesus’ presence must weep in spirit
and in truth. The old covenant will not perpetuate itself in the superficial
tears of women, but in the powerful sermon of a fisher of men. The son and the
mother whom the Spirit of Jesus has brought together will not be lacking at the
banquet which sanctifies all tears and which makes sacrifices of thanksgiving of
them ( Acts 1:13-14), O second Adam, life-giving Spirit, come, preach in our
fellowship. We will suppress the tears, O Lord.

We hear women weeping out of doors, we hear them sobbing; they say, and their
saying it disturbs Thy preaching: Alack, where is His poor mother? Pitiable the
breast that nourished Him in Nazareth. We hear the sobs, O Lord, and they are
very human. But Thou lookest around Thee and dost say: They are looking for My
mother. They want to press her hand and offer her condolences. Such is the
custom of a great city. Who is My mother save he that doeth the will of My
Father? Other than she I have no mother. Mother, do not accept their hand:
Because Thou hast become My mother according to the Spirit, and doest My
Father’s will, they will crucify thee with Me. Didst Thou say these words, here
in our company, O Lord? Then look around the room again, convert us to the will
of the Father. Teach us to keep our sins near the baptismal font on which are
written about each of thy brothers in particular these words: Lord, unite us in
the will of the Father. It might be that at some time we will not love each
other any more, that we will be jealous of each other, even as Thou hast seen
jealousy in genteel women. When our eyes, as we move along the via dolorosa,
look out in two directions toward Jesus and also toward the priests — or even if
our eyes, looking in one direction, only, see the humanity of “Jesus’’ without
penetrating through, that humanity to the divinity of the Son and to the office
of Christ, then our delicate weeping is the beginning of the jealousy of our own
flesh.

Listen, He says to me: I am the king, but My kingdom is not of the earth. All
kings who are not of the earth can use temporary faith very effectively for
their purposes. Excitement, enthusiasm, and bursting tears reinforce their
power. But I am the King of Zechariah 6; My kingship is united with the office
of the priest. I do not like those tears, for in themselves these tears are but
an expression of temporary faith. Woe is me if I do not wrestle with God for a
saving faith, O weeping daughters of Jerusalem. Here is the Bridegroom, a king’s
crown, a priest’s soul, and He does justice to the daughters of Jerusalem. He
struggles for their preservation. He is not faithless to the law of marriage: He
does not despise the tears, but only evaluates them, in order that the faithless
bride of the Lord, the Maker, who was her Husband, might still honor Him. In the
third place, we consider the Priest of our confession. He knows that He is the
Priest. Hence He is not satisfied with being the object of pity. He wants to
suffer in His own strength, and in His own strength be a sacrifice for many. Now
Claudia has her answer; now Pilate with his “ecce homo” also has his. Satan may
tempt Him, the devil may try by means of the sadness of the women to make Him
forget His own program of work, to distract Him from the demands of God’s
holiness, to make Him flee from the wrath of God. But Satan will not succeed in
this. Christ did not desire the superficial sentiment of the women of Jerusalem
for Himself in order to withhold from faith His determined will to be a
sacrifice. The tears of Delilah have not kept Samson from his work today. True,
He is put into the prison of the Philistines, but not because of those tears. It
was a part of His task to enter the prison. He derives His reasons for doing
things from Himself even on the day of His death. There were women here who
wanted to detain Him when He wished to pay the dowry of the true bride of His
heart. He struggled through their thronging; He had to pay, and He would. He
does not know what concubines are; the true bride can see Him and pay and buy in
haste. In haste. He does not stumble, O bride, over the impediment of the
strange eroticism of strange women who do not recognize a buyer in Him. Tears
have always detained those who were running in the race course. But He went
steadily on, quite undetained, on the way of genuine obedience. And thus He
becomes the “chief leader and fulfiller of faith,” who will presently remove
every burden from us, including the burden of tears wept by erotic women. The
tear stricken face showing itself to the left and then to the right of Him, as
He wiped the sweat from His eyes and could again see for a moment, that tear
stricken face of a woman which longed for a glance from His marvellously deep
eyes did not hinder Him from seeing the face of God. For God’s face demanded but
one thing from Him: absolute condemnation. Justice had so arranged it. The women
did not mention it to each other in the evening, but they had admitted it to
themselves for a second. After all, He had been less interesting than they had
thought. But that precisely is the case: He curses all interesting people, the
peddlers of the spirit, and their organizers. This is the Priest who is meet for
us. Once He Himself wept when He approached the city and said that she did not
acknowledge her sins nor that which could work her peace for her. God is now
evaluating the tears which Christ wept then. For all tears which man weeps now
and then are not evaluated until they maintain themselves genuine and
uncontaminated overagainst those of another. If Christ’s tears had fallen upon
Jerusalem solely as tears of weakness — He could do no miracles because of
unbelief! —these would have manifested that weakness now in an avid acceptance
of the sadness of these women. If this soul the anima sensitiva — accepts the
tears of others as a sacrifice of incense today, if He accepts them as they are,
separated from the spirit which is in Him, then He as a Mediator will be
disrupted. Precisely that is what constitutes the temptation of Satan by means
of the women. Satan wishes to disturb and move Christ’s human soul; he would
segregate it from the direction of His spirit. But now that He is maintaining
Himself according to soul and spirit overagainst this extensive and yet limited
sadness, He remains the strong. We know now that the tears which He wept
yesterday are not to be separated from the blood which He sheds today. The tears
of another have frequently hindered a person in offering his own deed; but Jesus
was not hindered by them. Now that He has maintained His tears in their own pure
strength they have remained united with His dear blood.

Now it is our turn to weep in His presence. We must weep with Him, through Him,
and for Him. Whoever has seen Jesus’ tears and blood fall upon the road which He
travelled as Surety, will not weep because of the weakness of “Jesus” but will
find himself weeping in the strength of “Christ.” As a priest Christ reveals
Himself, and lets Himself be seen.

Listen to what He tells the women. This is His priestly address: My death is not
My natural fate but My supernatural deed. It is not My natural destiny, for I am
not a dry tree, but a green and flourishing one. It is going against nature to
hew down a green tree. Only dry and dead trees are justly cut down. A green tree
when felled receives what it really has not deserved; such a tree is taking upon
itself that which should have overcome the dry tree. Dry wood and dead branches
are indeed fit for the fire. Such wood is but getting its deserts when it is
cast into the oven. Well, every branch of the tree of Israel which acknowledges
Me no longer is dead wood; it must be destroyed, for that is its destiny. But
when I, the green tree, allow Myself to be despised and put to death today, I am
assuming the fate of the dead branches. I am taking your lot upon Myself, O
daughters of Jerusalem. I shall let Myself approve of your fate even in My
death. Come to Me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden. Alas, if only you would
acknowledge in this hour what it is that makes for your peace. Did Simon of
Cyrene hear the sound of a dry sob? He could not be sure, for he could not look
up, he could not look up into the eyes of the people.

Priest, High Priest, incomparable in grace. When, after a while, the people
shall cry out, Mountains, fall on us, they will be trying to escape from God and
the Word and from Thy priestly face. They sought to protect themselves from
Moses’ dazzling face by asking that a veil separate his from theirs. That veil
must become a mountain presently; as thick and solid as a mountain it will have
to be. Mountains, cover us! For who can withstand the eyes of the Lamb? But this
priest draws God and the Word toward Himself: He can withstand the eyes of God.
He can look straight into them. He does His work consciously always. Do not call
Him Mara; do not call Him the most unfortunate of men; for that is the name
given Him by the women of Jerusalem. That name spells defiance for Him. He who
calls Jesus the most unfortunate of men is pronouncing His name in the same
breath and placing Him in the same category with all those other “unfortunate”
ones of this world, is failing to discriminate between the green wood and the
dry, dead wood. But Christ has expressly distinguished Himself from all those
others. He is the green tree in the decayed forest. He is not the most
unfortunate of men, daughters of Jerusalem; He is the Mediator of all the
condemned of God, of all those who reach out to Him, of all those who would live
by His death. Say no more, “Lo there goes the most unfortunate of men. Ecce
homo. Les miserables of Jerusalem are the women and the priests. With whom then
would you compare Him? I hear someone say that He died of His own pity, but this
hour has proved the falsity of that. My Priest, who in the distress of His death
could still turn pity away can never die because of pity. He can only govern
all. From a distance we already hear the Spirit praising Him by means of the
Word, praising Him who can have a true sympathy for our weaknesses, and who
teaches us that the sorrow of the world does indeed work death in us, but that
the sorrow of God, the sadness which is in conformity with God, works a
repentance unto salvation never to be regretted.

Give me my children. They were born in Jerusalem; it is late; the ends of the
ages have converged upon us. Give me the children of the Jerusalem of the latter
day. Otherwise they might escape from me. Fin de siecle. And unite me with my
unborn child, with the child of my mind, unite me with him before the cross of
Jesus Christ. And teach us as we are together here a Passover song. But do not
teach it to me too quickly. I mean, do not teach it to me prematurely. I may
overlook nothing today. Jesus has preached destruction, and has preached it to
the children within her walls: ceterum censeo Iesum esse delendum.[1] God will
punish me if I dare not make this terrible statement, dare not make it on His
authority. This is a wonderful day. Tears and tears — but God makes but one
statement: namely, there is such a thing as authority.He makes it very
difficult; for I hate authority, especially when it makes itself binding upon my
tears. I found those tears so pleasing. Yes, yes, ceterum censeo Iesum esse
delendum: Lord, do not destroy me.

[1] For the rest I mean that Jesus must be destroyed (a play on the familiar
reference in classical literature).

Open my eyes that I may see, Open my lips that I speak truth. Oh keep me from
all spurious ruth, From sentimental sympathy; For that would stain Thy
majesty.[2] [2] Adapted from Albert Verwey’sChristus-sonnetten.


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  CHAPTER 9: 04. CHAPTER 4: CHRIST ON GOLGOTHA
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C H A P T E R F O U R Christ on Golgotha And they bring him unto the place
Golgotha, which is, being interpreted,The place of a skull. —Mark 15:22.

THEN the procession arrived at the hill of Golgotha. That is where the sacrifice
which is to take away the sin of the world was brought. Men’s imaginations
throughout the centuries have, in spite of the fact that God did not want to
point out the place specifically, nevertheless persisted in trying to designate
it exactly. They found it too terrible to believe that the statement of Psalms
103 could be applicable to the Christ: And the place thereof shall know it no
more. In this respect, too, however, we shall have to be guided by the will of
God. The fact is that no one has ever been able to designate exactly where
Golgotha was, and that he who would look for the soul of his Lord among the
dead, and among the tombs of the dead, will have to walk around in the old
Jerusalem without arriving at any certainty.

It is not surprising that a legend-weaving tendency should have busied itself
with Golgotha. Some say — we shall only allude to a few of the guesses — that it
was the very place in which Abraham offered up Isaac. It is said that Golgotha
is the exact center of the world; that the skull of Adam was buried there; and
that the blood of Zechariah as well as the blood of Jesus left its indelible
stain there. There are many legends besides. In recent times the so-called
religion-historical school has also presented its opinion about Golgotha. These
maintain that the name “Golgotha” is derived from a root which means
“roundness,” and was a reference to the point at which the sun stands still. You
see that this is again relating a Biblical reference to mythological data
derived from astronomy.

We prefer to abandon these considerations at once. Those who cling to the
strictly historical interpretation as well as those who look only for symbolical
significance in the historical date must feel ashamed by these attempts to cover
the grave of Jesus and the death-scene of Christ with the poetic creations of
human fancy. We shall not judge those Christians of the ancient day who, we are
told, would at given times come together upon the hill of Golgotha to weep.
“Even as the Jews still weep and wail at the wall of the temple, so the first
Christians wept at the foot of the rock on which the cross stood. In the fourth
century, and afterwards also, the congregation would stand there from twelve
o’clock until the hour of Jesus’ death, that is, until three o’clock, and would
listen to the accounts of the gospel concerning the death of the Saviour, and to
the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament.”[1] No, we repeat, we shall not
judge these people, for as long as the place of the hill of Golgotha was
definitely known, people could stand there and could weep there prompted by the
Spirit of Christ. The childish piety which would seek out the place of Golgotha
could become a hampering demand on God only after God Himself had covered it
with the grass, and sods, and dust, of many centuries.

[1] Nathan Soderblom,Het lijden en sterven van onzen Heere Jesus
Christus,Translated into the Dutch from the Swedish by J. Henzel, N.V. G.J.A.
Roys’ U. M. Zeist, 1930, p. 291.

Unfortunately, that is just what happened. God Himself has in the succeeding
centuries removed the traces of Christ’s way of the cross. We must bow to the
counsel of God, and must give the hint narrated in Psalms 77 its appropriate
meaning. In that psalm we read (the reference is to the Red Sea): Thy footsteps
are not known. The water has completely removed the traces of the advance of God
Himself, of His camp, and of Moses. In the same sense, we now say to the Lord
God, who leads His people in the person of a Greater than Moses, but this time
in reference to Golgotha: Thy footsteps are not known. The dust has removed
every trace of Thy steps. Shall we lament this fact? To do so is to identify
ourselves with the poet of legends to whom we have just alluded, who from this
negative attitude passed over quickly to the positive one: Thou leddest Thy
people like a flock. He who sings that of Golgotha, who sings it in sincerity of
heart, can be said to have been upon the hill of Golgotha in spirit.

We shall not burden the reader with a summary of what has been said about the
hill of Golgotha as such. We wish to say simply that an identification of the
hill of Golgotha with the hill of Goat, which in the opinions of some is called
the hill-of-dying, is unwarranted. Those who so identify the two argue that the
word “Goat” can in one way or another be derived from a root which means “to
die.” This fantasy must give way to the plain statement of the Bible itself,
which says that the word “Golgotha” is related in one way or another to the
concept of a skull. The connection between the Aramaic word for “skull” and the
name “Golgotha” does not consist of the fact that according to custom the skulls
of those condemned there were buried there also — a custom which some wrongly
suppose is indisputable. The connection can very likely be ascribed to the fact
that the hill resembles the formation of a skull. This interpretation also makes
it highly probable that the hill must not be regarded as a mountain proper. On
the contrary, we must think of it as a small rise of the ground, small, but
large enough to make it easy for those who passed the spectacle to see plainly.
This is in agreement with the custom of that day to choose for purposes of
execution a place which was near a prominent thoroughfare, and one which because
of its conspicuousness attracted the attention of all those who came along the
highway. To this extent, therefore, the name “skull,” or “place of a skull,”
suggests the Biblical thought that Christ had to be publicly lifted up. Golgotha
was not a secluded spot, but a public place near the city. There the Lamb of God
(according to the law of God) had to be brought This consideration leads our
thoughts to what Jesus Himself once said when He referred to His dying as a
“being lifted up.” Such considerations lead us in the right direction. Golgotha
to us is not this or that place of topographical significance, but it is the
stage and the work-room of the power and of the Word of the Lord. Our only duty,
consequently, is to determine the significance of Golgotha by means of the Word
of the Lord. For Golgotha, which was Jerusalem’s place of execution, responded
fully to the needs of Christ’s own prophecy. In our previous volume we mentioned
the fact that, according to Christ’s own word, His crucifixion definitely had to
be an exaltation.[1] Before this time He had consciously and periodically and
purposely avoided the threatening death which He now willingly assumes. Again
and again we read the line: “His hour was not yet come” By way of analogy that
statement might also read: His place had not yet been reached. Now His place,
the place of Christ, the place of His death, is not a secluded one; it is not
found in the inner chamber; it cannot be seen in the desert. Neither is the
place distinguished by earmarks very different from those which characterize
other places in the world. Like Himself in His revelation, the place of Jesus is
very ordinary. If the cross had been erected upon Mount Gerizim or Ebal, or over
the Forum of Rome, say, or the Acropolis of Athens, then the determination of
the place of Jesus’ death would have occurred by means of a different logic from
that which characterized the whole of Jesus’ life on earth. Everything which
Christ as a human being living on earth has, and wants, and finds, and takes as
His own, is serviceable only to the purpose of revelation. We noticed before[2]
that the Son of God took the given name of Joshua — a very ordinary name. He
lived in a city which was typically human. In all of His life and His work He
never established a memorial for Himself unless everything which should remind
men of Jesus in the future would send their thought up to His God and serve as a
remembrance of Him.[3] Now, according to that same law of revelation, the hill
of Golgotha was not placed where men might place their monasteries or Colosseum
or monuments. The choice of this hill — and was it really a “hill”? — was
determined simply by these two considerations: first, the place is public, and
all who pass may see that Christ is being lifted up on the cross; second, the
place is ordinary, so ordinary that He wholooks for it or finds it, will not
even see it nor understand it if he does not believe. And on the other hand, all
who do believe cannot fail, in spite of all the particulars of the place, to
ponder the great significance of what happened there.

[1]Christ on Trial,chapter 15, especially p. 297.

[2]Christ on Trial,chapter 24, p. 464 f.

[3]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 14, p. 231 ff.

These two requisites Golgotha fully satisfied. It is a part of the Old Testament
that large, or at least conspicuous mountains, such as Zion, Horeb, Moriah, and
Carmel, should attract the attention, and that historical events are given
definite places which are conspicuously marked by monuments of one kind or
another. In the Old Testament each new essence tries to attract attention to
itself by a new form, by that which is obvious to the eye, by that which appeals
to the senses. But in the New Testament the external form gradually is given
less emphasis, the sensuous presentation is abandoned more and more, and the
direct thought which God writes upon the hearts of men by His Spirit moves them
so convincingly that the spiritual eye can see it, even though the physical eye
is given no tower or promontory to assist it in discovery. Golgotha is but a
very ordinary mound, a slight incline; it is no more than that. And this is in
keeping with the incarnate Son of God. No rock offering itself to Him for an
inscription; the Word, that is His epitaph. He does not plant His cross on an
Acropolis; the whole thing is quickly achieved in the presence of the people on
a very ordinary rise of the ground, the very same mound that was used for all
executions. This sufficed for God. That which He plants on the Acropolis is the
banner of the Word. He affixes no monumental tablet to the Forum of Rome, but,
traveling along the many ways of the Spirit, He earns the rent for a room in
which Paul can speak with the Jews of Rome unhampered. Thus the topography of
Golgotha fully satisfies the law of divine ideas as these were manifested
throughout the course of special revelation. It was this law of revelation which
more and more separated and abstracted the inner essence, the spiritual life,
the Word-content, from the forms of the external things, in order that the
church of the future might not be bound to those places, nor have to say some
time: The Antichrist has cut off access to our monuments, and now we cannot
remember the death of the Lord any longer. For the church can remember the death
of Jesus through the Spirit — if necessary without a linen cloth — and with
bread, a cup, and a prayerful heart. If necessary, the church can remember the
death of the Lord solely through the Word. Yes, if necessary, even without the
preaching of the Word, but then by the universal, regenerating Spirit of God. He
who has celebrated the Holy Supper no longer requires the conduct of a guide to
direct him to Golgotha. He has climbed Zion, has seen Gehenna, and has embraced
the cross on Golgotha; he has been in the garden of the Passover — and has been
seated in the heavenly places. “From thence He shall come to judge the living
and the dead,” to a place at which He is not expected.

Hence it was not a loss which we can ascribe to heaven, or heaven to our apathy,
that Golgotha was not more plainly marked. The old Christian church, and even
the earliest church has not done anything by way of pointing the holy place out
to its children or grandchildren. As we see it, that was better than what was
done later when the church became corrupt and began to look for material out of
which to build a Biblical geography. This was a geography to which Saracens
might also have contributed if they had wanted to; a geography which had no need
of faith. God designated no wailing wall for the Jews, and no hill of
lamentation for the Christians. The wailing wall of the Jews is a silent protest
against Jesus Christ, quite in the manner, we might say, of the emphasis of
Akeldama.[1] It is a camouflaging of the one great accusation which God has
against the wailing Jews; accordingly the Jews, so far from wailing too much,
wail far too little. At the wailing wall, they do not lament because of their
sin but they weep in order to conceal the death of Jesus. Now a hill of
lamentation would have been a similar protest on the part of Christendom against
the resurrection and the ascension, and a suppression of the need of the prayer
with which the Bible ends: Come, Lord Jesus; yea come quickly. When I read that
prayer, I can understand why Golgotha is such a very common place, and why God
did not give it any prominent earmarks by which it might be noticed in the
future. The Spirit and the Bride say, Come — and they sing no special prelude
for those living in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 13, especially p. 267 ff.

Accordingly we must not look upon the topography of Jerusalem and its vicinity
as a restriction upon the Spirit, for it is precisely the Spirit which limits
nature, also the nature represented by this city and its neighborhood. These the
Spirit limits by means of the Word and the mind of God. Dust does not control
the Spirit, but the Spirit controls the dust. True, the Spirit impresses its
traces upon the ground, molds nature in the shape of its well-selected
symbolism, but the Spirit never allows itself to be bound or restricted by it.

Therefore we can say that in the last analysis there is a symbolism here which
we may embrace. There are three well known places in Jerusalem: Mount Zion, the
Dale of Hinnom (Ge-hinnom), and — Golgotha.

Zion is the place of fellowship with God, the mount upon which He makes His
dazzling appearances. This is the place of the descent from heaven, and the
starting point of that union by which God wishes to unite Himself with His
people in all eternity. Ge-hinnom is situated on the other side of Zion. It is
the dunghill, the place of filth, a symbol of hell, and typical of the place of
outer darkness.[1] Zion also represents a fellowship; Ge-hinnom a thrusting
away. Zion means union, Ge-hinnom schism. Zion sends out its fragrant
sacrifices, and Ge-hinnom gives us a taste of what Isaiah 66 states in
conclusion: The abhorrent stench of carcasses, the vapors which are an
unquenchable fire.

[1] Chapter 1, page 32.

Golgotha is situated between these two. Bear in mind that the word “between” is
not a geographical designation. We are looking for the topography of the Spirit.
We know that the Spirit as it goes about the classification and arranging of the
various places in the city of Jerusalem follows the course outlined in the Word
of God. This work of arranging, the Spirit does very quietly, very unobtrusively
today. The Spirit raised some clamor in connection with Zion and with Ge-hinnom:
remember the “necessary circumlocution.” But He has told us nothing further
about Golgotha. From that place He has gradually enticed all His good Christians
with Him into the abundant life. He said: There you must worship the Crucified
One in spirit and in truth. Let the Samaritans have their church — the motley
people their Gerizim, but do you pray here.

Golgotha, the unknown place. Paul does not use the word. You cannot find it in
the letters. The Revelation of St. John mentions Zion, Jerusalem, the court of
the heathen, the seven hills of Rome, the cities of Asia Minor, and the temple
of Aesculapius, but never once mentions Golgotha. Not a word is breathed about
Golgotha as a place, because as a place it is, on the one hand, the culmination
of God’s long course of altars, and, on the other hand, it is the starting point
of Christ’s return to judgment. Now God, who is ever hasting, did not adorn that
place with a monument. He did not put a marker at the place on the red highway
where the blood of sacrifices and of altars ceased to flow, but hastened on and
impelled His letter-writers, as well as St. John, His great writer of the
apocalypse, not to look for a particular spot, but to spread their hands abroad,
and to point in two directions: the way of the Old, and the way of the New
Covenant. God points out directions, not specific points. The God of the Word
does not mark the point at which the vicious circle was broken, but establishes
and commemorates the fact that it was broken. God is great in making us
remember. He is just as great in making us forget. His footsteps cannot be
found; but the meek can learn the way of Him.

Now that I know this, now I return to Golgotha. I see it lying “between Zion and
Ge-hinnom.” Yes, in very fact, there is a road which reaches from Zion to
Golgotha, and a road which reaches from Golgotha to Gehinnom. For Golgotha
brings both curse and blessing, union and schism. It has given us the adoption
of children through the sovereign good pleasure of God, and it will supply a
deeper and profounder basis for judgment, inasmuch as from this time on that
grace entered in which will not ever recede again. Golgotha represents blessing
and curse alike; represents both election and reprobation. The restless soul
which is being driven to and fro between Zion and Gehinnom, and which cannot
find Golgotha, can find the Word, the Holy Scriptures of God, written by the
Spirit. That word outlines its own topography, a science unknown to Samaritans
and Saracens. It presents its own symbols, geographical symbols, too, but it
warns us against an accentuation of these at the expense of the Word. The Word
lays down a spiritual bond which unites our souls with Golgotha — Golgotha, a
little hill. The Spirit of God teaches us to ask the mountains, mighty in size,
why they exalt themselves against this tiny mound, this ripple in the earth,
this insignificant place of which no one can say: There it is; see, over there!
Why do the mountains proudly leap? God Himself desired this place, not for a
dwelling place, no, for Golgotha points to Zion and to all other points as
dwelling places. But God desired this place as a place of conquest, in order
that He, being honored here, might from this point forth manifest His glory. The
Lord who keeps His faith eternally would dwell in us forever.

Golgotha, the forgotten place. One can hardly find it any more. Pompeii is laid
bare, but Golgotha has gradually been thickly overgrown. No, it is not God’s
fault if my thoughts wander. Golgotha and the “forgetting grass” belong
together. The water goes up and goes down, the water goes in and goes out; a
child throws a stone in the water, and the water goes in and goes out. The earth
went up and went down, the earth went open and shut; when, higher than other
men’s graves, they made Him a grave, saying, There. The earth sank gradually
down, the earth subsided again; and groping fingers of grass reached out, of
grass forgetting and growing. And the earth went up and went down, the earth
went open and shut; till soon it was all as level and green as level as all
things alive.

(Freely translated from Guido Gezelle.)

We thank Thee, Lord. Grass has grown over Golgotha. Hallelujah! Thou hearest
prayer. All flesh can come toThee. Thou dost not lead us into erotic temptation.
Grass grew over Golgotha, but now a voice can be heard above the place that can
be found no more. It is the voice of the Word:

Oh voice of the bare wooden Cross, Oh voice of the plain wooden Cross, I pleaded
so often, so often, and prayed And...the answer was always: the Cross. The place
of His dying is known no more; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.


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  CHAPTER 10: 05. CHAPTER 5: CHRIST NOT REPELLING HIS JUDGE
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C H A P T E R F I V E Christ Not Repelling His Judge

They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted
thereof, he would not drink. —Matthew 27:34. And they gave him to drink wine
mingled with myrrh:but he received it not. —Mark 15:23.

WE SOMETIMES hear the phrase: A man is what he eats. We do not believe that this
is true. Not that there is no connection at all between the food and the heart,
between what is taken into the mouth and what the heart expresses. For there is
such a connection. Christ Himself has taught us that. The meal a person takes is
also a confession. Even the rim of the cup discloses what is in the inner heart.
That is why we prefer to turn the saying just cited around. Rather than to
maintain that a man is what he eats, we would say he eats according to what he
is. It may be true that food and drink affect the body not only, but influence
the soul also, and that to this extent food is a kind of education; nevertheless
the deepest essence of our life remains inaccessible to the effects of bread and
water, of food and drink. Food does not explain the soul, but the soul explains
the food. Tell me the kind of bread your soul feeds on and I will tell you the
kind of food your body uses.

There is only one person in whom this connection between the heart and the food
proved to be complete. He was Jesus Christ In Him the external and the visible
is always a faithful expression of the internal and the invisible. He is the
highest truth; He is what He seems to be; He seems to be what He is. You can
recognize Him in everything He does; in everything He does you can see Him as He
really is, if you look at Him with the eyes of faith. Observe His mouth, and you
will know the attitude of His heart. Pay attention to what He eats and drinks,
and to what food and what drink He refuses, and you will know the food of His
soul, and the drink of His heart. His food is to do the will of His Father; it
is to drink the cup of His Father. But all cups of devils are repulsive to Him.
That is why He is our Mediator in everything, in His eating and His drinking
also. Yes, even in His drinking. His drinking quenches thirst. His thirsting
also quenches ours. Faith can find nothing in the whole of that awful passion
night at Golgotha in which it does not recognize the tense will of the Redeemer
for feeding His people. The law of His death was the same as the rule of His
life: “Whether ye eat, or whether ye drink, or whether ye refuse to eat or to
drink, do it all to the glory of God.” Would He not drink the cup which the
Father gave Him? Would He not drink it to the dregs? Would He not drink it
unadulterated? Throughout all these years, from the manger to the cross, He has
been drinking that cup, and He never allowed anyone to add a different drop to
it; that which the Father had put into the cup, that only He drank. Now He has
reached the dregs; a few more hours, and the cup will be empty. Could it be
possible for Satan now to introduce a different ingredient into the cup of the
Lord, an ingredient which God had not prepared for the Servant of the Lord? No,
to the very last Christ keeps the bitter drink in its pure condition; He leaves
it as His Father had poured and given it to Him; He leaves it quite unmixed. Let
us consider the significance of that. When the procession had reached Golgotha
the preparations for the crucifixion were begun. One of these was that the
crucified persons be given a sedative drink. This is also given to Christ. The
drink consisted of wine mixed with gall. St. Mark tells us that the wine was
mingled with myrrh. Some observers think that St. Matthew, who speaks of gall,
is contradicted by Mark, who mentions myrrh. However, there is no conflict here.
The word “gall,” as we find it in the Greek language, can, just as the Hebrew
word “marah,” be used in the broad sense of something which is bitter. Whoever
follows the meaning of the word in the Greek translation of the Old Testament
will find convincing evidence of the fact that this is true. Consequently the
myrrh which was mingled with Jesus’ wine was the same bitter substance as that
which Matthew called gall. Who prepared this drink for Jesus? Opinions differ
about this also. Some think that the women who followed behind Jesus, weeping,
brought this drink with them. “Nowhere do we read that the Romans knew of this
custom. Hence the drink very likely was prepared and brought along by the
friends of Jesus, most likely by the women of Jerusalem who followed Jesus on
His way to the cross. These, then, must have seen to it that this drink was
handed to Jesus by the soldiers.”[1] [1] Groenen,op.cit.,p. 447.

That, however, is no more than a hypothesis. A more plausible explanation is
that the offer of a sedative drink was a fixed custom in connection with
executions, a custom used by the Jews, permitted by the Romans, or probably even
known to the Romans themselves. The pain of a crucifixion was so gruesome, that,
moved by their “philanthropy,” they would give a person condemned to crucifixion
such a sedative. Not that it would immediately remove all pain — how could that
be, when nails are being driven through hands and feet? — but it did at least
gradually put the consciousness to sleep, and make a more or less easy dying
possible.

We are not going to try to determine the origin of this custom. It is true that
this use of a bitter sedative at crucifixions is compatible with Jewish usage.
Various Jewish writings contain references which suggest that felons condemned
to die were to be given a reed dipped in wine and so to induce a gradual
deadening of consciousness. In order to explain the custom, commentators
sometimes appeal to Proverbs 31:6 : “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to
perish, and wine unto the bitter of soul.”[2] These considerations are not very
significant but there is one point which has some worth for us. These same
Jewish writings also tell us that the custom was designed, besides serving as a
sedative, to draw a confession from the condemned. Not that they wished to
forego the death sentence in that case, but — think, for instance, of the
persistent pressure brought to bear upon martyrs at the stake by dignitaries of
the Roman Catholic Church by way of eliciting a confession from these — but the
intent was partly theological. They supposed that a confession made at the
eleventh hour might at least serve to gain him access to the next world, even
though the condemned person was denied a life in this one.

[2] Strack-Billerbeck,Op Mattheus,p. 1037.

We should be imposing unwarranted fantasies upon the account of the most bloody
reality the world ever witnessed if we were to insist that this last purpose
also governed the Jews when they, by means of the Roman soldiers, extended a cup
of wine mingled with myrrh to Christ. The supposition is not entirely untenable:
church officials of a degraded kind have been known before to whisper weakly
into the ears of a man whose blood was being demanded by the church: My son,
give God the honor and make a confession before it is eternally too late. We do
not know. But we should not like to overlook the possibilities. We know, for
instance, that Pilate mitigated his rigid justice by extending a sedative drink.
Just so it is very likely that the Jews are perfectly willing with one of their
hands to support Jesus a little, even though the other is ready to push Him into
hell. Church officials have been known to be willing to help a person on the way
to his death and the other world if only they were sure of being rid of him in
this one. Be that as it may, it is, even though the Jews themselves never once
thought of eliciting an eleventh hour confession from Jesus, for Christ Himself
indeed the important question. He must indeed make the good confession. For He
does not want to drink the sedative, precisely because of the good confession,
because of the good deed, which He would fulfill in its completed sense, and
while He is fully conscious of what He is doing. The Jews perhaps would have
welcomed a constrained confession, because an opus operatum fits beautifully
into their perverted procedure. But if they want such a confession, they can be
sure that they will never get it from Christ. He will never confess that He
acknowledges the evil that they ascribe to Him. Moreover, in addition to this
negative attitude there is another one which in the highest sense of the word is
a positive point of view. Christ must make the good confession to His heavenly
Father; He must confess truth, justice, life, love, grace, curse, time and
eternity. Now this confession which as an office-bearer He must make before
angels and men in the hour of being forsaken of God and of being compelled to
meet God demands His whole soul. It requires the whole spirit of Jesus Christ,
our Lord.

Hence a sedative drink, which would have dulled the sensitivity of His human
feelings, would have rendered Him useless as the Mediator and as the second
Adam. We are not putting it too sweepingly if we say that the offer of this
drink was a Satanic temptation.

However, again we see Christ as genuine man, as true man; we see Him as the
Mediator of God and man.

We said that we see the Saviour here as genuine, as true man. In this connection
we think of that detail in the account which tells us that Christ tasted the
wine just for a second. He did not prepare for this circumstance beforehand; His
human nature, like ours in all respects, met with an unexpected experience here.
Accordingly, Christ tastes of the wine which is extended to Him. What else could
be expected? His exhausted body is crying aloud for water, and, in our
compassion, we would like to call out to Him: Drink now! Drink now, Thou
scourged mock-king; for these mercies of the ungodly are brutal indeed, but who
would shun the last gesture of sympathy on the part of cruel bullies? Drink,
empty the cup, take what they give Thee; it will dull the senses, take the world
away for a second; the burning sun cannot reach Thee then, the tears of Thy
mother will not wrench Thy heart in two . . . yes, drink. In this dumb cry of
Jesus’ torn flesh we detect a faint resemblance of the parable which He Himself
once spoke about the lost rich man who in his pain called for a drop of water.
No, the resemblance is not far fetched, for this is the descent into hell. But
that is precisely why Jesus is not like a laborer who calmly works out his
schedule because he has beforehand figured out every reaction to every
circumstance which would confront Him. Jesus responds immediately as a true man
to the offer of the drink. He is very eager to drink something. Learn of Him,
for He is meek and lowly of heart. Is not that your experience also? Even though
He has perfect insight into the scandal of this crooked, legal procedure, He in
no sense resembles the man who, while biting his teeth, stoically asserts: I
shall insist upon my pride. I shall spurn their drink. Christ does taste of it.
The soldiers need not think for a moment that He is not in a condition to pray
for them. He will do so very soon. But God before all things, God first of all.
This sinless soul responds immediately and genuinely to every stimulus coming to
it from without. Genuinely, that is, according to the law. It is a spontaneous
response — but it fits perfectly into the framework of obedience. The moment
Christ but smells the myrrh, and knows that it will deaden His senses, He
refuses to drink. And why does He refuse?

Because He is the Mediator, the Mediator of God and men. If in this most
momentous hour He should deaden His spirit, then He, overagainst God as well as
overagainst His people, would be doing wrong. Then He could not have represented
God overagainst the people and could not have represented the people overagainst
God. Then He would not have been the minister of the Word who in what He says
and what He does not say, rightly proclaims the truth and justice of God to men.
Then He would not have been the intercessor for His people, even though the hour
now demands that He be that. Then we would have lost the seven utterances on the
cross, voicing as they do a great love and a great passion. Then He would have
been ashamed in the presence of Gabriel and Michael, and of all the angels, who
are ever alert to God, and who also are always looking upon the face of His
Father, whenever they do something good to the least of God’s people. What think
ye — could the least of God’s angels be a greater than He? The angels are
ministering spirits sent out to minister to those who are heirs of salvation.
Christ Himself taught us that they come to the little ones who can hardly manage
to sustain their lives. They are around Him here, they support Mary, they
sustain John, they save Nicodemus from suicide. They labor with the gratia
praeparans — the preparing grace — in the souls of the darklings who are still
shouting themselves hoarse, but who will after a few weeks and after the sermon
of Peter be saying: Men and brethren, what shall we do? What shall we do?
Legions of angels are present here and the spirit of God, praying in unspeakable
groanings, is here, and is also there in the souls of men. The devils are here;
the whole company of them is here. The spiritual world, good and bad spirits
alike, is here.

Now suppose for a moment that of all those spirits the One who is called the
Logos had fixed a separation and an antithesis between the perfect activity of
His alert Spirit and the quailing activity of His human soul. In this we are
touching on the extremity of the possible; and we all know that the idea is
folly, the idea of a deadened Son of man among all those weaker, waking spirits.

We mentioned just now that we are standing on the border line of the
possibilities which are in Christ. We referred to the problem of the
relationship between His human and His divine nature. This is a mystery which no
one can ever fathom, and no one can ever put the relationship between Christ’s
divine consciousness, between the self-awareness of the eternal Word of God, on
the one hand, and His human activity, the activity of His human soul and spirit,
on the other hand, into a human concept, into a human formulation. But there are
some things which we do know. First we know that the divine nature can never let
its alertness and activity be lessened or even changed. Second, we know that the
sensitivity, the susceptibility, precisely because He is true man, is always
finite, and therefore changeable, mutable, in process of becoming, and bound to
everything which in this colorful life is subject to the sensuous apperception
and vacillating movements of the soul, and the tensions of the spirit. Third,
that this soul-activity of Christ is ever free from sin, and that consequently
the effect of the outside world upon Him can never contaminate Him. Now the
corollary of those considerations is that the divine knowledge of the Logos and
the human knowledge and awareness of the soul and spirit of Christ, distinct
from each other as they may be, never can be separated from each other, and
never can be said to be antithetical to each other. True, His human soul works
differently than His divine consciousness; His human soul engages in different
inquiries of the heart from those which are the inquiries of the Logos and of
the Spirit. But, precisely in this characteristic of the man Jesus inheres the
possibility of that man to work in God’s direction all of the time and to
conform the motivations of His soul to the conscious activity of the Logos of
God. That is why the problem of the apparently innocent drink is so very
important. At this time Satan is abusing the discord which is active in Jesus’
human life because of the curse of our sin. Satan would, by breaking down Jesus’
body, cause Him to cry so loudly for drink that the sublime activity of Jesus’
soul may give its attention to an accident rather than to the main issue. Satan
would induce Him to transpose the emphasis from the soul to the body, from the
spirit to the soul and body, from God to man, from duty to pain, from eternity
to time, from the history of God’s revelation to Jesus’ own experience at the
moment. A change of emphasis, that is all. But that is enough, in His case, to
break the world in two. Change the emphasis? That would mean that the man Jesus
had chosen to stand overagainst God; for God always puts the emphasis upon the
right place. Ah, a scattering of attention, a desire, a single act of the will
designed to repel the judge who is driving the cold sword of His perfect wrath
through Jesus’ soul and body, and all is lost. Then the Mediator is broken.

Therefore we can say that all eternity, that the whole of theology, and that the
whole of God’s revelation in the incarnate Word lies between the rim of the cup
and the lips of Jesus Christ. We are standing on the border line between two
worlds, and we shudder. Soldiers bite their teeth and others curse, muttering
under their breath because of this obstinate Jew.[1] But the angels are aware of
the fact that there is a quaking in the Kingdom of Heaven. They know that all
science and all philosophy will be given the unending task of thinking about
what is happening here.

[1] From the Greek text we gather that the soldiers persisted when Jesus
refused; that Jesus was compelled several times to spurn what was offered Him.
This drama was enacted before the eyes of the people (a prophetic drama!).

Let my soul ponder it also. The human soul of Jesus is, even in the most
pronounced temptation, immediately ready to conform itself to God and the Logos.
He at once senses the folly of this intoxicating image: a deadened Son of God
and man among the waking sons of God, among the angels. Never did Christ have to
fasten His attention upon the body so closely, and upon the tortured body
presently, as He did at this time. Alas, that body can be so agonizingly big at
times. It can cover the soul, it can darken the clouds, it can stand in the way
of God. But Jesus sees His God even through His own clouds, and ever seeks Him
out with a wise, a singing, a lamenting, and a longing attention. He seeks and
finds God. No, God need not go out to ask a secretive Adam: Where art thou? A
hoarse cry issues from the inner soul of Jesus, and that cry is seeking God.
Where art thou, where art thou? I see Thee, I shall not let Thee go, even though
Thou shouldst condemn me a thousand times. Never did the danger of a break
between a whole series of the years of His life and this one moment of driven
spikes and grinning faces threaten as overwhelmingly as it did now. Christ’s
attention is being demanded for only this moment, but if He gives it, it will be
at the expense of that period of thirty-three years of obedience. The life-work
accomplished in thirty-three years is now in danger of drowning in a single cup
of myrrh. But the human soul of Christ did not accentuate this moment at the
cost of introducing discord into the logic of His whole life. The cup of myrrh
did not interfere with the course of His obedience to God. He is the faithful
worker of God: He builds His temple, laying stone upon stone. In this moment
Satan incites Him, lures Him, to temptation, asks Him to bite His teeth, to lay
this one stone somewhat crookedly in the way, and to give it a smart rap
expressive of repressed animosity. But this is not the way it took place. Moses
may strike the rock in a fit of anger, the rock out of which the miraculous
water freely flows. But the greater-than-Moses does not strike the rock out of
which His own blood must, as the drink of life, necessarily flow. God will not
be able to say to Him: “Thou hast not hallowed me.” When Moses strikes the rock
He spurns the service of the Word. This, accordingly, was his sin as an office
bearer. Now Jesus must at once be both the Moses who breaks the rock by means of
the Word as well as the miracle-working rock itself which must provide the
water. And as He proceeds to be that He remains faithful to Himself, never once
fixing a schism between the service of the Word and the service of blood.

No, you must not haughtily say that it was impossible for Jesus to be dulled or
deadened. Do not say that, for that is not the issue here. True, from God’s
point of view it was impossible. Jesus’ death presently is a different death
from that of the other two. Christ presently will bear the pain of hell, and
will endure the curse of the descent into hell. It would be folly to suppose
that Jesus could be dulled; the terror of hell suffices to keep anyone awake.
The attempt to deaden the senses of Him who must meet God and Satan in the
extremities of death and curse is as ridiculous as the proposal Simon Peter
suggested on the Mount of Transfiguration when he tried to cage the fluid
sunlight of heaven in an insignificant hut.

But, once more, the point at issue here is not what is and is not possible. The
point is whether the human nature of Jesus not only spontaneously and
consciously spurns the evil choice, but also makes the good choice by a complete
activity. This choice He made. He was not thrust into hell; He descended into
hell.

Consequently Christ is susceptible to suffering the curse of sin. The curse will
break Him. It will be His portion to endure the catastrophes of that curse in
all their vehemence. For this He willed to do.

We have just referred to the catastrophes of the curse. By that we mean this.
The curse which impinges upon life because of sin does not begin
catastrophically but it does end catastrophically.[1] As soon as sin had entered
the world, the curse also entered. It spread out, penetrated farther; even
though in varying gradations of intensity, it spread out through the entire
world of created things. But this is important. At the first entering in of sin,
the curse came very imperceptibly. It came, if we may be allowed to express it
that way, on stockinged feet. The power to unbind, to loosen, which we call the
curse, a power which disrupts the organic unity of creation so that the parts in
relationship to each other and to the whole have lost their proper places, comes
creeping into the world very surreptitiously and quietly after the first sin.
The sun continued to shine, the streams of Paradise rippled on, the birds still
sang. It seemed as though nothing were wrong. The flood, centuries later, came
with far more obtrusiveness than the disruption of nature at the first advent of
sin.

1. We shall return to the subject in the next chapter.

Nevertheless, the curse was present. Although it does not begin with a
catastrophe it will end in catastrophe on the last day. Christ knew this. He saw
the curse which follows close upon the sin of the world; He saw it simmering for
thirty-three years. He saw it in the foliage of the trees. He saw the curse
lowering in the sun. As children laugh while looking at the sun, and as the
poets sing their sentimental songs about the moon and stars, Jesus says: The sun
shall be darkened, the moon shall be turned into blood, and the stars shall come
thundering down. He felt the curse in His own flesh; His thirst was a problem to
Him and His hunger a theological difficulty. A person suffering from fever
presents the problem of the disruption of the temple to Him, and the problem of
a rift in the clouds.

Now return to the cup of myrrh. Can you believe that Jesus had become used to
the “phenomenon” of the curse? Can you suppose that He no longer had an eye for
that terrible conductor of our lives, after He had seen him throughout these
years? We get used to things, but He did not. He always related the hovering of
the curse over nature and life to the first and the last things that are to be
in the world. In the last analysis He saw no fundamental difference between a
toothache and the day of judgment. He knew very well that the grim persistence,
the mad perseverance of the curse in this world, had begun in Paradise and had
to culminate in the last or judgment day. That day would witness a catastrophe:
moving mountains, a torn world, a devastated temple, and a sea of fire. The pain
of these catastrophes He must bear today. His flesh must be torn; that which is
tremendous is meet for His death. Presently He will live through the day of
judgment in His own person.

Now pay close attention to His Word. He did not want to repel this tremendous
judgment of God. His ears might not begin to hum, His eyes might not begin to
blink, and His spirit might not subside within Him. Had He wanted that, the
judgment day, which is the world-catastrophe of the final curse, would not have
had a place in His soul. He may not repel, He may not thrust aside, He may not
spurn the judge. “Whosoever lookest on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart.” He who does not look God straight in
the eyes to perfectly desire Him has already committed the great denial against
Him.

However, He preserved Himself, He refused the cup. He refused it spontaneously;
He understood it all in a moment. This is the second Adam; not even the most
rapid invasion of Satan can harm Him. Man can cut His body to pieces, but no one
will succeed in driving a wedge between His soul and spirit in order that Satan
may enter in.

Now suppose that this Priest had actually permitted Himself to be dulled and
deadened by the cup. Then He would have been dismissed from the priesthood. The
priest may never be drunk in the house of God. The sacrifice needs the prayer of
the minister; he who offers the sacrifice may not become inattentive. As for the
sacrifice itself, it may not mitigate the pain of death which justice demands.
As for the temple, it can brook no stench of decay; hence the incense of pure
prayer may not become mingled with the humid vapor of souls who seek something
other than God. Whom have I in heaven above to compare with Thee? What is there
on earth for me to desire, for me to yearn for, as adequate and pleasing as
Thou? In Thee I can rest. No, Father, in Thy house there is nothing besides
Thee. Hence the Son cannot want to be deadened or dulled. He is too full of
Thee; He who is full of God cannot suppress Him; for God, in such a person,
occupies the whole space.

O Priest, O High Priest. This Priest of our confession faithfully fulfilled His
priestly service. Some say that the word “priest” is related to the root
“stand”: and the work of priests is designated in the Scriptures by means of the
technical term, “Come near.” We know that a drunken man cannot stand; he sinks
down. Nor can a dazed man “come near”; he stumbles, he gropes. But Jesus who
refuses the myrrh both stands and conies near. Now He ascends to the altars of
God, to God, to His God, the source of suffering. Now He descends into hell and
yearns for the commandments. God is striking Him — hence He must feel the pain.

Jesus feels that the heavenly pronouncement of justice differs from that which
is pronounced on earth. When God punishes He punishes completely. His verdict is
not characterized by that inner contradiction which characterizes the verdict of
a Pilate who wounds the victim with a nail while he soothes him with myrrh. When
God in His flaming wrath begins to punish, He does not administer one stroke too
many, nor one stroke too brutally. Hence every stroke He gives must be felt. God
is not playing a game. The world may hold a sword in one hand and a soothing cup
in the other but God holds a sword in the one hand and a sword in the other, God
is wholly love or He is wholly wrath. Therefore that, cup of myrrh could not be
given Him by God. Our soul must not overlook these things in passing by. The
refusal of the cup of myrrh is just as important as the shedding of Jesus’
blood. Any fantasy of a holy grail or of a vessel which caught up the blood of
Jesus must stand or fall with His refusal to accept the soothing wine.

Priest, High Priest. And, second Adam. Let us, as He Himself did, go back to the
very beginning. When the first Adam had suppressed his God as a Father and Judge
from his attention under the shadow of the tree of knowledge of good and of evil
there must have been a moment in which this suppression of God, and this
inattention, and this removal of the emphasis from the center to the periphery,
was consciously willed by Adam. Otherwise his sin would have been weakness, not
willfulness. If so, the contrast now is complete. The first Adam consciously did
the deed which thrust God out of his soul and his spirit. It was the deed of
enmity. Now the second Adam must refuse such thrusting aside and must refuse it
consciously. Actively, consciously, with the whole force of His human
constitution fixed upon it, He must refuse the cup. No heart can go beyond this.
I see God standing here among the murderers. I know that Paradise is returning
here, and also know that God is trying the second Adam more severely than the
first. God prepared the first Adam for the coming test. Adam was told: Lo, there
is a tree; stay away from it; do not eat of it. It was the tree of knowledge by
which he might know whether he was to thrust God out of His place or leave Him
in the place He should occupy. But the second Adam was given no preparation. He
does not know, He does not notice. He even tasted of it, because the cup had
been set before Him in a very common and ordinary way, and He was thirsty. But
the moment He noticed the stench of Satan’s hot breath still clinging to the
cup, He knew everything, and He refused it. He saw His mother standing there,
and He knew that she wanted Him to have a drink. She could not bear the spasms
of His death. Mary means more to Jesus than “the woman” meant for Adam in the
hour of temptation. He would rather send His mother away than mitigate the dire
tragedy of His death, and drink from a cup which justice and the commandments
had not given Him.

Now we greet Thee, O King of the earth, who in the Holy Supper of the Lamb will
pour out wine in glory. Thy lips crushed death to pieces, just as the teeth of
the first Adam ground life to pieces. Your lips, O second Adam, parched with
thirst, tasted of the problem of time and eternity, for Thy heart, although
sorely tested, can taste only according to the law of God. Thy lips refused the
food of the dead and the drink of devils. Now serve the wine of Thy love and . .
. may He kiss me with the lips of His mouth, for I have not perished. Whoever
has seen Him in that way will possess a Christ Whose love was in no sense drunk
with wine, but Who is a glorious wonder of love known to no mortal. The
beautiful wine of love beams out to Him from the rejected cup of devilish wine.
This wine of love Christ Himself prepared here. The cross of weakness will
become the throne of Christ’s might.


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  CHAPTER 11: 06. CHAPTER 6: CHRIST UNDER THE CATASTROPHIC CURSE
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C H A P T E R S I X Christ Under the Catastrophic Curse And it was the third
hour, and they crucified him. —Mark 15:25. THE hour has now come in which the
Son of man is to be crucified. Come, ye Jews, feel free to break down the
temple, as He Himself has said. Come, Romans, break down the temple; you have
done it before and you will do it again. For Christ the moment has come. He has
refused the sedative drink, and it may be that the refusal caused the soldiers
to drive the nails somewhat more forcefully through the body of the Son of man.
Someone was hissing between his teeth: obstinate fool, he refuses the sedative,
does he? Come then, we will show him.

We must say at once that there is no unanimity of opinion about the manner in
which the crucifixion took place. One commentator supposes that, according to
the usual method, the cross was first laid upon the ground, and that the person
to be crucified was nailed upon it as it lay in that position. Others think that
they may infer from historical records that the cross was first set up
vertically in the ground and that the condemned person was then nailed upon it.
Even then, however, opinions differ about the further details. Some maintain
that the soldiers lifted the one to be crucified up and that one or two others
then stood on a ladder in a position to drive the nails through the hands.
Others again entertain the notion that the condemned man was compelled to jump
up on a stile prepared for the purpose, in order to place his body in the
desired position. A third group hold that they tied him to the crossbeam with
ropes, that they also tied his trunk and legs, and that then the nails were
driven through the flesh of the hands. Whether the feet also were impaled is
another question about which opinion differs. Some think that the feet were
allowed to dangle freely but others assert that these as well as the hands were
nailed to the beam, both feet together or each foot separately. And again there
is a difference of opinion about the position of the feet. According to some the
sole of the foot was pressed against the beam. If this were true the knees would
first have to be bent into a position which allowed for that; but others believe
that the legs were stretched out to their full length and that the nails were
driven through at the bottom of the foot. It would be to profane reverence if we
were to make any attempt to choose one or another of these possibilities. The
choice has been made innumerable times, both in classic art and in the written
and the spoken word. But we shall not commit ourselves to any one position, for
we lack certainty. We do believe that we are justified in inferring from Luke
24:39 that the feet of the Saviour also were impaled. But for the rest we lack
an accurate designation of the particulars concerning the crucifixion of Jesus.

Let us honestly admit at once that we do not regret this fact. We believe that
God Himself threw a veil over the naked body of His lost Son. Ours is not the
prerogative to remove this veil. At this point we return to the thought we
entertained before, when we pointed out the fact that the place of the
crucifixion cannot be exactly pointed out. We revere the will of God Who does
not allow us to fix our thoughts upon unrevealed, historical particulars, but
Who wants us to fasten them upon the idea, upon the prophecy, upon the
revelation-concept which comes to us in the martyr’s death of Jesus Christ. We
can say, of course, that the crucifixion itself, however it may have taken
place, was a terrible punishment. All kinds of enthusiastic and arbitrary
spiritualization of the event, all kinds of falsely mystical imaginations or
bloodless symbolism have, it is true, attempted even to take the sting out of
this worst of terrors. But Scripture points us in a different direction. It
forbids us to follow that method of argumentation, common in ancient
representations of the event, which sees in the extended arms of Moses, as he
prays in the battle against Amalek, the sign of the cross; or that which sees in
the bisection of the vertical beam by the crossbeam the bisection of the
“horizontal line” by the “vertical line,” the bisection of the eastern-western
line, the horizontal line, by the northern-southern line, the vertical line. The
cross of Jesus and its unknown form does not lend itself to a game of words. It
does not want to be a symbol but a reality which concerns us directly. That
reality, we may be sure, was very terrible.

“The extent of the physical suffering has been described by a physician in the
following terms: The unnatural, constrained position of the body with its arms
spread outwards for so long a time must have been a torture which cannot be
described in words. This is especially true because not the slightest movement
could be made without causing unbearable pain to the whole body but particularly
to the impaled hands and feet and to the back, made raw as it had been by the
scourging. The nails had been driven through the body at precisely the places
were numerous sensitive nerves ran together. Some of these were excited, and
others suppressed, a situation causing the severest pain, and one which must
gradually have increased. The irritated parts of the body, gradually exposed to
the influence of the air, must slowly have become swollen and bruised. The same
result must have taken place in other parts where the liquids of the body were
held back by the tremendous tension and consequently were frustrated. Now the
pain of the inflammation in these parts could only increase from moment to
moment. The blood which is carried to all parts of the body through the arteries
by the left auricle could not find room enough in these badly inflamed and
swollen parts, and consequently would have to flow to the head in greater
proportions than usual, would have to distend and press hard on the arteries
there, and thus cause ever increasing headache. However, because of this
hindrance in the circulation of the blood the left auricle would be unable to
send out all of its blood, and consequently would be unable to receive all of
the blood coming to it from the right auricle. There was, therefore, no free
circulation of the blood in the lungs. This would cause the heart itself to be
oppressed; all the arteries would necessarily feel the added pressure; and an
unspeakable sense of oppression had to result.

“Add to these considerations the fact that the person could never turn or adjust
himself amid all his pain, inasmuch as the head alone was free. The body was
persistently in an unnatural position. This meant that a gradual stiffening of
nerves, arteries, and muscles had to result Nor must we forget that a burning
oriental sun beat down upon the condemned man. There was not a blade of grass to
cast its shadow upon the cross. Fiendishly annoying insects hummed around him,
and settled upon the open wounds, aggravating the pains.”[1] [1] See P.
Biesterveld,Van Bethanie naar Golgotha, pp. 357-358.

Pardon the long quotation. We insert it because of an attempt to restrict the
matter to what is definitely known.

It is terrible enough.

We must look upon these things in the light of our faith. The cross takes on
significance for us when it is regarded not as a symbol, but as a bloody
reality, which was inevitable for Jesus Christ because the great Judge wanted to
minister the curse of sin to Christ solely through the cross. The crossbeam was
not an accident, a circumstance which gives a sort of perspective to Golgotha,
but which might also have been lacking. It is not a “tragic feature,” or
coincidence, for nothing in the trial of Christ deserves that name. True, the
cross of Jesus Christ, just as the whole of that fatiguing trial, does arise
very gradually and naturally out of the life of His time and out of the usages
of that time, and, to this extent, it is completely human. But from God’s point
of view the cross of Christ is the form by which we human beings were instructed
in the ministration of curse to the Surety and Mediator. Of all possible
operetta of curse and death, God chose this particular operatus for the Surety.
The question, consequently, arises: Just why the cross, and why no other form of
punishment?

We have previously indicated that the cross, inasmuch as it was a Roman and not
a Jewish mode of execution, gave expression to a definite idea of God. The
Christ had to be lifted up, we said. By means of that exaltation He had to be
raised above the particular sphere of the forms of Moses’ religion and law.
Consequently Christ had to die according to the verdict of the world empire
which was then extant. This is one consideration: the cross is international in
scope. But this is not the only consideration. The form, the manner of the
crucifixion, is also the particular one which God chose to express the idea that
the Mediator had to be publicly exhibited. This public display is indeed a
Biblical idea, and that is something which cannot be said about the too facile
and hardly poetic expression which talks about “swaying between heaven and
earth.” Heaven does not want the crucified One, and the earth can endure Him no
longer. But all these notions, and others similar to them, are the products of a
false imagination. Let us be very cautious here at the border line of hell, and
let us listen to the Bible. God chose the form of crucifixion which required
that the condemned person be raised above the common lay of the land: the
emphasis had to fall on the public exhibition.

These, then, are the two perspectives given us. First, God willed the
crucifixion because He wanted to lift Christ up before the world. Second, the
crucifixion was willed by God because by that means Christ could be publicly
displayed before men. The first perspective deserves the amplification that not
alone did Christ have to be raised before the world, but that He also had to be
lifted up before the world. Again we think of the analogy between the brazen
serpent and the Son of man both of which were lifted up, in order that anyone
whose eye looked forward to what could redeem his life, might look upon this
life-giving wonder. To these two considerations we must add a third. In the
death by crucifixion the curse achieves its confirmation. We want to point out
the fact that hanging on a tree is a form of punishment which must also be seen
in the light of the law of Israel. The form of the cross speaks a language known
to all men. The legal definition of the cross is laid down by Rome, and the
theological exegesis of it is contained in the law of Israel. Nothing is
accidental, neither the form of the cross, nor Roman power, nor the law of
Israel, to which Christ was still conscience-bound. He was not permitted to
separate His cross, not even His cross, from the law of Moses; He was not
allowed to look upon it solely in the light of Rome, for then He would have been
unfaithful to the law which He was not to break down but to fulfill. No, He
might not break down that law, even though it was breaking Him. All of those
Romans together were not permitted to keep Jesus from seeing the ghost of Moses,
for Jesus was dying within the domain of special grace. This, too, God had
willed. Moses’ book of law could not be pushed aside by Roman law in the
consciousness of Jesus. Just as the law book of Rome was being read to Him by
devils, and angels, so the law of Moses is being recited in His soul by the
eternal Spirit. Moses says: The curse, it is the curse which is expressed by
crucifixion. Cursed is everyone that hangeth on the tree. The curse . . . yes,
the curse. We have spoken of that before.[1] We saw then that the curse which
ordinarily came to the condemned man after his death, had to be consciously
assumed by Jesus before His death. We saw that for this reason He had to be
hanged upon the tree not after but before His death.

[1] Chapter 1, pp. 20 ff. In this circumstance we see a wonderful confluence of
the streams of the providence of God. We see that the God of history has given
Israel its law book throughout the centuries by means of inspiration and
theophany, thus arriving at the Christ. But we also see that the same God for
the sake of the coming Christ had already pointed the Roman book of laws, and
the Roman jurisprudence and the Roman history throughout the centuries in that
direction which would enable it to realize this curse in Jesus. General history
exists for the sake of Christ. Roman antiquity had to meet Mosaic antiquity at
noon of the Lord’s day of revelation. Both of these have their task and
function. Roman law had to determine the time of Christ’s hanging upon the tree;
Roman law had to see to it that He was hanged before and not after His death. In
this God permits the law of Rome to impinge upon the ordinance of Moses in order
that the Surety bear the curse before His death. But Rome cannot suppress or
push aside the spirit and the exegesis of Israel’s theocratic law. Hence Jesus
can find the exegesis of His own hanging upon the tree only in the law of
Israel. He knows that law; He knows very well that to hang upon the tree means
to be accursed. Thus the God of the centuries, the Potentate of Potentates, lets
the legislative avenues of His Spirit which come to Christ through the Holy
Scriptures of Israel meet with the legislative ways and avenues of the existing
world empire, in order that the cross might stand at the place of their
bisection. This makes the cross the result of the foregoing century. The cross
arises out of the fruition of the realms of culture and of grace. These two, the
unbound word of Israel’s inspired law book and the binding words of Rome’s
unsanctified tyranny are both taken into God’s service today. They must bring
Jesus as the Surety and Mediator to the place where He is to suffer the curse,
and to suffer it before His death. As we see the ways of Rome’s military power
and of Israel’s Word-power crossing each other here in order to enable Jesus to
suffer the curse in the right way and at the right time, we get a new glimpse of
the almighty, and ever-present power of God which we call His providence. The
God of the world not only descends to the earth from the Mount of Horeb but also
from the seven hills of Rome. We are given a new motif for the preaching of
God’s providence. This is a new knot in our confused, but also unravelled
thinking of faith. We will be profoundly awestruck in the presence of the
crucified One, for God will be coming to us from all directions. The world will
be full of God and full of the ludicrous. The world will be full of God and full
of scandal, full of God and full of folly and arrogance. Alas, to think that the
Saviour can understand the cross only in this way. His thinking is far superior
to that of all poets. His thinking is genuine and is true. But does this exhaust
the content of the Biblical thoughts contained in the crucifixion? He is foolish
who supposes that it does. If what was said above is true, we may not say: Well,
it was very tragic; now let us stop thinking about it. Instead we say to
ourselves: Now it begins. If Christ sees God coming down upon Him from all
sides, the God of history, the God of Horeb and of the seven hills of Rome, then
it is God Himself who is hanging Him upon the tree. It is God, the God who
buried Moses, Who slays the Lamb.

There is another matter which attracts our attention in the cross. This is the
violence of the breaking down of the body. Hands and feet were torn apart by
nails; hammers wrenched the flesh asunder. This too deserves notice. To ignore
this particular would make us poorer than the poets and painters and musicians
who have been fascinated by this terrible, tortuous death, and would keep us
from attaining to the overwhelming riches of thought contained in the Scriptures
and the Church. For the Scriptures emphatically point us to the nailing on the
cross, to the drawing of the blood, to the breaking of the body. And the Church,
accordingly, has in her liturgical forms preserved the memory of the breaking of
Christ’s body in the breaking of the bread at the Holy Supper, and of the
pouring out of the blood in the pouring out of the wine. Obedience to the
Scriptures and fidelity to the Church consequently teaches us emphatically to
ask for the significance of revelation in the violent treatment inflicted upon
the body of Christ by the crucifixion. We have observed[1] that Christ more than
once concealed a maschil in the word which spoke of the breaking down of His
temple. By that maschil He wanted to present His body as a temple of the Spirit.
This should suffice to induce a heart given to reading the Bible to say: A cry
issuing from the highest temple is, if seen in a prophetic light, as awful as is
the falling of a star. Precisely the fact that the body of Christ is a temple
gives so profound a significance to the violence with which the nails are driven
through His flesh and to the vehemence with which the temple in which God’s
spirit lived unreservedly is broken down. Just as the narrative of the creation
of the first Adam out of the dust of the earth, and the breathing upon it of the
Almighty, definitely affects all basic problems of philosophy and theology, so
the violent breaking down of the body of the second Adam, as it is recorded in
the Bible, directly affects Christian philosophy and theology. In the last
analysis, the life-and-world view of thinkers who are faithful to the Scriptures
must reverently bow to it.

[1]Christ on Trial, pp. 80 ff. (Chapter 4), 102 ff. (Chapter 5), 363 ff.
(Chapter 19), and 403 ff. (Chapter 21)

Accordingly, we must attempt to appreciate the theological significance of the
cries issuing from Christ’s broken flesh, from His torn body, from His driven
blood, from the gruesomely and tortuously constrained limbs. Doing that we feel
we must say that Christ in the moment of His crucifixion felt Himself being cast
into the catastrophic curse![2]

[2] The scourging was a different thing; it was an interlude, (seeChrist on
Trial,Chapter 27, pp. 508 f., 519 f.) and besides, it was not until after the
scourging that Christ was thrown “without the gate,” a step which must be
regarded again as a separate one in Jesus’way of suffering (chapter 1, this
vol.).

What do we mean by the catastrophic curse? Let us attempt to define it. In our
preceding chapter we observed that the curse is one curse, but that in its
manner of expression it may and always does adopt two forms. In its beginning
the curse, as well as the blessing, is “merely” a principle. But observe the use
of the little word “merely”— for we are using that word in a human sense; from
God’s point of view, the word is nonsense. The curse, then, is a principle. Now
principles are realized gradually, perhaps, but certainly. They work to the
inside of things first; there we call them energy. Afterwards they work to the
outside; there we call them explosion. At first principles become effective
slowly, causing neither break nor schism, neither violence nor explosion; they
move gradually and slowly along certain lines. Principles must be believed
before one can see them in their expression, but if, after the preliminary
influence, the expression begins to realize itself, when the principle, in other
words, attains to its “par-ousia,” then that par-ousia is something sudden,
something mighty, something explosive, something overwhelming. Now the curse,
just as the blessing, begins very unobtrusively. It comes into the world
unperceived. It is a power of death which seems hardly alive. But the curse ends
in violence. It ends with cloudburst, with tornado, with earthquake, with stars
falling from their courses — in short, with catastrophic things. A well-known
paper once wrote an article about “the apparatus of the last judgment.”[1] The
terminology of the caption was inexact to the extent that the person using the
words thought that the last judgment was something introducing a new element
into the world, an element not there before. And the terminology was inexact
also to the extent that the person who wrote it thought that something new was
being introduced into the world by a means of abrupt acts of mechanical
violence. Behind every explosion of wrath in the last day lies a persistent
energy of forces which have been gradually growing throughout the centuries.
These forces and this energy give expression to death in its function of
disintegration. These are forces which unobtrusively but persistently exert
themselves in the world. The Scripture tells us that wrath is being reserved. To
this extent the language which refers to the “apparatus of the last judgment” is
not Biblical. But it contains an element of truth inasmuch as it suggests that
judgment will come with catastrophies, with quakes, with mighty phenomena.

[1] TheNieuwe Rott. Courant.

These considerations will become more concrete to our imagination, and will
become more vivid and vital to us, if we ponder once more what we said about the
so-called vicious circle. We shall not repeat what we said about that before,[2]
but for the sake of clarity we want to summarize it in order to find room in
this scheme for what we have to say about the curse of the crucified Saviour.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 3, p. 52 ff.

Originally — we observed — the whole world, the world before the fall, seemed
destined to a gradual development, to an evolution, an unfolding of the life
which had its origin in creation. This evolution which God first had in mind and
which He ordered, would have brought the first man and the world created around
him gradually to a state of perfection in which not only the energies of nature
would have attained their extreme fruition, but also all faculties and
potentialities of the human spirit, of body and personality, would have reached
full and perfect development.

Now if sin had not disturbed the scene, that evolution of life would have been
reached without any new intervention, without any return to the beginning,
without any “new” creature, without any invasion of new forces. This evolution
would not have placed the crown upon Adam’s head from above, but would have
allowed it to issue out of His own flourishing, “organic” life. An imposed
crown, a super-added crown is suitable to a fallen world, but in a world
undisturbed by sin that crown comes naturally, just as the crown of a flower or
a tree grows out of a tender shoot “of its own accord.”[3] However, when sin
invaded God’s created world, things changed. Then the world had deserved the
curse, had deserved absolute death; and this absolute death would have
annihilated the world and that catastrophically and at once, if God had not
introduced a hiatus, a moratorium, by which the curse was tempered, and a state
was introduced in which God — according to the plan He had conceived before —
made it possible for a new life-principle to flourish, a principle known as
re-creation. Thus God introduced into the world that circle of human life which
to a certain extent kept the life of creation from developing gradually along
the courses of evolution upon which it had originally been placed, but which
also tempered the activity of the curse until the day of Jesus Christ. Now the
corollary of this, naturally, is that the new life of re-creation which thrusts
its foundations under the life of creation can reach its purpose only through
Christ.

[3] The factor of God’s providence (sustenance and maintenance) isnot
beingneglected here, but is not the issue in these contrasts.

Therefore we can say that since that time the world has been placed — if we may
use the term — “in the sign of” the new creation. “The Lord hath created a new
thing on the earth” Such, from this time on, is the peculiar language of
prophecy. No longer is there that gradual evolution, but there is a spasmodic
eruption of the “new” day and of the “new” creation and of constantly “new”
redemptive events. This series of spasmodic eruptions from now on characterizes
the course of history. Something “new” is introduced into the earth, and this
new thing constantly comes in the form of an invasion. It is the invasion, the
constantly new invasion of God’s irresistible power which spasmodically and not
gradually brings the life of re-creation to fulfillment in Christ. It is along
this line of activity that such a miracle as personal regeneration (the new
creation, the quickening of the dead, the laying of a new life principle,
without any “cooperation” on our part, in each one of God’s elect) has its
place. Along this line also the sudden, instantaneously effected, perfect
sanctification — spasmodic also! — of the soul in the dying hour (immediately
taken up to Christ its Head); thus also the — catastrophic — renewal of the
earth, the instantaneous mutation, the resurrection of the body from the dead,
in short the “restoration of all things.” On the other band, however, the curse
also is realized in the same catastrophic manner, for now the curse also comes
spasmodically. This could not be otherwise: the ways of the curse are dependent
on the ways of the blessing and of life. The curse may again and again be
restrained in the world, but such postponement for those who do not share in the
life of re-creation does not mean a dismissal. Even though the sun continues to
shine in its friendly way, even though the course of life may roll smoothly on,
even though the heart of man may be full of inclination to evil because judgment
does not come at once upon the evil deed, nevertheless the curse will eventually
break through in the form of an explosion of the power of death, a sudden and
violent invasion of the essence of death. And there are a number of things which
are appropriate to this line of activity also. These are found in those who
remain outside of God. The outright hardening of a human life, sometimes in a
sharply delineated crisis of life (think of the blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit); the complete sinking away into a state of unrestrained sin and
ungodliness (think of the dying hour in which even the “decent” impenitent
immediately[1] sinks away into the demonic); and also the change “in the
twinkling of an eye,” the coming before judgment, the casting of men and of
devils into hell and of the Antichrist into the pool of fire and of sulfur; the
acute, catastrophic annihilation of the sin- erected “Babylonian” tower, the
ejection of the children of Babel from their own palace, the last day, and the
thunder of the last judgment. These all again denote the invasion, this time the
invasion of death, of the curse. This is the explosion, the catastrophe.

[1] Compare the“immediately” with thewordsChrist assumed;seeabove- mid compare
the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 22. This acute, spasmodic, abrupt breaking
through of life (the blessing) as well as of death (the curse) again and again
is a dominating moment in the “day of the Lord.” He comes in woes, He comes in
the pains of travail, it is true, but in pains nevertheless. They are the pains
of death also. “The first woe is passed? But the second comes apace.” Such is
the law of catastrophic things. And the last catastrophe is the eschatological
culmination of them all. Whether it be in personal life, or in social life, or
in the life of the whole world, the circle of time, of today and tomorrow, will
be broken, and this disruption will be the conclusive triumph of the newly
created life, a life which transcends the restraint and tempering of common
grace and the common judgment. But overagainst this triumph of the new life
there is the equally conclusive and catastrophic breaking through of the forces
of perdition which are to annihilate the world.

Think now, after this necessary digression, of the Christ of God. As Mediator
and Surety He is the second Adam. As such He has been placed under the law of
the catastrophic curse unto death, and under the law of the spasmodic evolution
unto life.

Yes, He must endure the catastrophic curse, for that curse must break through
today in perfect righteousness. The curse must be satisfied now. If the Mediator
is really going to redeem, He must now endure the very same curse which would
without Him have plunged the lost souls in an infinite duration of misery, and
of the ministration of punishment. He must exhaust this immeasurable curse in a
given point of time. Hence the curse must break through Him today with the
portentousness of the last judgment, that most catastrophic of days. It is a
part of our faith in the God of revelation and the history of redemption to
believe that if, say, the eighteenth day of March, 1939,[1] was the dying day,
the curse day, the death day of our incarnate God in the humanity of our second
Adam, then on the eighteenth of March, 1939, the powers, the catastrophic powers
of the last day, broke out upon Golgotha against the incarnate God. On that day
Christ Jesus, not as apocalypticus, but in concrete experience felt the reality
of the seven seals, of the seven trumpets, of the seven souls, of the seven
thunderings, of the storming horses which drew the chariots of death, of the
four winds which are loosed, of a breaking world and a devastated temple. In
short, in this historical and actual moment of time He experienced the judgment
and the woes of — catastro- phies. That is why He can later have John write
about these things on Patmos. The Primary Author of the Revelation of St. John
is the Spirit of the Christ, and that Christ knows, has experienced, and can
never forget what He felt upon Golgotha. All this has been stated in the Book of
the Revelation written by John. Behind the Apocalypse lies an experienced
Golgotha.[2] [1]Christ on Trial,Chapter 29, p. 545.

[2] In fact, Golgotha as experienced by Christ was far more terrible than the
word of revelation as given in the last book of the Bible. This last book was
written in languagewecan comprehend, and consequently reveals less of reality
than He Himselfexperienced.

Here, then, is Golgotha. The curse comes and takes with it its deeds of
violence. It comes with its convulsions. True, the curse has accompanied Jesus
Christ throughout His whole life. Christ heard God’s voice in the form of the
curse always. But He also knew — and this makes Him weak and strong at the same
time — that until His hour had come, the curse had been tempered because it had
been introduced into human life such as that life was being lived in His days.
That life was organized on the basis of certain laws of existence, of certain
potentialities for development, was organized on the basis of common grace. But
in agreement with this knowledge which He had, He now assumes the necessity of
experiencing the catastrophes, the quakes of the irresistible judgment. For now
He has come to the end. That judgment must explode into His life now. Today He
must experience the impact of the last judgment. His soul admonishes itself:
Dies irae, dies ilia. O my soul, do thou bow low; why art thou disquieted within
me? This is the catastrophic curse; this is acute death. By this means He is
able for the first time to take the blessing upon Himself acutely. Now the feast
of the Passover will become the invasion of the new power which places His life
in the firm frame-work of eternal youth, a new power which will make the life of
His body thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a thousand-fold — spasmodically, you see, —
more glorious than it is on earth. This is a power which suddenly, abruptly,
spasmodically again, places Him in heaven, and thus glorifies Him. This is also
the breaking through of His life. It follows its course. This comes
spasmodically. This much the Church has understood, for the Church speaks of
“steps” of exaltation. The Passover is much, the ascension is more, the
exaltation at God’s right hand is an even greater fruition, and the influence of
His might over the world afterwards will cause Him to flourish more and more.
Finally the evolution of His life will be perfected in his par-ousia, His abrupt
appearance before our eyes on the Last Day.

All this God has in mind for Him, for Him who is called the second Adam. If
Christ is to earn that right of the breaking through of His life, He must first
submit Himself to the law of the breaking down of His life in His death. If ever
He is to reach the high-water mark of the “day of the Lord” He must go down to
the low-water mark of that day of the Lord on this occasion. Steps of
exaltation? Then steps of humiliation also. Leaps, spasmodic leaps into life?
But leaps down into death also. Leaps these are. He is not being shoved. He
cannot push Himself gradually into death, because He cannot push Himself
gradually up to life. If the Passover is to be an invasion, a sudden breaking
in, a leap, an acute manifestation, a violent bursting forth of life, then His
death now must also be a leap into death. He must be driven in, acutely,
catastrophically, with all the violence of the excited madness of the last
judgment. The catastrophe belongs to these things; the vicious circle of human
life simply has to be broken through by the Christ. The work of breaking up, of
tearing into pieces, is catastrophic work. The harmony here is a perfect
harmony. The order is a holy order. Now we see one of the reasons for Christ’s
crucifixion on the cross. The cross, and the breaking to pieces represented by
the cross, makes the chronic suffering of Christ acute. Suffering and death were
chronic with Him at first. He tasted of them throughout the years of His life,
even though He knew that the curse was tempered. But in His last days the curse
comes in leaps and bounds. Gethsemane, grief, the tortures of hell, the judges,
the scourgings, the cross, the beams and the nails. The nails are lances of God,
the wedges of the day of judgment. The nails represent the catastrophe. They
represent the breaking in two, the splitting. Oh God, my bowels are severed, and
catastrophe has come. God has come. God has torn the clouds in two, and caused
the mountains to melt. Dogs and bulls and the whole catastrophic series cited in
Psalms 22 are here. Must this be, my God? The nails, the hammer and the world
passes away; but it passes away in my person. Soldiers and whores remain erect,
but I, I am the world, and I am destroyed. I have been given up to devastation.
The chronic breaking to pieces has become acute now. My tongue cleaves to the
roof of my mouth. David spoke of broken fragments and of bulls and of dogs. But
how mild were the words He used. He said, “Thou hast brought me into the dust of
death.” But today God is breaking me into fragments, is casting me into the deep
abysses of death and perdition.

Now shudder, O son of man. The catastrophe was inevitable. The last judgment has
struck in the body and the soul of the second Adam. This is the breaking through
of the vicious circle. This is great joy, immeasurable grief. This is disorder —
chaos.

Nevertheless there is an order and a harmony in the thought of this: God “thinks
His thoughts.” And we can detect the order and the harmony. For us, too, every
historical particular given here has its appropriate place in the ensemble of
Biblical ideas. It is possible to look upon the crucifixion of Jesus simply as a
more or less accidental execution by the Romans, an execution which Pharisees
happened to witness. We can stand alongside the cross and say: Alas, this must
have caused grievous pain. And when we go to our homes again, we go there
without having understood anything. But if the extended arms of the soldiers
become the eternal arms of God as we see them with our mind’s eye, and if the
nails of the Romans become the lances of the day of judgment, and if the
flickering eyes of perspiring soldiers become filled with the threat of the
angels of wrath whom God will some day send out, then we can hear the thunders
rumbling, then we will read to our brethren at church the chapters which tell of
the seven seals, of the seven trumpets, of the seven thunderings, and the seven
vials; then we will read to them the chapter about the pit of hell which burst,
and say: Now the curse of the vicious circle has broken out and is having its
effect; it is taking the form of its catastrophe; now common grace no longer
exists for the second Adam.

Indeed, common grace no longer exists for Him. The robe of Christ will presently
be raffled away. God’s sun will presently disappear. Now these things assume
their proper places for us, for in this way we can see God who is withdrawing
His common grace from the second Adam. In this the curse attains its
catastrophe.

Jesus Christ, now it is necessary for Thee to make amends for Thy exalted
statement. Thou dost remember Thy proud, Thy exalted statement in the presence
of the Sanhedrin a moment ago; Hereafter . . . hereafter. That was the word
which represented the catastrophic power; that was the word by means of which
the Almighty introduced His “chedasjah,” His ever “new” creation. From now on —
those were the words of Thy paean of victory, by means of which Thou didst
announce that Thou hadst broken through, that Thou hadst penetrated all. This
day is the day of breaking through, and here, O Prophet of Nazareth, here is the
breaking through, for here are the nails, the thundering storm, the whirlwind,
the explosion, the being hurtled into death. All Thy temple walls are tumbling
down; ha, ha, break down this temple. Hereafter — thus He Himself has said.

Accordingly the hour of the crucifixion of Christ, of the violence with which He
was afflicted is indispensable to the history of the world. It is indispensable
because it fulfills the sacrifice. Sacrifices and offers are catastrophes. The
knives of the priests come to rest in the spikes and the nails. Every sacrifice
of blood throughout the centuries had been an act of violence. Today this
violence is being fulfilled before our eyes. Throughout these centuries the
sacrifice exhibited Christ, and Christ throughout the centuries to come will
represent the last judgment. His nails and hammers are an anticipation of the
judgment of the last day. Thus the cross of Christ comes to explain and to
fulfill the sacrifice and the offer.

However, no one will see the offer in this event unless he sees it by faith. The
knife of the sacrifice had always been manipulated by the hand of a priest.
These spikes, however, are being driven through His flesh by the firm hand of
the accomplices of Cain. Nevertheless, this is the offer. The whole of Christ’s
own work lies behind the act of the soldiers. He Himself led the process of
events to this point; He Himself arranged His feet upon the accursed wood; in
the last analysis He Himself manipulated the nails and the hammer. He is the
priest, therefore; He has nailed Himself to the cross. He has slain Himself.
That is why the Lamb, after a while, can “stand as the slain,” hallelujah!

God’s hand, therefore, strikes most terribly at the Son of man. God breaks Him
into pieces. God alone can make and break. Fear Him who cannot fail to kill the
body when He must kill the soul, the soul of Him Who has been made sin. Fear Him
in this portentous hour Who up to this time has withheld all His nails and
lightnings in order that they might strike the Son of man now. God can only
despise Jesus; God must turn His ear and eye aside from His supplication. God
sees very plainly that it is I who am hanging there: God must despise me, and
must turn His ear and eye from all my supplications.

I have been to Golgotha. I saw Adam in exile, and immediately afterwards a
cloudburst. I saw a flood, I saw a stroke of lightning. Men said: How firmly He
strikes the nails, how steadily the spikes go in! The world quakes; there was
the day of judgment. And all these things constitute a single thing; they are
all the day of the Lord.

Spikes, and hammers, and a distorted mouth. I have reference to the soldier. And
God nods at me, and says: Watch this. But I cannot see it; I can only read
epistles and gospels. Lord, I thank Thee for having thrown a veil over the
nakedness of the second Adam, who has quickened me to life, and that Thou art
willing to teach me of Him through the Word. Lord, I know no particulars, I know
only that there is such a thing as sin, as the curse, as the catastrophe, and I
pray that I may not in all eternity become a Shem, one who lifts the veil, when
he should lay it down, or leave it lie. My language is a frail language, and I
believe that Thou wilt regard me as a lost man if I fabricate words on this
occasion. The generation of Shem also knows the art of articulating sounds
together, but judgment is proclaimed upon the children of Abraham. And who can
stand in this day! The nails, the hammer . . . but every spike is but the
apparatus of an eschatological judgment. Judgment begins in the house of God:
break down this temple! This is the judgment; this is the judgment upon Israel;
this is the judgment upon man and nature. This is the judgment upon Israel.
Jesus says: My flesh is a temple. He means that His flesh, His body, inasmuch as
it is the temple of the Spirit, is the temple of Jahweh. His flesh is the flesh
of Abraham. Hence He who breaks down Abraham’s richest temple is letting the
Spirit of God recede from the people of Abraham. Thus does the communion of
Israel as a fleshly people place the wedge of disruption into the temple of
Abraham. Thus the spirit is driven from Abraham’s natural posterity. Praise Him,
all ye heathen. But dare the heathen praise God? Alas, they immediately grow
quiet again. They are shocked; they fear, because they remember that Abraham was
of Adam and lo — Adam is also being broken. When Jesus Christ says that He is a
temple, that His body is a house of God, He does not mean only the broader but
also the narrower implications of the figure. Hence He is not only the temple of
Jahweh in Israel but also the temple of God in man and nature. His body came
from Adam, and in that sense also God dwelt in Him. That temple of His humanity
is also being broken down. The whole world witnesses the breaking and says: Clap
your hands and rejoice and thank God with rejoicing. Yes, nature does not hide
her face before Him. Hence the Spirit is being withdrawn from the whole of the
human race and from the whole of nature. This my God does by means of a hammer
and a few spikes. For the rest, we have the Spirit and also the Word. This is
the way they treat the Temple. And where shall the ungodly and the sinner
appear? All that is dust and nature and man and Israel is consumed by the curse.
The wedge which Adam drove into the world, Golgotha drove farther. This is the
catastrophe. The sun stands still, the moon goes no farther, the world whirls
about in space. And all flesh must see and acknowledge that only on the other
side of the broken vicious circle of life is there the straight line which leads
to the life everlasting. Beyond the vicious circle lies the life which is in
Christ. For nature there is this life. The whole creation groans, expecting the
day of His perfect evolution, an evolution catastrophically achieved and
continued perpetually. For man and for humanity there is this life: the Christ
whom the vanity of the world broke in two by means of the nails exhibited the
true man to us once more. And for Israel there is this life. Abraham again
recognizes all the children who have been born of this one Son . . .

I hear the hammer’s stroke again. And I despise myself because I am able only
with the greatest difficulty to hear something of the thunder of the last
judgment in the falling strokes of that hammer.


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  CHAPTER 12: 07. CHAPTER 7: CHRIST ISOLATING HIMSELF IN THE CATASTROPHIC CURSE
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C H A P T E R S E V E N Christ Isolating Himself in the Catastrophic Curse Then
said Jesus,Father,forgive them; for they know not what they do. —Luke 23:34 a.
THE words of Christ Jesus constitute a deep abyss. This is true also, and that
not in the least, of the seven utterances on the cross. These are well known,
and have made a deeper impression on many souls than have the other words of
Christ. Who would dare to deny that this fact represents a weakness in Christian
thinking? But those were the words of a dying man, I hear someone say, in
explanation of his attitude. We reply that this is not true; they are the words
of the dying man. Yes, he adds, but nevertheless they are the words spoken by
Him when He was dying. To which we answer: He told Paul beforehand: I die daily.
Who, therefore, can dare to think more highly of one of His utterances than of
another?

Nevertheless it is a fact that the words of the Dying One have been better
remembered than the words of the Living One. Children learn them by heart; the
teacher numbers them. Moreover, think of the literature. The seven words on the
cross have been included in the literature of the middle ages and of later times
as well as in the critical commentaries of all times at the expense of the other
statements of Christ. The detrimental effects of such a disruption of the words
of Christ soon became apparent. Men forgot themselves and forgot Him in such
exegesis. Human fantasy was fond of weaving a cover which it might throw over
the light shed by Jesus’ seven last lamps, inasmuch as obscurity pleases the
human heart. And, again, the words which He spoke from the cross were segregated
from the momentary condition in which the second Adam then found Himself.

It is unnecessary to assert that the Scriptures themselves do not wish to take
this direction. True, the seven words on the cross spoken by the Saviour
constitute an architectural whole, but that is just another reason for which we
should not consider them without actual and unintermittent reference to
everything He is thinking and experiencing and doing on this day. Besides, these
same seven utterances are much more than a natural and immediate “reaction” to
what He is experiencing at the moment. They are at the same time a genuine
revelation of the heavenly reality, of the divine depths of His spirit. This
holds true also of the seven words as a unit. Even the sequence in which they
were uttered pleads for the truth of that predication.[1] Whoever pays close
attention to the order in which the utterances were spoken will see that Christ
was gradually isolating Himself on the cross, and that the seven words which He
uttered plainly delineate and circumscribe the several phases of that process of
isolation.

[1] We are sometimes, and that quite rightly, pointed to the fact that the
sequence of the seven words on the cross cannot be determined with absolute
accuracy on an exegetical basis. We grant the truth of this. If we, in spite of
this fact, assume that the sequence ordinarily accepted is the right one, we do
this— very frankly—because of a certain predilection, a certain assumption,
which is also enjoined upon us by the Scriptures. It is the assumption that
Christ always has a harmonious plan in His discourses, and that even His
spontaneously uttered speeches manifest the general logic and style of the whole
of His genuine being. Christ’s spontaneous responses are just as artistically
and authentically constructed as our artistic mosaics.

Just follow the process for yourself. First the large, inclusive circle of the
whole of human life still enjoys His attention. The first utterance on the cross
mentions the soldiers and the Jews who are urging them on. To both of these He
says, Father, forgive them. The second word on the cross circumscribes a
narrower bourne. It is addressed to a murderer who has come to the faith. In
this statement Christ is entering the domain of His church. In the third word on
the cross He addresses Himself to His family and to the intimate friend, to His
mother, and to His disciple, to that disciple “whom He loved.” In other words,
this is not the church, but the intimate group within the church. Mark the
marvellous unity of the sequence. First, man in general, then the man of the
church in particular, and finally the ones inside the communion of the church
who, both according to the law of blood and according to the law of the spirit,
were most intimately related to Him. Only then, after the circumference of
attention on the part of His active and alert life had gradually narrowed itself
— the scope of attention of any dying person gradually narrows itself in this
way, and such is also the case in the last judgment — only then, we say, is the
fourth word on the cross uttered. In this fourth statement Christ calls Himself
forsaken of God, and thus He relates the stress of the moment to the spiritual
world, the fact and actuality of which He had known before but had not
experienced completely until now. When He utters that statement, therefore, He
is alone with God, and it is inside the circle of those two, of God and Himself,
that His last three statements are made.

Christ’s seven words on the cross, consequently, do constitute an architectural
whole. Moreover, we discover with astonishment the process of isolation to which
we alluded a moment ago. We discover it with astonishment, but also with
gratitude. We do not want to get along without that word any longer. Our first
volume[1] ended with the isolated Christ. Our second volume[2] continued the
discussion of the isolated Christ. And the isolated Christ must also have a
place in our third volume.

[1]Christ in His Suffering.

[2]Christ on Trial. But with God the sequel is always richer than the precursor;
therefore our third volume can relate greater wonders than could our first and
second. Now, for the first time, we can plainly and sharply see that the
isolation into which the Son is hurled by men and God and Satan is not only a
fate which makes Him suffer and before which He bows, inasmuch as it is
inevitable now, but it is also a circumstance in which He rises up to His own
full strength, girds up His loins to do His own deed, to carry out His own
isolation. He does it Himself. He isolates Himself. He Himself prays fervently
for His isolation.

Yes, He prays for it. We shall see presently that Christ’s first utterance on
the cross is a prayer by means of which He isolates Himself. As we notice that,
we shall also see that precisely by means of this prayer He by His own deed
appropriates the great fact of the day: namely, that Christ is to be alone,
absolutely alone overagainst the universe. He is to be alone in the catastrophic
curse. There will not be so much as a voice asking Him:

What art thou doing here, Elijah? There is no whirlwind, there is no earthquake,
no fire, no terrible calm. But the prophet Elijah nevertheless has found a
Greater than he here. Elijah complained about his isolation but Christ prays for
it. And Moses, also, has found a Greater. He was allowed to climb the mount of
His death, knowing that God was awaiting Him in love. But Christ knows that God
as His Judge is isolating Him in the curse, and Christ nevertheless prays for
that isolation. Moses and Elias, He is reversing the roles. Now He is coming to
you to tell you of His departure, of His decease, at Jerusalem. Our task now is
to point out that all these considerations are warranted by the Scriptures. Let
us follow our text carefully. The sound of the words we are considering now has
a familiar ring: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The words
are no less than a prayer of Christ. This prayer issues from His lips as the
hammers fall and the soldiers swear. Horror and anxiety make every spirit
captive on this hill of death and suppress every voice. But there is one voice
which gives forth a clear sound, a sound full of confidence. It is the voice of
Jesus, it is the prayer. He asks the Father to forgive His murderers because
they do not know what they are doing.

Just who are those for whom the Saviour is praying? Who are to share the
blessing for which He now prays the Father? The Romans? The Jews? Both of these?
Are they those who are of the elect, and over whom the sun of Pentecost will
presently arise? This question has often been asked, and some think it is
absolutely necessary to assert that Christ is praying for no one not included in
election: They arrive at this conclusion by dogmatic rather than exegetical
routes. They think it strange that Christ should ask a good thing for those whom
He would have to call enemies and haters of God. They know that grace is
particular, and that intercession also is that. Others, however, who proceed
along exegetical rather than dogmatic ways, say to themselves that the obvious
and the simple sense of the words is that Christ is praying for that group of
people there, for the group as it is and as it led Him to His death.

Everyone will have to admit the truth of the last remark. For those who would
read what is written, it is plainly stated that Jesus was praying for the people
who stood there and who were nailing Him to the cross. The sense of the
statement is not that Jesus was praying only for the soldiers because they were
being used as the passive instruments of the government. For His words refer to
the entire group of those who are responsible for this sinister business The
Saviour meant the Jews as well as the Romans. The Romans are carrying out the
sentence, but the high priests are in command. Now Christ asks that His Father
forgive all these, because they do not know what they are doing. They cannot
fathom the implications of His act nor see the extent of its consequences.

And, indeed, there is good reason for asking whether Christ, our High Priest, is
praying for a mass of people. Grace is particular in character. And Christ, as a
human being, cannot desire that which would be opposed to the being, to the
will, and to the work of the God of election. Now if the high priestly prayer of
Christ is sent up to God for the benefit of a mass, for the benefit of a crowd
of people, who give no evidence at all of wishing such grace, it does seem that
He is opposing the God of election.

We appreciate this consideration, but we would add to it another difficulty. If
the word “forgive” as used in this prayer of Christ has reference to the same
tremendous benefit of grace which Christ as High Priest has achieved for all the
elect of God, and by means of which the sinner is justified freely, how could we
harmonize this word with what we read at other places in the account. How could
we do that if the will of Christ should here be reaching itself out to the
highest possible priestly function, a function which gives redemption and which
saves the sinner from the condemnation of His sin for all eternity. How, then,
can we understand Him in His other statements? Had not Christ shortly before
hurled His word of condemnation into the throng? Had He not Himself announced to
the daughters of Jerusalem that condemnation would overtake them, and not them
alone but also the community of the city and of the people? The announcement was
an instance of the extreme service of the Word, and it had threatened, had
threatened. And would Jesus’ first reaction to the last service of His Word be
unfaithful now to His preached word? Would His last preaching issue sounds of
thunder, and His first preaching after that be a playing on a mellow shepherd’s
lute? Is Christ one who can jump down from the thundering cloud to the soft moss
where the children are playing with justice and truth, not knowing what they are
doing? Can it be true that the first word which Christ spoke on the cross
conflicts with what He Himself told the Sanhedrin when He said: Hereafter ye
shall see the son of man in his glory? By that statement He had raised Himself
up above all, and had said, My blood cannot be darkened in the world. And would
He write the sentence of His death in sand today, suggesting that His red blood
may also be buried and covered in it? There are questions enough, you see, and
just as many improbabilities.

Nevertheless the solution is easy. Again in this connection we must, in order to
find the solution, read the passage very carefully. The word used in the
original and translated “forgive” in our version, gives us the key to the
solution. We know that the forgiveness of sins is described in the Bible by
varying words. The Greek language of the New Testament uses various shades of
connotation in speaking of it. It will be unnecessary here to name all those
Greek words individually and to give the meanings of each. Suffice it to say
that the word “forgive” as it is used here in our text can mean: to release
someone, not to put the charge or sentence against a person into execution at
once, not yet to effect the penalty which the transgression according to reason
and right probably deserves.

Hence there are two kinds of forgiveness. There is a forgiveness which, on the
basis of law, says to someone: I shall cancel that which you have done amiss.
The legal issue has been carefully considered, the verdict of the court has in
no sense been postponed, nor its effect mitigated; but we have found a legal
basis according to which the letter and spirit of the law sets you free forever
from the persecution of the law. Such forgiveness has a place, among other
things, in the justification of the sinner. But there is also a forgiveness
which consists solely of a temporary suspension of the charge or of the
sentence. With or without a legal sentence someone whose breach of law has been
alleged or proved can temporarily be freed from the persecution of law. Two
possibilities for the future arise from such a temporary dismissal of action:
later the man who was temporarily dismissed from the course of law can be
arrested and condemned anew; or, in the interim which ensues, a legal basis may
be found by means of which he definitively and strictly according to the
requirements of law is forever acquitted.

It was such a detention of the execution of law, preliminary and incidental,
which Jesus had in mind. This detention is not a plea for the justification of
the sinner, and is not a plea against justification; it simply desires that God
will temporarily withhold the terrible punishment, the catastrophic annihilation
which must necessarily follow the condemnation and cursing of the Prince of life
by this generation of vipers. May it please God not immediately to let the
powers of the last judgment break through against these. May it please God to
wait and not to send the storms of the last judgment into this scene. May it
please God, “not to make any work of it,” today, not to make any work of what is
being done by human hands, by Adam and his generation today. In this prayer
Christ manifests a very strong Messianic self-consciousness. And He makes the
implications of that consciousness relevant to God. The Saviour is, also as a
human being, so thoroughly permeated by the thought of His own universal
significance and of His Messianic righteousness before God, that He, even when
He must raise His head up to the storm clouds of absolute condemnation,
associates the most terrible of judgments with the sin of His murderers. If the
Judge is to do what these deserved, the flood will be but a shadow in comparison
with what will take place here. Then the abysses will at once have to open and
swallow up these people.

Surely, this is a pronounced self-disclosure of a Messianic spirit which is very
conscious of itself. No, indeed, this statement is not a denial of what Jesus
said in the presence of the Sanhedrin or of what He said in the last service of
the Word, as it seemed to be a moment ago, but it is a confirmation of these
things. He knows He is the Messiah, and He knows that the righteousness of His
“case” is perfect before God. But as the Messiah He also wants to make Himself
effective in His prayer. He knows very well that God is much concerned with the
Messiah whom He has sent out. Hence the condemnation which must accrue to the
murderers of the Saviour cannot be meted out unless He Himself acquaints the
Father with His will in the matter. This is a strange contrast. He who is
accursed, and who knows that God has cursed Him, nevertheless knocks at God’s
door and says: I have a desire, and I shall not put aside my feeling of freedom
to make My desire known to Thee. I pray Thee, Father — My prayer rests in a
confident sense of My own worth — that Thou suspend the judgment for a time. I
ask forgiveness for these sinners. I would leave some room, some room for the
future. I would leave room for the justification by faith of all those who are
present here, and are included in the election. And I would also leave room for
my living Word to become effective, so effective and so persistent, that the
measure will presently be full and the judgment can come.

We can deduce from this that Christ by no means in His thinking is opposed to
the good pleasure of God. He is not pleading for acquittal where the sovereign
good pleasure did not choose to grant it. No, there is another element here.
Christ adds to His plea: They know not what they do. But what further? There is
a saying which has it that ignorance of the law is no excuse. And ignorance,
certainly, is no excuse for sin. The failure to appreciate all of the
consequences and implications of one’s evil does not take away the guilt of sin.
We would reply that this is quite true. But we would add that Christ is not
asking for forgiveness in the narrower sense. The fact that these people do not
know what they are doing is not an argument for their eternal salvation, but a
basis for suspending the judgment. Time must come when they must know what they
are doing. Golgotha must be explained by the Word; and may God grant the time
necessary for those fisher-folk, who will be apostles later, to preach that word
to the world. The world must know what is happening here, in order that the
hearing of the preached word may bring the one to true repentance and faith, and
may aggravate the responsibility of the other, if he does not subject himself
sincerely to Him who speaks on Golgotha.

Hence Christ is not praying for a cancellation of the execution, not even for a
postponement of execution, but for the suspension of the judgment of wrath which
is sure to come in any case. Christ is praying for a period of time in order
that, on the one hand, all those souls who would seek acquittal in the execution
of Christ might seize on grace to that end, and in order that, on the other
hand, an even profounder legal basis may be placed under the condemnation of
those who are here condemning their God in Christ. Father, the Mediator’s voice
cries out, The world must pass away, but keep back Thy catastrophes for a
period, and let Me stand alone in My catastrophic curse. Father, there are many
branches on Israel’s tree. According to right and reason all these dead branches
must be broken off by the storm of the last judgment at once, and the whole tree
be cast into the fire. But do Thou withhold Thy four winds for a time, Father;
let the tree of Israel stand today in order that there may be occasion for
grafting new shoots to the old trunk, and in order that thereafter the dead
branches may by a more conclusive gesture be thrust into the oven.

Accordingly, it would be a vain task if someone should attempt to “play off”
this New Testament word of Christ against the Old Testament imprecatory psalms.
These psalms, surely, cannot be in conflict with the spirit of Christ, the
crucified Intercessor. For those imprecatory psalms were also given us by the
Logos. They can be explained only by the Logos which has been made flesh. No,
but on the contrary, Christ is uniting Himself with these psalms of Israel.
Christ’s soul is becoming one with them. At the same time, however, His soul is
very eager to have the wrath consumed by love. Christ’s mellow statement which
asks forgiveness for His murderers here may not be placed overagainst the
imprecatory psalms of the Old Testament. For the New Testament carries these
psalms straight into heaven. You remember the prayer of the “souls under the
altar,” who asked God, who cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord,
dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them? Now the link which unites the
Old Testament with the New Testament prayer of vengeance is this first utterance
from the cross. For Christ would also have time enough for Himself in which to
let His work ripen, to avenge His blood, and to provide the service of atonement
in His blood. He does not curse the furious horses of the last judgment, He does
not restrain them; He merely prays that the Father may withhold them for the
present, in order that His hand may presently take the reins. Father, let them
go today, for the whole of judgment must be made the prerogative of the Son. Do
not dismiss Him, Father, before the time has come.

Christ, accordingly, appears here in His full length. As the Messiah He asks
that the privilege be given Him to lay His own hand on the wheel of the world.
Thus He fastens His cross to the last, to the final day. Thus the cross becomes
a link. But there is more to say. He also reaches back to the first day. This is
the second link. As the Son of God. who continuously remains identified with the
man Jesus, even though He is cast into the catastrophic curse which brings the
last and final judgment very near Him, He nevertheless is doing the work of God
as that work was done on the first day of the advent of sin into the world. The
first day? The very beginning? Yes, indeed. We shall not repeat here what has
been said before about the will of God who interjected history between the first
advent of sin into the world and the realization of that sin in the form of the
curse. We shall not repeat here what was said then about the circle of earthly
life. We have said more than once that God interjects history between the moment
of the first sin and the final and absolute curse, in order to make room for the
Christ who would make both the blessing and the curse effective in the world. We
shall not allude to that again.

We recall it here for a moment simply because it must point out the direction
which we must take in pondering Christ’s first utterance on the cross.
Remembering that, we can go farther. Now we can say with reverence, as we look
upon the cross: Behold, He is doing perfectly that which God did in Paradise. At
the first advent of sin, when the “day of the Lord” dawned, when the sun of
grace arose, God said to Himself: I “forgive” them their sins, for they know not
what they do. Even that was not the complete justification of Man and Woman, but
it was an expression of the strong, divine will, which restrained the curse, and
which kept the thunder of God shut up in its treasure-rooms, by way of
restraining the explosion of hell.

Then it had been morning: the beginning of the “day of the Lord.” Now it is high
noon of that same day of the Lord. The clock of the “day of the Lord,” the “jom
Jahweh,” is at the moment pointing to twelve o’clock. And again the voice is
heard: Forgive them, they do not know what they do. This was said twice,
therefore. The first time in Paradise, the second time on the cross. The first
time the Logos pronounced these words before the incarnation; now He announces
them in and by means of the incarnation. The first time He spoke them as the
eternal God, who, however, stood ready to be the servant; and now He speaks them
as the servant of the Lord but as one who in the form of a servant perfectly
preserves and vindicates the will of God which is also His own will. Tremble, O
Pilate; and shudder all ye facile caricaturists. He remains faithful to all His
ideas.[1] He is God and man in one person.

[1]Christ on Trial,Chapter 27,pp. 519-522.

We also must tremble here. For, the first time the Logos prayed that the Father
forgive them, He wrought the possibility of general history, He wrested that
possibility from the abyss of God’s justice and truth. Now He prays a second
time — it is midday — but now He is struggling for the preservation, for the
maintenance, for the continuation of general history, in order that special
history whose incipient triumphs had been achieved in the Old Testament, might
flourish in the full energy of the New Testament, by means of the feast of
Pentecost and of the formation of the church. Christ is praying that God give
His chosen vessel, a certain Paul, his opportunities; He prays for that
commander-in-chief of the Roman soldiers, whose name is to be Constantine the
Great. He prays for Luther and for Calvin. He prays for us. He was as universal
as possible; Father, forgive “them,” — this perverted crowd. But it is His
sublime, blessed, and exacting manner of prayer never to let a general statement
fall without causing it to have a most special effect.

Listen: Jesus Christ is praying. Praise God, for He indeed is praiseworthy. He
manifests His strength in the skies and above the clouds. No matter how profound
the need, God sends out His Son in order that He may slay the enemy. He is given
all power in heaven and on earth.

What more can we do now? We must try to find the connection between these
things. We must bind into a synthesis the main idea of our preceding chapter
with this chapter, with this first word on the cross. In our preceding chapter
we said that Christ was living under the tension, under the pressure, and in the
oppressive atmosphere of the last day. We pointed out how He is experiencing on
the cross the suffering of the night of the day of judgment, the night of the
“jom Jahweh.” To His ears the strokes of the hammer came with the sound of
thunder. The nails and the hammers of the soldiers were as the lances of God to
Him. Too sweeping, you say? By no means, for His eye never once “armed” itself
with a magnifying glass.

Now it is high noon. He has the evening and the night in His thoughts. And He
has just returned to His morning prayers. Therefore our soul must testify of
this Worker of God’s one day, this Worker of the “day of the Lord,” that again
He has suppressed nothing. This Servant of God, my Lord and God, experiences in
every successive moment the organic interrelationship of the whole season of
God, This is the hour of Golgotha: this is high noon. He is referring for the
moment, however, to the morning and is experiencing the catastrophes of late
evening. Thus He vindicates all prophets. The prophets also saw the day of the
Lord as one great, unbroken, single day, though as comprising many centuries.
Christ’s first word on the cross is the apology of all prophets. Take Golgotha
out of the picture, and these all are psychopathic cases, overwrought
personalities. But Golgotha is their apology. They made no mistake; the “jora
Jahweh,” the day of Golgotha, is the burning day of centuries. Christ
experiences this in the vehement pulsing of His own blood as it is poured out
and also in His passionate yearning for His spoken word. The Word has become
flesh. This is its sublime message, in His flesh. He is suffering the pangs and
the woes of the one “day of the Lord” but also as the Word of God, as the
uncreated Logos, He shares in all the hours of the one “day of the Lord.” Thus
does God enter into our distress. The first word on the cross looks like a
mellow prayer, innocent and meek as the wafted fragrance of a blossoming
flower-garden. But in the presence of this first word spoken from the cross we
also say with profound reverence: In all our afflictions He was afflicted. For
He experienced the “jom jahweh.” And it happened that at the end of the day (the
catastrophe) it was noon (the struggle for the continuation for the world); yes,
and also morning (the affirmation of His prayer of Paradise: Father forgive
them).

Consequently that: which Christ is praying here must always be distinguished
from the prayers of others, even though they use the very same words. True,
there was Stephen (Acts 7:60), and he also said later: Lord, lay not this sin to
their charge. And there is Paul, who said: Being persecuted we suffer it, being
reviled we bless (1 Corinthians 4:12); and again: All men forsook me; I pray God
it may not be laid to their charge (2 Timothy 4:16). But can you believe that
these and other persecuted followers of Jesus Christ were standing on the same
sublime heights as Jesus was? That which they asked was but the fruit of His
prayer. Because of that prayer Stephen could say in His terrible death: I see
Jesus standing. And Paul could say that Christ’s Spirit itself made intercession
for him with groanings that could not be uttered. When other people address God
by means of the words, Father forgive them this sin, there are only two
possibilities. If they use these words prompted by the Spirit of Christ, their
prayer is the fruit of Jesus’ praying. And if they segregate their will to love
from the love and justice of Christ, then their petition for mercy is in the
last analysis a praying against Christ. For the prayer of Christ is not
expressive of rebellion against the justice of God, but it is a struggle to give
both God’s justice and His love their fruition in a world which presently will
have become ripe. Christ who, after His final and personal service of the Word
in the state of humiliation, pronounces this first word from the cross by way of
application to it, was asking God for the permanent service of the word, in
order that He might thus cause the world to ripen, the world and its “clusters
of the vine of the earth” (Revelation 14:18). In other words, Christ as God and
as man is busy asking for a continuation of what we called “the vicious circle.”
Not that, in doing this, He is recalling what had been His glory in the presence
of the Sanhedrin: namely, to indicate that He Himself was vanquishing the
vicious circle.[1] It is precisely because He has conquered the vicious circle,
that He takes the reins of the world’s cyclical movement into His own hand from
now on. All power is given Him in this hour. The word spoken before the
ascension, “All power is given to me in heaven and earth” is a powerful paean of
rejoicing in which the Conqueror stretches out His arms, fills His lungs, and
exclaims: God be praised, My first prayer on the cross has been heard. The
Father could not but hear.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 7, especially pp. 143-144. And for that reason, O
man, this word spoken on the cross has a direct significance for you. For if it
is true that this petition uttered on the cross is a prayer for the prolongation
of the vicious circle of world history, we cannot but think of the Ecclesiast of
the Old Testament again, for it was he who spoke of the vicious circle. Well, he
also observed how the people, slaves as they are of the passion of their own
sin, and foolish in spirit, seem to build their life upon the cyclical movements
of nature. Hear what the Preacher says: Because sentence against an evil work is
not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in
them to do evil (Ecclesiastes 8:11). He is saying that because the catastrophe
of the judgment has not yet exploded, because Good Friday does not strike the
planes of our life with lightning. Therefore the world is willing to settle down
comfortably even at the scene of Golgotha. Even at the cross, men play at
roulette and never dream of condemnation. Soldiers raffling garments next to the
cross — such is the keynote struck for the following ages. Because Jesus’ first
petition on the cross was heard, the heart of the children of men is fully set
in them to do evil. So we may translate Ecclesiastes 8:11. Christ’s cross breaks
the circle of the history of the world only for those who have faith. It was His
will that this should be so. He prayed that the merry-go-round of this life
might continue to whirl, and that the merry-go-rounds of God continue to turn as
slowly as they had before. Hence the course of sin was prolonged, and the
struggle of faith and unbelief was continued also. May the church tremble, for
the church has named the mystery of God’s relationship to sin by means of the
designation: active permission.[1] But in this petition on the cross the active
permission becomes human as well as divine: here it is not only a secret of God
but also of Christ Jesus our Mediator. He let the world go on; that is
permission. He prays that it may continue: that is activity. In the one, the
first petition on the cross, He heals the ears of all the Malchuses of the
world. He guarantees Cain and Malchus that they will have a place on the earth
until the last day. At noon His voice said to God: Father, do not let the
evening come earlier than usual; let the afternoon gradually move towards the
night. Therefore the heart of the world is still full of the desire to do evil.
Christ will presently and throughout His days fall into the skeins He Himself
has woven, because those who mock at the foot of His cross continue their
reviling. Why? Because His prayer has been heard. Satan can still battle against
“the remnant of the seed of the woman” (Revelation 12).

[1]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 25, p. 436 f. But this does not take away
your heavy responsibility, O son of man. Precisely because Jesus at mid-day of
the “jom Jahweh” acknowledged and in the last analysis asked for the justice of
God to make its appearance in the evening, therefore His mid-day prayer
naturally becomes weaker in sound, less audible in tone, as evening approaches.
Remember, His great argument is this one: They know not what they do. But each
new day, each new dawning and sunset spreads further the knowledge of God in
Christ through the world. Gradually people will learn to know what they are
doing. The word of the cross is preached: the crisis is made a conscious one.
The Antichrist will know perfectly what he is doing. And the more the world runs
to the end of its course, the nearer the Antichrist comes with his false
prophet, the better will men know what they are doing. As soon, therefore, as
the day will have come in which, according to the Biblical statement, “the earth
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,”
Christ’s mid-day prayer will no longer be heard. This will be the end; then
evening will come; evening and a silent Christ who can find no more words in
which to couch His first petition on the cross. The moment He closes His mouth
and no longer assumes responsibility for the content of His uttered prayer on
the cross, it will be evening, the evening of the “jom Jahweh.” Then the
catastrophe will break loose, the same catastrophe in which He is now isolated
according to His own will. Then all the sluice-gates of God’s floods of
vengeance will be flung wide. Consequently every service of the word, and every
deepening of theological thinking, is an eschatological thing: it makes more
blunt the sharpness of the modifying clause in the first petition from the
cross. For, so much is plain, “They know now, what they have done.”[1] Judgment
comes, and the innocent voice which seemed to whisper the words Father forgive
them, grows into a veritable tornado:

[] Therefore the church which makes dogmatic thinking as broad and as deep as
possible is the Maranatha-church. An institution which presents the
Maranatha-message but ignores or does not plumb the depths of dogma is less
eschatological than a church whick is faithful to dogma. The church which makes
the deepest and broadest confession is always busy eschatologically.

Day of Judgment, day of wonders, Hark! the trumpet’s awful sound Louder than a
thousand thunders Shakes the vast creation round! How the summons Will the
sinner’s heart confound!

But to those who have confessed, Loved and served the Lord below, He will say:
Come near, ye blessed, See the Kingdom I bestow, You forever Shall my love and
glory know. The last thought provides a resting place for our poor heart. We
should want the courage to wait for the judgment if we could not at the same
time confidently speak of His priestly love. But be of good cheer: He is our
Priest. Simon, you isolated Him, and you still remember that, you remember the
curses and oaths which you swore. But be of good cheer, disciple, weeping
bitterly, for today He is isolating Himself. Father, He says, I am stepping into
the dark, but give them the full light of the sun until the last day. I want to
be in the catastrophe alone. Father, the seed of the woman is being wrenched
away today; the word has a catastrophic connotation. But give the remnant of the
seed of the woman a further place in the world. Reserve, prepare, a place for
them in the wilderness;[2] I want to be alone in the catastrophe. Thus Christ
wrests the catastrophe, into which He Himself has been thrown, from the
soldiers, and from the priests, and from the temple, and from Caesar. And the
Batavians on the west coast of Europe can divide their loot in the evening, and
wait for Boniface because Christ prayed this prayer. Be of good cheer, ye
disciples, and you also, you who flee anonymously.[3] All of you have isolated
Him but a short time ago; but now He isolates Himself. He is not the object but
the subject of His own isolation.

[2] Revelation 12.

[3]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 27, especially p. 460. This is a miraculous
thing: He is isolating Himself. Note carefully the fact that He did this by
means of a prayer. The prayer must not be regarded as an accidental particular
which we may with impunity overlook. For prayer, being divine, means to make the
will of God our will. In prayer the commandments become our food and drink. The
person who prays is uniting himself with the will of the Lord by his own deed.
Prayer is not an unconscious expression of life, is not a naive self-expression,
but is a deed done by the spirit of man, which unites itself with the familiar
commandments and burdens of its God. And Christ prayed “Father forgive them.” He
prayed, and by His prayer, by the strongest assertion of His deed, He isolated
Himself in catastrophic death. Thus His priestly soul by means of its active
obedience completely acquiesced in the destiny pointed out to Him: namely, to be
isolated from the whole world. By praying He completely embraced the command of
isolation which God had given. He suffered alone, He stood in the thunder and
lightning of the last day alone. Not only because He had to, but also because He
wanted to. Yes, He had to. Fellowship, company, is a concept appropriate to
planes. The vicious circle is a plane. Social life is possible on a plane. But
the breaking through of a circular plane can take place only at a certain point;
it creates a kind of vacuum. Now one is always alone at a point of bisection; a
vacuum can offer nothing but a descent into isolation. What, therefore, is more
natural than the isolation of Christ in the moment of the breaking through of
the circular plane of life. Indeed, He could not but be isolated. But God be
praised: He wanted to be isolated also. He prayed that He might be alone in the
catastrophic curse; He prayed for His isolation at the time of His descent into
hell. He prayed: that is, He attracted the isolation to Himself. His name be
praised; but give the praise very cautiously. He had to and He wanted to.

These two may never be separated. He is being isolated, yes, but not only
because He wanted to. Had that been the case, He would have been guilty of
suicide, of forsaking God and the Church. Again He is isolated not only because
He had to be. Had that been the case, His isolation would have been His fate,
and His abandonment would then have lacked redemptive power. But now that He
must do what He wants to do, and wants to do what He must, everything is right.

No, we may not overlook this prayer contained in the first utterance from the
cross. The specific prayer-form into which this word of isolation comes to us
fulfills the preaching of isolation as pointed out in our first and second
volumes; it amplifies God’s message, and imparts a new depth to our own praying.
For the true humanity of the Son of man as He was even in His catastrophe gives
our prayers body and depth and genuine humanity which, at the same time, through
Him is compatible with the true essence of God.

Now this day is a miracle to me. The sun arose this morning and I looked upon my
day. It came from Him; He did not hinder me from doing my work because I had
crucified Him. Christ, great in mercies. Pia anima. O holy heart of Jesus.

Christ, the catastrophe is upon Thee, Thy heart is beating wildly because of it.
Thou sawest that the world was oppressed by the heavy burden which God sent upon
it because of Thee, and Thou Thyself didst say that He would forsake Thee. Those
were two truths, and they supported each other. Thou sawest both of them in Thy
spirit, and Thou didst profess both of them without reservation. The harmony of
the two is a melting together of paradoxical reality. What have I left but the
Word, but Thy authority? But let me know, Lord, that Thou by reason of Thy own
will didst descend into the curse which is catastrophic in character alone. A
Christ who has isolated Himself in the curse by His own deed teaches me to
number my days. Moses also asked that we learn to number our days (Psalms 90),
but he could not recite the text while standing beside the cross. The pagans
teach me the phrase, “Carpe diem,” in vain; they cannot translate the first
utterance on the cross from the inside. I can do that if I believe, for if I
believe, I have myself been present at the cross. Lord, teach me to number my
days at the cross of Golgotha in order that I may become wise at heart, and
realize Thy own work in Thy servants. Father, forgive us, for only at the last
day shall we be fully able to see what we have done here . . . Brother, mark the
day. Have you noticed how His voice has weakened already? Each day He speaks
less loudly of the people who know not what they do. A speaking Jesus is
terrible: a silent Jesus far more terrible. I dare not sleep. As I turn the leaf
on the calendar I know that His voice speaks more softly than it did yesterday.
He knows how much I know. This is the dogma of the Church — and He Himself
taught it, for He greatly desires His judgment day. He calls the counsel
together in Nicea, He is present at Wittenberg, in Geneva, and in Dordrecht, for
He is eager that we should know. Could you suppose that His judgment day has
been infinitely postponed? He spoke the prayer from the cross, you say. Yes, but
postponement is not cancellation. He hastens to the fulfillment of His judgment
day, provided that it come in the right manner. Jesus’ mild prayers are prayers
of steel. Only if I am in Him can I fall safely asleep beside my dear Lord. On
Patmos He summoned me by His Spirit to amplify His first word from the cross —
amplify, mark you, not contradict — by that final prayer: Come, Lord Jesus, yea,
come quickly. The first word on the cross certainly must be one of those things
which is sweet in the mouth — the first contact — but bitter in the belly — the
further amplification and fulfillment.

Go where it is quiet now. It was morning, and it was noon: the first day. Sun,
never stand still over Gibeon, and thou Moon, over the vale of Ajalon. It seems
that the second Joshua prayed the prayer of the first Joshua together with him.
But in reality the prayer of Jesus Christ transcended that of Joshua. This was
His privilege, His right. Come, Thou great Joshua, come quickly. And for the
rest — the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all, amen. Otherwise ...
no, let me be still at last in His presence


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: 08. CHAPTER 8: CHRIST AMONG THE BANDITS
========================================================================

C H A P T E R E I G H T Christ Among the Bandits Where they crucified him,and
two others with him,on either side one,and Jesus in the midst. —John 19:18. WHEN
Christ came into the world He lay amidst the magi and the bringers of gifts,
amidst the shepherds who were also men of prayer, and amidst venerable guests of
the temple. When He seemed to be passing out of the world, He was in the company
of bandits.[1] The gospel tells us that when Jesus was brought to the place of
crucifixion, two other malefactors were simultaneously taken there. We cannot
say who these two others were. It is true that their names have been mentioned;
the apocryphal imagination of men has dared to pronounce them. Thus we have been
told that one of them was called Zoathan and the other Chammata. And others
claim that the two had definite names, that the one was called Dysmas (or
Dismas), and the other Gestes (or Gestas). And there is even a third version of
the matter which has it that the two were called, respectively, Titus and
Dumachus. That this tradition, which, as you see, contradicts itself, is
unworthy of acceptance needs no contention. Just so we know little about how it
happened that these malefactors were put to the tortuous death of the cross on
the same day Jesus was executed. It may be that the execution had already been
fixed for this day beforehand; it may also be that Pilate decided, once Jesus
had been assigned to His death anyhow, that these other two could very well be
put to death at the same time. We do not know. We may accept with certainty the
fact that Pilate wanted to mock the Jews by his action in this matter. He
thought it rather a happy idea: the king of the Jews: the sentimental Jesus
ought to have the escort of two bandits. We cannot accept the fact that Pilate
in the first place wanted to revile Jesus by placing Him on a par with the scum
of this nation. His repeated affirmation of Christ’s innocence was too
formidable to allow us to think so. He simply had in mind to mock the Jews. They
had been such a nuisance to him all day long that now he wanted to avenge
himself. How could he do that more strikingly and “proudly” than by sending two
varlets along with the self-vaunted king of the Jews to serve as His subjects.
Once before Pilate had put all his pride and disdain, mingled with regret, into
his ironical statement: Behold, your king.[2] A little later the same disdain,
not unmixed with bitterness and sarcasm, was written into the superscription
placed over the cross: Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews. Those, then,
were two ways in which he had reviled the Jews. They had been prompted by
grimness and the boredom of exhaustion. Now we can better fit this sombre
procession into this background of the two former acts of Pilate than in any
other kind of context. Pilate did indeed want to mock the Jews as a people. Aha!
Look! that king of the Jews was nailed to the cross in the company of two
“subjects” of the lowest kind. This by way of a delicate and delicious mockery
of the poisonous generation of Jews.

[1] This word was selected in agreement with Grosheide,Kommentaar op Mattheus,
p. 351.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 29, p. 547.

Thus, however, Jesus as the King of the Jews was being reincorporated into the
body which had rejected Him before. The Jewish people are being mocked by the
same judge to whom they have catered in their effort to have him carry out their
will against Jesus Christ.

However, the important thing is not what Pilate does, but what God does through
Pilate. The Gospel according to Mark indicates that this leveling process, this
degrading of Jesus, was a fulfillment of the old prophecy which had been made
about the suffering Servant of the Lord: He was numbered with the transgressors
(Isaiah 53:12). Some think that this reference to Isaiah, as it appears in the
gospel of Mark, was not written by Mark himself, inasmuch as there are other
manuscripts which give a different version. Personally, we do not believe that
this contention is necessarily sound. In any case, however, the citation of
Isaiah 53:12 is completely appropriate to the historical narrative of the
gospel. Christ Himself also stated at the Passover supper: For I say unto you,
that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned
among transgressors (Luke 22:37). This plainly is a statement springing directly
from Christ’s own Messianic consciousness, and this statement provides the link
between what Isaiah wrote concerning the servant of the Lord and what Jesus of
Nazareth experienced in the day of His suffering.

It provides the link, but it does more than that. Not only is there unity and
correspondence between Isaiah and Jesus, but there is also a fulfillment of the
word of Isaiah in the reality of Jesus. For Christ had been reckoned with
transgressors before. What still needed doing was the actual fulfillment. The
levelling of Christ, I mean of God, with the scum of the street and the outcasts
of society still had to be actualized in experience. For Satan still has in mind
a nice question, which he means to put to the church. Throughout the centuries
he will ask the church: Can it be that God said, He resembles my Son? That
question is being prepared today.[1] For Prophecy is active again; the Word is
moving on. Hence it is by no means merely Pilate’s fit of anger or his
delicately woven network of sarcasm which is the cause of the fact that Christ
in the moment in which He is being lifted up and advertised,[2] is publicly
placed on a par with two varlets. No, this was caused by Christ’s own direction,
by God’s government, and by Satan’s evil desire. It represents not only the
control of God but also a deed of Jesus Himself. He allowed Himself to be
numbered with transgressors, “He allowed it to please Him that His people
regarded Him as one punished by God for His sin, and as one sent to His death as
a male factor.” He allowed Satan to classify Him with the rabble, for He
personally dares to ask whether God has ever said: He resembles the Son of God.
Presently He will Himself raise the question: homo-ousios or homoiousios: the
equal of God, or merely one who resembles God. Hence He must be placed on a par
with the rabble and there bring the greatest sacrifice in order that seeing they
might not see, and hearing might not understand.

[1] Homo(i)ousios.

[2] SeeChrist on Trial, chapter 15, especially p. 297 ff.

Again you see the imperious style and the pure will of God interjecting itself
into the chaotic transaction of Pilate. Christ had to be numbered with the
malefactors. This fact gives expression, from our side, to the wickedness of the
world, and from His side, to the severity of His struggle and to the depth of
His self-humiliation.

Yes, the caprice of sin is expressing itself through the escort which was
assigned to Jesus. Christ continues to be treated by Pilate in the way in which
Pilate has abused Him all day. Pilate wants to mock the Jews and the Jewish
nation by hanging the scum of the streets next to Him. Three unfortunates, all
next to each other, and their pathetic king in the middle — by arranging it so
Pilate persists in the attitude which has been his throughout the day. The judge
avenges himself upon the Jews but he does so at the expense of the Nazarene. The
Jews put Pilate into a bad temper, but Christ has to suffer the effects. God
lets the scourging fall upon the back of Christ, and Pilate draws an ugly Jew
upon it, a caricature. The man who asked, “What is truth?” persists in ignoring
the ethical problem. First of all he sins by placing Jesus on a par with those
who have neither any might nor any right. But his second and greatest sin is
that he places Jesus on a par with malefactors, and he does that notwithstanding
the fact that he himself is willing to acknowledge that a great gulf is fixed
between the varlets and the Nazarene.

However, it is not for us to single Pilate out for criticism. His sin is but a
recurrence of the old root-evil: the world places Christ in its own light. That
is the beginning. Having begun that way, it soon dares to degrade Him to the
level of the least of men, to the plane of the misbegotten of civilization, as
the world itself describes them in its books. The phenomenon occurs again and
again: like Pilate, the world has Christ move around its own arrogant ego.

Accordingly, we can safely say that the caricature which the soldiers had given
of Jesus’ kingship continued to be displayed before the eyes of men on the
cross. This caricature of the soldiers Pilate pasted on the cross-beam, on the
same little placard which bore the “title” of Jesus.[1] But this is remarkable:
the two murderers were also subjected to caricature. These poor fellows — they
too must suffer because of the Nazarene, just as Barabbas had to suffer.[2] For
they would not have had a place in the caricaturing if it had not been for
Jesus. Alas, now everyone must be put to shame because of Jesus Christ. Yes,
even the Jews are mocked together with Him. He takes them all with Him into His
degradation. There are three crosses: that of a self-vaunted king, and those of
two other “pretty replicas” of father Abraham. Pilate insists that this
threefold chain must by no means be broken, for it serves beautifully as a
caricature of the whole Jewish people. Two dead branches and a thicker one which
can serve as a trunk. That is the best way to make the tree of Abraham
ludicrous. Thus Pilate subjects all the dry branches of Abraham to mockery. He
does injustice to the green tree, but a voice sounded from this bush also: if
they do this in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? Almost at once
that voice was fulfilled.

[1] See chapter 10 of this volume, especially p. 192.

[2] SeeChrist on Trial, Chapter 24, p. 459.

Painful as this caricature was to Christ, He nevertheless had to remain faithful
to His labor. He may not despise the people that despise Him. Paul’s great
question, Hath God cast off His people? — a question asked when He let them
struggle on without grace and the covenant — that question today for the first
time lives in Jesus’ soul.

Therefore, we must again speak of a temptation of the Saviour at this point. We
know that His own people despise Him. According to the standards of justice,
therefore, this people has lost its right to a place under the sun. As a carnal
community it is in very fact deserving of death. Now Pilate is mocking this weak
and twice-dead people, and is publicly exhibiting its pathetic frailty.
Nevertheless as the Son of man, Christ must in His spirit take just as keen an
exception to this blunt characterization as He did when He Himself was made the
subject of world-caricature by means of the crown of thorns, the reed, and the
gorgeous robe. Unless Jesus Christ, even in His severest passion — no, precisely
in His severest passion — is just as active about the problem of Israel as His
servant Paul under the inspiration of Christ’s Spirit is later on (Romans 9-11),
the soul of Jesus, according to the standards of divine justice, will be
delighting itself in the sinful manifestations of Pilate’s mockery. Then His
approbation will make Abraham’s seed an exlex,[1] precisely as Pilate made
Abraham’s great Son that. Then Christ will be degrading Himself to the level of
Pilate. Then, indeed, these varlets will be the escort most becoming to Him, for
then He will become one of them. Then He will be returning evil for evil; then
that part of the sermon on the mount which says, Pray for them that persecute
you, will return to Him like a boomerang. For, in this connection the petition
means, “Force your way back into the sphere of law from which you have been cast
out.” Then Jesus Christ is not being infinitely busy in righteousness with the
question Paul is asking, “Hath God cast off His people?” Then the inspiration of
the Scripture by Christ’s own Spirit will be lost. Then indeed everything is
futile.

[1] Concerning this concept see this volume, chapter 1, and various chapters
ofChrist on Trial.

Alas, the Man who is like us in all things. Woe to Him if He does take exception
to the Pilate who mocks those that mock Jesus. Yes, indeed, now again everything
hangs suspended before our frightened gaze by a silken thread. At the same time,
of course, everything is anchored in the pure soul of the Son. If Jesus Christ
had delighted in, or if He simply had not opposed,[2] the mockery heaped upon
the seed of Abraham by Pilate, Christ would have been unfaithful to His
Messianic office. Then His own evil soul would have driven the seed of Abraham
away from Him in a spiritual sense. Then He, delighting in Pilate, who delights
to tread upon the dead branches of the tree of Abraham, would Himself have been
chopping that tree down.

[2] By active obedience just as well as by passive obedience. This He may not do
because God still has a future for the tree of Abraham’s seed. God cannot chop
down a single tree which He has planted, says Paul. When He plants new shoots He
simply grafts these shoots into the old trunk. Woe to Christ if He does not live
by this law. God never destroys the old trunk. Woe to Him if He does not live by
this law, and if He cannot through the Spirit be the Father of the inspired
writer of Romans 9-11.

However, our soul believes in Him and through faith our soul acknowledges that
inwardly He wept for the Jews who were being mocked by Pilate. When He had
approached the city, He had wept because of it. But that was in the past. When
He is being cast out of the city, He still weeps because of it, and says to God:
It is not true, my Father, it is not true; the seed of Abraham has not been
rejected! I say then: Hath God cast off His people? No, God hath not cast off
His people which He foreknew.[1] Father, Father, protect these varlets; put them
in their place. That man Pilate, O Father, is taking everything out of its
place. My people, O Father, is not what this caricaturist chooses to make them.
Father, protect the rights of all varlets. Thou hast never yet created an
alms-taking people, heavenly Father, even though Pilate says so a thousand
times. I praise Thee, Father, and I praise Abraham, here among the varlets.

Then the angels said to each other: Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall
be allowed to build up middle walls of partition. Indeed, He was a peace-maker,
essentially He was that. He confessed the miserable congregation of Abraham in
the presence of Pilate, He who is still willing to confess Abraham’s varlets
before the Father, Him will God confess to Himself.

[1] See the beginning of Romans 11.

Consequently, I believe. I believe that this pathetic escort of two malefactors
was a temptation to Jesus. I believe that He was conscious of this. The mockery
of Pilate comes back upon the head of the Jews, but I, second Adam, may not
rejoice in that. I believe that His spirit struggled between the malefactors and
Father Abraham to whom God once showed a thousand stars and then, doubling them,
said: Thus shall thy seed be, and I the Lord shall not cast them off in all
eternity. I believe He upheld Abraham overagainst Pilate, the Beast of Rome. I
have no certainty other than the certainty of this faith. This certainty
suffices: faith will not be put to shame. Faith will presently see Him laboring
so long, so hard, with such concentration of His spirit that of these two men,
who with Him were brought into the caricature of the world, who shared with Him
a place on this print of mockery, He will save one for eternal life. Jesus’
sustained struggle for the preservation of that murderer is evidence for us
which proves that He did not acquiesce in the ways of Pilate’s sin and in the
ways of “all flesh.” When He Himself was made the exlex, He did not multiply the
number of those who bore that title. Presently He raised the sound of rejoicing
by way of taking exception to Pilate’s mockery. Exuberantly, He shouted: Exlex,
my brother in caricature, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.[1] This
second statement from the cross certainly is an acknowledgment of Abraham. By
this statement He is refusing to chop down the tree of Abraham. From this point
on the victory of the Spirit which inspires Paul begins. Here He purified
Himself overagainst all Jews and indicated that He did not desire that meager
comfort of hell which consists of laughing at the destruction of another.

[1] For further consideration, see the next chapter.

Isaiah, and Ezekiel too, tell us in reference to this comfort of hell that the
condemned in Hades mock and disdain each other; that the one delights in the
misfortunes of the other. We have the very opposite of that in the Man of
sorrows. The great Exlex can derive no comfort from an exlex. The mock-king gets
no comfort from the mockery of His subjects, but He labors to save a man who is
faltering to death. He struggles to receive a child of Abraham, who like Him,
will presently lack everything, into the eternal tabernacles. This is the
Saviour of our heart. We thank Him for the fact that His pathetic escort, so far
from being able to tempt Him, could only give Him an opportunity to manifest His
true majesty. Fall down and worship Him: He makes friends out of the unjust
comedy in order that, when all semblance of truth will be lacking to Him — on
the cross — they may recognize Him in the eternal tabernacles.[2] [2] SeeLuke
16:9. The Father praised the cautious, dialectical Master: He had not been
fooled by the caricatures. The angels sang of reality and truth. The world did
not fall to pieces simply because He could not endure Pilate when he chose
bandits as models for a malicious caricature of the Jewish nation.[1] [1]
Material for a sermon on Jewish missions. The labor of Jesus’ spirit to look
upon the mockery of the seed of Abraham theocentrically at this time naturally
spelled suffering for Him. Always there is this attention on His part, an
attention which may never for a moment subside. And there is always the official
obligation to give even though everyone is taking. And there is that severe
struggle of the soul to save the seed of Abraham, which does not protect Him
against Pilate, — to save it from Pilate in His own soul. And then that
levelling process. Lo, this is the hour in which Christ is not only to be the
Head of the covenant of Grace, that is, the Head of the lost varlets whom God in
Him regards as the “congregation of just men made perfect.” In this same hour
Christ is made “common,” is degraded. False appearance, of course! Not only is
He placed on a par with the malefactors (negation of His holiness) but He is
even denied beforehand the power to make from what is disgraceful and despised a
masterpiece of the Spirit of regeneration. For the caricature of Pilate — like
all caricature — can only be understood in such a way that the main person in it
— in this case the king — who is being gorgeously decked out, is the most deeply
mocked and humiliated. But we do not lament any longer. God still gave His Son a
task to do. Before He completely descended to hell He had the heavy task to
accomplish for a lost person His great, messianic, world-mission.

If we look upon the matter in this light, we see that the company of bandits in
which Jesus was placed was willed by God. From Jesus’ point of view, this
company was absolutely inevitable for Him. Not the slightest hint of accident
this; the full justice of God places Christ here in the position assigned to
Him. This is the true relationship: Jesus among the worthless ones. These are
not political prisoners, these are not Barabbases, these are not the sons of
eminent rabbis, are not people of whom we know that they have been put in prison
for reasons of a political character — no, these are simon-pure bandits. These
are the least of the least; they are despised of everyone. And these had to
accompany Jesus. God purposely reaches into the lowest layers of that to which
sin gave birth — the world of malefactors — seizes two of them, and places them
in Jesus’ path, the one to the right, and the other to the left of Him.

Why does He do that? To humble your pride and mine, for we always think we are
better than these two malefactors. Nevertheless, according to heavenly prophecy,
He is here in the presence of those who are His appropriate company, His fit
subjects. Yes, we may say so reverently: this is an instance of the right Man in
the right place. Christ among the bandits. God reaches down into the lowest
possible layers by way of pointing out that Jesus when He Himself, in this
company, answers the question put by Paul and thus labors for life, does not
work through culture but through grace, does not ask men to be civilized, but to
be penitent. God does this by way of, showing that He does not build up on what
is still present in man but on what can give you and me life only in a new
creature. He says to the women who weep for Him: What is your glory: are ye
Abraham’s seed? I say to you that God even out of these varlets can raise up
children unto Abraham.

He says this to us also for we all come from the lowest levels. The bandits who
accompanied Jesus had to disclose and exhibit to us the essence of sin precisely
by the forms of their despised lives. For the essence of sin is in the last
analysis the same in all those who depart from God; the same, and even worse.
For even bandits are not an adequate expression of the terrible nature of sin.
The locus de peccato is given an inadequate illustration even in their company.

Thus the whole issue is made to converge upon us, upon us “decent” people, for,
the moment we have become, not the superman but the sub-bandit, we will have
understood a little of it. Then we will say to Pilate: poor fool, you can engage
in your levelling processes if you want to, but Jesus Christ can only make
confession of the law of election and reprobation. The good pleasure, the
eternal and sovereign good pleasure of God, is active here. That good pleasure
will place Jesus “in the midst of them,” the two bandits to the right and to the
left of Him. Thereupon that good pleasure will command Jesus to reveal in the
repentance of the one and the hardening of the other the wonders of election and
reprobation, the segregation of Abraham’s sons and bastards.

After this manifestation of naked reality it is no longer a sin to speak of the
symbolism of Golgotha. We noted above[1] that the topography of Golgotha had a
symbolical significance inasmuch as routes led from it to Zion (the communion),
and to Gehenna (the forsaking). Just so this same symbolism is again plastically
developed at this place, on this mound of death. Jesus between the murderers
represents the way to fellowship and the way to abandonment. On this day there
will be two people in one escort: the one shall be taken and the other left.
There is no such thing as a levelling process when God has a hand in it. This is
always true and is true everywhere. God makes of Golgotha, that dry and evil
place on the world’s surface, a cultivated field in which wheat and chaff must
be made public according to His good pleasure. That which Pilate would make evil
by means of His sarcastic levelling, that God would make good by perfectly
realizing the ideas of God in full reality. For who can separate God from the
beginning of the counsels of God? Who is to make blunt the knives sharpened by
God’s will? And who can avail to make the presence of true varlets such a
hindrance to the attention of Jesus that He will cease to be the theocentric
Theologian? God has appeared to Him in person. He Himself is God.

[1] See Chapter 4, p. 84.

Thus He goes on His way laden with His curses, but in His soul He sings an
idyllic hymn: Pilate would cast this people off but I, I say then: Has God cast
off His people? God forbid, Pilate, I am the true Israelite of the seed of
Abraham, of the seed of David. God cannot cast off the people whom He foreknew.
Hence, Pilate, this escort of bandits, is, it is true, together with the whole
people, an enemy as far as the gospel is concerned, but as far as the election
is concerned they are the beloved for the fathers’ sake. For the gifts of grace
and the calling of God are not to be repented of. God has included them all
among the disobedient, in order that He might be merciful to the elect. That is
now their abundance, their wholeness; this is their true pleroma.

Pilate, does this sound strange and unreal to you? I shall prove it very
shortly. Today this bandit here will be with me in Paradise. As for the other?
That other one is not a Jew, for His is not the circumcision of the heart. The
other is not of the seed of Abraham, for he has not Abraham’s faith. Pilate, the
caricature has failed miserably; the devil is honoring you for nothing today.
God’s elective mercy is still looking for her children among the Jews whom you
despise. Mark this, Pilate: the Judge of heaven and earth is protesting against
the mockery heaped upon the seed of Abraham. Pilate, I, Jesus Christ, I do not
recognize the exlex, not even among the bandits. My God, my God, have mercy upon
the refuse of Abraham. O depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the
knowledge of God! How unfathomable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!
They assert themselves even in the reprobation of the man who engages in
levelling processes. They reveal the law of election and reprobation, they
separate the seed of Abraham from the bastards. What more could Abraham wish?
Furthermore, God has never denied Abraham; for of Him, through Him, and unto Him
are all things. His be the glory forever, amen.[1] [1]CompareRomans
11:1-2;Romans 11:28-36.

Thus the Saviour walked among the bandits. Presently He was permitted to call
one man to the wedding. Well, it was not surprising that the king should say to
the servant: Call in wedding guests from among the varlets, that my house may be
filled. But it was surprising that the king stripped the servant who was to do
the inviting of his livery and placed him in a bandit-garb. The voice of One
crying; but do not regard His clothes. A voice, the Word — that suffices for
God.

Thus the Saviour walked among the bandits. He was on the way to the altar. The
Priest is on His way to the sacrifice but He so perfectly embodies foolishness
and offense, also as Priest, that God gives Him as His companions on this final
journey to the altar not two common Levites, but two mean bandits. Yes, indeed;
foolishness and offense. All these words are known to God from eternity, and
therefore I see, I seek, a significance in them. I do not find it strange to see
these bandits around Him. But this journey to the altar; I mean the journey to
the altar in the company of bandits, is this not a strange thing? He places His
altar in an ugly spot. But never mind, it may be that I understand it already. I
think He wants to ask me emphatically once more — the voice of One calling from
among the bandits: poor fool, whether is greater, the altar, or the gift that
sanctifies the altar (compare Matthew 23:19)?[1] Are you still as superstitious
as this? Lord, depart from me; I am a sinful man, a bandit in Thy presence.

[1] Intentional reversal of the text. In the sacrifice of the Old Testament “the
altar makes the animal an offer” (Grosheide,Kommentaar op Mattheus23:18), but
here the offer (the priest of His own offer) makes the place an altar, and
consequently the offer and the altar (the place) are necessarily related to each
other by the good pleasure of God.

Thus my Saviour walked among the bandits. When next I see the loafers, and the
smugglers of liquor, and the “scum” of society, I shall remember that Christ was
among them and that He sang His psalms from the midst of bandits. Wist I not
that He had to be active in His Judge’s business? I shall examine myself once
more; I must be about my Judge’s business. And in His palace I dare not look to
the right nor to the left. In court I lose my sense of rank. I do not look for
loafers. Great grace, incomparable grace it will be, if I escape alive — I,
varlet, parasite to God.


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  CHAPTER 14: 09. CHAPTER 9: CHRIST DISROBED
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C H A P T E R N I N E

Christ Disrobed

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made
four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat:now the coat was without
seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let
us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture
might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my
vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did. —John
19:23-24.

WE GENERALLY pay more attention to the clothes in which Christ was swaddled in
the manger than to the clothes in which He went to the cross, and which were
brutally taken from Him by the people. Nevertheless such an apportionment of our
attention is unwarranted. The swaddling clothes were given to the babe by the
providence of God, and the garment which, now that He has grown up, is taken
from Him on the cross, was taken from Him by this same and most special
providence of God. The clothes in which He was swaddled as He lay in the manger
are less essentially a sign of His poverty than the manger itself. True, they
were made a sign by which the shepherds might distinguish Him, but they were
constituted a sign only in relation to the manger itself. As such only were they
regarded as a symbol of His lowliness and poverty. But at Golgotha the garment
alone, in relationship to no other thing, was made a sign. The disrobing of
Christ was a special symbol and spoke a unique language of God. This shall be
the sign unto us: we shall find the Surety, robbed of His clothes, and hanging
on the cross. A merciless plundering exhibited His nakedness to the eyes of the
delicate priests and of the youth of the Great City of Jerusalem. Think of that.
They seized on His clothes in the hour of His death upon Golgotha. And we would
have been summoned to leave the place lest the penalty of Ham and Canaan come
upon us, had not God Himself cried aloud that we must stay, inasmuch as He had
made this plundering of His clothes a sign for all ensuing generations.
Precisely this constitutes the difficulty of this day.

We want to avert our eyes, lest we should be cursed with the curse of Ham and
his generation, but we may not. We must look on. He is greater than Noah, and
consequently He is much less, for zeniths are nadirs, and robing is but a
disrobing. God adjures us if we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, to
stand then and see, for thus saith the Lord: in the plundering of Christ’s
clothes an ancient prophecy has come to its fulfillment.

Consequently let us see, let us hear what the Spirit has to say to the churches
about the naked Christ who was crucified amidst the bandits. To all appearances
the incident was a very ordinary one. Regulation had it that the property of the
person condemned to death was the legitimate loot of those who executed the
sentence. Accordingly, the four soldiers who were carrying out the penalty
against Jesus were legally authorized to lay claim to the clothes of the bandits
crucified with Jesus, as well as to those of Jesus Himself. It is not unlikely
that the centurion, the “captain of a hundred,” could lay official claim first
of all to the property of the condemned persons. However, we have no evidence
for believing that the man made good his claims on this occasion. No wonder:
there was very little to take. As a matter of fact, the centurion had other
things to do today besides worrying about the poor legacy left by these three
crucified ones. The man concluded the day by a kind of confession of faith;[1]
and that was quite a different thing. He paid very little attention to this
division of the spoils. Something else was disturbing him.

[1] There will be further discussion of this point later. Be that as it may. In
the fact and the manner of the division of Jesus’ clothes we see above all a
sign of His great poverty:

All rights denied, naked, Christ died. (Guido Gezelle.) In this connection two
elements require our attention: first, that Jesus’ clothes were taken from Him;
and, second, that they were assigned to others, in this case to the soldiers.

Before Christ was hanged upon the accursed wood, He was disrobed. Opinion
differs about whether the disrobing was partial or complete. Some think that the
Saviour was allowed to retain some of His garments. Others believe that in order
to make the shame of crucifixion as great as possible the crucified person was
customarily robbed of all his clothes. As a matter of fact, this interpretation
seems to be historically verifiable.

It is true, of course, that we would rather not look these facts in the face.
Whoever has been taken captive by the majesty of Christ will say with the
Baptist: I am not worthy, I am unfit to loose the latches of his shoes. Well, if
the majesty of Christ is so overwhelming that we would not dare to approach Him
by way of untying the laces of His sandals, how could we dare to approach Him in
order to see His complete disrobing? However, we must not forget that the
question is not what John the Baptist or what any other person who loves Him can
bear to see at the foot of the cross. The important thing is to know what He
Himself tells us. And He wants us to understand thoroughly that He in His
nakedness is unfit to untie the laces of our shoes. He wants to humiliate us to
the point of shame in order to exalt us, the “clothed upon,” later, Accordingly,
He compells us to notice Him. We must know what He allows the enemies to do to
Him. Lo, without any piety whatever, they have made Him the subject of shame and
have done this as absolutely as was “the custom” in that day. After all, He must
experience all the customs, must He not? Lo, the Son of God, naked, hanging
between two naked malefactors! In this all the souls are being discovered. Only
he who has faith can find his God and his Lord in this extreme shame. Such is
the course which the penalty is taking. In the first place, the people cannot
conceive any other device to which their delight in humiliating Him can resort.
But the people are not the only ones with whom we are concerned here. Besides
considering what the people do to Jesus, we must also devote attention to what
God causes the Surety of our soul to suffer.

There is but one answer. The shame of nakedness is fitted into the framework of
Christ’s whole Suretyship. This shame of nakedness constitutes punishment. Just
as sin, when it had entered into the world, caused man to sense his nakedness
with a feeling of pain because he knew his being lay disrupted, inasmuch as the
forms of life were no longer an expression of their hidden, holy essence, but an
expression also — and that an unknown one — of strange sinister influences
opposed to God, so now nakedness comes in the form of pain to this place of
perfectly executed punishment.

After the advent of sin to the world God gave man clothes to wear. God’s special
providence — thus the account of Genesis — gave man those clothes. Now the
entrance of protective clothing into the world was not an accidental thing, nor
a passing thing, not an alogical civilized form of a highly developed life; it
was, according to the Bible, an inherent part, a definitely accompanying
phenomenon, of our lives — lives in part contaminated by sin, in part protected
from sin by grace. Clothing is not the product of the evolution of culture, but
it is the thoughtful gift of God’s grace. To go naked after God’s first act of
clothing us, is not to engage in a form of primitive barbarism but is to become
the victim of retrogression; it is to fall from the plane of life in Paradise.

We would be going too far afield if we were to elaborate here on our notion of
the function of clothes in the world. It must suffice to remark that clothes are
a gift of God’s common grace. We cannot understand the function which clothes
have in our human life unless we again think of those marvelous indications of
God to which we have alluded so often in this work — so often, in fact, as we
spoke of common grace, of the vicious circle of life, and of the circulation of
the blood.[1] In all of these matters we saw, in the last analysis, the same
manifestation of God’s activity in the world and in its history. After sin, God
introduced a law of retardation into the world. By this means He tempered the
curse, the judgment; and by the same means He restrained the blessing from
attaining its full fruition and its full realization. This God did in order to
make room for the Christ and for the victory of the regenerative powers which
His love and grace set into action.

[1] SeeChrist on Trial,(Chapter 3) pp. 53 ff. (Chapter 4) 77 ff., (Chapter 7)
137 ff., and (Chapter 27) 512 ff. This law also affects the function of clothes.
Clothes are indeed on the one hand a restriction upon life and blessing; a
hindrance to the perfect expression of beauty. Clothing molests the “devine
theos,” — the pagans say. For the body of a human being, beautiful and
unblemished as God made it, gives a rich expression to the beautiful idea of
God, the God of beauty — say the Christians. If sin had not disturbed the
scheme, God, the supreme Artist, also in creating the human body, the final and
most beautiful of His artistic creations, would not have allowed it to be
covered by clothing. Consequently in the eventual elaborated state of things
clothing will again have served its purpose. The riches of God’s perfect
artistry will then again manifest themselves to every eye in their naked form.
In another sense, or better, from another point of view, clothing is part of the
activity of God’s grace. Sin which eats its way into and out of all things makes
itself manifest in everything which life offers. It devotes itself to the
origins of our life also in order to defile these. Hence God gives man his
clothes in order that sin might be hampered and restricted, and in order that
the retrogression which sin introduced into the human body also, might be
retarded and thwarted in its curse-laden, fatal work.

If we bear all these considerations in mind, we will appreciate better what God
did to Christ when His hand disrobed the Son. Again the beautiful scheme of
God’s thoughts interjects itself into the apparently accidental and certainly
customary[2] activity of men. That which we observed in the passion of Christ at
every successive moment, we observe again now. Human beings are active, yes, but
God especially is active. The people disrobe Christ because, well, that just
happens to be part of the penalty. They did not see beyond their lugubrious
disciplinary regulations.

[2] See chapter 9, p. 168. But God does the same thing by means of their
activity to the Surety of the world. God lets the Surety feel the consequence of
His surrender to the Suretyship. If, as was said above, clothing is a fruit of
“common grace,” a retardation of the curse in its relentless course, and also is
a manifestation of the “common judgment,” which hampers what otherwise would be
the perfect fruition of beauty, then it must also be taken from the Christ. God
could put clothing upon the first Adam only because he would one day take it off
the second Adam. For clothing represented grace. But all grace — He is
descending into hell — must depart from the Christ. Indeed, clothing represents
judgment, but only “general” judgment, However Christ is today the subject of
absolute judgment. Listen, Hosea, God is drowning out your voice: God will strip
Lo-ruhamah naked (See Hosea 1, 2). Because an unrestricted exhibition of naked
reality is a proper part of an exhaustive penalty of sin, Christ must be so
exhibited and despised in the world, in order that all the eloquent,
illustrative expressions of the time in which the Son appeared on the earth
might give as complete an expression as possible to the rejection of the Surety.
He had to undergo also the humiliation of nakedness, a nakedness customary in
hell (and also in heaven).

Thus the second Adam sinks to a plane below the first. The clothes which were
given to the first Adam were made out of the skins of animals. This gift already
represented great grace, a significant restoration of the condition which
obtained before man fell. For from this gift it becomes apparent that the
subordinate creature, the animal, is put into the service of man, even as he is
after the fall.

Yes, that first piece of clothing was made of the skin of an animal. . . Some
have said that the first piece of clothing was the product of the marriage of
art and worship. These argue that the clothing represented art and that the
animal killed for it contained in it the idea of sacrifice. This seems
unplausible to us. When first instituted, clothing did not represent art. It
represented necessity. It was a defense, a protection. And the sacrifice of an
animal for the sake of the piece of human clothing was not a cult, or a form of
worship, for the element of sacrifice is lacking in the slaying of that animal.
God seizes on the animal in order to make it serve man’s purposes, but man does
not give the animal to God. Nothing is being paid.

But, if the clothing of the first Adam did not represent the marriage of art and
worship, it did represent the mastery of technique[1] over nature. It
represented an intervention, the product of God’s own act and later by God’s
active permission the product also of man’s act — an intervention in what nature
provides. Thus the phenomenon of technique might still serve to protect and
defend the lost human being.

[1] Common grace (a life which is still endurable, in whichdominion is
stillpossible) and also the common judgment, by which ismeant that there is
noevolution of the basic elements of life to their pleroma without pain and
suffering.

Therefore the first piece of clothing which God as a result of His own care gave
man in Paradise, contains a beautiful if frightening lesson. It proclaims to man
the whole truth of long-suffering, and at the same time entangles him in the
great obsession of the law of common grace (and retardation). It still points
out to man — nomad as he is upon the earth — the scope of the natural world, in
order that he may still have dominion over it. And it gives the human being,
brutal annexationist of heavenly gifts that he is, a certain amount of property
in the world nevertheless. It guarantees the fact that technique may triumph
over nature. But it adds that the triumphs will come “with fear and trembling.”

Surely the gift of clothing was an instance of grace, and also an instance of
judgment. Or can you believe that it was purely an accidental phenomenon? No,
for this gift is conceivable only in terms of that will of God which would make
human life possible in order that Christ could in His own time redeem life
conclusively; in order, that is, that Christ could redeem life, on the one hand,
by first of all losing the gifts of common grace — for, after all, they had been
given man only on the condition of such loss — and, on the other hand, in order
that the common grace, regained by His satisfying righteousness, might burgeon
forth as the Lord of nature and, as the second Adam, might rise to the highest
forms of kingship over the universe. In other words, we may say that the hour of
God’s constricting logic has arrived. This is the very logic which He Himself
preached to those who were unclothed in reference to particular grace. Whosoever
will lose his life, shall save it. Now He Himself becomes ensnared in His own
net. He who is naked as far as common grace goes, must lose His garment if He is
to gain it. If He cannot earn a garment, He can conquer nothing.

Accordingly, the Son must die now, naked. Fully aware of the fact that He is
doing so He must consciously endure the shame of the nakedness which is part and
parcel of existence in hell. For the curse is descending upon Him. Now we know
that the expressions of shame, also in their bodily manifestations, await the
accursed after death. This experience is called “nakedness” but the word does
not do justice to what it is intended to convey. Nakedness means a frustration
of the spirit. Now the one who quite consciously wanted to endure this hellish
fate for us is the Christ. Hence Christ’s disrobing was in no sense less
oppressive and infamous to the Messianic sense of the Christ than the merciless,
inevitable exhibition and ostentation of the lost life of all condemned persons
in hell. What is true of all other things in Golgotha is also true of the
disrobing of the Son. We must look upon them sub specie novissimae diei. We must
see the movement of the last day in them. It is a terrible punishment for the
Christ to be made a naked exhibition; for Christ is the one who would strip the
authorities and powers naked and make them a public example. This to Him is the
same bitter reality as that which bore down upon Him in all the other forms of
His passion. The nails and hammers, we observed before, appeared to Him as
catastrophic powers of the last day.[1] Well, the disrobing of the Saviour is
subject to the same law; it was a part of the shame of hell.

[1] See Chapter 6, pp. 118-122.

Nothing is accidental. Clothing represents the first gift given to man by common
grace; it is the first intentional technical creation coming after sin by way of
constraining nature. Because it is just that, Christ’s clothing must be taken
from Him, in order that the victory of technique over nature and of the
intentional and violent conquest of nature by the technique should accrue to
everyone save to the Surety Himself. Yes, by His loss we gain. Our factories are
busy, our looms, our textile mills, our technical facilities triumph over nature
because the Surety first of all relinquished the benefits of the first technical
triumph over nature when he was on Golgotha. Golgotha, that bare and barren
hill. The hill was bare, yes, but He was completely naked. Naked and exposed to
the eyes of Him with whom He, for our sake, had to do (Hebrews 4:13).

Thus the offense and the foolishness of the cross was intensified and aggravated
by the spectacle of the naked Christ. This is a thing for which all Jews and
well dressed priests must either bite their lips to pieces, or laugh themselves
into distortion. We have here a naked God, a naked Messiah, and hanging on the
cross. Is it any wonder that even today we can find on the walls of certain old
barracks of the paganism of antiquity certain caricatures in which the Saviour
of the Christians was represented by this or that soldier as a crucified donkey?
Such was the mockery with which their pagan colleagues chided Christian
soldiers. No, it is no wonder. That would happen today again under similar
circumstances. When God took the clothes from His Son, that Son no longer was
allowed to move through the world, for one’s clothes give one the privilege of
going about. That was no false fancy but a logical insistence upon Biblical
ideas which made us say a moment ago that the Baptist sighed: I am not worthy,
condescending, to loosen the latches of His shoes; and that, everyone can now
say of Jesus: He is not worthy, condescending, to untie the laces of my shoes.
Christ has not now the right to go about freely in the world. In this the
Suretyship was made perfect. Let Him hide behind the bush as He can. But He
cannot. The first Adam was able to do so! the second is still limited to His
nakedness. Nails, spikes, and the heat of the catastrophic day! O God, He cannot
escape, He cannot hide. Nevertheless, voices everywhere are crying: Where are
Thou? Where art Thou? On our own part, it would be to cheapen the gospel of the
passion and of the story of the cross if we were to separate Christ’s anxious
cry, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? from these considerations. He who knew
Himself to be the Son of man did not overlook the fact that He sank to a plane
below that of Adam and that He was made a public spectacle in His nakedness on
the accursed cross. He could not forget that He had fewer rights than Adam.
Adam’s was still the right to conceal Himself. And Christ’s awareness of His own
shame in part prompted the plaint: My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? He could
truly lament God’s forsaking Him precisely because He, unlike Adam, felt that He
would never be separated from God. But we said that there was a second
consideration which required our attention. To the fact that Christ’s clothing
is taken away from Him must be added the consideration that they were assigned
to the soldiers. A comparison of the several accounts of the gospel shows us
that the soldiers in dividing Jesus’ clothing separated them into two groups:
first, the garments in general; and then, the coat. Of the first classification
we can say that by the “garments” in general was meant the outer covering, or
cloak, which served as a cover for the night among the poor. It may be that the
girdle, which was commonly worn around this cloak, was also included among the
garments. The sandals also, doubtless, belonged to Him. Some observers suggest
that a covering for the head should also be added, but it is not likely that
Jesus wore one, inasmuch as He had been taken captive at night; moreover, the
brutal mockery involving the crown of thorns indicates that the covering for the
head had been taken away from Him if He had had any at all.

Special mention, however, is given to the coat, to the so-called chiton. By this
is meant the long coat which was generally worn next to the naked body and was
made up of wool or linen. Sometimes the chiton was not worn over the naked skin
but was used to cover a linen shirt which, in that case, was worn next to the
body. We do not know the particulars; and no one has the right to act as though
he did know them.

Now the soldiers divided the clothing of Jesus into two parts of equal value.
The first part consisted of that first group called the “garments,” and the
second consisted of the chiton, which was kept separate. Do you wonder why it
was kept separate? Some believe that we must regard this indication as evidence
for the fact that the chiton which Jesus wore was a very expensive garment. They
point to the fact that the coat in question was seamless, that it was all of a
piece. They assume that such a single piece of goods which had come in precisely
that form from the loom, and was at no point sewed together, must have been
especially expensive. From this assumption they derive various hypotheses. One
observer, for instance, claims that Jesus’ beautiful, artistically constructed
under-garment goes to prove that He enjoyed a relative amount of riches; and
still another commentator adds that Christ laid claim to His priestly
pretensions by means of this chiton. We know that the priest also wore a garment
which was woven of a single piece of cloth and was seamless. Christ, these
observers maintain, by means of His seamless coat was saying: I too am a priest,
and I give that fact expression by my clothes.

We need devote no argument to showing that such a play of the fancy is vain.
Christ did not want to make His priestship tangible by means of a cloak, and
certainly not by means of a garment, which because it was an under-garment,
could not be seen anyhow. Similarly, the contention that this coat was woven of
a single piece and that this goes to prove its costliness is an argument which
also has nothing better than fancy as its basis. Whoever, even today, can tell
us something about Oriental life will confirm the fact that woven stuffs which
we regard as very expensive are worn in the East by very ordinary people.
Weaving was a very common activity of the time; hence Jesus’ woven chiton is in
no sense to be taken as an indication of unusual wealth. As a matter of fact, we
should prefer to deduce the very opposite from the account. The soldiers divided
the clothing of the Nazarene among the four of them. In doing this, they first
divided the whole of it in two groups. The chiton was kept separate and formed
the one group; the rest constituted the second group. The reason for this
classification was self-evident. If they had done it differently, nothing
valuable would have remained. If they had made a group of all the material,
including the chiton, they would have had to tear it into four pieces. Then no
one would have had anything worth while, for the rest was worth preciously
little. Girdle, sandals, and under-garment were hardly a prize. Their decision
to cast lots for the chiton goes to show that this was the only piece which
“amounted to anything,” and which was still worth rescuing from the meager
legacy.

Hence we can say that Jesus left very little behind Him in the world. He was
poor when He came into the world, and poor when He went out of it. At several
times in His life He had had money in abundance; many women served Him with
their goods. But by the end of His life everything seemed to have been put into
the service of the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus Himself wore no more than was
necessary.

Just because of that fact the raffling of His clothes was a difficult problem in
Jesus’ consciousness. Perhaps the easiest way for us to appreciate the
significance of this will be for us to give our attention to two things: first,
to His right of requisition; and, second, in connection with that right, to His
self-awareness as the Son of God, a self consciousness which also asserted
itself in His property-concerns. We shall consider each of these two matters.

We have previously mentioned that Christ made requisitions; Christ made His
demands, by the grace of God. In this way, we said, He laid claim to His beast
of burden, and to His passover room. He laid claim to His beast of burden as a
King, upon His “triumphal” entry into the city. He demanded His room as a
Priest, preparing the Holy Supper for His people. He did this fully aware that
He was the Son of David and the priest-king of Zechariah’s vision. Thereupon we
observed that this right of requisition was completely denied Him. This occurred
when Simon of Cyrene was compelled to bear His cross.

Now God goes further along this same line with the Son, with the Surety. Simon
of Cyrene — yes, it may be that he wounds Jesus’ soul, but if so he does it in
spite of himself. From the viewpoint of human beings at least, the assistance
given by Simon of Cyrene has the semblance of a gesture of friendship. However,
even this last suggestion of assistance and good will is now taken from Jesus.
They remove His clothes. This clothing — on which His disciples had lovingly
labored — is now, together with a few worthless rags which had belonged to the
bandits, cast upon a heap and then divided among the soldiers by lot. Surely,
this is the perfect contrast to what happened a week before when rich and
eminent persons threw their clothing upon the road in order that the king of
Jerusalem might arrive at his residence by passing over them.

Christ’s right of requisition had merely been denied when Simon of Cyrene was
constrained to bear the cross. But now God and the devil go further. That right
is being mocked now. So thoughtlessly does the world throw Jesus’ property about
that a centurion does not even think it worth his trouble to ask whether there
is anything in the heap worthy of his attention; and the soldiers, grinning
because of the meager loot, agree at least to give some consideration to one
useful article on the pile.

Then they took out the dice. Or it may be that they did not even use the dice.
They could also cast lots by means of their fingers. Be that as it may, they
cast lots. It was a game of chance and it took place on Golgotha. This is the
second cut of the two-edged sword of Satan’s mockery. Is not Golgotha the best
and the first revelation of justice from God’s point of view? What place can
accident and chance possibly have here — before the eyes of the Saviour? To
throw the dice, to cast lots, is to catch at the hem of the garment of chance as
it dances through the world.

Such was the end of the matter. He began the week by laying claim to things, and
He ended it with His eyes fixed on raffling soldiers, dividing His legacy among
themselves while He, alive, looked on. Such was the end of the way which began
with gold and frankincense and myrrh. In this way we naturally reach the point
we wanted to give attention. Christ’s Messianic consciousness, we said, placed
the problem of His property also in His own light. When at one time they had
asked that He contribute taxes for the temple, He asked Simon Peter directly, in
separate conversation, whether it really was not foolishness to ask Him and His
disciples for taxes. Indeed, that was a topsy-turvy world. For Christ is the Son
and in the house of the Father the Son is not One who pays, He enjoys the
privilege of inheritance. In the house of God, says the Saviour, the Sons are
free, and if this holds true in reference to assessments for the temple, it
holds true in an even larger sense for all other forms of taxation. For if
Christ as the Son of God is the Heir and Receiver in the temple, He is that in
an even stronger sense in the house of nature. Good, says Jesus; from Him then,
who is the Son of God, the Supreme Owner of the world, nothing can be demanded.
True, He paid the assessment “lest He should offend them,” and in order to
conceal Himself as the free Son and as the sole Heir of the whole world.
Nevertheless, exactly by way of demonstrating that He was that to His disciples,
He performed a sign which demonstrated His absolute right as Owner. In order to
be able to pay the penny demanded of Him as an assessment, He did a miracle. He
had the coin taken from the mouth of a fish which was drawn from the water just
at the time. This, in His self-concealment, He placed on the table of the
collector of revenues.

Now these are things we must keep in mind at the crucifixion and especially as
we look upon the scene which the soldiers are raffling off Jesus’ clothes. Are
we arbitrarily putting two things together here which have no relation to each
other? No, but who, indeed, has the right to separate these matters from each
other. The life of Christ on earth is precisely comparable to His coat: it is
all of a piece, is seamless. Consequently we are not trying to establish a
connection between things lying far apart from each other but are simply doing
our duty when we put those things together which Christ by His Spirit brought
together. We can catch only a glimpse of that which suffused His Spirit when we
say that Christ, while looking upon the raffling of His clothes, did not for one
moment segregate Himself from His own consciously presented doctrine about His
right of inheritance, about His right of assessment, about His Sonship, as He
confessed these before Simon Peter “at the occasion” of the tax bill which was
given Him. As His clothes were being raffled off and given away, His inclusive
spirit saw the magi of the East, who brought Him rich gifts, saw Sheba who
brought her treasures with her, saw the Father in heaven who made no demands
upon His Son, and He saw all these things in their direct relationship with
these raffling soldiers. Yes, yes, He senses it very well. It did seem as if
that apparently inattentive gesture, by means of which through an aristocratic
miracle He pulled a coin out of the mouth of a fish, was being mocked by God
Himself. Now, Jesus Christ, Thou hast performed a wonder. Where now is that God
who can provide money-laden fish at a moment’s notice? Thou hast instructed Thy
disciples that Thou dost govern the property of the world. Thou didst set
Thyself up as the Chief-Requisitioner overagainst all tax-payers of the world.
Thy self-consciousness availed to vanquish nature, and to open the mouth of a
fish. Thy hand reached into the water with a playful but serious gesture. And
now, Chief-Heir, Thou must make compensations for that arrogant attitude.
Soldiers are dickering over Thy coat, and are casting lots for it. In other
words, miracles are receding. Heaven is silent. The gift of gold, frankincense,
and myrrh from the magi of the East has its counterpart now in these raffling
soldiers of the West. The Orient sends its gift-bearers; the west its
plunderers. Thus Christ as the Lord of the temple and as the Prince of the world
went into concealment here. Shall we weep about it? No, for our faith finds its
Surety in this. If the free Son allows His right to property to be thus
profaned, He by that means also “became poor, having been rich,” and naked
having been clothed. He raised the taxes for us all, He who can demand the
revenues. Write His monogram on the cross. It must be written in the form of a
fish,[1] for the cross and the fish belong together. He caught that fish in
order to demonstrate His right to property to the faith of Simon Peter and also
in order to conceal His right to property to the unbelief of those in the temple
who demanded the taxes. If only I draw the sign of that fish over His head, I
will have understood the cross and the casting of lots. Then He Himself will say
to me in His profound nakedness: This is Suretyship; this is Suretyship; for
know this with absolute certainty — the Son is essentially free. Thus He again
conceals all His human rights of requisition and all His divine claims of
taxation behind the shame of His nakedness. All the problems of theology and
revelation and of the Scriptures are revealed — to Him who believes — in the
naked Saviour.

Now return to our point of departure. Look back to Paradise and to the clothes
of Adam. In Paradise, God took an animal in order to clothe man. God said that
man might continue to have dominion over the beasts. God placed the beasts in
the service of man. And Christ demonstrated that as the Son of God, He, too, can
take animals, if He wishes to, by way of making the beasts subservient to man’s
purposes. But He did more than that. He used that animal particularly to conceal
His right to property. After the dazzling miracle He satisfied Himself with the
very ordinary gesture of a tax payer, who comes in the usual manner to pay His
assessment.

[1] Later Christians used the symbol of the fish as a sign of recognition. The
Greek word for fish isIchthus. These are the initial letters of I(esous)
Ch(ristos) Th(eou) U(ios) S(oter), which means: Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Saviour.

Now this law of utmost concealment is realized in the second Adam on the cross:

All rights denied, naked, Christ died. The animal’s skin to be used by Adam, and
the mouth of the fish by Jesus. All this returned on the cross. His people are
clothed by His nakedness, and by His nakedness His people can and may support
the temple.

We can easily understand in this scheme of ideas that the Scriptures should
point out to us the relationship between that apparently ordinary intermezzo
between the raffling soldiers on the one hand, and the whole of prophecy on the
other. The Scriptures tell us that what is written in Psalms 22:18 was fulfilled
in the disrobing of Christ, that is, was carried out in its full implications.
In that well-known psalm of passion David complains that they have parted his
garments and cast their lots for his vesture. Do not ask now whether this
literally happened to David, and denying that it did, do not say therefore that
he exaggerated. This is neither literal record, nor hyperbole. In Psalms 22 the
poet laments that the misery which robs him of the experience of fellowship with
God is caused by people who are doing him wrong, by robbers and plunderers. And
he gives a vivid picture of these robbers and plunderers by comparing them with
such common ones as are willing to raffle off the clothes of their victim and to
make him the object of shame; they let him lie on the street naked. This
figurative language employed by David is now being literally fulfilled in
Christ. David gave expression to the idea of a plundered, robbed king, or (if
David was but a pretender to the crown by reason of the promise of God at the
time he composed this poem) to the idea of a plundered crown-pretender, one who
has been promised a crown, but who for the rest feels himself without any rights
in the world. And this sense of despair is expressed in a cutting lamentation to
the effect that God is letting the clothes of His anointed be raffled off.
According to this bitter plaint, the poet is one who has “seen the promise afar
off, but has not experienced the reality of it.” David’s lamentation is the cry
of one who feels the incongruousness between what is justly his and what is
being given him in actuality. Now this word of David is fulfilled in his Son
today. The form of the lamentation as well as the content of it is being
fulfilled. Yes, the form of it also. David speaks of plundering and the Son of
David is being plundered on Golgotha. Robbers tear the clothes off His body. As
He watches their game and their casting of lots, He loses His claim on all His
clothes and stars. His is not the privilege of walking about freely, neither on
earth, nor anywhere else in the universe. But the content of Psalms 22 also
achieves its fulfillment. The contrast could not be more terrible than it is in
Christ. David was robbed, but all his property which he had had before, had been
given him by grace. But the Son of David is the Owner and the Receiver of taxes,
and is that not by grace but by eternal right, by the right of God and also by
right of the faithful Worker in the covenant of works. Now this Son of David
sees His cloak being raffled off and as He watches this the problem which
grieved David is perfectly present in David’s Son and Lord. It could not be more
oppressive in the world than it is now. The great Clother is being stripped
naked; Caesar Augustus has robbed the Child of His swaddling clothes. May all
weep because of their sin! We have robbed God. The preaching of the Deus
Spoliatus proclaims our shame. Away off in the distance it uncovers the dark
corners of hell, the place where all are robbed of everything which God gave
them. Your clothing, O son of man, is becoming mingled with the dust of the
earth; Thou mayest not take it with Thee into the realm of outer darkness. And
hence the demand that we should not seek for “raiment” but for the Kingdom of
heaven can never be urged more strongly than at the cross of Jesus. Do I hear
someone laughing back there in the rearguard, and is he a living person? Let
everyone laugh because of Jesus’ righteousness, for the Author of the sermon of
the mount is dying for His own discourses — hallelujah.

For, in that sermon on the mount Christ had said three important things. He
referred to the right of requisition which one man would sometimes employ
against another in this crooked world. He said: If any man strike thee on thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also. That insistence He Himself fully
satisfied.

We observed that before.[1] Besides, He is still turning the other cheek, for He
who is calling up no fish from the depth of the sea, is calling down no
lightning from the height of heaven; He performs no miracle to redeem Himself;
He turns the other cheek to us.

[1]Christ on Trial,Chapter 4, pp. 71 f. and Chapter 6, 123 f. But He went
further. If any man, He said, would enter into judgment with thee and would
demand thy children, give him thy cloak also. Well, they have taken the chiton
away from Him and He also gives them His cloak. He does not curse the gamblers,
nor scold the rafflers. He leaves them all of His clothes, and He prays for the
gamblers who know not what they do. He allowed the fish to go on swimming in the
water, for He had to fulfill the sermon of the mount on the cross and had to
vindicate it in Himself.

He went still further and said: If any man should constrain thee to go with him
a mile, go with him twain. This also was fulfilled in Him now. For Simon of
Cyrene bore the cross for Him. That was the first time Jesus’ right of
requisition was being denied Him; but He endured it; it was the first mile, and
Jesus went along. Now His coat is being raffled off; again His right of
requisition is being denied, is — and this is even severer — being defied and
disdained. Again He goes along; He also goes the second mile. He lets the fish
swim on, He calls no lightning from heaven. He does not call upon Elijah. Nor
does He, like Elijah, call down fire from heaven. He endures all this and knows
of what Spirit He is, and prays: Father, forgive them.

Thus Christ verified the sermon on the mount. He told us there that we should
endure three requisitions made upon us: “Injury of the body, impairment of
property, and infringement upon liberty.”[2] And Christ Himself was completely
faithful to His own threefold demand.

[2] Grosheide,Kommentaar op Matthew,p. 66.

Now we turn aside, and around; we fasten our eyes upon Him. We do not know what
we should do now; alas we do not know. Woe to us if we should see His nakedness,
and not believe in God. Then our name would be Ham. No, we turn aside now, and
look upon Him no longer. Our eyes hurt, shame makes us blush; this is His
repulsive nakedness. But the anxiousness makes us pale; this is our repulsive
nakedness. Time was when the priests could not stand at their ministration
because of the cloud, but here was a thick mist, and we can not bear, we can not
endure it. O God, the door of hell has gone open for the moment; blindfold my
eyes, lest I should see. Nevertheless, He says to me: Fix your eyes upon Me,
look upon Me in faith. He says: Could you believe that I had been made naked in
the world in vain? He says: Am I not the Word, clothed with power? My nakedness
is prompted by a reason known to God Himself from all eternity. Am I not the
speaker and the autocrat of the sermon on the mount? There must be a reason for
My nakedness; there is a reason, and it was known to me throughout My days. And,
again, He says to me: Do not go Away now, for you must see and acknowledge that
this is the Suretyship, the conclusive payment.

Thus do we bind our eyes so that they see now, and do not see then; thus we long
for the hour in which His beauty will be revealed to us. We shall see that King
in His beauty. We heard the death-rattle of a dying animal in Paradise. God
killed it. He took the lesser for the greater, even though man said in that very
moment; Lord, I perish; I am the least of all. Observe, however, that all this
happened solely for Christ’s sake. For Christ’s sake it took place. For when the
animal had to serve as clothing for man it was still the privilege of the
lesser, the animal, to serve the fallen superior, to serve man: and this is
common grace. But this paradoxical service, we must remember, was made possible
only because in a later hour at Golgotha the greatest of all should become the
least of all, and He who clothes everything, should be unclothed. In this the
divine will is operative; God Himself has disrobed God. This was the final
remedy. It was absolutely impossible for it to be any different in the world. He
who had everything, was allowed to retain nothing. To him that hath shall be
given; but he that hath not for our sake from him shall be taken even that which
he hath.

Presently I shall go and pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, give us this day
our daily bread. Now if in doing so I never once think of Christ who lacked
bread and water and shelter and clothing, I am but a proud trifler with words.
The soldiers gambled on the hill of prompt payment and I am as ridiculous as
they if I should play with wine now, and parade with clothing, and bandy to and
fro the dollars of the rich without having earned in my soul and spirit a true
appreciation of the great problem of the Suretyship. That problem alone can
teach a seriousness of life; without it all decent people are but dickerers and
gamblers who thoughtlessly finger the clothing of God; they are but pitiable
rafflers all. This is a kind of world-view, but it justifies itself overagainst
the spectacle of the naked Christ. We can hear a voice coming from the cross,
and the voice has in it a dominating irony. This voice says to all arrogant men
(and Paul also appreciated some of the irony later):[1] Now ye are full, now ye
are rich; ye have reigned as kings without me. Even unto this present hour I
hunger, and thirst, and am naked. Mark this: so the naked Christ speaks to all
those who would pay by means of their money: You are rich and are full, and can
get along without Me; you can clothe yourselves without Me, but I suffered
thirst and was naked; and you who do not allow Me to clothe you with the cloak
of my righteousness remain pitiable, naked, and miserable in all eternity, for
you, O man, are really the one who was disrobed on Golgotha.

[1]1 Corinthians 4:8-14.

Again, then, inscribe the figure of a fish over His head on the cross. But think
in that connection of the fish which carried a coin in his head, and think of a
miracle which shook heaven and earth, a miracle as great as the crowing of the
cock,[2] as great as all the miracles together.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 10, pp. 212-213.

Draw the figure of a fish over His head, and say to Paul: What I have written,
that have I written.

Jesus is very tired and He says quietly and reluctantly: Have I need of madmen?
Come instead as a believing one, as a fool to the world, but as a wise person to
God. And then say that you want to draw the figure of a fish for all time on
that beam of the cross, not as a monogram but as a sign of His wonder-working
power. Look carefully then at that beam inscribed with the figure of the
wonder-fish, and look carefully upon His naked death, upon His essential
nakedness, and you will say to those who ask about it: I am the soldier who
removed His clothes: He has taken all my clothes from me, and has put me, naked
and cold, on display before the universe.

Never before did I feel so deeply ashamed of myself. Nevertheless, blessed be
His hand. He did no gambling. He was in His rights. He acted justly and
mercifully. A cloak has been prepared for me, a chiton of righteousness, and
white clothes and palm branches for His, for my, triumphal tour through
Jerusalem.

Just wait, soldiers, the Lord Himself will presently put new clothes on the
second Adam. Just wait till Sunday morning, till Easter morning. Nor will any
beast have to be killed for that clothing. All animals, and the whole creation
will rejoice on Easter day looking forward to the day when the children of God
will be clothed.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: 10. CHAPTER 10: CHRIST’S SUPREME TITLE
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C H A P T E R T E N Christ’s Supreme Title And Pilate wrote a title,and put it
on the cross.And the writing was,JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.This
title then read many of the Jews:for the place where Jesus was crucified was
nigh to the city:and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek and Latin.Then said the
chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that
he said, I am King of the Jews.Pilate answered,What I have written I have
written. —John 19:19-22.

CHRIST became the subject of world caricature.[1] In this caricature He was
depicted as the mock-king of the Jews. Now God says to Him: Do not regard this
as though something strange had happened to you. Do not think it odd that you
are entitled the mock-king of the Jews in the language of the world. And indeed
Christ became so used to it that He did not regard it as strange. In this
caricature He was given what was rightly His. First in the picture of the
soldiers and afterwards in the official language of the court He was mocked and
despised. This is the title that is given to Him: Jesus. Of Nazareth. King. Of
the Jews, you understand.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 28, p. 525 ff. For it is in terms of defiance and
mockery that you can state the significance of the superscription which was
placed over Jesus’ head on the cross. They make a public spectacle of Him as the
King of the Jews. He is proclaimed as such in the Hebrew language. And in Greek.
And also in Latin. The superscription was written in three languages, but that
can be understood, for it was at the behest of Pilate that the title was written
over Christ’s head. If we may trust the reports which can be gleaned from the
several writers, it was a custom of the day to affix a “title” to a person
condemned to death. Sometimes such a “title” was written on a white placard; on
this, in red or black letters, the breach of law for which the person had been
condemned was inscribed. Sometimes the “title” was carried ahead of the
condemned person; at other times the placard was hung on the victim’s breast. In
this way he himself had to give all who cared to read a chance to learn what the
verdict in his case had been.

We do not know which of these two methods was employed in the case of Jesus.
Perhaps neither. We do not know just when this placard — if a placard was
actually used — was prepared, and when it was affixed to the cross. According to
some commentators the superscription was prepared by Pilate immediately after
the verdict had been read. These maintain that he thereupon at once gave orders
that the placard be prepared. Many add to this the assumption that the soldiers
carried the superscription. In that case it was easily accessible to the eyes of
the public. Thus we can explain that it was not till after the crucifixion,
until after the “title” had been placed over Jesus’ head, that the high priests
noticed what was written on it. But there are others who maintain that Pilate
saw the high priests coming to him at once, that is, as soon as the procession
had started, to protest against this phrasing of the superscription. And these
believe further, therefore. that the placard, or whatever it was, was then very
likely hung upon Jesus’ breast at once.

We believe that the first reading of the account is the better one. We feel,
however, that the significance of such inquiries is little. The only question
that matters in this connection is what the superscription meant for Him for
Whom it was made.

Now it is remarkable that the superscription over Jesus’ head was put as tersely
as it was: Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews. Doubtless Pilate’s sarcasm
had a part in the conception of this terse phrasing. The deep disdain which he
felt towards the Jews, with all their king-and-messiah problems, moved him to
seek out a subtly ironic and poignant superscription. We had a taste before this
of the superciliousness with which Pilate looked down on those seething Jews.
And today his disdain has a special reason for wishing to express itself, for he
feels more humiliated today than at any time. He had already mocked the Jews by
the statement, “Behold, your king,” and also by the question, “Do you really
want me to crucify your king? Obviously, Pilate’s mood had not improved any as
time went on. The sentence which had been elicited from him had left him in a
bad mood, in an angry temper. Consequently he grimly gives expression to his
sarcasm in the terse statement: Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew-king. The high
priests noticed at once that the judge had given expression to his sarcasm in
these superscriptions. They had been told in plain language that Pilate
personally did not believe in the legitimacy of the charges which they brought
against Jesus. Hence, when he by way of officially circumscribing the breach of
law, states that the quintessence of the whole trial could be summed up by the
word “Jew-king,” everyone felt that he had in mind to mock the Jews more than to
mock the poor Galilean. Ah me, these Jews! The whole lot of them are worth no
more to me than this miserable, broken, annihilated king. The Jews are precisely
like that man himself: they are so many good-for-nothings; they are a people who
occupy space on the earth for nothing.

Consequently the superscription over the cross was indeed a severe humiliation
for Christ. It is a gruesome passion to the Bearer of God’s justice to be made
the dupe of Pilate’s moods. Let Pilate be never so angry with the Jews, he must
give Christ what is coming to Him. But that he does not want to do. He knows
very well that for him to disclose the truth is also to reveal his own shame.
For that reason we can say that the superscription over the cross is an eloquent
symbol of our sin. Man as he is by nature does not want to admit that he is
doing Christ an injustice. Hence he calls Jesus an unfortunate king of other
people. Thus he supposes that he can avoid the confession that he, the man who
does the maligning, is an unfortunate subject of that king. In this state, man
does just as Pilate did. He bandies Jesus Christ to and fro between himself and
others. But Christ can see through such a person; he knows what is in man. He
knows very well that Pilate is doing nothing “strange”; He knows very well that
all “flesh” by nature does what Pilate did, and that it in the same way refuses
to acknowledge and establish the charges against itself. In the last analysis,
the titles which the “flesh” conceives for the Saviour are all prompted by a
feeling of resentment. Man knows he has been defeated by Christ, and thus he
says that Christ has been defeated by another. All unfortunate subjects say:
Behold the unfortunate king. But there is much more to say. The title “king of
the Jews” is intensely satanic. Jesus wants to be the king of the world. His
kingdom is ecumenical; He gave expression to that Himself in the presence of
Pilate. Nevertheless Pilate designates Him solely as a king of the Jews. The
degradation[1] of Christ relentlessly pursues its own inevitable logic; it gives
expression to its envy and hatred without reservation.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 16, p. 314 f. In this we see a pathetic contrast:
Jesus is called the king of the Jews, but the name is written out in the
language of the world. He is called the king of a sect, but the language in
which the mockery is couched is an ecumenical language. The superscription is
written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Those were the three languages in which the
entire world of the time might be able to read the placard. It was written in
Hebrew for all the Jews going to the feast. All the guests of the temple had to
read how pathetic was the case of the king of the Jews. It had to be written in
Greek, for that was the language of culture, of the world then civilized. And it
had to be set down in Latin, for that was the language of Pilate’s king, it was
the language of law and of official jurisprudence. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: the
language of the land, the language of the world, and the language of
jurisprudence.[2] Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: the language of Zion, of the
Acropolis, and of the Forum. The language of Jerusalem, of Athens, and of Rome.
The language of religion, culture, and of the usurpation of power. The language
of the ancient Orient, of the changing West, and of the incipient, newly-formed
world-empire. The whole image of the beast of which Nebuchadnezzar once dreamed
is given a mouth with which to speak on Golgotha. The Beast opens its mouth in
order to speak grievous words against the Spirit. For all the world empires
which Nebuchadnezzar saw issued in that of Greek culture, and arrived at the
point of the Roman empire. These are the kingdoms, we can say, which are
represented by the head, the trunk, and the appendages of the vision which
Nebuchadnezzar saw. Latin is the language spoken by that world empire
represented by the feet of the image of Nebuchadnezzar. Hebrew is the language
of him, who in the vision of Daniel, is called the rolling stone, the stone
which causes the vision of Nebuchadnezzar to crumble. Hebrew is the language of
Christ Himself, the language of Daniel’s Son of man, and of Daniel himself. This
precisely constitutes the humiliation, the gruesome mockery: In this
superscription the Hebrew is merely a subordinate matter. Pilate uses it not
because he recognizes that the Hebrew language is a world language, but because
he wants to mock the Jews in their own dialect. The Hebrew, well, that is but a
subsidiary part of this matter; it really does not count. The Hebrew language
would, in fact, have been omitted entirely in the superscription if Pilate had
not wanted his mockery to be evident to every Jew. For this reason, also, the
superscription is a grievous source of suffering to Jesus. He is announced in
the language of the world then known as an unsuccessful dictator to a pathetic
little group of people, who have no longer a role to play in history. The
rolling stone which Daniel saw seems to have lost its power and to be unable to
harm the image of the Beast. Look at the superscription, read the title written
there in three languages. Does it not seem to be mockery to believe that that
rolling stone could possibly make an impression on the gigantic image of
Nebuchadnezzar? Son of man — that is the title God writes in the Hebrew
language. And the Greek and the Latin, that is, the cultural powers represented
by those two languages, were supposed to be splintered into pieces by this
power. Of that victory there is no hint or suggestion on Golgotha. The
superscription on the cross again comprises all the offense and foolishness of
the Gospel.

[2]Nebe,op.cit.,p. 233.

Most pathetic, indeed. Even in the language in which it is expressed, prophecy
is being mocked to its very face. Offense! Foolishness! Hebrew, Greek, and
Latin! But the Hebrew is merely thrown in for good measure. The Hebrew language
was the instrument by means of which the antique world, in so far as it allowed
itself to be served by the true religion of Israel, moved on its way. Latin and
Greek were the instruments by means of which the new world, to the extent that
with its pagan culture it fought against the religion of Israel, made its
progress. Latin and Greek were the two languages by means of which the beast
would presently oppose the Spirit, and paganism would oppose the young world of
Christendom. Hebrew was the language of revelation up to this time. Greek and
Latin were the tongues spoken by the opposition.

We can say, therefore, that the little white placard is suspended between two
worlds, between the ancient and the modern. It hangs suspended between two
cultures, the Oriental and the Occidental. It hangs between two religions, the
religion of revelation and profane religion. God Himself affixed this
superscription of the cross to the line of demarcation separating those two
worlds. But is this cause for lamentation? No, for through the deep humiliation
of Christ the power of His exaltation again breaks through at God’s behest. The
Son of man is lifted up on the cross; that is, He is made visible, He is made
conspicuous to all.[1] Well, it is an appropriate part of such exaltation that
it be given expression in a universal language, in the language which causes two
worlds, two cultures, and two religions to clash.

Christ is, of course, called a sectarian person, but He proves to faith,
nevertheless, and that in the very languages in which He is being mocked, that
He is the Son of man, that He is exalted, lifted up on the cross, and that He
could not be thrust aside at the crossroads of times and cultures and religions.

[1]Christ on Trial,Chapter 15, p 298 ff.

Exaltation! Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the
Son of man be lifted up . . . before and above the world. But this exaltation
could accrue to Christ only by means of His humiliation and therefore God
permits Him to be mocked by all those who speak the tongues of men. He had to be
given a name of mockery by all the languages spoken at the time. That was His
glory, but it was also His shame.

It was His glory. Be very careful, Pilate, lest you overlook some language on
that white placard. He lays claim to at least three groups of languages. Again
we say that the superscription written in three tongues is His glory. In the
last analysis Jesus, and especially the Jews themselves, are being mocked and
defied in three languages. Moreover, it is apparent that the Jews themselves
sense this. They ask Pilate, we note, to alter the superscription, not to say
that Jesus was king of the Jews, but that He wanted to be known as such. But
this by no means changes the fact that the superscription which was phrased in
three languages was also Jesus’ shame. True, the mockery which the Jews would
heap upon Christ returns like a boomerang upon their own heads. This is so
essentially true that several expositors believe that they must detect in John’s
account a delicate play on words. John tells us that Jesus was called the king
of the Jews, and thereupon the priests are very advisedly designated as the
priests of the Jews. These expositors think, therefore, that John wanted to say
this: The king of the Jews is passing into exile together with the priests of
the Jews and is being mocked together with them.[1]

[1] This would then be a striking allusion to the chapter we have discussed at
various times, the chapter of Zechariah (Christ on Trial,Chapter 23, p. 430) in
which the priest and the king are both represented in Joshua, and can only be
affirmed or denied together. In that case, the Bible wishes to tell us: Unless
the Jews are willing to honor the Priest of Zechariah 6 together with the King,
the Priest and the King will be together in their humiliation. But what, pray,
does that subtract from the passion of Christ?

We have repeatedly pointed to the fact that the shame of the Jews cannot be the
honor of Jesus, and may not be that. He is not a child of hell, deriving solace
and comfort from the misery and degradation of those who hate Him. On the
contrary, the disdain of the Jews grieves Him. As often as Pilate uses Jesus’
despicability as an argument for what, coming as it does from His mouth, is an
irreligious contention to the effect that the people of Abraham is good for
nothing under the sun, so often is Christ mocked, He and the community of
Abraham, for He must confess these all as long as it pleases God that He should
do so. For He Himself is the great mystery of Israel. He who, in the manner of
Pilate, despises Israel and all her mysteries, despises especially the Christ
Himself.

Therefore we say that the superscription over the cross is a proclamation of
great power for us. In this title over the cross Pilate takes over the crown of
thorns, the reed, the gorgeous robe, and all the forms employed by the
caricaturing soldiers beforehand. The caricature which the soldiers printed now
goes through another edition, this time accompanied by a commentary which is
translated into all “civilized” languages. The superscription over the cross
leaves Christ in the caricature of the world. By means of it the Saviour is
punished for the “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem.

Above Pilate’s superscription God wrote His own epigram. God speaks in and
through and above Pilate. You ask what God says? Notice this. The superscription
on the cross, placed as it was above the head of Jesus, is a repudiation of all
the sentimental imaginings of men which have woven a halo, a nimbus, around the
head of Christ. As I look at the superscription I recollect again that Christ
was crucified between the bandits. Therefore I would see Him who is my Lord and
God, the King of the world and the King of my heart, as One who was unsuccessful
according to the flesh. Pilate, that which you write or do not write, that which
you subtract or leave, does not touch Him, it does not affect Him. What thou
hast written thou hast not written. God wrote and He still writes, and He only
writes. And the Lord my God summons me to Him today and says to me: What I have
written, I have written, I, the Lord, the Almighty. I have written over His
head, not that He said that He had to be the King of your heart, but that I said
it, and He, and that He is that because He is that. His name, also when He
proclaims Himself to be the king of your heart, is: He is what He is. And that
is the end of the matter, saith the Lord, the Just One.

Hebrew, Greek, and Latin . . . Christ in the caricature of the world. Christ in
the literature of the world. Hallelujah, amen! He is preparing the day of
Pentecost, the day of tongues — for what the Spirit of Pentecost has prescribed,
that He Himself has done.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: 11. CHAPTER 11: CHRIST SUFFERING THE MOCKERY OF HELL
========================================================================

C H A P T E R E L E V E N Christ Suffering the Mockery of Hell And they that
passed by reviled him,wagging their heads,and saying. . .Likewise also the chief
priests mocking him,with the scribes and elders,said. . .The thieves also which
were crucified with him9cast the same in his teeth.And the soldiers also mocked
him. . .saying. . .And one of the malefactors. . .railed on him. —Matthew
27:39-41; Matthew 27:44; Luke 23:36-37; Luke 23:39.

CHRIST being mocked again: that is the theme of the pages to follow. Now I think
each will hear a voice saying to himself: Let us ignore that in this connection,
or at least dispatch it very quickly. We have heard so much about the mockery
which men heaped upon the Saviour. That has been repeated again and again. And
must that old theme be begun anew now? The question was asked before we had time
to feel ashamed of it. And, there is something of truth in it. How difficult it
is for us to be patient, and to be ever alert and attentive as we sit at a death
bed, that is, at a death bed which would lay claim to a few hours of our
attention, or to a single faculty of our spirit. Well, the suffering on the
cross by Jesus Christ also lasts a very long time. Moreover, in speaking of it
the same subjects recur again and again. Hence we tire of it very soon. If a
person is to talk of each one of the “instances” of mockery, he soon begins to
feel a little ashamed about the inevitable repetition of the same words and
thoughts. The conclusion of that is that the speaker and the auditor, the writer
and reader, begin to say to themselves: Now we can appropriately pass on to
another point, to something which “we have not had yet.” The fact that Jesus
Christ is mocked, and defied — we had that long ago. We have learned enough
about that as we went along. One who has treated of the base defiance which the
Sanhedrin heaped upon Jesus and which Herod and the soldiers of Pilate inflicted
upon Him will at first blush think it rather superfluous to devote a separate
chapter to the mockery which Christ had to suffer after the crucifixion. The
only thing left to say — one might surmise — is that the number of those who
mock Him is gradually increasing. This and the fact that besides the dignified
members of the Sanhedrin, the passersby, the soldiers, the one crucified with
Him, and the priestly party now engage in the gruesome game of mockery and
defiance also. But when that has been said, there is indeed little that can be
added, unless, indeed, one wishes to fall into the annoying fault of repetition.

Still we must say that it is not fitting to become impatient — at the cross of
Christ Jesus. That is a predication which needs no defense.

No, we must not be in too great a hurry for there is a difference between the
one moment and the other. There is a difference between mockery and mockery.
Permit us to say that rather strangely and still rather naturally. It makes a
great difference whether Christ is being mocked in the morning or at noon. The
reason for that difference does not inhere in the mockers themselves so much as
in the soul and spirit of Him who is the passive victim of the mockery. It is
not the action of the people who mocked Him, but the reaction of Christ, His
different response overagainst God and the world in successive moments which
must provide the explanation here. Christ relates every experience which He
undergoes to the actual circumstances in which He is involved. Now the process
of Christ is a richly varied one on this day, and therefore His reaction to it
is equally varied. Of Him we can never say that we have “had it” already. In
this way we can appreciate the consideration that a mockery of Christ taking
place before His legal condemnation impresses Him differently and grieves Him in
another way than a mockery coming to Him after the condemnation, after He has
been led “without the gate” after His being bruised by the catastrophic curse.
Such mockery is a different thing from the mockery which went on before. For
this is a different hour in the great Trial.

We can point out in various ways the difference between the mockery which He
experiences now and that which He felt before. For instance, there are more
mockers now than there were previously; again, the things for which they blame
Christ are not the same for which He was blamed before. But those are not the
important differences. The greatest difference between the then and the now is
that the mockery of Christ upon Golgotha is a definite and separable moment in
the short but violent process of His descent into hell, of His being accursed
“without the gate.”

It is this last consideration which is the new significance here. When the
Sanhedrin placed Christ in the middle of its group, when He stood there as the
target of their mockery, and when, later in the day, the same kind of mockery
came to Him from another direction, Christ was not experiencing the extreme
afflictions of the pain of hell. Then He still stood within the gate of the
city; He had not yet been cast out of it.

Now every violation of law is forbidden within the gate; when such violation
occurs the right of appeal exists before God. We must note this. Christ retains
the right of appeal up to the time in which He is “condemned,” in which He is
cast outside of the gates. As He sees it, He, as the son of Abraham, and as a
citizen of Moses, still can appeal up to that time. True in all the things which
are actualized on the day of His death (as well as on all the days of His life),
in all the facts and events, whether they take place within or without the gate,
He must detect the hand of God in the mockery heaped upon Him, and seek the
justice of God in the violations of justice carried out by man. But the right of
appeal is, as it impresses His conscience,[1] still His own. He may persist in
telling those people who are making Him an exlex that He, as long as He is
inside the gates of Jerusalem, may acknowledge God there, the God who does not
make Him an exlex.

[1] Interpreted here as the ever active faculty to examine critically all His
thoughts, words, and actions as being conformed to the law and will of God. For
the hidden things are the Lord’s and the revealed things are for us children.
This is the great regulation which is written down for the human attention of
Jesus Christ also. The hidden things for the Lord. That the Servant of the Lord
must carefully consider. In the last analysis He must in His human nature and in
the deliberations of His “believing” heart (which walks “not by sight”) simply
perform the duty of His office, and in this He may not ask any questions about
the outcome (as if that in reference to “salvation” could be uncertain). To ask
such questions would betray unbelief. He must simply keep in the forefront of
His consciousness the fact that perfect fidelity to God will also be perfect
service for the benefit of the people for whom God wishes peace. Hence as a
human being, the whole night of Gethsemane and the whole day up to the moment of
His condemnation were to Him nothing short of the law according to which He had
to live. These to Him were the revealed things, and one of these revealed things
was the knowledge that God hates sin as He enters into judgment, that he who
condemns the just is an abomination to the Lord, that God regards as an evil the
mockery, defiance, and rejection from the law of: the most faithful Son of the
law. He knows that every legal transgression is regarded by God as a sin, as an
evil against which, the accused,, be ‘he whom he may, can appeal to me Highest
Judge himself.

Because of this revealed truth, Christ, up to the moment of His condemnation,
could in silent prayers to God, the perfect Judge, still appeal to Him against
all the mockery and defiance heaped upon Him.[1] Perhaps someone is inclined to
say that this after all was not a great privilege, this right of appeal to God.
For it was a privilege which had no practical effect; it was one which could be
entertained only in the form of thoughts. Can we say, for instance, that Jesus
in the presence of the Sanhedrin, of Herod, and of Pilate, had a voice with
which to call out to God, to angels, and to men? Could He have rent the clouds?
No, the truth was not such. Only in His thoughts could He appeal to God
overagainst the judges, and that — I hear someone say—does not amount to much.

[1] Think,forinstance,ofthe“hymn of praise”which Christ sings before He enters
Gethsemane. It is an instance of His self-consciousness as a just man, an
awareness which becomes evident also from His apologies, His Intercession, His
“supremeserviceof me Word.”

Whoever says that, does not know what He is contending for. Can you say that an
appeal to God which is purely ideational in character does not amount to much?
What, in the last analysis, has man which transcends the worth of that? The
riches of our life do not reside in what we can hear or see. Our lives are not
rich primarily in terms of what can be heard by the ear or seen by the eye. Our
riches inhere in what is anchored in the spirit. It is in virtue of his
spiritual life that man is differentiated, on the one hand, from all creatures
below him, and, on the other hand, is brother to the angels and a real image of
God. The deepest motivations of his joys and pains lie in this personal,
spiritual basis of life. All the struggles for justice common to our human life
are, in the final analysis, operative in the forum of the human spirit; there
they are litigated, solved, or dismissed; there, be it along legal or illegal
ways, they are brought to a close.

Therefore the spiritual element in man is the conclusive, the determinative
element. We live or die, we are rich or poor, elect or lost, children of freedom
or children of slavery — in terms of our spiritual existence.

If we think of that, we can appreciate that in a very important sense Christ was
still rich and strong, and was God’s great Fellow-Owner as long as He was
permitted in the realm of His thoughts, in deliberating on the several stages of
His trial by means of His human spirit, still to appeal to God overagainst men.
For Him too, the law of life was binding, the creation-ordinance held true, that
His riches or poverty, His rising up or His falling down, His life or His death,
His possibilities for going on or the immanence of His being closed in, had to
depend not on what He said or did, but on the manner in which His active spirit
was related to God, to the devil, and to — Himself. Keep Him from working His
way outwards if you can; He will still be able to speak and to think. Hinder Him
from speaking, take the privilege of speech away from Him, and He still will be
able to think, to exercise communion with God in His thoughts. As long as He
knows that He can do that, He knows that He is free. If a person would touch,
would affect Him essentially from within, he will have to touch His
thought-life.

We shall have to consider all of these things if we are to appreciate to any
extent at all how Christ in one hour of time could fall into even deeper shame,
into much deeper shame than had overcome Him before. For Christ descended into
the shafts of humiliation by leaps and bounds; He descended, if we may say so,
spasmodically. There were mutations, there were steps, in that process of
humiliation. It may be that we sometimes talk too facilely and too unwittingly
about the steps in the state of Chrises humiliation. That is something which is
very easy to say: that He passed from one step to another, that He plunged from
one plane to a lower in His passion. But it is more difficult for us to
appreciate the meaning of this, to get a vivid and concrete picture of its
significance. For that which He experiences in one moment of His passion will in
the next moment seem to have been a kind of height compared with the one to
follow; this will again be a deeper level of shame, a lower rung of the ladder,
than the one on which He is standing.

Nevertheless it is necessary for us to consider these things and to follow Him
from step to step, from rung to rung, from stage to stage. Only in that way will
we appreciate why Christ, when He was mocked by the Sanhedrin, by Herod, and by
the soldiers, before His conclusive condemnation, was standing on a different
step of humiliation than that on which He rests now, after the condemnation,
now, hanging on the cross, and why the raillery and the lashing bitterness of
hellish mockery is being heaped upon Him. For it is quite true that in the
moment of the official condemnation the course of His suffering sharply broke
downwards, and plunged abruptly into a much lower stage. We have observed
already that when Christ was condemned He was cast without the gate. We must
accentuate that again; it is a detail which is absolutely necessary for us if we
are to keep the drama of the darkest day in the history of our world vividly
before our apathetic minds, if we are not to let that drama become an illogical
succession of pure accidents.

We must recall just for a moment what we said in our first chapter. There we
must pick up the thread which can guide us now. There we discover three moments
in the course of Christ’s passion, three sharply delineated transitions. First,
Christ is robbed of the privilege of acting freely; second, He is robbed of the
privilege of speaking freely; and, third, He is robbed of the privilege of
thinking freely. Those are the three milestones at which we have successfully
stopped to ponder. At the end of our first volume Christ was bound; that is, the
privilege of acting freely was denied Him. The fettered hands were not allowed
to act at His behest. At the conclusion of our second volume, the gospel account
had brought us to the point at which Christ was judged, was “condemned,” by the
judge. That meant, accordingly, that not only was the privilege of acting freely
taken from Him, but the privilege of free speech also. The condemned man cannot
say anything thereafter; He will not be heard if He does.

Now it is possible for people to deny a man the privilege of acting and speaking
freely, but they can never take away the privilege of thinking as he wishes. The
deep recesses of free thought do not lend themselves to restriction. The spirit
cannot be put in bonds, at least not by fellow human beings. Hence there have
always been those condemned people who went to the place of execution without
saying and doing what they wanted to say and do, but with a full sense of the
fact that in the freedom of their ideas they were triumphing over their enemies.
A paean of victory was, well — not in their mouths, but in their hearts. They
stood among tyrants as free men, and it was their thinking spirit which allowed
them to retain the freedom of personal selfhood. In the case of Christ, however,
this could not be the conclusion. The privilege of thinking freely, as well as
that of speaking and acting freely had to leave, had to depart from Him. Unless
God took this privilege away from Him it could not be said that He descended
into hell. Unless the Lord opposed the Surety, unless the Lord arrested Him in
the crevices of His pure logic, of His penetrating reason, and of His
ever-active thoughts, Christ could not be said to have been completely
condemned. In that case, He would, in fact, not be condemned at all. If by means
of His human power He could thrust His thinking spirit through the mountain-pass
where Wrath is seeking Him, He would internally and essentially have escaped
from the Wrath. Then the Wrath would not have bruised Him; the core, the essence
of His human life would have remained unperturbed, free, and entirely unbroken.
The descent into hell could not be realized until He lost the privilege of free
thought as well as that of the free act and the free word. His thinking, too,
had to be challenged radically and seriously. The Lord God had to challenge and
oppose it. Christ’s might not be the privilege of freely going about, whether it
be actively with His hand, or actively with His mouth, or actively with the
thoughts of His unrestrained spirit. His thinking had to be bound. O God, arrest
His progress. And it is precisely this which now overtakes Him. His thinking is
being absolutely challenged by the Lord. God is molesting His thoughts. The
beginning of our third volume mentioned that. When that milestone had been
reached at which we paused at the beginning of our third volume, in other words,
when Christ had been cast without the gate, God Himself — the stronger, the
absolutely Other-One — took from the man Jesus His right to think freely. The
spirit of Christ could no longer unrestrictedly proceed in its own power (see
pp. 27-29). In a certain sense it would seem that the harmony, the parallelism
of the passion is being destroyed here. One would have expected that, just as
the right to act freely was taken away from Him at the end of our first
volume,[1] and just as the right to speak freely was taken away from Him at the
end of our second volume,[2] so the right to think freely will be taken from Him
at the conclusion of our third volume also. And yet we have pointed out that
this took place at the very beginning of this volume and not at the end.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 25, p. 444 f., see also Chapter 25, pp. 435
and Chapter 24, 421.

[2]Christ on Trial, Chapter 29, pp. 544-546. This need not surprise us. As we
pointed out previously, this ought to be so. We have observed that there was a
compelling logic of justice according to which the Messiah as the second Adam
had to suffer the pain of hell and to experience the curse within the space of
time allotted to Him for the human struggle, within the time intervening between
manger and cross.[3] This He had to experience with a full and fine awareness.
Now the same constraining logic demands that before His death, and with the same
fine awareness He must suffer the pangs of not feeling “right” with God, not
even in His ideas. His apology must be able to find “no place,” not even a point
of connection. He must be absolutely miserable in His paradoxical state.

[3] Chapter 1, page 24.

Yes, it was the inevitable consequence of the justice which condemned Christ,
the justice of God, that Christ had to suffer a restriction of His created
spirit, the deprivation of a free, unhampered, and penetrating mind. He will
have to run into a wall precisely in the spiritual conflict of His ideas. The
pain of the concussionChrist will suffer with a fine awareness and before His
bodily death. For what, to repeat, is the descent into hell, in the final
analysis, other than that — the restriction of the active spirit, the
deprivation of the privilege of free thought. Must Christ truly descend into
hell? Surely, this sounds like luxuriating in oratory about the most gruesome of
experiences. And must this become actuality today? If so, then in the name of
God let every one of His unhampered thoughts be molested. Then let every asylum
in which His distressed spirit might wish to take refuge be closed to Him. No,
Jesus’ distressed spirit may not even take flight to the narrowest of alleys
today, for He is being entirely cast without the gate. That means that He must
acknowledge God’s forsaking Him. And this in turn, means that, according to the
discipline of the church and according to the written lawbook of Jerusalem and
according to the holy ordinance of an Israel not yet forsaken by God, He who is
cast without the gates is a curse to the Lord; and again, He that hangeth on a
tree is a curse to the Lord. God Himself is rejecting Him and is leaving no
place of refuge for Him, neither under the strength of His arms nor within the
spacious folds of the cloak of Father Abraham. Does it seem that it is taking
quite a while before we return to those members of the Sanhedrin, those military
men, those priests and soldiers who are railing against the Nazarene? Perhaps,
but we had to take this long course in order to see clearly what the
significance of this new mockery is. It was necessary for us, if we may put it
that way, to place all those mocking people, those dwarfs and midgets — against
a background of human convention and of “humane” sentiment. We must accept these
grinning dwarfs in the way the Spirit of inspiration presents them to us; and
that spirit has placed them against the background of a sinister heaven which is
pouring out of its darkly lowering clouds nothing less than the Absolute Wrath
and the Pang of Hell. Presently the sun will shine no longer. For we find
ourselves here in the ferment of hell.

He, accordingly, who would genuinely appreciate the significance of this
particular moment of the passion of Christ must not overlook the hellish
character of Christ’s torments. Are we exaggerating the matter? No, if we devote
sound deliberation to the passion on the cross, we cannot possibly “exaggerate.”
Everything in Christ’s suffering on the cross weighs as heavily as infinity. Of
course, it is true, that he who explains the particulars of the suffering of
Christ wrongly can “exaggerate,” for his thoughts and propositions have their
source in himself. But he who sees the crucified Saviour of souls as the Bearer
of the guilt, and as the Sufferer of incomparable penalty, of the penalty of
hell itself, knows very well that, inasmuch as he is following the course of
sound exegesis he can not “exaggerate.” Why not, you ask? Because the truth
which is revealed to him by God speaks in a language which cannot possibly be
exhausted. One can never give adequate expression to the penalty of hell (and to
the blessedness of heaven), unless one is in hell (or in heaven) oneself. That
we shall have occasion to stress more often.

Hence we can say that our account of the suffering of Christ is not liable to
the danger of exaggeration as long as we interpret it in the sense of the
Spirit. We always say too little of the Man of sorrows and cannot possibly say
too much as long as we remain faithful to the truth about Him.

Hence we must observe now that the Christ, who is suffering the pain of hell on
the cross, recognizes that the mockery hurled against Him is the mockery of
hell. We know that the nails which were driven through His flesh were not
“ordinary” nails to Him, but instruments of the last judgment. We know that the
rupture in His side was not a wound measuring so much in length, to His
consciousness, but that it was a bruise inflicted upon “this temple” by the hand
of God in what is justly called a catastrophic curse. And we also know that the
consumption which His soul and spirit felt was not merely the lonesomeness of
this or that suffering individual, but the eternal and profound forsakenness
suffered by the Son of man because of His God. And in this same sense, we must
believe that the mockery which man inflicts upon Christ at the cross in its
essence is nothing less than the mockery of hell. It is the defiance of hell. It
speaks a sinister, diabolical language. It is the greeting with which the demons
welcome the damned. That is the way Christ senses it, and as He senses it, it
is. He alone feels the objective reality of everything in His whole being, for
His entire being is ever turned toward God.

Now you ask how the mockery of those passersby, the defiance of those who went
to and fro along the way, could possibly become the mockery of hell for Jesus
Christ. If you would understand this, open your Bible, and ask Him what He sees
happening in the place of outer darkness. You will not look long for an answer.
The Bible itself teaches us the nature of the mockery of hell. Not only is the
greeting of hell, by which one lost soul spews out his misery and despair
against another, made audible to us in the poetical language of the Bible, but
it is also possible to deduce along dogmatic lines from other parts of
Scriptures that the essence of the punishment of hell is defined by the sinister
law: homo homini lupus. Being interpreted, that means that one man literally
consumes another. The one lost soul fiendishly preys upon his neighbor. The one
who is nearest is always the farthest away. To meet the person who is nearest
one is to meet the person who is most distant. The general law of dissolution
drives a wedge wherever it can find an opening. It is a law of hell that the one
hates the other.

Thus it happens that Isaiah speaks of condemned persons who consume each other
in the realm of darkness and of the shadow of death. Isaiah refers to the king
of Babel, and to the defeated ones of the realm of the world. If these tumble
into Sheol, into the realm of death and darkness, and if they tumble into it
without God, the first word which greets them is as venomous as death itself.
Each lost person gloats over the misery of the one who is lost with him in the
eternal darkness. And this is also the way we can understand Ezekiel, who speaks
in the same spirit about Asshur among the condemned.

Thus Christ also heard Himself being mocked upon the cross. He heard exactly
what Isaiah and Ezekiel heard, heard it coming to Him from the realm of
darkness. For what inhabitant of hell is there that does not mock the great Lost
Son as He hangs on Golgotha? Lo, He is descending into hell, and, nevertheless,
He knows that He still is the bright and morning star (Revelation 22:16). Such
is the paradoxical experience, and the paradoxical self-appraisal. Isaiah once
heard awful words being addressed to the lost king of Babel but those which are
hurled against Christ bear a heavier accent, are spoken in a stronger tone, and
spring from a profounder background of justice and of wrath than these.
Nevertheless, we can the better appreciate Christ’s suffering for listening to
the description of Isaiah:

All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art
thou become like unto us?

Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is
spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut
down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit also upon the mouth of the congregation, in the sides of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet
thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is
this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? (Isaiah
14:10-16) The Christ knows and feels that the suffering which is coming upon Him
now is infinitely heavier than the suffering which Ezekiel pictured when he
described how the dead of Asshur, that tree which had once stood so radiantly
proud in the Eden of the world’s culture, were received into Sheol with a bitter
mockery. They were received there by the swords and knives of that hellish
community.[2] [2] Ezekiel 31. See alsoChrist on Trial,Chapter 9, p. 193.

Yes, swords and knives and the community of hell — these are the things which
are present at Golgotha when all ordinary folk rail against the Passover of God.

We return now to the point of our departure. Even though the people at the foot
of the cross took on the proportions of hell, the severity of Christ’s
humiliation is not determined by the subjective scope of their intent but by the
objective scope of the word of God, and of the wrath of God. Those people are
but the instruments, and the instruments come from below. But God manipulates
the instruments and God is from above; He is the eternal.

Now we must know that all those people are provoking Christ to rejoinder, to
defense, to apology. They goad, they spur His trembling thoughts into those
narrow confines where God, the righteous Judge, had always given an audience to
the oppressed and accused children of the covenant. But God does not answer. He
spoke to the fathers, He heard their addresses, He gave their inmost thoughts
free scope. But Christ can find no room for His apology today. Even in His
inmost thoughts, nay precisely in His inmost thoughts, He can no longer appeal
to God overagainst men. He lacks the power of appeal because the right to appeal
has been challenged by God. He hears Bible texts being cited against Him in the
challenge. Alas, it is written that He who is hanged without the gate is a
curse.[1] A person cannot appeal to God unless he feels free to do so; He must
have what the Scriptures call a good conscience, and that upon objective basis.
That eager yearning of faith which the Bible calls a good conscience is the
absolute requisite for every appeal which man, overagainst his earthly judges
and enemies, would make to God, the perfect judge. It was a comfort to Job to be
able to appeal to his judge, whom he called his witness for him, He who was in
heaven. And this must be the same assurance felt by every accused person who in
his distress because of what men do to him desires to appeal to God. Whoever
makes this appeal knows that God is with him. Or, at the very least, he should
be able to feel that he is not certain to the marrow and the bone that God is
against him.

[1] Chapter 1, page 24ff. Is this true of Christ Jesus? No, for Him matters are
very different. He feels in the bone and marrow of His being that God is against
Him. He is man — therefore He has to keep the revealed and not the hidden things
before His consciousness. Hence the word which must be seared upon His mind is
the one which says that he who is hanged is a curse to the Lord, and that there
is no acceptance of him with God. A great gulf has been fixed between Jehovah
and Me.

Now all His ideas jar against this high wall of God’s relentlessness. All the
thoughts of the Son of man beat against it. He is without the gate — and that is
more than a topographical designation. It has become the active cause and the
explaining motivation of all His struggles ever since this king was led out of
the gate as an exile. The word written about those who are cast out was written
for Him; it suited Him and it was all too clearly designed for Him.

Now it is easy to raise as an objection against this the fact that Jesus knew
very well that up to this time He had been without sin. We know that He ever
kept His eye fixed upon the holy pattern of the lawgiver of the universe.
Consequently He must constantly have known and believed that no eternal abysses
of animosity can come between the righteous soul and the righteous God. We would
not think of denying this fact. We would, in fact, go so far as to say in a
positive sense that the Mediatorship of Christ depends upon the soundness of His
conviction that God will not condemn the righteous soul and that His soul is
indeed righteous. But there is an adequate response to the objection raised.
Christ must not only and must not in the first place devote His attention to His
own clear and immediate knowledge, a knowledge which is His because of His pure
relationship to God. As the Servant of servants He must also pay attention to
that law book written of God to whose texts and codices He is subservient. This
law book has announced that he who is legitimately hanged can find no acceptance
with God, but is a curse to the Lord. Therefore this revealed truth demands as
much of His attention as the other revealed truth which asserts that God cannot
be the antithesis to “die schone Seele.” He must give as much attention to the
first of these revealed truths as to the one which maintains that the glory of
God cannot take a paradoxical and critically condemnatory attitude towards any
righteous spirit. At this point we must look in two directions. Some
commentators like to emphasize the fact that Christ was convinced of His
personal righteousness with God, and, consequently, of the right of apology
which He had overagainst God. To this emphasis, however, we must add another,
which does not contradict it: namely, that Christ, as man, as servant, as a
creature subservient to the law, had to draw the Scriptures towards Himself.
That means that He had to apply the Scriptural utterances about the person
hanged upon a tree without the gate to Himself also. Such a person, Christ had
to feel, is in a double sense a curse, an outcast, a thing which cannot be
accepted by God. Dying, He still had to keep this Scriptural statement before
His eyes, and He had to pave a way in His shocked spirit for the specific,
concrete, and absolute application of this revealed word to Himself. He had to
fix His soul upon it. He whom we see upon the cross is not a “naive” Christ who
is internally but acritically convinced of the righteousness of His cause, and
who does not tire or trouble Himself about the rest. No, He who is hanging here
is the fully conscious Worker in God’s universe, He is the Office-bearer, the
second Adam. By means of a passion for reality and an effort at sensitive
awareness, He must stretch His human existence to the breaking point of active
strain, in order to experience, to live through, the curse, the forsakenness,
the rejection, the “hanging before the face of Jahweh.” At this point our
thinking meets with difficulties. We know that Christ’s progress towards death,
that His self-surrender to the cross, must essentially be an act of service, a
gift. For a “love” which overlooks its purpose, or which departs from a clearly
perceived knowledge of its goal in distinction from its means, is not love but
ecstasy, eroticism, passion, self-service, or idolatry. One side, one term of
Christ’s mysteries on the cross, is that the love of the priest must remain
aware of the fact that the priest himself is innocent, and that he consequently
is in a position to give gifts, to give away what he has earned from God. Such
love must know that the sacrifice from beginning to end is an act of love, of
lordly, divine, and sovereign love, a love so important, so chaste, and so
blameless that the word “aristocratic” would be ludicrously inadequate to
describe it. But there is another side to this problem. There must be another
side to the description which love writes of itself by way of a memorial today.
For now this question arises: May the awareness of His own beauty, His own
purity, of His own capacity to give gifts serve as a kind of counter-argument by
means of which He as the satisfying sacrifice may mitigate the terror of God’s
wrath? God is entering His Great Remonstrance today, and is laying it before the
Son. The principal reason stated in this remonstrance is a definition of His
wrath, and of Christ’s obligation to suffer punishment. Now the question arises
whether Christ’s own sense of being perfect, and gracious, and precious in love
and in virtue can become a continuous argument for Him to be included in a human
counter-remonstrance. Can He enter this apology with God, the same God who is
beating Him in the presence of angels? Can anyone in God’s wide world really
feel that he has been made a curse, if he has all kinds of counter-arguments at
his fingers’ tips? To ask the question is to answer it. We are sure that all
sources of comfort which Christ has must be earned at the cost of awful
struggle; not one of the consolation prizes has been paid for Him beforehand; we
need not believe that at twelve o’clock of the “day of Jehovah” the climax of
this “day of the Lord,” the day which comprises all the centuries,[1] a single
prize, a single consolation prize will be given away. The day demands payment,
nothing less; the prize must be purchased at the cost of awful struggle carried
on before the face of Jahweh.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 28, p. 314 f.

Yes, every consolation which He wishes to keep before His eyes, and every act of
lordship which He may wish to do, and every respite which He may want to enjoy,
must be earned by Christ. Does He want to have the power to say to a murderer
beside Him: I shall reserve a place for you in Paradise? Then He must struggle
for the right and the power to do so by means of a fiercely fought conflict;[2]
and, since that is true, there is no other possibility for the Son of man as a
temporally motivated and impressionable human being than that the unhampered
control of His sources of comfort first be taken from Him. The right of apology
must be taken from Him, cum effectu civili. He must be made conscious of the
pain which this denial causes Him by means of a crowd of mockers swarming around
Him, to whom He can make no rejoinder. He must be bandied to and fro between the
possibilities of remonstrance and counter-remonstrance, between the poles of
attraction and repulsion, of conscious sovereignty (which stands above the plane
of apology), on the one hand, and a conscious sense of having no rights whatever
(a sense which puts Him on a plane below apology, unless the curse has been
exhausted), on the other hand.

[2] See the next chapter. In the language of men, this is called paradoxical — a
word which probes, and gropes, but which cannot state exactly what is meant in
reference to Him.

We alluded to the paradoxical in the Christ. Now we are perfectly willing to
confess that we are on dangerous ground. We are touching on one of the most
difficult problems which it is possible for the thinking of faith to confront.
We are not merely using a word which is in vogue just now, but are using it
quite seriously. As we stand at this moment before Christ’s silence among all
those mockers without the gate we are facing a paradox. By this we mean — for
misunderstanding in this matter is dangerous — that it is not we who find
ourselves in the midst of a paradox, but Christ. He is being consumed by the
paradoxical plague, and it is precisely this passion which delivers us from the
pang of the paradoxical.

Let us approach Him again and observe. The paradox ... the moment we use that
word many contemporaries prick up their ears. The one will find the word
interesting because of its sound; the other — with more wisdom — because of its
meaning. The one will use the word loosely and facilely, taking it upon his lips
five times in as many minutes. By a paradox this person means an opinion or a
reality which is or seems to be in conflict with what by the standards of common
sense is obvious, even though the opinion may be true, or may correspond to
reality. The other person will by no means use the word “paradox” facilely or
flippantly, but will bring the thunder of God and of the Word to bear upon it.
By “paradox” he means that God and God’s thoughts are absolutely different from
us and our thoughts, and that, therefore, everything which is genuinely divine
and heavenly is vertically opposed to everything which we think or can think,
everything which we feel and know, or can feel and know in our horizontal plane
of apperception and orientation. In recent times there have been many who point
to the fact that God is entirely different from us, that a great gulf lies
between Him and us which no one can bridge. These say that God is the “wholly
Other.” These maintain that no one who is finite can ever by means of his own
human thoughts comprehend the infinite, absolute God; and that therefore, and in
this specific sense, God’s truth always opposes our human thinking and feeling
and expression in a paradoxical way. According to this opinion God’s truth is an
ever- living, ever-variable judgment upon our thinking and feeling and arrogant
speaking. This is not the place to discuss these things further nor to state our
own opinion about the attitude to which we referred.[1] It suffices to say here
that according to our view the word paradox cannot possibly be used more
appropriately, and that its content was never sensed more sharply, or plumbed
and experienced more fully in its capacity for oppression and judgment than by
our Lord Jesus Christ at this moment. And it is also our purpose to point out
that the element of truth inherent in the opinion of those who think of God as
the “wholly Other,” never grieved a human soul by its terrible pain so
intensely, nor ever shocked or cast anyone into the abyss of judgment and of
bruising as it did here in overcoming the Saviour.

[1] For my personal attitude towards this interpretation I refer you to my: “Bij
Dichters en Schriftgeleerden,” p. 65-147, and “Tusschen ‘Ja’ en ‘Neen’,”p.
233-359.

Now return to the barren knoll of Golgotha, and sit down calmly and quietly at
the foot of the cross. Listen attentively to what the mockers dare to say in
railing against the crucified Saviour. Do you not feel, here, that Christ is
being consumed by catastrophic griefs which, while being catastrophic, are at
the same time permanent griefs, griefs which may be characterized as
constituting a truly paradoxical suffering, paradoxical knowing, and paradoxical
thinking?

Thus we must return to the word “paradoxical.” It was taken to mean: proposition
and counter-proposition, reality and contradictory reality. And in discussing
it, we encountered two propositions. The first was that Christ had to assume the
curse for Himself, and that He had to acknowledge that this curse was willed of
God as a power of devastation actually arising in His life. This He had to
acknowledge by applying the words of the Scriptures to Himself which said that a
condemned person who was hanged without the gate upon a tree is accursed. The
second proposition, was that the man Christ Jesus also had to be convinced of
His own sinlessness overagainst God. These two truths force His thoughts to
oppose each other diametrically. This is the paradox in His prayers and in His
sufferings. He must consider the first truth. The text of the Scriptures states
that the person condemned outside of the gate is a curse, and this truth must
echo in His soul in all its power. Remembering that, He must necessarily
conclude as follows: It is just that I be dumb before God and men, that my
breath be cut off, that my righteous speech be taken away. This is just. It is
just that Christ the exlex should be silent among these many shouting people.
Jesus held His peace — this was the first time without the gate that He had laid
His hand upon His mouth. But Christ must also pursue that second train of
thought. Doing this He must necessarily confess that He has not deserved the
curse by Himself and for Himself. He must confess that He has indeed been
plunged into the dark waters of the curse, but that these could find no point in
Him at which they might cause infection to set in, at which the curse might
“organically” take its effect in terms of the law according to which sin in
principle is itself death and curse. To put it humanly we can say that an
epitome of the first train of thought would be this: I suffer justly. And that a
summary of the second line of thought would be: I suffer unjustly.

According to the first line of thought He may with good reason cry out: I am a
curse; I dare not appeal to God. But in terms of the second way of thinking
there is as good a reason for crying: I am just and woe to Me if I should doubt
the primary scheme of God which has said that He is not antipathetic, nor
antithetic, to the “beautiful,” to the just, soul.

There are these two lines of thought then; they take opposite directions; they
constitute the plague of paradox.

Looking upon the first of these, at the reality of His accursed status, He can
but be mute. He must even be silent about the perturbation of His thoughts. But
when He thinks of the fact that He is the pure man, that He has indeed a “good
conscience before God,” He must, with or without words, but in any case “moved
in spirit” cry out against all those mockers. Then the apology, even though He
does not express it with His lips, must be present in His thoughts, and able to
build up its structure in terms of a logical development.

What is this, if it is not paradox? It is the paradox which tore Christ apart,
which rent Him asunder.

We can be sure that this paradoxical element in Christ’s experience grieved Him
terribly. On the one hand, He knows that the suffering of the curse is the
inevitable way, the curse is the only way. It means the forfeit of the right to
defend Himself even in His thoughts. That is the way. It is the way of payment,
it is the way drawn by God for the people whom I love infinitely. The Lord told
David to say to Abishai that he had to be silent over- against Shimei, the
railer. And David after a while presents the message of the Lord and says: Let
Shimei curse, for the Lord hath said to Shimei: curse David (Compare 2 Samuel
16:5-11). And is it plausible to believe that David’s great Son can escape from
the message of His father David and from his having no message at all to give?
Let Him be silent and constitute Himself a speaking David as well as an
astonished Abishai. O spirit of God, hear Him as He confesses from the depths of
His soul: the Lord hath said to all the Shimeis, to all the remnant of Saul (2
Samuel 16:5) who are gathered here at the foot of the cross: Curse Jesus, curse,
and defile, and mock. His curse, is his way. A spirit entered heaven and said: I
will be a spirit of mockery in all the epigones of Saul, in order that the Son
of David may fall, in order that lie may be reviled on the hill of hellish
mockery. The Lord said: Thou shall prevail: go forth and do so (see 1 Kings
22:22). On the other hand, however, all that is in Jesus rises tip to sing
psalms to God’s glory. Or, if He does not actually sing them, He at least
composes them. He did no evil at any time, and He kept His thoughts pure. This
had been His task had it not? Was it not His task as the second Adam to stand in
the state of obedience and was not the second Adam, even as the first, promised
a future which provided an unhampered vision of God that set up a relationship
between “the beautiful soul” and the right to live? As Christ thinks of that, He
feels constrained to say: The glory of a “good conscience,” a confident
presentation of my own apology to God — that is my way as well as the curse is.
The Lord spoke by David, saying: Woe be to Shimei, who curses David; the sword
shall find him out. “Hold Shimei not guiltless, for thou art a wise man” (1
Kings 2:9). It may be that the spirit of mockery has entered into all the sons
of Saul, but it is written, and it remains written: He who condemns the just man
(and mocks him) is an abomination to the Lord.

O paradoxical day of Golgotha! This paradoxical suffering of Christ’s disrupted
spirit was as intense as it was because this particular moment of mockery and
defiance is essentially different from all the other moments in which He was
also mocked and defied. The difference arose from the fact that before this time
He could, and now He cannot, exercise the right of appeal to God. In all
previous instances in which the mockery of men grieved Him, the speech of God
and of the Word of God could still offer Him comfort above what human beings did
to Him. The Word of God weighed heavier than the word of men. It always weighed
heavier, not only when it guaranteed acceptance, but also when it threatened
reprobation. Again and again God Himself stood at the end of the way overagainst
those who rejected Him, over- against the false friends. But here at Golgotha,
which is “without the gate” things are different. Now God is not standing
overagainst the human, but now the divine seems to be standing overagainst the
divine, the Word of Scripture overagainst the Word of Scripture, the way of the
covenant overagainst the way of the covenant. The nonuse of apologetics today is
just as necessary according to the law of revealed things as is the maintenance
of the right of apologetics. What human beings call despair (irrespective of
what in their case motivates it) is not only the greatest sin here but also the
primary manifestation of righteousness. Here — that is, in the case of Christ,
the second Adam. Do not misunderstand us. We are not saying that there is an
essential contradiction in God or in the Scriptures or in the whole scheme of
revealed things. For the unity of what seems to be contradictory here is to be
found in the divine counsel, in the good pleasure which laid down the law of the
Suretyship, and in the words written about that law.[1] But this does not take
away the fact that as a man Christ felt the concussion of those two realities of
experience in Himself and felt them as a concussion. It is precisely in this
moment that He in the strictest sense of the word finds Himself in the
paradoxical tension, for on Golgotha the divine does not stand overagainst the
human as the higher power and as the ultima ratio (final cause), but all that is
of God, and all that is of the Scripture, and all that has been revealed, now
seems to conflict with itself. In each of the terrible hours of mockery and
defiance which He suffered before,[2] Christ could freely draw up His apology,
in His thoughts at least, overagainst the people who accused Him. He was still
inside the gate. But if He wants to ascend from the human beings who mock Him to
God in His thinking today, He confronts a wall, and can go no farther. My God,
why art Thou forsaking me, standing afar off from my roaring? My Rock, why dost
Thou forget me?

[2] We shall consider this point further in a later chapter.

[2]Christ on Trial,chapters9,16,21, and 28. Is it a foolish undertaking to
consider these things? How can anyone ask that question now? Are we not, if we
look upon matters in this way, facing the absolute impossibility of harmonizing
the first and the fourth utterances from the cross? In that first utterance
Christ expressed Himself with confidence. Jesus was so firmly convinced of the
justice of His cause, and so naturally persuaded by His feeling of
self-confidence, that He risked being the intercessor for His murderers. Plainly
an intercessor who prays in faith proceeds upon the assumption that his right to
apology goes unchallenged. In fact, all the apologies and all the defences of
others must appeal to Him, and be pleaded on the basis of His virtue.

Overagainst this first utterance from the cross stands the fourth. It speaks of
being forsaken. It is the lamentation of One whose apology simply does not
register, who no longer can be heard, who has been proclaimed unacceptable.

Now do you yourself state whether this first and this fourth utterance from the
cross, both of which issued from a single human soul on the same afternoon, can
be related to each other by anything except the experience of extreme paradox.
We shall return turn to this point[1] but just now we wish simply to point out
that in the most absolute sense paradox is present here. God was indeed the
“wholly Other” to Jesus. The term “without the gate” was translated in Jesus’
theological dictionary by that other term, “in hell.” Jesus suffered under the
transcendence of God and lacked the comfort of His immanence. God refused to
comfort Him against the Shimeis, even though He called out the sword for their
devastation. All the angels whispered to Jesus — or were they devils? —that the
Lord had charged these people to curse the Son of David. This is a paradox:
mockery belongs here (for Jesus is outside of the gate) and —mockery does not
belong here (for Jesus is the “beautiful soul”). The words of raillery are
decent (for Jesus is hanging on the tree) and they are indecent, they are an
abomination (for he who condemns the righteous is an abomination to the Lord).
The first utterance from the cross is a natural matter, a very natural thing:
the just may pray for the unjust: Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do. And this same first utterance from the cross also has its repudiation
in heaven: Father forgive Me for asking a benefit for others; forgive[2] Me, for
Thou knowest what Thou art doing to Me in binding my mouth. And thus Christ is
bandied to and fro. God is very distant from Him; God is the “wholly Other.”

[1] In the two next following chapters.

[2] “Aphes”: do not attach any immediately responding legal results to that.

Well, we alluded to the fact that there were steps of humiliation, steps —
abrupt, spasmodic stages of descent into hell.

Recall Gethsemane and try to measure the distance between Gethsemane and
Golgotha. We noticed that in Gethsemane also Christ suffered grievously. We
noticed that He there also had to lay a bridge over the abyss by means of His
struggling spirit, that He had to construct an arch between the one mountain top
and the other mountain top of God’s eternal justice. But in Gethsemane He was
not without rights as He is now. First His right of requisition was completely
denied, and now His right of apology, of defense, is taken away. In Gethsemane
Christ solved His paradoxical problem and when He had conquered it and achieved
His poise, He spoke confidently to His friends saying: Arise, let us go from
here. At Golgotha, hanging on the cross, He will gain another victory. But here
it will be at the expense of more tears and more blood than at Gethsemane, for
now He is the exlex, the refuse of all things. He is in a state of
excommunication. In Gethsemane we could say: Christ’s sorrows have their own
peculiar end;[1] now we must say: Christ’s sorrows have their own and
ever-renewed beginning. In Gethsemane, the moment the power of thinking freely
was His again, He could regain His poise; but at Golgotha He must battle for the
privilege of free, unhampered thought. In Gethsemane the heaviness hovering over
Him was caused by trying to reach God in His thinking. At Golgotha the trouble
begins the moment He lets His thoughts proceed from a God who speaks in His
Word, and for the rest is silent.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 22, pp. 379-392.

Yes, indeed, there are steps of humiliation. Only a few hours separate Golgotha
from Gethsemane, and yet the distance is immeasurably wide. And just because
this distance is so great and because the descent from one to the other is so
sharply marked, there is no point in saying that Christ took the words of
raillery hurled against Him “too seriously” and that it is unwarranted to speak
of the “mockery of hell” here. The Bible itself reveals to us that the moment
Christ was driven “without the gate” was the all-prevailing moment of the
passion. If that were not true we would not dare to say what we have written in
this chapter. But inasmuch as the Holy Spirit Himself has said these things,[2]
we dare not choose softer colors than those we have selected for painting
Christ’s spiritual-paradoxical destruction. For Christ the people who did the
railing and reviling, common, ordinary men of the street as they were, were in
very fact the poison-mongers of hell. Not less than that. In fact they — were
worse than hellish people.

[2] See the particulars included in chapter 1 of this volume.

We said they were not less than hellish people. We have pointed out previously
that the person who would appreciate what is going on in the depths of Christ’s
soul must not ask about the person doing the mocking but what is the action and
the reaction of the person against whom the mockery is hurled. Not the subject,
but the object, determines the nature of the passion. We have previously stated
that men cannot destroy Christ unless God does it.[3] But the moment God begins
the destruction, men are also able to destroy. The instrument becomes effective
by means of him who makes use of it. Now we know that God as the Judge did
excommunicate (without the gate). Because that is the case, those puny people of
the plains, those ordinary Jews of the street who are standing at the cross,
railing against Christ, are for Jesus Christ the regular customers of hell.

[3]Christ in His Suffering. Chapter 21, p. 373.

No, do not weigh them in your personal balances or in mine. They might have been
seated at the table with us this noon, and they might have revealed the image of
our own heart to us in that case. Yes, these people also were blind; and the
guilt of many generations avenged itself in them; and he who gives his attention
to the mockers themselves and to nothing else is sure to exaggerate if he calls
their mocking the mockery of hell. But Christ measured them with His own rule.
He did not look upon the mockers as such but saw them as instruments of the
wrath of God. The spirit of the Son of David on this occasion exhausted the
problem of David, Saul, and Shimei. “The author sang his own psalms” in the room
of the Passover and that was but a short time ago; we heard Him sing them with
joy in His heart.[4] But we must not limit ourselves to this one side of the
truth; there is another side: the Author sang His own psalms of wrath and
cursing. And He appreciated fully that they referred only to Him. Hence He is
mute. Isaiah was inspired by Him and by His spirit when He composed those songs
of the mockery of hell which were too realistic for even the spirit of Dante to
employ. So also Ezekiel; we alluded to him before.[5] But He who incited the
Spirit that prompted Isaiah and Ezekiel is today being shocked by the fulfilled
puissance of reality lurking in His own compositions about hell. All of His
works are the works of God and the Logos is familiar with all His own poems from
eternity. But that which was known to the Logos throughout eternity by means of
a preliminary and creative knowledge, that the incarnate Logos must now
experience by a knowledge which is a humanly limited and humanly empirical
knowledge. That is why at this point, outside of the gate, the raillery of these
people wounded Him sorely. It “overpowered” Him, and pressed more heavily upon
Him than when Isaiah and Ezekiel in common with all prophets cried aloud: Thou
hast overwhelmed me, O God of all prophets.

[4]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 16, pp. 269-286.

[5] Chapter 11, pages 211-12.

Approach reverently, and see whether He can sustain His own composition. Once
more, however, do not say to yourself, “But these were mere men, innocent men to
a certain extent; these were not devils.” As though the mockery of men did not
count as heavily for Christ as that of devils! As a matter of fact, we must put
it the other way: Men can grieve Him worse than devils can. In this respect also
Gethsemane represents a less severe temptation than Golgotha. As the Saviour
left Gethsemane, He gave utterance to that heavily-fraught statement: This is
your hour and the power of darkness. He saw the demons and the devils preparing
themselves for a pompa damnatoria. They drew themselves in the form of a black
procession of mocking forces. But he who, like Christ in this hour of Golgotha,
has tarried in a hellish sphere for a time, he is troubled by others besides
devils. All that is personal is aroused in the land of hell and draws itself up
in a disjunctive, antithetical, damnatory power overagainst all that is personal
and that was cast with it into this pool of outer darkness. In other words, next
to the lost angels who are called devils, the lost men take up their places, in
order to hurl the mockery of hell against the others, who in turn inflict it
upon them.

We can even go farther. We know that in the kingdom of heaven, and in the state
of blessedness, men occupy a position higher than that of angels, inasmuch as
men are the sons of God’s house but the angels are only the servants in the
house of God. That is why a doxology lifted up to God or men in the heaven of
God’s glory has more worth when it comes from human lips than when it has its
expression among the angels of God. And this we would say also but in a
precisely opposite sense, of the depths of hell. In hell also a fallen man is in
the last analysis more terrible inasmuch as his nature is more important than a
fallen angel. All of the destructive forces of hell taken together cannot break
down the ordinances of creation. Presently man will be transplaced from this
changeable period and from the process of mutation and endless “becoming” to the
state of perfected, and immutable things. When that happens the least among men
will be greater, and hence more terrible, more sinister, than the greatest of
the fallen angels. A dwarf among men will be greater there than a giant among
the devils. Just as much as a son transcends a servant in glory, so much more
ominous will a fallen son be than a fallen servant in the grotto of hell. For
this reason, when weighed in Christ’s delicate balances, the suffering which
overcame Him was far weightier when it came from men than when it came from
devils. Yes, in Gethsemane Christ spoke the statement which revealed prophecy:
“This is the hour and the power of devils.” To that Christ now had to add as an
acknowledgment to His own soul this acquired[1] confession of experience: “This
is the hour and the power of the people of hell.”

[1] “Yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).
For this reason the attack of the devils in Gethsemane was less difficult to
withstand than the attack of the judges during the trial. Hence also the attack
of men during the trial which took place within the gate and before the official
curse was less difficult to bear than the screech of all the raillery which took
place without the gate and after the perfected act of the curse. Were they,
then, mere human beings? But the fact that they are human beings is precisely
what accounts for the terribleness of the travail. The hellish triumphed in the
human: hence the awfulness of the passion.

We must go further. We said a moment ago that this suffering of Christ was even
more severe than the suffering of hell. Why more? Because Christ suffers
differently in hell than does anyone else. He is the sinless one. Hence, in
hell, He is the absolute stranger. When a lost child of man has gone into the
darkness of hell, and when he is mocked there by the spirits who are bound by
the same bonds which fetter him, we can say that the hatred of the one is a
sharp thorn in his flesh, but the other person is in the same sin; in the other
person the same sinful passions are active. But Christ suffers the pain and the
mockery of hell while He Himself is the holy and innocent one. It may be a
terrible thing to be black among black men, a sinner among sinners, a dead
person among dead people, but Christ is the white person among the black, the
holy person among sinners, the living among the dead.

Therefore His suffering of hell is always a more terrible experience than that
of any other person in the realm of outer darkness. No one in all eternity will
ever experience this mockery of hell so intensely nor drink of it so fully as
Christ does here. No one will ever understand or appreciate His paradoxical
distress, no one in heaven or in hell. In hell He was the stranger, the one who
had no relations with any. In the place of outer darkness where each rejects the
other, Christ was the One Who was as conjunctive as life and love. He thrust no
one aside from His pure humanity. True, His spoken word turned many away,
rejected many, condemned many — all those in fact who rejected it — but that was
not the fault of the Word, but was owing to the sin of those who refused to
accept it. The pure soul of Jesus could be nothing less than the great
attraction to everything that can be called truly human. Christ, then, was the
only one among all those mockers and railers Who as the Unique One experienced
“something strange” there. That is why He suffered a hellish pain which was
severer than anyone in all eternity will ever be able to feel. His first
utterance from the cross had still been: Father, forgive them. But hardly had
this statement, by means of which He kept the world together through all ensuing
centuries (chaper 6, page 125), been spoken, before the venomous serpent of
human mockery crept up against His cross, and before the sputum of hate and
rejection attached itself to His forsaken soul and spirit.

Truly this was the mockery of hell. And it was more than that.

Now faith must sing a hymn of love for Him and about Him. For it is precisely by
means of this spiritual disruption and captivity that He became for those who
accept Him the better Mediator, the complete Mediator, the satisfying Surety.

We said that in the suffering of the mockery of hell He was the better Mediator.
The better . . . that seems to suggest that there was another. Yes, there was
another Mediator in the Old Testament. The Bible itself gives him this title and
calls him by name. His name was Moses.

Moses also had the idea of a substitutionary suffering in his mediator’s soul,
and had presented it to the God of spirits and had asked whether God would not
provide a satisfactory development of it by carrying it out in his own body and
soul and spirit. We are told of this in Exodus 32. When Israel had dared to
undertake a service of idols with its many idolatrous forms around the “golden
calf,” Moses, fearing that the initial vengeance of the Judge would not satisfy
Him, had offered himself as a sacrifice. This people have sinned a great sin, he
says to God; yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin — and if not, blot me, I
pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written (Exodus 32:31-32). This event
reveals the mediator’s soul which was in Moses. His love would exert itself for
the preservation of others and stand ready to be the sacrifice itself. He is
willing to be cast out into the sea of perdition by God if this substitutionary
endurance of the curse will only serve to keep the ship of the others upon the
sea of the promise. Yes, indeed, that is what human beings call “love” and an
act of love. And this act is so great as is seldom seen in the world. It is the
kind of motivation which also came to expression in Paul’s writing later on in
which he said that he could wish to be cursed for the sake of his brethren
(Romans 9:3).

Nevertheless this does not gainsay that the mediator’s love in Moses was a false
love and one which was helpless to redeem. We called it a false love, for Moses’
offer to satisfy God for the guilt of others was in principle unrelated to the
justice of God. He wanted to and he dared to dictate to God in the form of a
prayer the way in which it could be done. This he did two times (Exodus 32:11-13
and Exodus 32:32). This he did instead of trembling and living and thinking on
the basis of God’s revealed Word and Counsel and Justice. To which we must add
by way of aggravating and also by way of explaining the sin, that Moses broke
into pieces the two tables of stone on which the first written words ever given
men were inscribed, and that He did this between the two acts of prayer. Thus
the primary task of the Mediator, the transmitting of the written word,[1] was
neglected. Hence there was no preservation of the bond of the law, and hence we
must call his love a false love.

[1] “Gave the law into the hands of the mediator” (Hebrews). But the love of
Moses is also helpless to redeem. Moses is not a second Adam, he is not a
covenant head. He cannot by means of his own death include all others with him.
He is but “one” among many. Strike Moses’ name from the book and that book will
simply contain one name less. More than that has not happened. In this respect
the Christ is a greater than Moses. He is not merely one among many but as the
Covenant Head and as the second Adam He bears all men within Him. If God strikes
His name from the book of life, from the list of those who may speak freely
before the gate of heaven, all other names will simultaneously be stricken from
that book and that list. “All have been crucified with Him, buried with Him, all
have died with Him.” And hence all were with Him in the mockery of hell. But
there is another thing which demands our attention. As Moses climbed the
mountain — surely the admirable deed of a calm soul and a strong spirit! — in
order to present the offer of his substitutionary sacrifice to God, there is
nothing poor or pitiable in him. In fact, he has much that is humanly desirable.
There was no paradoxical confusion in him, nor did he suffer the mockery of
hell. On the contrary, the fragrance of love issued from him. Not a single human
being was clenching his fist against him. A whole camp of miserable people was
hoping for the victory of Moses. He was, in fact, the aristocrat, the dazzling,
the great, the strong soul. No, he was not caught in a paradoxical conflict, for
he had carefully worked out his self-conceived plans for redemption. He had no
fewer than three of these plans to suggest to the Lord. The first plan was: to
preserve the nation as a political unit, to overlook the sin as a sin of the
whole people (Exodus 32:12). The second: to spare a definite remnant, namely,
which Moses had left after a punishment he had felt free to execute. The third
proposal, a subsidiary one: to preserve that remnant minus one (Exodus 32:32 b).
Now Moses had conceived all of these plans in his own heart; apparently the
ancient mediator had various “methods” at his fingers’ tips. The method of a
substitutionary suffering was his last resort, the one to be used only if the
other plans were, God knows why, unacceptable.

Now it is plain that the man who approached God in this way was further removed
from a paradoxical struggle than anyone conceivable. He was perfectly willing to
suffer death but in dying he had to be the great aristocrat.

Now place overagainst this mediator of the Old Testament the better Mediator of
the new. In Him there is not the least hint of a “system” of redemption which
has been conceived in His own heart. In Him there is but one thing: the Word. I
must ... I must ... it is meet for me — those are the terms of justice and
redemption which He has gleaned from the Scriptures. Precisely because the way
of redemption is but one way and precisely because the plan of salvation is but
one plan He is being plagued very terribly and being placed in the terror of
paradox. If only He could but for a moment have turned aside and detached
Himself from the Scriptures and from what is written there about the person who
is cursed without the gate, all of His sorrows would have receded from Him at
once. Then He could have woven the laurel wreaths which would have been extended
to the eventual, more than aristocratic man of love around His own head with a
kind of blessed ecstasy. But the awful thing of the day is that the Word does
not present laurel wreaths as prizes of honor; it gives away only emblems of
shame to this Chief of those who love on the day of His greatest sacrifice. This
grieves Jesus sorely. The word which is at once lofty and lowly simply must be
expressed: Why? Why? He simply cannot reach, He cannot touch God. The system is
so terrible because it is absolutely inevitable and is based on a relentless
sovereignty. Moreover, who has believed His love? There is not a single one
yearning for preservation who cares to look up to Him as the rest of Israel once
looked up to Moses in his final approach to God. Here are two murderers who are
mocking Him, the one on the right and the other on the left. He is suffering the
mockery of hell. There is no form or comeliness in this non- apologetic Jesus.
He sinks away into nothingness beside Moses. This is purely a question of grace.

Purely a question of grace. Just because it is that we love Him. For He proves
to us that He is the final Mediator precisely by this paradoxical silence as He
suffers hell’s defiance. That was the second point we made above: that He was
the final, the perfecting Mediator. This Mediator had been thrust into the
narrownesses, into the grottos of His paradoxical thoughts. This is but saying
that He not only transcended Moses: He also solved the problem of Moses. Moses’
“solution,” painful as it may have been to himself, was a very easy one. His
thoughts had not been limited but had remained free; in fact, they had remained
too free. He himself had drawn up his plans: A preferred plan, and a subsidiary
plan. Think how perfect Christ is as He stands overagainst this situation. His
thoughts are completely limited. While He is bound spiritually by the Word, God
and Satan turn the muskets of the spirit upon Him. Suppose for a moment that
Moses’ sacrifice had been accepted by God. Then death would have approached him,
borne on by a stream of fragrant incense, by the fragrance of a great,
incomparable love. And can you suppose that fire and sulfur would have been
hidden underneath the fragrance of this love? Had Moses ever thought of that
problem? But Christ Jesus did not draw an opportunistic argument of defense from
the empirical fact of His burning love; no such apology released Him from the
pain of contradictory thoughts. His practical reason did not come to the
assistance of His theoretical reason. He is not a Moses who can so avidly imbibe
the fragrance of his bottle of nard, of his incomparable love, that its delicate
scents, springing from his “beautiful soul,” draw out the vapors of fire and of
sulfur. But fire and sulfur were present in abundance in Christ Jesus, and the
stench of these could not be suppressed by anything save the revealed Word. The
terrible fact was that this dark vapor had become perceptible at all only
because of the Word. As Moses enters upon his hypothetical death he drives the
dank vapors ahead of him. But Christ struggles with God and with the Word and by
His own authority draws hell into His spirit. He draws hell and all its dank
vapors into Himself. He has kept all the commandments; nevertheless He must ask
God: Why? Why? He had to labor for hours before He could bring Himself to the
point of uttering even this one word. Moses thought he could pleasantly descend
into hell, but Christ is shocked, and trembles, and has no apology to present.
He is mute while the rabble heap on Him their raillery; He alone could say how
the venomous vapors of fire and sulfur cut off all knowledge and self-assurance
from Him.

Hence we conclude by looking upon Him as our Surety. He is our satisfying, our
compensating, our paying Surety. The act of suffering the mockery of hell was
the act of payment. Christ bore the mockery in our stead. The rasping language
of that passerby, the conscious mockery of the leaders of the people, even the
stuttering disdain of the man who hangs beside Him on the tree — all these are
appropriate here, they belong here. This is the burden of God’s justice which
weighs down upon Christ. And this is true in a double sense: in suffering the
mockery of hell He endures the natural results of sin (hell, after all is very
natural!), and He also makes amends for the arrogance of sin. Concerning the
first of these we must say that the sin whose penalty He bears for us has
separated man from God not only but from his fellow man also. The bloom of
social life can burgeon forth only in Paradise and can be enjoyed only in
Paradise. And, on the other side, the disrupting influence of sin is perfected
only in hell. Hence this same power of disruption had to devastate the Christ.
In this, too, He had to suffer what we deserve because of our sins. The mockery
which one condemned person hurls against another is not an artistically
conceived “device” of the last judgment but a natural “apparition” of the first
judgment, of the judgment, that is, which accompanies sin at its first advent.

Concerning our second consideration to the effect that Christ in suffering the
mockery of hell, is compensating for and atoning for the arrogance of sin, we
can say this. We may not permit our spirits to be guests at the banquet of those
arrogant ones who with a painful punctiliousness are perfectly willing to state
what that first movement of sin in the first Adam should be called. One such
specialist will say that this first transgression represented pride; the other
that it was unbelief; the third that it was doubt; and the fourth will name it
something else. We prefer to be classified with those who do not further divide
the general category of disobedience or lawlessness. But we can, at least, all
agree that sin, that the first sin, included pride among other things. Hybris is
the word used for it in these days; and hybris means — arrogance, pride. Yes, it
was pride which induced man in Paradise to set up his ideas, and the ideas of
Satan, overagainst the spoken word of God. It was pride in man which wanted to
analyze the order of God’s thoughts, and wanted to set man up as a critic of
those divine ideas and their order.[1] It was by pride that man did the deed
which issued naturally from this critical attitude and the standards which it
set up. All this was included in the essence and in the birth of the first sin.
The name of this was hybris. It was arrogance on the part of the created and
finite spirit.

[1] “Yea, hath God said?” He arrogates to himself the strength and right to
construct a system of God’s secret will in his own way without feeling bound by
God’s revealed will, and without standing awestruck in the presence of the idea
behind that revealed will. Taking this course man soon arrives at a second
autosuggestion. Then he claims that he has the right and the power to construct
a system of God’s concealed will which is in antithetical relationship to the
expression of God’s revealed will. And thus he finally arrives at the act of
setting up such a construction, and of regarding it as something which has truth
and reality. This is “being like God.”

Now the second Adam must compensate for this arrogance of the first; He must
suffer for it and die the spiritual death. The pride of Adam is now being judged
and punished in the paradoxical distress of Christ.

God breaks down this pride by means of the paradox. No, this is not saying that
our pride is broken the moment we desire the paradox. To desire the paradox is
to play with fire, to play with the bonds of the spirit, to play with what is
hellish in character. And Christ did not desire the paradox. He dreaded it. He
suffered because of it just as He suffers under all things which issue from
hell. Nor is our pride broken when we regard the paradox as our normal fate, as
a sure symptom and regularly accompanying phenomenon of a pious life. For our
fate, precisely by appropriating to itself the Christ of God as the Surety for
our sin, must bow before the revealed word and the revealed promise. It must bow
before that word which assures us that Christ by the captivity of His thoughts
guaranteed liberty to ours and opened the doors of the prison in which our
thinking spirits were held captive. We must bow before the Word which tells us
that the captivity of Christ’s thoughts assures us of the swallowing up of
paradoxical stress and death by the vanquishing power of God’s gracious Spirit,
a power which in virtue of Christ’s merits earned on the cross gives us
fellowship with God and the solution of His decrees of grace above all that our
spirit would divide and tear asunder. The faith of the Christian is willing to
acknowledge that it cannot reenact the cross of Christ, nor earn it. This
acknowledgment of faith which sees Him suffering what we may not want to suffer,
leads us to the conclusion that His paradoxical grief was unique, that He has
redeemed us from the distress of the paradoxical plagues, transplanting us to
the fellowship of the transcendent God.

Thus Christ takes His place, the place of the Surety, driven into a strenuous
narrowness. Thus we apprehend by faith what we cannot fathom with our minds:
namely, that in the paradoxical distress of Good Friday He was completely
humiliated by the binding of His thoughts, when these thoughts were driven to
and fro. These thoughts contradicted each other not because He doubted the
Scriptures but because of a successive, temporarily effected struggle with the
Scriptures.

Thus the Lord caused His Servant to make atonement. If this Servant had played
with paradoxes He would have perished because of His own guilt. Because He
shunned them as He shunned the judgment, He could be broken by that judgment. In
this He arrived at a nadir of the state of having no rights whatever, of a
non-apologetical relationship to justice, and of silence. Nevertheless He
thirsted for the Most High throughout. And this nadir was situated at the
opposite side of the mountain top of Adam’s tribe. O the depth of the misery
both of the achieving of knowledge and of the earning of wisdom of the Saviour:
how unfathomable God’s judgments were to Him and how untraceable were God’s
ways! Even the obedient soul had not known the meaning of the Lord creatively —
schopferisch. The Grand Pensionary of the Love of God could not be God’s
counselor in His own right. For of Him, through Him and to Him are all things.
To Him be the judgment in all eternity. Amen. When Christ had arrived at this
sub-paradoxical amen He had arrived at the nadir of His Suretyship. Then there
was no more possibility of progress for His thoughts. Irrespective of the place
at which His thought- conquest had begun, He again and again confronted this
paradoxical confusion. This was His passion. It was His. It could be the passion
of no other person. When God had become the “wholly Other” to Him, the
transcendent One, and when Jesus no longer could experience the comfort of the
immanence of God, He was in hell. The hybris of Adam was broken and conclusively
condemned. The second Adam no longer found room for His thoughts. In this the
proud conquest of Adam’s spirit was avenged. All of Adam’s schopferische ideas
are put to shame on Golgotha, are put aside, are mocked by God, by Raphael and
Michael. And Lucifer looks on, and gnashes his teeth. And what man, pray, would
not shudder in the presence of this reality? For God used those people standing
there at the foot of the cross in order to put His Son in distress, and in order
to disconcert His thinking.

Come down, come down, they shouted. It was a challenge to His power. This
challenge had been hurled into Jesus’ ears more than once. A wicked and
adulterous generation frequently asks for a “sign.” But Jesus must suffer under
His own prophecy: No sign shall be given this generation, save the sign of Jonah
the prophet. Now Jonah has been driven into his narrowness, and a greater than
Jonah is here. O yes, more than once they ask that Jesus perform a miracle and
show a sign. He never granted the request unless He was called to do so.

Never. But things had been different in the past than they are now. In the past
when He had refused to perform a sign for which no official mandate existed, the
“will not” was identical in Jesus’ consciousness with the “may not.” The
limitation had its other side in the lordship, in the self-assertion of God’s
self-conscious and goal-conscious Worker.

Today He hears a wicked and adulterous generation clamoring for a sign again,
for the last, for the greatest, sign. He may not perform it. He looks at the
coin of the prohibition, and lacks the courage to turn the coin around in order
to learn whether the other side is inscribed with the free will of Jesus the
Nazarene. He was not allowed to, inasmuch as tor the first time He was without
the gate. For the first time He lacked the courage to triumph in the pure and
unalloyed Word. And Satan’s wiles were not unknown to Him.

Only one thing He knows, and that is the justice of God. Yes, He had been a
child and had had to learn the nature of life. Now He was entering hell; now He
was a child living in the evil place. Again He had to learn anew, had to learn
how to take the first steps. But the hand of the Pedagogue hurt Him and led Him
along dark avenues. The Head of the covenant had to be mute among the rebels of
the covenant. He did not know what to say in response to all the reviling. He
did not know because of the paradoxical plague.

Because of the transgression of My people the plague of the paradox came upon
Him. Now He had reached the core of the matter. Now He faced the problem of
whether thought was free or restricted in the world, in a world in which every
thought is a created thought, although it wants to be creative(schopferisch).

Golgotha: counterpart of Paradise: apologetic hiatus.

Yes, at no time had it seemed easier to defend Himself than it did now. The
chances looked very favorable. Just visualize it: the speeches of mockery hurled
against Him were the poorest ever heard in the world. They were a denial of the
most superficial of human feelings. It was a contradiction of humanity and
humaneness itself and a repudiation of the simplest logic. Barabbas, the
Antichrist, and even I, we all can say, we could easily have opposed a good
defense to these mockers, for they represent the world at its worst. But Jesus
held His peace. Even here there was nothing more to say. His name was the second
Adam. That means He was the very beginning. Every beginning has its own laws.
The hammer of the word had bruised, had annihilated Him. He who was hanged upon
the tree was the curse. He dared not stand next to Job, for Job dared to put the
crown of apology upon his head. Nor did He dare to punish Job by means of Elihu.
There was but one thing to do: to be punished. And until He had suffered the
penalty, He dared not speak. To speak while under the burden of such a
punishment is to contradict. The paradox strikes one dumb before God. He who is
not struck dumb has not known it.


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  CHAPTER 17: 12. CHAPTER 12: CHRIST’S PARADOXICAL PLAGUE AND HIS FORGOTTEN CHAPTER
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C H A P T E R T W E L V E Christ’s Paradoxical Plague and His Forgotten Chapter
And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save
thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross ....

He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him
now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.

He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I
am the Son of God. —Matthew 27:40; Matthew 27:42-43. And the soldiers also
mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, And saying, If thou be the
king of the Jews, save thyself. And one of the malefactors which were hanged
railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. —Luke 23:36-37;
Luke 23:39.

WE return once more — and hope to do so again —(Chapter 13) to what we discussed
in our preceding chapter. We return to the subject of Christ as He suffers the
mockery of hell. In that awful hour of mockery He felt the terrible plague of
God, the Just One, bearing down upon Him. He was the incarnate Logos, He was
filled with the Spirit, He was bruised by His people. As such He felt hell’s
mockery weighing down upon Him. Consequently we cannot pass lightly over this
theme. We must devote our attention once and again to the plague of paradox
which accrued to Jesus, to the grief which the paradoxical motifs of His plagued
thoughts placed upon Him from the outside.

Someone may feel inclined to ask: Why all this discussion? Has not enough been
said about these things? Has not the mockery of all those people been
sufficiently discussed? Permit us to answer that the question is stranger than
any possible reply which we could give to it. We have pointed out in our
previous chapter that we should not devote our attention to those mockers but to
Christ, that it is because of Christ and not because of those who railed against
Him that this moment of mockery upon Golgotha is so terrible as it is and that
it deserves its own, unique place in our considerations. But that is not the
only reason. There is another reason which compels us to linger longer over this
spiritual conflict of the expressed thoughts of men against the repressed
thoughts of Jesus Christ. We must not forget that in this matter we are standing
overagainst the greatest riddle that was ever given in the world. We allude to
the riddle which God presents to us in the fourth utterance from the cross in
which Christ laments: “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” It is to that fourth
utterance from the cross that our ponderous thoughts would now proceed. We must
go there. We must go through that fourth utterance. We must pass underneath it.
But the moment we sense a little of the significance of this fourth statement
from the cross it at once becomes a crystallized mystery to us. There is not a
single riddle in the world which conceals so many unexplained things as this
unique statement uttered by Jesus at this time, Why? Why? Is this the mystery
that on the day in which He whose office it is to explain God Himself calls for
an explanation? It is. He, the One, who was sent out to put all those who are
asking their “why’s” at rest, cannot find rest Himself — that is the mystery. By
His “why” He leaves all those who would have an illuminating “therefore” in
embarrassment. That is the great mystery, the embarrassing circumstance in which
Christian thought here becomes confused. The “why” coming from the mouth of the
highest prophet really is the blind alley in which all Christian thinking seems
to run against a wall; it is the great den of lions of Christian wisdom from
which no one can escape by the ladders of his own thinking. That is why we
consider it very important that Christ seems to us to be caught in paradoxes. He
who is ensnared in the lassos of the paradoxically frightening God must perforce
ask his many “why’s,” and he cannot escape from them unless he should leave God
outside, God and the problem, God and the soul-rending paradoxes. But because
Christ cannot relinquish His hold on God in all eternity He must progress from
the many “why’s” to the singular “why.” He must utter the single “why” which
raises the basic with all the paradoxical experiences and troubles which fiend-
problem. Therefore Christ must continue to struggle, to battle, ishly accrue to
His spirit today. These paradoxes are at enmity with Him; they are antithetic to
Him in the holy war in which the incarnate Logos has become involved. Can you
suppose now that it is “superfluous” to linger long over the Christ while He is
ensnared in these paradoxical complications? No, we have not the qualifications
to analyze His “why.” The abyss of this acknowledgment of impotence which He is
constrained to make, the abyss which stands at the very center of the world’s
primary conflict, and in which the paradoxically plagued Mediator confesses that
He is defeated, is an abyss which no one will ever completely fathom. Hence, our
only purpose is the hope that by the great grace of God, we may, if we believe,
discover the lines which the Scriptures have laid down in delineating the
manifest character of His revelation. We would discover these lines also on the
campus paradoxalis upon which Christ has been smitten down, and on which He
seems to be the plaything of the winds of the Spirit, beaten to the ground, as
He is, by the efflux of hell, stifling under the venomous vapours which are
belched from so many cesspools. What has Christ to say to us? Or if in the
mystery of His paradoxical hour He has nothing to say to us, even if in this
mysterious period He experiences a paradoxical confusion of thoughts which
reciprocally consume each other — good, let it be so — what then has God to say
to us? What has God to tell us by means of the Scriptures? The Prophet holds His
peace. God refused to let Him speak in the world without the Scriptures. Hence
ours is the task of carefully and discriminatingly following Him in His
paradoxical confusion, by way of preparing ourselves thus to meet the plagued
Christ later in that deepest nadir in which the fourth utterance from the cross
must necessarily confront us. In studying these things, three considerations
demand our attention. This is the first one. Just what is it that those people
who are madding around His cross have against Him? Yes, we know they are merely
the loafers running about in the market-place of the spirit, but we know also
that, in spite of this, they have proved to be instruments of the mockery of
hell. Consequently, our first consideration must be: Just what is it that these
people are saying to the Christ? And this is the second issue of importance.
What are we to think of what these people say? What basis of criticism can a
Biblical approach give us for appraising the content of their raillery? And the
third and last important question is: How, both negatively and positively, does
the soul and spirit of Christ respond to all these things? What effect has the
mockery upon Him; or, to put it better, what does He, from His side, place
overagainst their reviling? We shall consider each of these points in order.

Just what is it that these people are saying about the Christ? What charges are
they making against Him? If we compare the several narratives of the Bible as we
find them spread out before us in the gospels, and if we lay these several
accounts next to each other, we see that they are raising six counts against
Him. First of all there is that well known maschil which we discussed frequently
in our second volume. The meaning of that is clear to us now. The maschil was
the inciting word of Christ telling them that they could break down the temple
and He would rebuild it in three days. Now they hurl the words back at Him: let
Him begin this miraculous building, they say (Matthew 27:40; Mark 15:30). In the
second place these mockers at the foot of the cross raise the issue of the
miracles which Christ had performed. They unmistakably acknowledge that He has
saved others. Perhaps they mean that He has rescued them from the general
distress of life. And it may also be that they are thinking of that
master-stroke by means of which He as a worker of miracles robbed death and the
grave of their loot. Lazarus! Hah! Let Him repeat that Lazarus-miracle! There
are three crosses here; He has a triple chance to repeat it (Matthew 27:42; Mark
15:31; Luke 23:35)! The third count they raise against Him concerns Christ’s
self-announcement as a King; it deals with the message of His royal
qualifications. If He is the King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross
(Matthew 27:42; Mark 15:32; Luke 23:37)! The fourth subject which has a place in
their raillery is Christ’s personal faith in God and the mystical communion that
has united Him with God. Yes, He has trusted God, has He? Then let God, if that
trust means anything, give Him answer now and rescue Him, for he who is not a
priest of Baal need not send up the prayer of Carmel in vain (Matthew 27:43).
Observe this: they seem to be able to step into the atmosphere of Carmel in a
moment; Carmel is not far removed from the sermon on the mount. The fifth issue
they raise is the theme of Christ’s Sonship before God. He has said that He is
the Son of God. That is at least what our translation states. But it may be
better to take a different translation and to agree with the general
observation, which asserts that these mockers really said: He said that He was a
child of God.[1]

[1] See Grosheide,Kommentaar op Mattheus,pp. 352, 353; and see also what we
shall say later about the centurion, and his utterance: Truly, he was a Son of
God (Matthew 27:43). And the sixth and last charge which they have against Him
is that Christ said He was the Messiah. At least He announced Himself as such.
Now if He is really that let Him draw up His festive procession, and come down
from the cross! We will gladly form a part of it (Luke 23:35; Luke 23:39)!

If we compare these various argumentations with each other, we must naturally
begin by agreeing that they are all confused with each other. We detect several
groups of mockers: the one group says this, the other that. The several groups
are specifically named. The members of the Sanhedrin contribute, the soldiers
make sure to add their part. Then there are those who are chance passers-by and
happen to look upon the spectacle. These, too, add their bit. And even those who
were crucified with Christ chime in with this well supported choir of hellish
mockers and revilers. We believe that we would be going too far if we should, as
some wish to, assign each specific piece of mockery to a specific group. On the
contrary, we may accept as a fact that these six points mentioned by the Bible
were confused with each other, and that the one group took up the cry of the
other. This is the course the mockery of hell takes. This is the false
appearance of solidarity; it is the caricature of solidarity.

We know that these mockers represented various stages of cultural development.
The one had attained a more complex level of general or theological development
than the other. The one had a better familiarity with the concrete events of the
day and of the outstanding moments of Christ’s public life and ministry than the
other. Consequently, it is remarkable that all of these groups can agree among
themselves about these specific points. We want to point out three counts on
which all of these mockers agree in their mocking. In the first place, they all
acknowledge that Christ has done miracles. They concede the fact that the man
who is hanging on the cross has performed wonders. They do not deny that forces
coming from “another world” — “another world” is a handy term for unbelief, that
is, for an unbelief which refuses to call it by its real name—have been loosed
in His life and that those wonderful potencies have come to expression in
specific effects which took the form of miracles. The registration-book in which
the wonders of Jesus of Nazareth were written has lain open to their
investigation for some time — they speak pedantically of unusual events. In the
second place they all characterize their raillery and typify their own spirit by
asserting that the conclusive miracle is still lacking, and that this one — alas
— simply has not yet been registered. Yes, the Nazarene has exhibited various
powers, and there are several entries of miracles in His journal. And, a person
might investigate them and find that they were authentically reported. What of
that? One wonder is still lacking. He has not yet saved Himself. That is the one
thing which should still take place. Imagine, if you can, a crucified person,
imagine this crucified person, coming down from his cross. If he could achieve
that, it would indeed represent the acme of miraculous activity, and it would
clear up all that which is still of a disputable character in his previous
wonders. The third point on which all these railers agree is that they can
boldly demand that this last wonder be performed now. They suggest that if he
does this needful thing, they will “believe” him. But they suggest also that as
long as this particular miracle is lacking they propose to reserve the right
also to investigate those other miracles critically, and to think of them
accordingly. They know all about it, they suggest. Beelzebub can also do tricks.
There are those who in disturbing times perform miracles through Beelzebub, the
chief of devils. And you need not think that good theologians are going to have
the fleece pulled over their eyes so easily. So much by way of a reply to the
first question which we put. The second question was this one: What must we
think of these charges, these counts raised against Christ? What evaluation must
a mind guided by the Scriptures place upon these revilings? In answering this we
do well to bear in mind that we can give our attention both to what they say and
to what they do not say.

What must we think of what these mockers dare to say? In answering this question
let us first reckon with the opinion of those who think that an ethical
seriousness still characterized these people who mocked the Saviour. And also
with those who believe that an unfortunate and pitiable misunderstanding was
responsible for their mockery. For there are some who hold that this was the
case.

Some believe that the Jews at the foot of the cross were thinking of a passage
taken from an apocryphal book, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, or at least that
a passage of that book is applicable to these Jews. The designated book is
clothed in the form of an admonishment, artistically put into the mouth of
Solomon, and directed to the pagan empires and pagan world-rulers. In this
admonishment the learning of Wisdom is glorified. The book itself was not
written by Solomon inasmuch as it has a later date. Opinions about the date of
this composition differ greatly. Some think it arose in the time of the
Ptolomies; some think of a more recent date; a few even adhere to the opinion
that it was written after Christ. The conjectures vary between a period
extending from 150 A.D. to 40 B.C.[1] You see that nothing has been definitely
ascertained. Hence it would be quite unwarranted to suppose that the Jews at the
foot of the cross were thinking of the Wisdom of Solomon.

[ See R. H. Charles, D.Litt. D.D., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the
OldTestament, volume 1, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1913, p. 521. According to
the argument of this book, Paul was familiar with the Wisdom of Solomon and
alluded to it in his letters to the Romans and to the Ephesians (p. 519).

Nevertheless there is another possibility. It may also be that the content of
the book inadvertently in one way or another runs parallel to or has a point of
connection with the spectacle of mockery which we are witnessing on Golgotha,
and, indeed, this apocryphal literature does touch on the mockery of hell which
grieves Christ on Golgotha. The passage which is usually related to this
panorama on Golgotha can be found in Wis 2:12-20. There the issue of the
relationship of divine wisdom to profane wisdom is raised. In the Book of Wisdom
a polemic is conducted against certain Jewish, philosophical free-thinkers of
the time in which it was composed.[1] [1] E. Kautzsch,Die apokryphen und
pseudepigraphen des A.Τ.,volume 1, Tubingen, Mohr, 1900.

First their argumentations and manner of conducting themselves is delineated
(Wis 1:16-16); then a portrait is given of those eminent but decadent Jews whose
picture is also delineated in the Book of the Maccabees. These same Jews, we
know, again and again are the theme of the writers of the psalms also. In
general, then, we can say that the first part of this book outlined the battle
which divine wisdom must carry on against the wisdom of the world.[3] It is in
the midst of this peculiar entourage of this aprocryphal piece of writing that a
very remarkable passage occurs. In chapter 2, verse 12, the wicked freethinker
himself is made the speaker. In fact the company of these decadents is seated in
council. They arrive at a kind of conclusion. They propose to keep a close watch
upon “the righteous” because he is always standing in the way of these
free-thinkers, and hindering them in their work. As a counter-stroke to the
discipline which “the righteous,” the law in his hand, always wants to exercise
against the wicked (verse 12), this group proposes to subject him to a kind of
judgment of God. The passage reads:

[3] Ibid, p. 483; see also1Ma 1:53-54; and then again see the reference on
Chapter 20, page 483, both toPsalms 22:9and toMatthew 27:43; and also p. 478.

He professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself the child of
the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to
behold: for his life is not like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion.

We are esteemed of him as counterfeits: he abstaineth from our ways as from
filthiness: he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed, and maketh his
boast that God is his father.

Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what shall happen in the end
of them. For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and deliver
him from the hand of his enemies.

Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that we may know his
meekness and prove his patience.

Let us condemn him with a shameful death: for by his own saying he shall be
respected.

You detect it at once: in this peculiar language which the author of the
apocryphal book puts into the mouth of a wicked coterie, mention is indeed made
of a certain judgment of God; according to the proposed test the righteous if
indeed he is righteous will prove to be righteous by the outcome. But if he
cannot by a miraculous escape from his distress prove that God is befriending
him, his pretensions to being a child of God will be proved vain. Then the
shameful degradation of such a person who is righteous in his own eyes will
serve to these people as a gift of God. It will give them permission to go on in
their careless way.

Some think that the problem raised in this passage in the Book of Wisdom was in
the minds of the mockers at the foot of the cross. These interpreters graciously
conclude that, especially among the scribes, a certain ethical and theological
seriousness characterized the raillery they heaped upon Christ. Might they not
in their own way have put the problem of the judgment of God here?

However, we said that another attempt was made, and that this one tried to
ascribe the brutal and uncouth mockery to a certain misunderstanding which
existed between Christ and His enemies. We are thinking in this connection of a
book which appeared not long ago, and which speaks in detail of these matters.
It is the work of a theologian who belongs to the so-called religious-scientific
school. This theologian maintains[1] that Christ’s familiar statement about the
destruction and rebuilding of the temple was really a kind of protest against
the temple made of stone. This is asserted on the supposition that the temple in
Jerusalem was far too beautiful to suit Him.

[1] By reference toActs 6:13ff. (Stephen), andAmos 9:11; see alsoActs 15:16.

Accordingly, Christ’s maschil was intended to be a kind of plea for a simple,
unadorned tabernacle, which, so far from being a display of splendor, might
serve as a spiritual dwelling place of God among His people. Does anyone feel
like asking how such a singular paraphrase of Christ’s statement could possibly
arise in the mind of this theologian? Well, according to him that other
explanation, familiar to us, which the Bible itself gives, and according to
which Christ meant His body by “this temple,” is a Pauline, allegorical
“distortion” of Jesus’ statement. The writer referred to thinks that to the Jews
it would have been a strange and unacceptable idea to believe that the body of
Jesus could be acknowledged as a dwelling place of God, as a temple. On that
basis, he argues that Jesus meant something quite different by His riddle than
is the usually accepted interpretation. According to him, Christ wanted to
protest against the temple as such in Jerusalem. The assumption is that the
building of the temple of Solomon was a sinful transgression against God and the
fathers. Christ in reference to those fathers would, according to this
interpretation, have preferred to limit Himself to the statement: God does not
dwell in a house made with hands and this, in turn, is taken to mean that God
does not dwell in a house made of stone, but in a tent, a tabernacle. Christ,
then,[1] was by means of the well known maschil condemning the proud temple with
its splendid adornment and exalted dome. Instead of it He wanted to return to a
tabernacle. The old tabernacle of Israel in the wilderness was as simple as the
temple was extravagant. Now, as this interpreter sees it, Christ wanted to
return to that tabernacle within three days. For Moses had also asked that
Pharaoh grant them three days for the exodus of Israel into freedom and for the
sacrificial feast in the wilderness (Exodus 8:27).

[1] According to this argumentation, a more or less conscious difference of
opinion must have existed between the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus and the
Saviour Himself. The Jews, deriving their argument fromExodus 36:8-38, appeal to
the unusual beauty of the old tabernacle, and wanted even more splendor and
adornment in the temple of God (now extant, or to.be built by the Messiah), but
Christ over against this desire for greater splendor wanted to adopt the line
indicated inAmos 9:11-15, and to deduce from it that the ideal temple of the
future should not be a proud and splendid one, but a simple and unadorned tent.
The God of the fathers had not lived in so formidable a temple but in a
tabernacle. What Jesus, then, had wanted to build in the desert during the three
days which elapsed between the feast of the Passover and the exodus into freedom
was a tent, for the worship of God by the faithful ones of the future. Might it
not be that the obscurities of the temple maschil partly provoked the
misunderstanding upon the part of the people and were a contributing cause of
the conflict with the official leaders of the people? May we not suppose that
behind the sarcastic word of the scribes this theological controversy lurked?
That is the question they ask.

Inasmuch as this issue touches our subject, we want to linger a moment over this
example of exegesis. We believe what follows will suffice to rule it out of
consideration. If the interpretation cited above were the correct one, Christ in
opposition to the Jews, who wanted to make their present temple even more
beautiful and dazzling, was entering a summons to return to the simple dwelling
place of God such as had been given the fathers in the form of the tabernacle
during their journey through the desert. We deny the justness of this
“explanation.” For good reasons, we believe.

Christ was not taking exception to the temple as such. He did not come to
destroy the temple, but to fulfil it. Moreover, Christ never stood in the way of
the progress of the vehicle of the history of revelation. Hence He never advises
a return from the temple to the tabernacle. That tabernacle had its place in the
wilderness, but that does not mean that the temple was not a desirable house,
nor that it might not be richer and more beautiful than the tabernacle in the
wilderness could be. Just as Christ had no objections to supplanting the
tabernacle when the time came for it, by the temple, so He has many objections
to returning to a tabernacle after the temple has been built. The work of Christ
never goes backward. Besides, it is unwarranted to say that a plain exegesis of
Christ’s maschil, an exegesis given by the Bible itself — saying that “the
temple” is to be taken as His own body — is nothing but a “distortion” in the
manner of Paul of a statement made by Jesus. Such an interpretation is in
conflict with what we regard as the truth in reference to the Holy Scriptures.

We shall let that suffice, and shall not discuss other ideas which might be
raised in refutation.[1]

[1] This consideration, for instance, that the “fulfillment”of the shadows of
the temple by a worship “in spirit and in truth”rules out the forms of the
tabernacle as well as it does the beautiful dimensions of the temple.

Moving as some of the alien interpretations may be, they cannot alter our
opinions. Even in full view of the objections raised, it seems to us that there
is nothing in the mocking and reviling on the part of the enemies of Christ
which can be characterized by an ethical seriousness or by a theoretical
“misunderstanding.” The mere fact that the mockery which they indulge serves to
unite the most diverse human types, and that the genteel members of the
community as well as the ordinary folk poured out the last remnant of their
humanity upon the crucified Nazarene, goes to show that the commentary to be
written about this occasion must not be drawn up on the grounds of humanity. We
saw that there were various groups here. There were passers-by. These, in
passing, could, hear only a few words, but once they heard them they immediately
joined in the chorus. There were the soldiers. A stray sound occasionally
reached their ears also, a rumor about a kingship which the crucified one had
arrogated to Himself. But they also take an eager part in the railing. How
little of seriousness there was in their bearing (even though they as a group
are placed on a par with all the other mockers in the gospel account), becomes
obvious from the fact that they in a quasi-spontaneous manner offered Him
vinegar[2] without: by any means wishing to quench His thirst,[3] No, we cannot
speak of ethical seriousness in reference to them, and not even of the most
superficial sympathy. And we have seen before what we ought to think of the
attitude of the Sanhedrin.

[2] Some think that this item in this connection (Luke 23:36-37) tells us
something which anticipates what is separately reported inMatthew 27:48,Mark
15:36, andJohn 19:29. Personally we believe, however, that this is not a just
interpretation, and agree with the opinions of others, among them Nebe, who
defend the attitudes presented in this study.

[3]The Greek can also be translated to mean: They came to offer him vinegar;
they came bearing vinegar with them.

No, we cannot agree with the interpretation of those who would mix the “clear
water” of genuine humanity with the filthy wine of demonic passion. The language
employed by the mockery and the defiance today is too terrible for that.
Frankly, is it not terrible to notice how they manipulate the word “faith” in
their reviling? “Come down from the cross, and we will believe you!”

They cannot succeed in getting beyond that point. They want a miracle and
preferably one which corresponds to their improvised stipulations. Without
having weighed the norms of the concept of a miracle, they at once definitely
stipulate the exact shape in which the greatest of wonders (greatest and primary
in their estimation) ought now to take place. And, they claim, the moment they
see this stipulated miracle, they will believe. But the true faith which is the
essence of religion and which unites men with God, and through Him by means of
love bears fruit, is completely ignored by those theologians and their
disciples. As long as these mockers are in a position to get no further than an
opportunistic theory about the wonder and power of the miracle, they will always
be able to escape from their own snares, when they are unexpectedly caught in
them. For before this time they also explained Christ’s miracles by assigning
them to Beelzebub the chief of the devils. That they can do again if He should
actually perform the miracle, for the Nazarene has for days and years spoken to
them about the miracle and its source. The moment He had chosen to perform their
miracle, the discussion would immediately have begun anew. Even if Christ should
come down from the cross, they will not believe, and will prefer to assert
themselves by characterizing this last wonder by the Nazarene as the deftest
show which prince Beelzebub has yet presented.

Moreover we can see how little of theological earnestness was in them by noting
from the whole complex of argument which they present that in their estimation
the true king of Israel cannot be humiliated. If Jesus is the king of Israel,
let Him come down from the cross! So they concoct a kind of dogmatics which
leaves no room for faith in a king of Israel who is in a state of humiliation.
But their own literature has very frequently referred to a Messianic King who
achieves His glorification only through the experience of humiliation. Their own
literature contains references to it, but it is necessary to state that the
problem there is put much differently than it is in the letters of Paul, and in
the whole of the Scriptures themselves.

Go on now, and you will touch on even deeper abysses of sin. We have already
stated that the.tr spitefulness reminds us of Psalms 22:7. In that psalm also
the poet complained about mockers who “shake the head” and say: He trusted on
the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in
him; let Jahweh deliver him, for Jahweh delights in him! The question might be
asked whether on this occasion there is a conscious quotation or allusion to
Psalms 22:7-8. Certainly it is foolish to think that each of these gapers at the
cross could literally have remembered Psalms 22 or have quoted from it. But what
of the scribes? They knew how to quote Bible texts, and how to apply them in
their own manner. Indeed we may accept the fact that among these there were some
who knew that in Psalms 22 a righteous person is speaking to whom the wicked say
that he must go through a judgment of God if he is to prove his conscience
clear. And these scribes know also that according to the logic of that psalm
this tormented righteous man cannot perform a single external sign by which to
externally demonstrate his righteousness before God. If these scribes were
thinking of this text, that is just so much more proof of their demonic mockery;
then indeed they are playing with fire; then they most certainly demonstrate
that they are tearing the psalm apart and are recalling only that part of it
which will not incriminate them at once in the eyes of those standing by. But if
they had known what it means to tremble at the Word they would have dreaded a
flippant game of words as men dread death, especially a game of words in which
the role of the wicked is delineated. They would have found it just a little too
“risky” to put the words of the poet of Psalms 22 into the mouth of the
Nazarene, for that poet, although he was plagued and forsaken by God
nevertheless was a classic example of one who was righteous before God but whose
apology would not be effective until it was presented in heaven. And yet David
was used as an exordium of a salutary influence and life on an earth which
simply will not understand. In touching on this point we come to the second
question which, as we said originally, requires our attention: What standards of
evaluation does the Bible give us for appraising these mockers and their
mockery, with a view to what they do not say. Why do they obscure the issue in
Psalms 22? How does it happen that these fine heads can tear all problems into
bits today? The reason is not unrelated to the general truth of the day: namely,
they have no eye for Christ’s priesthood. Their thoughts persistently ignore the
great question of the ministration of reconciliation, of the idea of the offer,
of the ministration of satisfying, compensating love. We can say that God is
being wounded anew in His soul because no one of all those who are shouting so
loudly ever touches on the subject of His “forgotten chapter.”

Just what was that — that “forgotten chapter” of Christ? What do we mean by that
phrase? We have used it before. We referred to it in so many words in the second
volume of this work, but we alluded to it also in the first volume. In our
second volume, you remember, we discussed Christ exlex and His forgotten
chapter. We noticed that this “forgotten chapter” was the priesthood[1] of
Christ; it was the law of satisfaction, of reconciliation with God by means of a
satisfying sacrifice. Throughout the trial not a single word was devoted to that
subject. The kingship, yes, and the prophetic office of Christ were referred to,
but the priesthood was not once raised in the discussion. But in our first
volume also we already confronted the tragedy of the “forgotten chapter.” It was
necessarily a part of the chapter which bore the title, “Christ Welcomed— and
Travestied,” There too we notice that the people who are madding around Jesus
like to glory in His might and His wonders, are perfectly willing to linger over
the concept of His kingship, but refuse to devote a moment’s attention to His
priesthood, to His will for reconciliation by satisfaction.

[1]Christ on Trial, Chapter 23, p. 428 f. The same theme returns now. Read those
speeches of mockery again. There are references in them to Christ’s prophetic
office, for those who mock acknowledge that the wonders are signs, and the
prophet becomes manifest in the sign. They also allude to the kingly office of
Christ, for they acknowledge that His wonders are ‘powers”; and it is the king,
the bearer of might and force who is manifested in these “powers.” But there is
no one who thinks of Christ as a priest; no one even alludes to the idea of the
priesthood; no one thinks of the miracles as a gift, as a gift in the absolute
sense, as gifts of a sovereign love, whose giving is always absolute, and whose
receiving therefore is impossible. No one thinks of the fact that in the wonders
of Christ a love is coming to the fore, a love which gives, a love in which
influences of healing are given expression, influences of healing which will
presently consume the physician himself. For if they had thought of that, their
defiance would no longer have been significant. Then all their fabricated
learning or banal ignorance would have become immediately apparent; then all
could have seen at once that they were miles away from the real problem of the
day.

Surely, this was a tragic omission. For now we can point to three moments in
which Christ was publicly placed overagainst the people, and in which the issue
of His priesthood proved to be His forgotten chapter. These three moments have
been assigned to each of the three volumes respectively. The first of these was
that of the entry into Jerusalem. Then the crowd spoke of Christ’s deeds and
powers,[1] but not of His priestly sacrifice. On that occasion we saw Christ
glorious — and His forgotten chapter. The second moment took place when in our
second volume we saw the rulers and the people together speaking of Christ as
the eventual King and Prophet, but being deathly silent upon the subject of His
priesthood.[2] There we saw Christ exlex — and His forgotten chapter. And so we
come to our third volume and find Christ ensnared in the paradoxical riddles,
find that He is being mocked even unto death, that He is being cast into the
mockery of hell, and that He is mute among all these people who speak of
everything save His priestly love. This is Christ paradoxalis— and His forgotten
chapter.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,Chapter 8, p. 121 f.

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 23, p. 428 f.

Well, if the whole mass of Christ’s executors completely deny His priesthood
then it is apparent that the defiance, the proud mockery which they heap upon
Him does not even touch the essence of His own problem. We knew this beforehand:
now it becomes obvious also. Mockery could never be as shallow as it is here,
never as stupid and ridiculous as it is now. One step farther, and we would
indeed touch on the hellish; and one definition of what hell is can be said to
be this: the acme of the ridiculous. We are not trying to write exciting
literature, but have wanted to contribute an answer to the second of the three
questions we originally asked. In the last analysis, of course, we are not here
to judge these people. A better question —- our third question — demands an
answer: How did Christ respond to all these things, and what was His reaction to
them? The answer to this huge question is this short reply: Jesus held His
peace. No, this time we are not citing a “bible text.” We do not find those
words actually written. The fact that we do not find it seems remarkable to us
at first. In the account which the gospels gave us of the course of the trial we
hear it said again and again: But Jesus held His peace. And as often as we
paused to consider these words, we noticed that they contained a profound
significance. And it is not surprising that we should at first expect to find
this characteristic comment included in the narrative of Golgotha also. But it
may be that the Bible this time purposely omits mention of Christ’s holding His
peace because — here upon Golgotha, “without the gate” — His silence may be
taken as self-evident.

Yes, indeed, the silence of Christ during the mockery which He suffers in this
dark hour is self-evident. That becomes apparent if we simply pause to
appreciate the conclusive significance of this particular moment, and the
difference between His legal status before and after His passing “through the
gate.” For what is more “natural” than the silence of the exlex, of the man who
has not the right to present an apology? The first thing to excite our marvel
was Christ’s silence in the presence of His judges. We wondered at that. Why?
There He still had the right to speak; in fact, He was expressly asked,
summoned, to speak. But here, upon Golgotha, Christ sinks to a plane beneath
that other one; the question about whether He may or may not speak is no longer
a disputable issue. He is sinking down into “bottomless” slime, He has become
for us a lost person who, precisely because He endured the mockery of hell, no
longer has the privilege of free speech, inasmuch as He no longer can think
freely and thus set up His self-defense. Pro domo — that is the most useful term
with which to describe a person who would speak for himself. But how can Christ
pronounce a pro domo here? He is here in the stead of all His people, and
inasmuch as His people in their lost condition cannot but be silent as they
listen to the charge of God’s vehement wrath, Christ also stands mute. This is
the hour and the power of the children of hell; these are bringing Him the
deserved wages of sin, the anti-social power of death. [1] [1]Christ on Trial,
Chapters 7-9, pp. 142-194.

Christ is silent; He leaves the mockery of hell unanswered. In so doing He is
revealing His passive obedience, His endurance of God’s ministration of
punishment. Unhesitantly He spurns self-defense. His thoughts which have been
frustrated in their course do not even conceive of an apology, or think of
entering one where none belongs: the place of absolute excommunication. He reads
all the proverbs of the Scriptures, also all those which shut off every avenue
of escape from one who is hanged upon a tree on the other side of the walls. He
does not contend with the world, and does not begin at the beginning. He has
just performed His “extreme service of the Word.” Now He comes to the Judge who
has been basically maligned by His own, by His mystical body.

Christ’s silence therefore means something different now than when we saw Him
stand mute before. His silence before His judges proved to us, in our second
volume, to be a legal act. It was an insistence upon the maschil,[1] that is, a
prolongation of the judgment of separation, of sifting, set loose by the Word,
and a calm re-authentication of all the obligations which Israel and all its
colleges of law, and in another sense Pilate also, had not yet satisfied. His
silence was an act of authority[2] as long as He stood before the judges. In His
silence He condemned them more firmly than they Him; within Him He was conceding
the same thought which, some day, having arrived at the end of the revelation of
the Scriptures, He would say, He would inspire in Revelation 22:11 : He that is
unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy be filthy still, and he
that is righteous be righteous still; and he that is holy let him be holy still.
Such was the law of separation; such was the eschatological law of sifting.

[1]Christ on Trial,Chapter 5, p. 104 f.

[2]Ibid,pp. Chapter 5: 104 f., Chapter 5: 112 f., Chapter 19: 357 f., Chapter
19: 364 f., Chapter 21: 399 f., and Chapter 21: 403 f. But the situation is
different now. Christ’s silence upon Golgotha was a vital and powerful and
significant appropriation of the curse. He who as an accursed person no longer
had the right to apologize, refuses to take that right now by stealth. His
silence now is an expression of conscious weakness. It is judgment.

Weakness — this is a word which we easily misunderstand. Therefore we wish to
add at once that in using it we do not refer to a weakness of “character” (if we
may set this theological piece of folly down on paper); it was not a subsiding
of courage; it was not a disheartened relinquishment of a struggle which seemed
to be “useless anyhow.” For this kind of “weakness,” this kind of defeatism,
would immediately have thrust Christ outside of the possibility of fulfilling
His messianic task. No, in calling His silence weakness we mean by that to refer
to the absolute helplessness of one who in very justice bears the judgment of
God. It is God who fetters His lips and who forbids and practically hinders Him
from speaking out against God on the basis of the right of His nature, His human
nature, as if these had any rights at all outside of their connection with law
and justice. His human nature is not a phenomenon “an sich.” For today Christ
must speak and maintain His silence purely in terms of His office, an office
which was instituted by justice and circumscribed by justice, an office which
has delineated and delimited Him in all His movements, including the movements
of His spirit. Everything He is still to say after this time, all those
utterances from the cross, all those explosions in the spiritual world, will
have to be uttered by force of an inner convulsion and uttered before the
tribunal of the Chief Lawgiver. Every privilege of free speech which He is to
exercise after this, beginning at once in the second utterance from the cross,
must be expressly earned.[1] It must be a Samson’s burden for which He must
struggle with God. And hence Christ may not antithetically make Himself as He is
in His naive “nature” a sort of focal point for a group of accidentally
congregated spectators who in that specific little spot of the world, under a
given constellation, raise the question of the Nazarene and His peculiar “case.”
Golgotha is not “a specific little spot” of the world, for Christ now is in
hell; and the moment of Golgotha is not “a given moment” in the history of the
world but it is high noon of the one day of the Lord, the Day of Jehovah; and
the group at Golgotha is not an accidental conglomeration of people who raise
the case of a historically conspicuous Jesus in their discussion. What we have
here is simply and solely the great dialogue between God and creature, between
God and man, between God and the covenant- breaking communion, between Him whose
privilege it is to demand and those whose duty it is to comply.

[1] We shall discuss this and the power to earn this privilege in the next
chapter.

If that is the situation, “a certain Jesus” has nothing to say, for “a certain
Jesus” does not exist; He who is here is the second Adam, and He is arriving at
the critical point of the workday of the world. Consequently, the “historical
Jesus” has nothing more to say; that is, no “specific” word, no “specific”
expression, no “specific” datum, no “specific” count, no “specific” action which
might become the subject of discussion among such a chance aggregation of
people. But one thing is in order here; and there is but One who draws up the
program of speakers, and who assigns the roles of speaking and of being silent.
That One is God; He is in charge of everything; and He opens no discussion which
would be an unrelated “part” of the whole.

Therefore Jesus is silent as these mock Him. It was self-evident. For these
people talk about a certain text, about a certain allegation, and about a
certain remarkable predication which has struck their dull attention. These they
have gleaned from the discourses of the Nazarene. If Christ were to respond to
such mockery after He had ministered the last service of the Word, now that He
was in the curse, He would be speaking out of order. Then He, now that the
great, fundamental problem of all thinking and living and speaking is being
discussed, would have been acting like someone who takes a specific subpoint
from the periphery of a problem, and accentuates it as a way of distracting
attention from the main issue. Then Christ would immediately have departed from
the imperious style of the hour. Hence Jesus holds His peace. This becomes so
clear to us, that after His last service of the word, He did not once address a
direct, antithetical condemning speech to men. In this He appropriates to
Himself the right of God who is transacting everything, that is, the one thing,
in this hour of His condemnation. He is so essentially silent, that mention is
not even made of the fact.[1] Never was anyone so essentially mute; not even He
Himself at any other time. We know, then, that Christ did not give a single
detail of His messiahship to the argumentative people for discussion. Neither
antithetically nor by way of predicated thesis did He raise any one of the six
“points” they named. Formerly, when He was their teacher, He always traced
everything back to the main issue, and now that He wants to be our Surety He
maintains His silence in reference to that same fundamental major issue. Now
these people are forgetting that “chapter” of His office which is called the
priesthood. They are forgetting the idea of the sacrifice, of God’s will to
minister, of the Messianic self-surrender prompted by burning love. And having
forgotten that, nothing they may say besides concerning Him can have any worth.
Therefore Christ assumes the burden of His destiny, He assumes the denial
confronting Him, and bows low under the misery of the punishment of hell. And a
rule of hell is that the people who understand the secret, the mystery, of no
one have the most to say about everyone.

[1] Before someone raises a question about it, we wish to remark that in a later
chapter we hope to speak of the place and the mutual relationships of the other
utterances from the cross, the statement to the murderers, to Jesus’mother and
disciple (in which the “particulars” of daily and personal life are also given
their place). By assuming the burden of this silence Christ became the Man of
sorrows in the strongest possible sense of the word. We said before that as a
proposer of His maschil He had to become entangled in the skeins of His own
yarn.[2] Now this is being fulfilled in its most terrible sense. For Christ has
fatigued the people with His riddles, has, in the form of a servant been
wandering around with the Chief Wisdom, and by presenting the problem of the
three-day restoration of the temple has incited the animosity of all theologians
by profession. Today, on Golgotha, is the day of the reckoning. Now all those
riddles are turned against Him. He must experience the fact that even that small
suggestion of respect which all proposers of riddles generally may count on does
not exist for Him, inasmuch as He has made a “great mistake” in the estimation
of the people. He did not increase the number of the riddles, He did not solve
one problem by presenting another, nor cover up one mistake by another, after
the fashion of the interesting proposers of problems belonging to the school of
false prophecy. But He always forced these poor ponderers and pedantic
professional people back to the one problem which was not yet solved. He raised
the maschil about the temple again and again as a problem throughout these
years. Who had ever seen so arbitrary a master of riddles? Away with Him!

[2]Christ on Trial,Chapter 4, pp. 92-94.

Now the masses avenge themselves after their own fashion. The crowd knows
nothing, and therefore acts as though it knows everything. The man on the street
without any investigation whatever poses as though he knows all about it: there
are six counts against Him! But He assumes His fate, He accepts the profoundly
human grief of this suffering, the suffering of being travestied and mocked in
the most peculiarly personal intent of His life. He stands silent overagainst
those people, because He is so essentially mute overagainst God. Whoever has
entered into the great dialogue with God does not have to cover his ears against
what those who are standing next to him are muttering; for he has an ear only
for God. This is the passive obedience! But this silence is also characterized
by an active obedience. How shall we describe the task of this active fidelity?
Perhaps we can visualize it best by thinking of what the Bible calls “committing
himself to Him that judgeth righteously.”[1] Yes, we are all familiar with that
text: “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he
threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.” But do
we give enough attention to the power, to the activity of this act of
“committing Himself?” Well, If we read tills word in reference to the Lord Jesus
Christ in the light of what in our “sensitive moments” we regard as edifying for
ourselves, then this essentially powerful word “committing,” even though it is
used here in reference to Christ, takes on a prosaic and frail significance. So
frail does its connotation become that it communicates nothing to us but a kind
of dull resignation, a kind of “letting it go at that.” Then it means nothing
more than to do nothing, to be passive, to be inactive. But if we look upon the
word from the viewpoint of Christ (the right method!), “committing” means a
definite act, a deed, a deed which is persisted in, and is repeated again and
again.[2] Committing may be taken to mean “giving oneself over.” Well, the act
of “giving” is indeed an act; hence that of “giving over” connotes a conscious
surrender, it suggests going to the judge, begging audience from him, and then
purposely presenting our case to him. Whoever “commits” his case in that way
cannot remain passive, for a passive person remains at home and does not try to
obtain an audience with the judge. The active person, on the other hand, does
something. He calls on the judge, and declares himself incompetent, he achieves
the active deed of “committing.”

[1] See1 Peter 2:23(imperfectum); active deed.

[2]Dr.S.Greijdaanus,Kommentaar op de brieven van Petrus,
etc.(Amsterdam,Bottenhurg); see commentsespecially on1 Peter 2:23(persevere in
perfectum).

Hence we can say that Christ is busy. Precisely because He is “without the
gate,” and because He acknowledges the punishment of God which allows Him no
privilege of free speech, He goes actively upon the way of the incompetent, the
way to the only Judge. Step by step He goes, actively, in His thoughts. He is
actively obedient and in being this reckons with the time and manner of it. His
thoughts have been driven into their narrowness; this was His paradoxical
plague. His thoughts were not allowed to go on; He finds Himself in the one, in
the absolutely real dialogue; God has entered into the crevice and he who has
become a Balaam cannot get through the passageway. But He has seen God and the
sword in time, and He does not strike at the dumb beast, or at anything or
anyone in the world. He is silent and does the deed. He puts the case into the
hands of the judge. He has pondered all these things, and speaks to God so
basically that He does not say a single word audibly; because of that it is that
He can be so essentially mute overagainst these people. In this obedience He
separates Himself from all the children of hell who in their mockery wish to
annihilate Him, that is, who wish avidly and eagerly to entice Him into their
circle. But it is just the fact that He gives His case into the hands of the
Judge which does not hold true of these children of hell. If only there were one
soul in the realm of eternal darkness who would put the case of the revilings
and mockery into the hands of the Judge, then at that point the bottom of hell
would be split wide, and a human being would begin to be rescued from the claws
of Satan. That would be the case even if he were to do nothing more than to say
something opposed to the mockery of the others, something desperate about the
disruptive influence of hell, that great and wrecked community. That is, of
course, if a beginning and a “becoming” were still possible there. But no one
there will ever do what Christ is doing here.

That, then, is one thing. Christ isolates Himself from the children of hell. In
the second place, He also vanquishes them by that means, He overwhelms them, He
purchases for Himself the jurisdiction over their coterie. By actively giving
Himself, together with the world, over to the righteous Judge, the Servant of
the Lord, the second Adam allowed God to remain the Judge over the whole world.
And this kingship of God He acknowledged precisely in the spiritual world: there
the principles of the fundamental law are being maintained or denied. In that
spiritual world, where it was most difficult, He transferred to God and the
Father the right to rule. This He does before He plunges into eternal death,
just as He will do it again before He conducts everything into eternal life.

Now this active obedience again, as ever, merges with the passive obedience in a
single act. We said before [1] that Christ isolated Himself in the catastrophic
curse. The bitter fruits of this self-isolation He assumes now in the moment of
this silence both in its active and its passive side. He eats that which is His;
He eats His own food. At bottom there is no such thing as real isolation, save
only among the lost. To be the object of the mockery of hell — that is to be
isolated. Reverence Him now: He began the isolation of His curse in the form of
prayer: Father, forgive them. Now He has completed it by actively committing all
that was His to the Judge of heaven and earth. Thus He persevered in prayer. In
His silence, also, He persisted in the prayer of the first utterance from the
cross. He prayed perfectly, for prayer at bottom is committing oneself to God.
It is actively proceeding towards the prayer which will constitute His last
utterance from the cross: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Prayer is
to acknowledge in faith (an active deed therefore), it is to acknowledge God as
He is in exercising the right of infinite or [2] of the elemental election, of
the prime decision. Prayer is an active self-expression to the Father and a
simultaneous, conscious attachment of the self to the Judge. To pray is to put
oneself in the right position overagainst God, and therefore involves accepting
the consequences. For Christ it means that He be given the privilege to put all
things in the right position overagainst Himself. Thus Christ was isolated in
the curse, as He prayed the “messianic” prayers of the servant. He was alone.
And He who stands alone is silent.

[1] Chapter 7.

[2] In this connection these two are the same. May the church now praise its
Surety, who held His peace in hell and there recognized God as the Judge. Now we
dare to speak of the “Suretyship”; now we know that in our stead He suffered the
mockery of hell. When His spirit was driven into the one, unique, and utter[1]
narrowness, when He suffered the conflict of thoughts, and the inhibition of the
stream of His thoughts, He consciously bound Himself to the ideas of God. At
this time He did not dare to pronounce His maxims aloud unless God Himself had
written them upon His conscience as the articles of the Constitution of the
Kingdom. In this we see the Christ as one who dared to transcend His own
confusion only by the grace of God. He had been cast into the paradoxical
confusion. He wants to transcend this, He is eager at heart to conquer it. But
only in obedience. The “Satz des Widerspruchs” could not, as a quietistic
argument which would distract His thinking from God, comfort Him for one moment.
He was not permitted to find peace in a self-determined sabbath. God was His
sabbath and for the remainder — there was only the plague of His suffering.

[1] Eschatological. In a separate chapter we shall in fear and trembling try to
say how He conquered this plague of suffering. We shall not discuss that now.
Today we wish to ponder but one thing. We want to see that Christ in the plague
which came upon Him because of the paradoxical strife entertained the forgotten
chapter of the love of His Suretyship in His own soul and spirit, and preserved
it there for Himself and His people. Today it suffices for us to know that He
did not in order to cling to it have to look upon the idea of Suretyship
according to which God determined His priesthood, and His priestly sacrifice,
and the opening of His heart to all that was lost, antithetically. He did not
have to look upon that idea of Suretyship antithetically in order to preserve it
overagainst the people who reviled Him. Instead He grasped that idea anew,
struggled with it again, clung fast to it, and reorientated Himself to it in His
own personal struggle. This He did first before God and then before the people
who were bound to His spirit. “Set me as a seal upon thy arm,” says a soul who
is looking for a bride’s comfort. “Put your name upon my back as the mark of a
burning brand,” said the Slave[1] who was here exercising religion before God.
His saying was first, His saying counted.

[1] Christ “in the form of a servant” (Philippians 2); in spirit also.

How glorious is He who by means of His own human[2] spiritual faculties always
kept clearly before His mind that which every one forgets; He kept it before His
mind constantly, unintermittently, continuously, permanently.[3] Is He not the
most Beautiful of the children of men? Wholly different — as far as sin is
concerned?

[2] This will be discussed further in the following chapter.

[3] Imperfectum; see1 Peter 2:23(imperfectum); active deed. For we human beings
if we are honest must acknowledge that the man who rails against us, and
persecutes us, that the man who mocks and defies and pursues us with his ugly
caricature, very frequently is as necessary to us as bread, inasmuch as he in
spite of himself often does us a great service. Does us a great service? Yes,
for there is such a phenomenon as “ressentiment”[4] in psychology. We shall not
enter upon the question of whether those who in our days talk about this most[5]
are leaving things in their proper positions. But in general it is true that
many people raise a given subject again and again in the presence of others or
in their own minds simply because the oppositions they encounter in their
enemies, or the mockery which clever caricaturists employ lingers in and incites
their mind to constant defense. There are people who can cling to a subject only
so long or can elaborate their pet thesis, or can furbish their playthings or
their instruments of battle only so long as their spiritual property meets with
opposition. They are active in these things only when some other person actually
or, as they imagine, takes up a position directly opposed to them, or
contradicts them, or puts their thesis in a false light. Here is a man, for
instance, who ardently defends the “Christian activity” when a real or supposed
enemy thwarts his path. There is another who can pursue an ideal so long only as
another stands in his way. The moment the opposition weakens the zeal wanes.
Over there we find still a third who propagates the positive demands of the
kingdom of heaven, the Christian school, Christian politics, a Christian “radio”
and other Christian movements, solely because Christianity still has to conquer
these things by means of an active struggle. It is not a pleasant truth, but we
must say it nevertheless: the existence of “the world,” and much talking about
“the world” is very necessary to a weak church because it incites activity,
keeps people alert, and serves again and again to raise schemes for
consideration which our apathy, in case there were no active struggle, would
rarely touch on. The entire history of the church, and also the history of
Christianity in our own day, is proof of this. And he who is honest and is
willing to trace the concept of sin down to its deep source, will have to admit
that many Christian voices in the world would immediately be silenced if the
world itself did not make so much ado.[6] It is a fact that there are many in
the camp of Christ who would immediately cease following Him if there were not
an Antichrist and a Pseudo-Christ.

[4] This can be defined in onewayas a constantly recurring, negative, emotional,
often unconscious response to another person or to something else.

[5] Nietzsche, E. Duhring, A. G. Hubener, and especially Max Scheler.

[6] The opposite is also true. This is not the place to discuss this further;[7]
here it is our duty to put in the foreground the fact that we will not have our
reward if we must be incited to “act” in the kingdom of heaven on the basis of
such a negative stimulus. In such a case we are not driving our own steeds, but
are letting Satan bridle and conduct us.

[7] Naturally the instances cited are not sufficient to typify the phenomenon
being discussed. It takes other forms also: criticisms of the vices of others,
for instance, because one regrets that he cannot participate in them himself; a
glorification of specific ideals, in an attempt to escape from the imperative of
other ideals, etc. That which people are discussing recently on this theme tends
more and more to become a part of the doctrine of suppression; the conflict
becomes an inner one, the antithetic attitude to the outside world does not
become as conspicuous then as in the examples cited above; but we chose those
examples advisedly for this connection. See Max Scheler,Vom Umsturz der
Werte,volume1, 1919. But enough of that. Overagainst all this apathy,
negativism, and decadence by which we, especially in our “busiest” moments, must
seem very poor and meager and ridiculous in the eyes of the angels, we have need
of keeping the High Priest of our confession before us. Look closely upon Him.
Presently, right after this, He will give the love of His Suretyship to the
“murderer” and thereby prove that He is burning with love even in hell; and He
will prove also that He has ignited the fires of His love Himself, that He has
blown it into a flame with His own breath, that He has fed it with wood gathered
by His own hand. Observing that, we must acknowledge that there was not a hint
of “ressentiment” in Him.[1] In this, too, this High Priest is without sin. God
be praised: His love was not sentiment, but a struggle of the Mediator, a will
to fulfill His office, an instance of obedience, of being a servant, of faith;
it was a revelation of Christ’s being completely contained in God. “For such an
high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners”
— and He became us also as He was in putting His problems.

[1] This theory must be maintained overagainst those of Nietzsche (in a broader
sense), andespecially of A. GustavHubener(Christentum und das Ressentiment;see
Scheler, p. 74). For again He has overcome all. “Ressentiment” can lead to a
situation in which we constantly evade[2] specific subjects because some other
person uncongenially opposed to us, or in a manner unpleasant to us, or with an
effect disagreeable to us is discussing them. Human beings are alike throughout
the centuries; is it particularly foolish to suppose that the silence of the
priests on the part of Christ’s priesthood[3] also was born of “ressentiment”?

Nevertheless Christ was victorious over them in this respect also.

[2] The“forgotten chapters”of the ecclesiastical press, for instance.

[3]Werefuse to countenance the suggestion maintained by many that there is a
contrast between Paul’s Jesus and the synoptic Jesus.

We can be sure of this: Christ while suffering the plague of paradox, although
bandied to and fro between “doxa” and “doxa,” between meaning and meaning,
between thesis and thesis, did not take refuge from one bias in another, from
one “doxa” in another, from one thesis in another, from one word in another, but
remained what He had ever been: the Word of God, the man of God, the unbroken
man of God, the pure soul, the unbroken soul, the guileless spirit, in whom
there was no diversification of whole and part. It is from this tact that the
secret of His transcending the distress of the paradoxical struggle must arise:
but of that later.[4]

Hast Thou been in hell, Lord Jesus? And hast Thou stood in the fire of thorns
prepared by the mockery of hell? And didst Thou there, my Saviour, preserve and
blow into a flame that other fire of Thy priestly love, the love no one would
name, the love no one would recall, because no one saw or sought a place for it
in the constitution of things above or below? Then we would take courage, and
believe that in heaven a song of love will be composed and sung which will be
done in figures of speech very different from those of Solomon’s song as
recorded in the Bible. The Song of Solomon reaches the point beyond which our
thoughts could not go when it writes as follows: Many waters would not be able
to quench love, the very flame of Jehovah. But the praise of the angels will
sound loftier and the litany of the redeemed people will be more sublime as they
together marvel at this great miracle in which the many flames of hell did not
mingle with the flames of love. It is a great thing to know that many waters
cannot extinguish the fires of love but it is a greater thing to know that the
many fires of the passion of hell did not consume the flames of the Lord by the
glowing coals of their destructiveness and did not even make them invisible.
Lord, Thou art the second Adam; for since the first Adam fell, there has been no
one who could withstand the opponent in love. Those who mocked Thee were not an
inducement to Thee to recite a psalm, a hymn of love. By way of thesis and not
by way of antithesis Thou hast related Thy forgotten chapter to God, without
being provoked to do so by any single voice coming to Thee from below. As I open
the treasury of books composed by human searchers for beauty, I find a well
known poem[2] which tells me that in the battle of angels and demons the angels
can avail to make the spirits of hell recede. When angels softly and delicately
strew rose leaves (symbols of love) upon the backs of these upstorming devils,
they by that means gain the victory; for how could the spirits of evil bear the
symbol of love?

[4] In our following chapter.

[5] Goethe’sFaust. But now I have heard Jesus being silent, and now I have seen
Him struggle in the campaign of His love, deriving His materials from His own
treasury to which all the winds of earth had contributed nothing, even when He
was in the house of hell. And now I know that the rose leaves of love are
helpless to achieve anything in the garden of the world. But that figure is not
strong enough. Many waters — ardent fires, and a groaning called a whirlwind,
because it issued from Jesus’ mouth, that is a more suitable figure. Paradoxical
winds are blowing. It causes the rose leaves to twirl about in the air and to
settle on the devils, blowing past these punctilious people. The leaves go with
the will of the wind. But in the winds of paradox the Rock of Love stood firm.
The winds blow from beneath, and all of them have been released together; they
are paradoxical. But the wind of the Spirit, the firmly-driven wind of the
relentless, priestly influence proceeded from Himself. This whirlwind did not
arise from nature, and consequently could not be dependent upon the natural laws
which hold for the earth. God’s wind coming from God’s storehouse — what more
can we say? The powerful whirlwind of the spirit of Christ as it is in the
priestly campaign of His Suretyship conquered the vicious circle of all the
blowing winds. He did not spring from nature, nor from man; He is of God.

Come down from the cross, they said, and we will believe you. But they did not
understand that He Himself had planted the cross; that His own hand driven by
the Spirit had planted it. It is not a Saviour who comes from the cross that
compels us to believe, but a Saviour who ascends to the cross — He is a wonder
in all eternity.

Again: come down from the cross, and restore the temple! That is what they said.
But they did not understand that this was indeed the building of the temple.
Surely He who can still see God and the people redeemed by the priest, He who
can still see these in the community of hell, and who can cry out “My God” and
“My people,” so that the sound of the crying transcends the screams of hell’s
mockery, He has traced the plan of God’s house upon the floor of hell, and He
has had the whole structure with all of its dwelling places of love before His
eyes, even when He descends between satyrs and demons, between bandits and
revilers, between the doomed fellowship of you and me as we are by nature. Great
art Thou, Lord, and greatly to be praised, for our eyes, seeking for the temple
of love, seek ever restlessly, until they are fixed on Thee.


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  CHAPTER 18: 13. CHAPTER 13: CHRIST’S SUPER-PARADOXICAL “AMEN”
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C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N Christ’s Super-Paradoxical “Amen” And Jesus said.
..Verily(Amen). —Luke 23:43. BUT Jesus held His peace. This was strange and yet
very natural.[1] Such can be the summary of what we have been discussing in our
latest chapters. “But” Jesus held His peace: it was a wonder in our ears.
“Therefore” Jesus held His peace: it was reasonable religion. To be silent in
the dialogue with God, to stand mute before the Judge, to hold His peace in
hell, that was reasonable religion.

[1] Strange if observed from below; natural if observed from above (from the
viewpoint of God’s justice). This, therefore, is not a paradox!

Jesus very simply held His peace. He had nothing more to say; the hour of
abandonment had come, and no one had heard the clock striking the hour. In
eternity the pulse-beat weighs as heavily as the stroke of a clock. Jesus held
His peace because of His heart and His God; in His case we can put it that way.
He could not speak, because the prayer which had been on the lips of all the
poets of the psalms would have done injustice to the knowledge of being
abandoned, being forsaken by God. The psalmist had prayed, Deal justly with me,
O God, and avenge my enemies, and those who revile me. But Jesus could not pray
that prayer. Therefore He was mute. But His silence was not His last act. Very
soon we will hear Him speaking again. The statement He will make at that time
will be one of great power. It will be an assurance of firm confidence. He who
could not succeed in forcing a single thought to the door of heaven, presently
by means of a confident gesture throws open the gates of heaven, and says to a
murderer — now you have guessed it—: you are sure to enter; come, thou blessed
of my Father, and inherit the kingdom. He who Himself had to be silent while
surrounded by the mockery of hell now governs a thousand angels who are singing
their litanies, and He does not ask whether these might wish to have His guest
go elsewhere. He speaks firmly; He speaks so boldly and so loudly that the
heavens quake because of it. He says: Amen! This is a strange thing. We know
that this “amen” comes after the mockery with which He was afflicted and which
buried His living spirit. That this, however, is the chronological order becomes
apparent from the indication that the “murderers,” regarded as a group — we
shall consider the particulars later — took part in the mockery of the many
others. Jesus said nothing to the one fellow crucified person, to the one who
perseveres in mocking. Overagainst him Jesus remained profoundly and essentially
silent. But when a little later the other murderer speaks, and addresses a
reprimand to the blasphemer next him, and then says nothing until, somewhat shy
and embarrassed, he directs a prayer to Christ, we know that much time must have
elapsed between that moment in which the mockery took place, the mockery also of
this fellow condemned, and the moment in which Jesus by His address to the
second criminal, again speaks, and, with a voice full of assurance, introduces
this second person into the paradise of heaven. The very fact that Christ
pronounced His “amen” after He had suffered the mockery of the people, tends to
enhance for us the sense of His poised power. “Verily” He says. And in the Greek
the word used here and at other places where our translation uses the word
“verily” is the familiar designation “amen.” If ever the little word “amen” was
used as more than a stop sign or a dignified ending, it was here. Here it was
living and powerful, a word borne up immediately by faith, by sure knowledge,
and by firm confidence. This “amen” was spoken at mid-day of the Day of Jehovah,
the great day of the Lord. It challenges our attention for three reasons.

It challenges our attention because it is another instance of speaking. Jesus
opens His mouth again; He listens again; He has something to say after His
profound silence. The word challenges our attention because it is firmly,
positively, confidently spoken. It represents firm assurance. “Amen” is a word
taken from the vocabulary of faith. It really is a Hebrew word; the root from
which it is derived means: to hold a thing true, to trust (overagainst a
person), to feel assured. The word has this function throughout the Bible. Jesus
used it often, as often as He said “verily, verily,” for “verily” means “amen.”
But we also find the word (after all it is a Hebrew word) in its root form in
the Old Testament; and always in such cases in which faith is being described.
The word used in the Old Testament for “believing” comes from the same root from
which “amen” was derived. We read, “Abraham believed God.” In the original, we
really read that as follows: Abraham stood in an amen-relation to God. It meant
that a full confidence in God had naturally elicited the “amen” from Abraham;
the word was part of the man; it typified his relation to God. Now this faith of
Abraham, this amen-relationship in which Abraham stood to the living God, is, as
Paul says in the letter to the Romans, the cause of His justification with God.
We can say that Abraham entered into an amen-relationship with God in a moment
of time. This took place in history; it was conclusive, radical, definitive, and
it took place because of the irresistible work of God in that moment of time.
Since then Abraham remained in that relationship, and it was reckoned unto him
for righteousness.

We all understand, of course, that the word “amen” is not always used in this
sharply delineated and firmly circumscribed sense when it is used in the Bible.
On the contrary, there are also places where the word “verily” or “amen” is used
to indicate only a very ordinary assurance. But now the word comes from Jesus’
lips. That means that the simple “amen”, just as all His words, can be explained
solely on the basis of His specific relationship to God. It is true that the
word is used by the Saviour to give assurance to a human being; nevertheless the
word according to its origin and birthright must arise from His perfect
assurance about the universal acts of God. Jesus speaks to a malefactor
crucified beside Him; His “amen” opens Paradise to him. We shall discuss the
particulars of this later; now we have enough to do to think of Christ, using
His “amen” as a self-aware Prophet, and Priest, and Kang. As a Prophet He sees
Himself opening up the avenues of blessedness to the desolate present
circumstances of this lost son. As a Prophet He establishes the relationship
between heaven and earth, between the man next Him and the counsel and will of
God. Hence, Christ is prophesying; He says “amen,” and is perfectly certain
about the axioms of God’s heavenly ordinances. As a Priest He puts this lost
sheep to rest by means of His “amen.” Hence He must be completely assured about
His relationship to God and about the inner influences of His mercy. Finally, we
can say that by means of the power of a King He throws open the gate of the
heavenly Paradise to this fellow sufferer of the curse; that act also testifies
eloquently to an awareness on His part of His own powers of isagogics. This
astonishes us. Out of the eater came forth food, out of the strong came forth
sweetness. And an “amen” came from Him who suffers the paradoxical plague. It is
a short word but it wrenches clouds asunder: “amen” — the Assurance. Never had
an “amen” echoed so clearly as did this one. No “amen” ever was such a miracle
as this one. Even the preliminary “amen” of the angels, of the blessed, of the
“beasts,” of the “elders,” in the heavenly-paradise (Revelation 5:14; Revelation
7:12; Revelation 19:4; Revelation 22:20) are not as powerful, as active, as
self-sufficient as the “amen” of the Crucified. He who spoke it had long been
silent, because He knew no more ... it is a wonder in our ears. For these two
reasons alone, this “amen” deserves our fullest attention. But there is a third
reason for devoting careful study to it. We are almost embarrassed by our own
first gladness. The “amen” seems to subside very quickly, even though it was so
positively expressed. A moment ago it seemed very firm and overwhelmingly
confident to us but a very different word is to follow upon it: the word, “Why.”
Where now has the power and assurance gone? “Amen” — surely that is as far
removed as possible from “why.” And besides being very far removed from “why,”
“amen” transcends it. At opposite poles from “why,” failing to comprehend,
stands the “therefore,” the expression of those who understand. And those who
add the “amen” to the “therefore” have added insight to understanding, and faith
by its own laws gives them assurance. Hence the “therefore” means much, hut the
“amen” means more to those who live in the revealed Word of God. “Amen” does not
oppose, but strengthens the “therefore” of faith as it is maintained overagainst
the “why” of the uncertain. “Amen” signifies more than laying down the
relationship of the will to the content of assurance, and the god of good
pleasure who has internally given us confidence; for when I say “amen” both the
thing I am certain about and my certainty are founded on the presence of God.
Hence the “amen” serves as a loud speaker for the expression “therefore” as well
as for the assurance “that.” And this in faith.

Now if this is true, how shall we go about explaining Christ’s “amen”? His
fourth utterance from the cross asks “why.” “Why, my God, hast Thou forsaken
me.” These are the words of the man Christ Jesus. Again He confronts a wall and
cannot pass through it. By means of His “why” — He has struggled for three hours
to reach the point at which He could utter it — He hurls Himself and us to the
other side of His sublime “amen.” All of His confidences and assurances have
disappeared in a moment. Disappeared? As He saw it, they have been forfeited.
For to Him everything here seems just. But Lord, how can this be? He who says
“amen” one moment and “why” the next, and in both cases about the same
relationships, must be regarded by heaven as an abomination, for, as it seems to
us, He has disturbed the amen-relationship. This, if we may be allowed to use
the language of men, is a living offense and foolishness. Yes, indeed, also in
reference to the words He speaks, and to His interludes and pauses, we seem to
be driven again to I Corinthian 2: Christ, the offense, the great foolishness.
For it is indeed true that the fourth utterance from the cross with its “why,”
at bottom makes the very same things disputable which the “amen” of His second
utterance from the cross had established as being certain. The fourth utterance
from the cross also treats of the relation between God and the creature, of the
relation between heaven and earth, of the relation between the ordinances of God
and their corollaries, on the one hand, and the soul that loves God, on the
other hand. For Christ together with the murderer has been elected of God, and
awakened to the love of the Spirit. The issue at stake in the fourth utterance
from the cross also concerns whether the doors of heaven shall be open or shut.
Fundamentally considered, the second and the fourth utterances from the cross
deal with the same elemental problems. That fact precisely constitutes the
difficulty. The very Saviour who by means of His powerful “amen” had hacked
every knot in the rope of the murderer next Him to pieces is in a position three
hours later to unravel His own knots, and to pronounce His gloomy “why.” God, He
says then, I am not certain any more. Be as cautious as you will now, you will
not for the sake of Paul’s wish — for he wrote 1 Corinthians 2 — and for God’s
sake — for He inspired 1 Corinthians 2 — succeed in restraining the question:
But, if this is so, was the “amen” of Jesus worth anything? Is that which we
have called the strongest language possible to faith perhaps nothing more than a
hollow phrase? Can it be that the “amen” which Jesus pronounced at 12 o’clock of
the Day of Jehovah is a brutal anticipation of those declarations of heaven, for
which the Father of all truth, and of all integrity, has thoroughly punished
Him? Can it be that it was simply to take from Him His confident assurances that
God punished the Son of man who was so very certain in uttering His “amen,” by
means of uncertainty — even though He allowed the murderer, who, after all could
not help it, to enter in.

Yes, yes, Paul, this is foolishness and offense. A new guest is being introduced
to the heavenly banquet, but He Himself must presently ask why He is being
locked out. This is foolishness and offense. We have here one who is assured,
and one who assures, and the latter, after a few hours have gone by, has no
certainty anymore. Now it becomes very difficult to hear Him say “amen,” without
clenching the fist or bursting into laughter.

It was very difficult for the man who had been so easily comforted by means of
that “amen.” It was very difficult for the bandit to whom the word was
addressed; someone[1] has suggested that the man must have had a very difficult
time when Jesus died before him. And this person discriminatingly adds that the
murderer had to believe in a dead Saviour. We have no objection to a person who
says that a dead Saviour must have been a problem to that man, but we would like
to suggest that in reality the problem begins earlier than the death of the
Saviour, We would like to put it this way: Presently the murderer must believe
in an amen-sayer who is asking “why.” It is quite possible to enter in at the
eleventh hour as that murderer did, but there is no possibility of escaping from
1 Corinthians 2 at the eleventh hour.

[1] J. van Andel,Bloemlezing uit “De Avondster,”p. 172.

These then are the three reasons for which the “amen” of Jesus is of the
greatest importance to us. Their simple naturalness is so convincing that it
seems inappropriate to overlook this “amen.” However, it has frequently been
overlooked. This neglect was owing to two causes. On the one hand our Christian
thinking continues to have this weakness, that it looks too much upon the
suffering of Christ as a bodily distress, or, to put it more delicately, as soul
distress. Christian thinking too infrequently struggles with the problem of the
spiritual distress of Jesus Christ. By that we mean the distress in which His
human spirit and His mind become involved. A fact which is frequently ignored by
many is that the redemption, the Suretyship, the earning of the right of free
thought by means of a limitation of thought was also a part of the program of
the Surety on Good Friday.

Nevertheless it was on that program. But if we prefer to look upon the suffering
as taking place primarily in the body, or in the sorrow of His soul — and of His
soul as understood up to this time — it is very natural that we will not soon,
or rather we will never, busy ourselves intensely with the spiritual struggle
which had to take place in Christ. This spiritual struggle has two sides: on the
one hand, He must passively listen to the sarcastic words of the mockers; on the
other hand, He must pronounce that confident and self-conscious “amen.” A second
reason, or cause, for overlooking Christ’s “amen” is that our emotional
Christian world prefers being stirred by a narrative about an interesting
“murderer,” one who is brought to repentance, and that almost too late, rather
than consciously and purposely and proleptically always proceeding from Christ
Himself. An “eleventh hour” object of eternal election is more interesting for
people — they would say “more edifying” — than the spiritual struggle of the
Messiah who had to leave the legal basis for election lying just as it was. No
wonder, they say, when you present the contrast: The one is good matter for a
moving story, and the other is “nothing but” a dogmatic construction of which we
read nothing “in so many words” in the Bible.

Nevertheless we shall have to be on guard against this double mistake. It is a
comforting thing to speak about that comforted and redeemed bandit but it is our
duty to proceed from the Christ. And it is also necessary for him who is looking
for “suspense.” Which is the greater: the suspense in the person who listens to
the narrative of that proselyte who almost comes too late (the one who listens
forgets that for God the “almost” was by no means a “surprise”), or the suspense
of the Christ who must now struggle in order to earn a legal basis upon which He
can introduce this man who had been elected from eternity into heaven? Yes, this
is tension, this is extreme suspense. The “amen” of Christ’s spiritual triumphs
— for it was the beginning of His spiritual victories — is a turning point; the
embattled God later drives Him back from this position which He has gained.[1]
That is why this event deserves its place in this book before we can consider
what is to follow. The question is not whether we can succeed in avoiding this
“amen,” without thinking of the distress of the poet of Psalms 42. “All God’s
waves and all God’s billows” have gone over Christ. The poet of Psalms 42 time
and again admonishes his soul to pronounce an “amen,” but he must ever repeat
the admonishment. Now this short-time amen-sayer admonishes the spirit in the
one verse to redeem itself from the paradoxical experience and complication of
soul which he is experiencing, and by faith in God to work his way upwards; but
before long his “amens” will again be interrupted. Just so Christ passes from
His “human,” all too “human” hurry and paradoxical confusion to His reprimanding
and encouraging “nevertheless,” and thus to an “amen” of regained certainty;
thereupon follows the relapse with its: Why, O God? “My rock, why dost Thou
forget me?”

[1] Darkness, and “why”; the fourth utterance from the cross; we shall discuss
that later.

Let us approach reverently and try to understand some of these things. The
question at issue will be one which even touches on the inspiration of the
Scriptures. The poet of Psalms 42 is not singing his own psalm so much as he is
struggling to earn and release it. The Author experiences his own psalms and
emerges from beneath them.

We have stated already that this assertative “amen” of Christ is a cry of
triumph. By means of it He emerges triumphantly from His paradoxical plague. By
means of this “amen” He regains the top of the very mountain which had caused
Him to be driven into the grottos and crevices of oppression, and into the
valley of contradiction before.

Let us for the sake of clarity summarize the main things that were said before.
In the first place, we observed, Christ had to be absolutely sure, as He kept
His eye fixed on the Scriptures and on experience, that He was innocent in the
sight of God. He was not allowed to be in doubt for a single moment about His
own purity and virtue.[1] In the second place, we noticed that Christ had to be
absolutely sure, as He kept His eye fixed on the Scripture and experience, that
He was repulsive in the sight of God, that He had been made a curse, that He had
been made sin. In the third place, we are confronted by the difficult question:
How was such a paradoxical concussion of thoughts possible in Christ’s human
nature? And thereupon we also had to ask how, inasmuch as this conflict was
given, He could vanquish it and emerge triumphantly from it. Hence the question
now is: How does He come up from the valley of the “why” to the mountain top of
the “amen”?

[1] We asked on page 215 (chapter 11), “Why?” To recapitulate: if Christ had no
longer been aware of His own purity and sinlessness then (to say nothing about
many other unacceptable deductions) His suffering would no longer have been the
active deed of the Mediator; then the “why” of the fourth statement from the
cross loses its keenness, precisely because it is explicable at all only on the
basis of His awareness of being without sin; then Christ would have had to
regard Golgotha as a daily recurring symptom of injustice in the world, or as a
judgment upon His own sin, or — if He had thought that He could redeem without
aconsciousconviction of perfect obedience — He in the act of His final
satisfaction for the covenant would have broken the terms of that contract (for
one of those terms is the imperative of perfect and self-conscious fidelity to
the commandments).

Some interpreters evade these problems by appealing at once to Christ’s
knowledge. For them it is enough to assert that Christ simply saw everything
“systematically” and plainly before Him. These aver that at every moment of His
passion the whole book of explanation was with Him in head and heart, and that
He consequently never stood embarrassed before a closed door. He had the key
which immediately fitted all locks. Christ, they say, always saw the whole plan
of God, the whole work of God. He saw it stretched out before Him, and
consequently He could have no problems, but immediately brought everything He
knew to bear upon everything He experienced.

It will very likely be apparent to all those who read our first volume with
approbation that this interpretation is not ours. There we tried to indicate at
great length that Christ’s thinking as man always represented a unity,[1] that
it always remained pure, and also that it always remained completely human and
therefore relevant to the laws of time. Because of that we were permitted to
speak of Christ’s sorrows as having their own peculiar origin,[2] their own
peculiar severity,[3] and their own peculiar end.[4] What we remarked then must,
in a different connection, again be brought into connection, again be brought
into discussion here. Why, indeed, should we still have to speak about these
things as though they were disputable to a person believing the Scriptures? The
mere fact that Christ Himself asks “Why” is conclusive. Either we must reduce
this “why” which He uttered in His dying grief to the level of a rhetorical
question (which would be making it blasphemy) or we must take out of it its
devastating quality, or we must let it stand in its full strength, and then
acknowledge at the same time that a grievous oscillation between the walls of
the work-room of God’s righteousness and truth was possible here in this history
in which God’s counsel is being fulfilled; we must acknowledge that it was
possible for Him to be pushed back and forth between heaven and earth, an
oscillation caused by His real and difficult search to establish a connection
between God’s revealed and hidden will, between a creative and a created
knowledge, between a righteousness which establishes standards and a
righteousness which maintains standards, between decree and experience, between
a nomothetical and a nomotactical work of God in history, between a logical and
a genetic judgment, between the books written in heaven and the journals written
on earth, between an a priori and an a posteriori way of thinking. He was hurled
back and forth in His real search to establish a connection by means of His
life-taking struggle between one end of Histhoughts and the other, in His effort
to find a higher harmony, approved of God and effected in His soul.

[1] Synthesis (without the added idea of the relationship of heterological
elements: Kant).

[2]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 17 [3]Ibid,chapter 20 [4] Ibid,p. chapter 22

Surely, if Christ on His cross had stood outside of the possibilities of
paradoxical confusion and dissipation, if He had lived beyond the chances,
beyond the possibilities, of the pain of paradox, and — imagine the possibility
— if a true “why” could not have come to birth in Jesus’ soul, then — we are
taken aback at the very thought of the word — then Golgotha would have been a
mere display, and a mere appearance. The very people who are so eager to discuss
Christ’s blood, and who write many books about the worth of only a single drop
of that blood, and who dedicate sermons and poems to it should have busied
themselves long ago with the tremendous worth of the struggle and the passion of
Christ’s human spirit. Take the spiritual confusion out of Christ’s suffering,
especially His suffering on the cross, take the oppression which He suffered in
His human experience and the confronting of problems which He encountered in His
human nature out of Golgotha, and Golgotha will become nothing but an
unsuccessful attempt; then Golgotha represents an effort to enter into human
suffering, without ever achieving a real participation in it. Then Golgotha at
very best, if it still represents a service to all, certainly cannot represent
the service of the second Adam.[1] Then Christ is not in our stead suffering
that which we by our sin deserve, but then He — imagine that this were possible
— is bringing us something as a “prize” which He has “earned,” a prize,
understand, which had never been a debt demanding to be paid. For a part of the
suffering of the wrath is the binding of His ideas, the confusion of His spirit.

Consequently we cannot avoid the question we put above in this way.

[1] Second Adam: for the first (think of the probationary command) was also duty
bound to establish the relationship by means of a conscious and active deed of
religion between God’s hidden and revealed will, etc. (See chapter 13, p. 282).
We shall not discuss this further at this time, however, because the issue of
the Suretyship as it functions in the paradoxical suffering of Christ was
touched upon in the preceding chapter and therefore need not be taken up here
except in an indirect way. But now others approach us, and say that they too do
not want to look upon the matter thus. Nevertheless, they add that they propose
to overlook all these curious questions simply by taking refuge in that
statement of our faith which says that in His human nature Christ’s suffering
was supported by the divine. Those who prefer to adopt this attitude like to
believe that the thinking of Christ is too difficult for us to follow (a fact
which we readily admit) because (and in this their attitude differs from ours)
we cannot possibly know anything about it. They say that Christ was not only a
human being, but also God; in Him therefore there was not only human experience,
and human thought and feeling, but also divine knowledge, divine sovereignty of
decision, and divine foreknowledge. And in Him there was, besides, a constant
knitting together in each specific moment of all the threads which merge in each
specific decree of God. Therefore — they go on — it is not appropriate for us to
go into these things farther. “We ought not to be wise above our own conceits.”
Even though we know that the soul and spirit of Christ were vexed by the passion
and by the problems which depressed Him, let us — thus their admonishment — let
us comfort ourselves in general with the truth that me divine nature supported
the human, and that, for the rest, all questions must necessarily remain
unsolved in this admittedly unsolvable mystery.

Now it is the least of our wishes to gainsay the element of truth contained in
these remarks to the extent that they have been spoken with reason and justice.
We, too, acknowledge the fact of the mystery, and frankly state that we cannot
fathom it. We do not know and we never will know how to span the gap between the
divine and the human in the Christ, As He hangs on the cross, we confess that He
is our Lord and our God. To confess Him as such, in this terrible hour
necessarily commits us to a full acknowledgment of the unfathomable, of the
mystery in this hidden relationship. If ever a person should undertake to give a
“conclusive” explanation of the relationship between the divine arid the human
in Christ’s mind, we could say that this effort would be as foolish as the
effort of those who think that they can “prove” God’s existence, and that they
can exhaustively set down a characterization of the works of God. But this does
not take away the fact that precisely by calling the mystery a mystery we are
but becoming more deeply entangled in our problem. The core of that problem we
remember is this: the paradoxical in the human which remained pure. Now we
cannot escape from this. It does us no good to say that Christ’s human man
nature “must have” been sustained by the divine also in its spiritual struggles;
for that is a remark which includes the suggestion that a further
“application”[1] of it must not be undertaken. The very fact that reference is
made to supporting, is an acknowledgment that Christ’s being vexed in His human
nature is the real problem.

[1] The application is that the problem be left untouched.

Now is it allowed to man to investigate this human passion in the light of
Scriptures. Allowed to man? No, the Christian must investigate it. We are called
to see the second Adam who struggled for us as He was in His thinking; we are
called to investigate that in the light of the Scriptures and it is our duty to
keep that which has been given us to know about it clearly before our eyes.

Just what kind of “comfort” is it anyhow, and what kind of ethical seriousness
is there in that facile gesture to dismiss all the difficulties of the problem
of Christ’s spiritual ascents and descents, of His “amens” and “whys,” by a
mechanically applied theological knowledge according to which the moment a
difficulty arises for us we dispatch it by a reference to the support given
Christ’s human nature by the divine? We must not think of this support in so
mechanical and abrupt a way. We may not use the mystery of the relationship
between Christ’s divinity and humanity as an argument which, after the fashion
of a deus ex machina, can be drawn into the discussion at any time to help us
out of our difficulties. For that mystery, that relationship, between the divine
and the human created a certain condition, a condition which was ever present
and remained for years, a condition which was Christ’s in His youth, in His
temptations, in His miracles, in His sleeping, in His calm deliberations, in His
eating and drinking, even in His vacations. We must not think of the
relationship between the human and the divine as something which periodically
intervenes and then recedes again; it is not a spasmodic interference on the
part of heavenly influences which explodes out of the clouds each time
difficulties arise for us. Hence anyone who would forbid us cautiously and
reverently to investigate the problem of Christ’s human, spiritual confusion by
an appeal to the relationship between the divine and the human in Him, must also
act on his assumption when he discusses Christ’s birth, and childhood, and
youth, and such other things as were named above.

No, we prefer to acknowledge that in each instance Christ was true man, and that
it is both warranted and good to discuss His purely human temptation and
victory, provided that in the discussion we limit ourselves to the data of the
Scriptures. Whatever the connection and relationship between the divine and the
human nature were, Christ nevertheless suffered all His passion completely and
exclusively in His human nature. This, therefore, also holds true of His
spiritual struggles, of His paradoxical difficulties, and of the triumphs which
He achieved in His “amen.” Every attempt mechanically and abruptly to call the
relationship between the divine and the human into the discussion by way of
explaining this or that, is, to anyone who has fathomed the fundamental
principle of Calvin, nothing but a hardly concealed heresy. For it takes offense
at the truth that the suffering of Christ was completely endured in His human
nature.

Accordingly, we shall limit our discussion solely to the human nature of Christ.
We want to raise two considerations. The first is the fact that Christ is true
man; the second is the thought that Christ is sinless man. And we want to attach
two conclusions to our problem: first, if Christ is true man, then it is
possible for Him to be steeped in paradoxical conflict. Second, if Christ is
sinless man, then it is impossible for Him to remain in a condition of
paradoxical conflict. Our first consideration, accordingly, is that as true man,
Christ can be steeped in paradoxical conflict. In view of what we said about
this in our first volume we can leave the discussion here after having made a
few remarks.

Christ as a man born in time, and, living, suffering, and dying in time, was
subject to the law of growth, of change, of mutation. True, His being was
characterized by unity but the unity of His being, of His essence, did not
exclude the breadth of His experience. It is true that He always stands as an
essential unity, perfect, undivided, unblemished, overagainst the pluriform,
vacillating things and influences of human life. But His mind is subject to the
law of growth, and also to that of time and succession. His mind is genuinely
human and consequently cannot isolate itself as a separate entity from what for
Him as for us are gradually developing and evolving areas of knowledge. All the
things which are external do not impinge upon Him simultaneously but
successively. For Him, too, life does not arrange things in a harmonious order.
For Him, too, the Scriptures are not a concordance, with an adequate
text-and-subject index. He, too, must learn, must penetrate, must organize.
Hence when His human nature confronts the things which He must meet, and when He
fastens His heart upon God’s means of revelation, He also establishes a
relationship between what He experiences and what He knows about God; these He
puts into living relationship with the things of temporal experience, with the
vacillations of earthly life, with historically progressive human experience.
Thus He puts Himself before a gradually unfolding Scripture. Christ’s attention
does not wish to be dissipated or scattered; neither is it an immovable,
immutable greatness; it is simply bound to the scattered condition of things,
and to the scattered condition of the Scriptural data. In the last analysis
Christ as man did not have to devote Himself to the hidden things, known only to
God, but to the revealed things. Each moment, overagainst everything which He
sees and experiences, He must consciously and by means of an ever new deed, fix
His attention upon the Scriptures, upon the spoken and written Word given us “at
sundry times and in diverse manners.”[1] This He must do with powers that are
ever growing and with a mind ever becoming firmer, a knowledge of God which
takes on strength with His increasing knowledge of man and life.

[1] Think of the significance of this expression (Hebrews 1:1) as Christ must
have read and assimilated it. From this we may infer that Christ, even as we,
met with influences and realities in this our human life, with antithetical
forces and things, whose deeper unity God only knows, but whose inner
reconciliation is given no human mind to know. There is much in life which seems
contradictory to us. Now His consciousness was also impressed by the things
coming from without as having this apparent antithesis, this apparent duality.
When these mutually contradictory things confronted Him, He had to span the gap
between the one pole and its opposite, between one side and its opposite,
between truth and temporary truth. He had to span the gap, He had to bridge the
gulf, as does everyone. The material for that bridge God gave, as He ever does,
but He first had to gather it together. He Himself had to estimate the length,
the arch of the bridge. In order to do this He had to concentrate on what He
knew about God, about what He read and believed in the Scriptures. This was all
the more exacting because Christ is not in an abstract sense a “theologian” but
is first of all the one who is the motive force of religion, the one who is the
great religious soul. The fact that the man Christ Jesus is active
theologically, the fact that He lives and reads in the Scriptures is but a
result, an expression, a “good work” of His religion. This religion we must
understand as being pure and unbroken, as a service of God manifesting itself in
all things. For this reason it is impossible for Christ to set up an experiment
with an “abstract” theological system of thought, and to combine the
manifestations and scattered data of experience and revelation without entering
into awful spiritual conflict. In Him the knowledge of God does not come “from”
experience but is itself experience, life, and service. Precisely because He is
the motive essence of religion itself He is a theologian. Ours is not a Christ
who by means of abstract human thinking constructs park benches where, unmoved
by the apparent contradictions, He can sit, resting quietly, and making Himself
believe that He is “enjoying” God. Nor is ours a Christ who by means of the
apparatus of His mind constructs His arcs — arcs by means of which He binds
together the outlying mountain-tops of God’s revelation — in the manner of an
architect who by means of a mathematical computation and the aid of a few
scattered data works out his blue print for a building. For, besides
constructing the blue print, besides drawing up the plan on paper by means of
square and ruler, He must experience His constructions. He must bring what He
has projected in His mind to bear upon living reality. These He must carry into
the farthest recesses and the inmost chambers of the universe of the works of
God. An immediate consequence of this fact is that paradoxical experience is
possible to Christ. For He came into the world as true man, and as true man He
came into the Scriptures, and both the world and the Scriptures reveal their
unity only to those who obediently investigate these in time. Gethsemane is the
example of that, by no means the only example, by no means the first, but
possibly the one which speaks most loudly to us.

Now there was paradox in this human course of His obedience, in this dual
experience. Here was the consciousness of His just rights on the basis of the
revealed Word; for the revealed Word testified well of His works. And on the
other hand, there was the consciousness of His being abandoned, of His being
forsaken, of His being condemned, of His real repulsiveness to God — and this
again on the basis of the revealed Word, which specifically assures Him that the
curse attached to him who hung upon the tree. In this way, then, we may know
that it was possible for Christ to be steeped in paradoxical entanglements.

We consider next the fact that, as sinless man, it is impossible for Him to
remain in this paradoxical confusion. He cannot stay caught in it, He cannot
remain resting in it. He cannot abandon the problem; He cannot admonish His soul
to overlook the problem, and without a super-paradoxical answer to rest in a
“why.” At this point we must make two predications. First, the paradox cannot
evolve in Christ from within. Second, Christ cannot objectively ascribe the
paradox to God, or explain it on the basis of God’s essence and works.

We said that it was impossible for the paradoxical confusion to arise out of
Christ’s own life. This has its immediate consequences, for — speaking generally
— that which cannot evolve out of man (unless it is a new creation,[1] a thing
which we shall presently deny about the paradox) cannot be a remaining condition
of the human life, it cannot be an abiding, ever accompanying manifestation of
his life.

[1] Such as regeneration, and the effects of it. The fact that the paradoxical
confusion cannot arise from Christ Himself needs little contention; at least not
to the person who shares this interpretation of the essence and the origin of
the paradoxical. If we can define the paradoxical as a division of the ways of
thought, by means of which the unity of thinking is broken, and as a result of
which two attitudes or theses persist in contradicting each other in our minds,
and concerning which we dare not say yes to the one and a conclusive no to the
other, then we can safely say that such paradox cannot possibly have its origin
in Christ’s human constitution.

Christ is one. Sin may have seized upon our human mind and have steeped us in
paradoxical confusion, but Christ who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and in
whom sin at no point introduced perdition or disruption — Christ, even though He
was heir to the weaknesses of the human constitution, never found the cause of
these residing in Himself. His thoughts were never driven apart by an act of His
own spirit. Never did He on His own part shift His point of view, His point of
orientation, from the center to the periphery. He never sought for bias, and
never carried faulty weights in His hands. Hence the paradoxical cannot arise in
Him; it can only impinge upon Him. He was never antithetically opposed to
Himself, and consequently He never “saw” an antithesis unless God had placed it
there. True He saw a clear and sharp antithesis between God and Satan, between
the divine and the satanic, between good and evil; but He never recognized an
antithesis as the result of a flaw in His own thinking, never in this way saw a
contradiction in the Scriptures, or in God, be it in nature or grace. We must
never convert the weakness of Christ’s human nature, a “weakness,” in which life
as He experienced it, and in which His apprehensions and His spiritual
development were bound, into a spiritual “sickness”; for weakness and sickness
are not identical. No, Christ’s thinking was not faulty, and He was not Himself
responsible for the parting of the ways of His thought. His thinking “creates”
no antinomies. “Weakness” and “sickness” are not identical; and “weakness” and
“strength” are not identical. The “weakness” of Christ’s human nature is not a
positive influence or principle; it cannot set Him to thinking “creatively.” We
cannot ascribe His knowledge about the Most High to it any more than we could
imagine a phantasy about a God broken up into antinomies, or about a revelation
thus broken up as having arisen in Him because of it. His “weakness” prevents
Him from climbing up to God’s altars but does not itself build an altar to an
unknown god who conceals himself in antinomies. The weakness of Christ as a
human being can operate as a hindering influence, and as such it can be an
obstruction in the way of the ascent of Christ’s thoughts. It can also detain
Him in His struggle to arrive at that sublime condition of rest which He desires
not at the beginning but at the end of the labor of His thoughts, at the end of
His inquiries which both proceed from and work towards His God. This weakness,
this human and temporal limitation, can stand in the way of triumphantly feeling
that the mountain top of accomplished thinking has been attained; it can prolong
the struggle of His ideas. But it cannot introduce a flaw into His thinking. It
cannot teach a false logic; it cannot serve to impart a false dialectic which
ascribes unreasonable things to God and traces antinomies back to Him.

We do well to note the difference between the beginning of Christ’s thinking and
the results of Christ’s thinking. We admitted above that as true man He was
susceptible to the struggle and conflict of thoughts. As the second Adam in
objective reality, and as having a mind which functions purely and genuinely, He
must now achieve knowledge, He must earn the content of thought; and this He
must do along the ways of revelation. For Him, too, nay, precisely for Him who
must go the whole way of the probationary commands of Adam, precisely for Him
the rule was inviolable that the revelation of God contained no paragraphs in
which specific loci, in which specific chapters of dogmatics, or paragraphs of
philosophy, or completely prepared material of knowledge were fixed and arranged
in a logical order. The opposite is more true. The first and second Adam are
duty bound to gain for themselves a synthetic judgment and unified knowledge
about what God reveals in the Word, in nature, and in history. And in this we
detect a difference between the beginning and the end of the learning process of
both. At the beginning both have as a given a pure, and genuine capacity for
apprehension, an unspoiled mind, a normal attitude toward everything. Thereupon
both are asked whether they are, as religious people, willing to take the way of
obedience to the rich reward of knowledge (regarded now as the content of
thought, as the object of knowledge). It was in this way of obedience that Adam
fell but the second Adam remained inaccessible to sin. The sin of passive
acquiescence in the paradox[1] consequently could not be His. Such acquiescence
would be possible to Him only if on His own part He had yielded the center of
His area of knowledge and had no longer believed in the unity of God and the
work of God. He ascribes no antinomies to His God, even though the appearance of
these can distress Him and assault Him.

[1] A form of despairing of God, or despairing of conscious fellowship with God.

We note, then, that the appearance of paradox — for this appearance does exist —
can accrue to Him, but that He cannot acquiesce in this semblance of paradox for
a moment. Just as a healthy body reacts to infectious materials, so a reaction
must immediately arise in Christ against every phenomenon of life by means of
which God or Satan prove or tempt Him with the semblance of antinomy. A passive
attitude toward the appearance of paradox in God’s words or works is as He sees
it a sin, a repudiation of God, and an instance of unbelief. This opinion is
based on our firm conviction that acquiescence in the paradox, taken in its
strictest sense, is an instance of arrogance. We stated previously[1] that God
can use the experience of paradox in order to break down one’s pride; in fact,
we derive from this thought our right to conclude our previous chapter with the
thought: Christ our surety in the paradox.

[1] Chapter 11, page 234.

We must remember, however, that this coin has its opposite side. When God while
disciplining me by means of the trial of paradox, strikes me to the ground in
order to break my pride, I must not myself want to manipulate the instrument
with which He struck me down. That would be to confirm my arrogance: God’s
instruments do not fit my hand. Nor must I take the instrument which God hurls
against me in His loving warfare and conjure it into a different thing by means
of an unctuous faith; I may not, preaching the while, convert it into an
instrument of peace, but I must pray that His proving me may not become a
satanic temptation: lead me not into (paradoxical) temptation, but deliver me
from evil! It is folly to take the instrument which God uses for disciplining
and to convert it into one for building up, or for cultivating a field. It is
folly to convert a disciplinary device with which God can humble my arrogance
into a means of education by which He can in His school teach me the genuine
elemental relationships existing between things. It is folly to oppose the
salutary effect of shame caused by ignorance (in paradoxical conflict) after the
conflict (for then the shame follows) by regarding ignorance as normal. The
abnormal — my sin — is indeed broken by the disciplinary means of God’s proving,
but this last remedy of discipline must not be praised and glorified as the
normal bread of life.[1]

[1] For then we forget that the disciplinary remedy of proving (a) coincides
with a satanic temptation in the form of an act of war; (b) that, from God’s
point of view, this remedy is applied at all because I have recognized the
revealed Word too little, and must be driven back to it now. The first of these
was no part of the Christ (not sufficiently recognizing the Word before the
paradoxical conflict); but it is true of us. Because of that He must make
atonement for us as our Surety now; therefore He must by means of the conflict
of paradox work His way back and up to the Word. For this purpose the Word first
had to be broken into pieces: text “against” text.

It is this last consideration which is the error of those who proclaim that as
long as the world and time exist, the paradoxical is normal inasmuch as God is
“wholly different” from man. Overagainst this thesis we maintain that God goes
give us a sense of His revelation in our human life, causes it to bear fruit in
our human life, inasmuch as in this life we are aware of communion with Him as
conscious human beings and enjoy such communion. Now we want to add that those
who take this attitude can never ascribe the paradox to the revelation which God
gives, or to the manner in which that revelation is given. Clashing with these
paradoxes arises from our limitation, our weakness, our perdition, but not from
God. It may be true that He humiliates us by this means, and “mocks” us as
dwarfs who in our proud journey have gone astray in the forest of paradox in
which we, like so many children, have been overtaken by darkness. But His is not
the guilt for our straying; for His revelation was one. If we were to accept the
paradox as a fate, a fate which God as the Creator and Revealer has laid upon us
from the time of Paradise to the end of time, we would not have believed in the
unity of God’s thoughts and works or in the unity of His being, or in the unity
of His revelation. Then we would have been taking an attitude of doubt, an
unbelieving point of view, towards the transparency and manifest character and
unity which, according to these themselves, characterize the Holy Scriptures.
Then we would be taking a critical attitude towards the belief that the
Scriptures are adequate, not to “solve” all kinds of scientific problems, but
adequate to lead us as religious people to the goal which religion puts before
us.

If we carry these thoughts to Golgotha, we will be able to understand what the
response of Christ must have been to these things. God had never taken an
arrogant attitude towards God, and hence He at no time could for a single second
countenance the thesis that God had spoken to us unplainly, or that God had
plainly contradicted Himself, or that He had talked to us in a way we could not
understand. The Saviour never found rest in the experience of paradox; for such
an experience cannot represent a Sabbath-experience; and the spirit of Christ
longed for the great Sabbath-rest with the Father of all spirits Himself. The
appearance of paradox cannot arise from the positive will of God. As long as
this plagues Him “His heart is burning within Him.” The content of God’s
speaking is a single, undivided thing. Consequently He must take His paradoxes
to the Scriptures, even if it was the Scripture itself which had placed the
paradoxical problem before Him.

We even dare to accept the thesis that Christ in the conflict by means of which
He would consume Satan’s temptation[1] and deliver His thoughts from the burden
of paradox, was pointed solely to the revealed Word, solely to that revealed
Word. His Messianic consciousness was not a superb, divine knowledge, which He
had taken along out of heaven, and which, for the rest, at no point touched on
His human thinking. It was not a naive intuition, which could stand as a second
factor in the motivations of His life beside the Scriptures as a first factor.
Every attempt to “explain” these matters in that way must necessarily lead us
back to the manner of thinking alluded to above,[2] which ascribes Christ’s
human obedience in part to His divine obedience; but the divine excludes
obedience; God does not obey. No, when Christ entered the world, grew up into a
lad, a youth, a man, when He suffered and died, He had to be satisfied with what
was His in the Scriptures. The doctrine of the adequacy (de sufficientia) of the
Scriptures takes on new glamour and new depth if we look upon it as being the
spiritual property also of the true man Jesus Christ. The second Adam could
learn from the Scriptures that obedience, that the fulfillment of the
commandments, was pure religion; and He could also learn that religion is always
communion with the Father. Moreover, He could learn from the Scriptures that the
unique human life which could confess every moment that it had kept the
commandments could only be the life of the one Messiah for whom the centuries
had waited, and to whom the Great Mission had been given by the Father. Thus
Christ, confessing with a blessed joy His own sinless existence every day, and
confessing with blessed joy His own perfect faithfulness to the commandments,
could move upwards knowing with certainty that He had to be the great elect, the
Messiah, the second Adam, He who had been called from eternity to the great
labor of redemption, to the law of the covenant of grace.

[1] A struggle, too —this timeofSatan:SeeCremer-Kogel, Bibl.-theol. Wtchch. &
Neut. Graz. 10, p. 914, for the difference in the original
betweendokimazeinandpeirazein. This must notberegardedasa purely intellectual
struggle by reason ofparadoxicaltemptation,butas abattlefor life.

[2] Chapter 13, page 285. In very truth, then, the Scriptures were adequate to
Him. His Messianic self-awareness was conditioned by their adequacy, and vice
versa. The adequacy of the Scriptures, was, we can say, His great axiom, His
first and great conviction and belief. Because of this it was impossible for Him
to look upon a paradoxical experience as being normal, and impossible for Him to
find peace in such an experience for even a moment. And when the passion of that
paradox came upon Him, along the one route on which it could accrue to Him, the
way of descent into hell, the way of being the exlex without the gate, He — this
was His obedience, and thus He became our Surety — exerted all His living
effort[3] to take exception to that paradoxical experience. But the effort He
exerts is an exertion of obedience. Thus do the Scriptures drive Him to the
Scriptures; thus words impel Him to the Word. “Comparing Scripture with
Scripture” — that is what took place here. The wrestling of Psalms 42 in which
the soul admonishes the soul and the spirit the spirit was absolutely fulfilled
in Him there.

[3] A struggle, too — this time of Satan: See Cremer-Kogel, Bibl.-theol. Wtchch.
& Neut. Graz. 10, p. 914, for the difference in the original
betweendokimazeinandpeirazein. This must not be regarded as a purely
intellectual struggle by reason of paradoxical temptation, but as a battle for
life.

Now we shall not ask further to what extent His divinity supported His humanity
on this occasion. We believe that it did, but we can never say a word about the
manner in which this took place. It does not grieve us that we are unable to say
anything about it, for we cling to the heartening knowledge that in His
humanity, that in His being Adam, He had enough not only to be susceptible to
the confusion accruing to Him as a paradox from the outside, but also by the
exerted strength of His perfect religion to assert Himself against it, and to
fight against it so puissantly and effectively that He finally gave voice to
that super-paradoxical: amen!

Amen — “It shall certainly be so!”

Now there are some who abandon this Scriptural chain of thought in favor of
entangling themselves in such poetry of the Middle Ages as, by means of a false
science of esthetic, an unspiritual eroticism, compared Christ to a nightingale
singing a song in the May-tree, or warbling because He cannot do otherwise in
the joyous May of His natural, native, impersonal, unspiritually apprehended
love — a song of love[1] for that poor “murderer” hanging next Him. For he who
abandons the other interpretation in favor of such a phantasy has bartered the
riches of God’s truth and the riches of a truly architecturally constructed
dogmatics[2] for a poor and helpless science of esthetic.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 13: p. 269 f.; also see this volume, chapter
14.

[2] A dogmatics which has left ample room in it for this “mystery.”

Perhaps someone will call this a singular unbosoming. It is. But it can be
explained on the basis of our firm conviction that this is the only way we can
believe in an amen-relationship[3] which has, by means of a proving[4] of the
second Adam, been put in the fire of refinement; this is the only way we can
believe in such an amen-relationship between God and the Christ as the head of
the covenant of grace, as the Great Maintainer of the covenant of works.

[3] Probationary command!

[4] To be “proved” again presently from God’s side by the darkness which lasted
for three hours; to be discussed later.

Now we want to see the dogma converted into a poem; now, by losing the
paradoxes,[5] we would gain them. For the “amen” which the Christ addressed to
the murderer is fully informed by glorious contrasts; but, since we understand
the background, we know that these contrasts have their deeper unity in Himself,
and in God, and in the Word.

[5] Not now, naturally, in the strict sense in which paradox was set aside
above.

We can say that the “amen” of the Saviour is: first, although full of tension,
nevertheless very “ordinary”; second, although empirically it may be regarded as
a moment of experience, Scripturally it may be regarded as sound doctrine;
third, although it is super-paradoxical, it is humbly believing; fourth,
although uttered by the emptied Christ, it is an expression of the perfected,
pleromatic Messiah; fifth, although uttered by one who was completely broken, it
is a cry of triumph. We pause to consider each of these predications.

We said that although Christ’s “amen” is full of tension, it is very “ordinary.”
By this we mean, that as He saw it, it was perfectly “natural.” It has become
apparent long ago that it is full of tension; it represented a cry of triumph
after a paradoxical conflict; and it is to be followed very shortly by a “why”
of utter distress. The “amen” may therefore be said to be situated between two
wars. On the other hand, it is also very “ordinary”; for in all this, we have
seen the Christ as a true man, who in order to utter this “amen”, needed nothing
more than that which God had given to every man: namely, the Word, and for the
rest the revelation of God in the history of life. Everything in this wilderness
consequently was as common and usual as was every moment in Paradise for Adam.
Perhaps we can say that Christ did not stand up before our astonished eyes on
the stage of Golgotha in order to fulfill His calling there in a mystery drama
motivated by divine knowledge and kept poised by a super-natural strength, but
He proved in all these things to be true man, We have not seen His Messianic
self-awareness as a detached mental construction which always lay fully
explained before His mind’s eye, and which He had taken with Him ready-made from
God’s hidden council, or by way of recollecting the council of peace which from
eternity and all times had been set up between the Father and the Son. No,
Christ had no means at His disposal which the first Adam did not have. We have
seen the Christ as a true man who in His Messianic self-awareness in the last
analysis had sufficient for Himself on this day, and as a servant had to have
enough for Himself in the two data: the Scriptures, and His perfect,
self-confessed, historically manifested obedience. We can say, therefore, that
Christ as Servant, as Mediator, entered into the most difficult of battles in no
other armor than suited Him every day. He fought as man; what God was to do
besides, in order to support Him, that was God’s prerogative and work; but He,
from His own side, did not reckon in terms of that. In this most unusual, and
unnatural hour, He remained “usual” and ordinary. Then He uttered His “amen” and
the utterance was not foisted upon human experience by divine knowledge; nor was
the “amen” an “aristocratic” gesture of certainty on the part of one who without
super-human strength could not have rescued His spiritual property, but it was
the expression of one who was true man, and who made use of no armor which had
not been given Him at His birth as a servant and a man.

Therefore we can say that this “amen” of the Christ in the last analysis is a
maintenance of what, three years ago — at the beginning of the ministration of
His office — He had told the devil. Then, three years ago, when Satan tempted
Him in the wilderness —no people were present at the time—Satan told Him: Leap
down from the pinnacles of the temple, and they will believe you. Satan said:
Perform an ostentatious sign, a miracle, and they will believe you without the
cross. But Christ said: “My “amen-relationship” with God prevents me from doing
that; get thou behind me, Satan, hallelujah, amen! Today the situation, but with
a sharper delineation of the problem now, recurs. Again there is the voice; no,
there are many voices, there is a chorus of voices, of human voices, saying to
Him: Come down from the cross, and we will believe you; perform a miracle,
expressive of unusual might, and we will believe you. This time the problem is a
more difficult one. These are not devils, but these are men; and that aggravates
the situation, as we have seen before (pages 226-228). In the second place, the
cross can no more be evaded, for the cross is here now. Only death can be
avoided. However, the problem may be more complicated and the tension severer,
but it is the same old problem, the same problem now which existed then. The
question is this one: Will Christ by an ostentatious miracle, cut loose from
utter obedience, request and earn faith in Himself. This helps us to understand
His answer for the first time. It is the answer which He has given during three
years of discoursing, and it is the answer which He is giving now by silence.
The answer is: It is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. To Him this
means: Thou shalt not perform any extraordinary miracles, any miracles not
written in the revealed Word; Thou must accommodate Thyself to the lowly, to the
ordinary, to the things written in the daily program of the kingdom of heaven,
to the extremely “common” attitude of one who simply does his duty, and cares to
know no more than that.

Christ did not “tempt” God, but chose the “ordinary” way. He kept choosing it
also as He hung mute while suffering the mockery of hell. As He did so, He saw
the way lying clear ahead of Him. It was the way of very ordinary things. By
that route He arrived at His “hallelujah” and His “amen.” The heavens quaked
because of this “amen,” but the heart of Jesus did not once beat faster because
of it. On the contrary, His heart regained its normal equilibrium again
precisely when He could utter the “amen,” and his soul was the more ready to
offer itself now to death. He who gives God room is able to breathe the more
freely. This “amen” is fully informed by the conscious activity (the utter
tension) and — let us use the predication very cautiously — the heavenly naivete
(the very ordinary).

We said that, in the second place, the “amen” of Christ, although it can be
designated empirically as a moment of experience, can also be designated
Scripturally as the sound conclusion of sound reasoning. It is indeed a moment
of experience; for while Christ was in the state of being forsaken, and of being
rejected without the gate, He was in a state of extreme distress. Difficulties
of experience crowded His hours and consumed His soul. Nevertheless, in order to
save Himself, He must let the Scriptures speak, He must let all of the
Scriptures address Him. The difficulties which the Scriptures themselves
disclosed to Him, He solved by means of the Scriptures. In these His victory
must have its point of departure. Just as Christ, a few days later, after His
resurrection, will comfort those travelling to Emmaus, and will lead them to
victory by admonishing them not to listen to a single statement of the
Scriptures in reference to a specific event, but to let all the Scriptures
witness about all the events, so He Himself now turned Himself to the whole of
the Scriptures, and referred the whole of the Scriptures to the One Word.
Between the one datum of the Scriptures which asserted that God cannot despise
the absolutely faithful soul and the other Scriptural datum which asserted that
He who was without the gate was to be legally despised no bridge seemed
possible, and this, we said, seemed to us to be the paradox. Now Christ who for
the sake of God and His own distress, had to bridge that gulf, proceeds to
construct the bridge not by means of an abstract philosophy about possibility
and non-possibility. Instead He allowed the Scriptures themselves to gather
their data into a synthetic whole, and thus He climbed from one mountain top of
Scriptural wisdom to the other by passing through the connecting valley of what
was also Scriptural wisdom, “He was not foolish, and slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets, all that the Scriptures had spoken aforetime.” “Ought not
Christ (the Messiah) to have suffered these things, and so (along this route) to
enter into His glory?”[1] Yes, indeed, this all the Scriptures said. There had
to be one, and that one the Messiah,[2] for whom forsakenness and abandonment
would dig a gulf to acceptance, for whom the curse would be the route to the
perfected blessing. Now all the days, and this last day also, and this last hour
even, had been concluded with the perfect assurance: “I have kept all the
commandments.” Therefore He knew: There can be no other Messiah than I; hence
for me utter distress can be the only way; utter abandonment the only method of
acceptance. Thus He entered into the Scriptures and thus His “amen” was the
result of His Scripturally authenticated wisdom.

[1] CompareChrist’sstatement to those who travelled to Emmaus.

[2] A posteriori thinking about what God decided a priori. From the second
conclusion (by God)tothe first (by God), from thefruitto theroot;practical
piety, theology as religion. In the third place, although Christ’s “amen” is
super-paradoxical, it is also humbly believing. He assumed the burden of the
Scriptures and the Word. This had to be, this sank deeply into His soul today.
It had to be, He sang to Himself in His soul. It was meet for God, He told
Himself, and now He asks no further questions but believes along the way, along
this route, His Messianic triumph must come. And He believes that He is being
obedient when He, doing the work of the Messiah, opens wide the gate of heaven
to a lost son of man who is praying in His ears. Hence He opens the door as King
and nevertheless knows that He is servant. Just as even in this moment Christ
still governs the world from heaven as the servant of the Lord, a servant in
exaltation also, so, as a servant, He has the law-book open before His eyes, and
the commandments of God in His heart. Thus it was that He uttered His “amen.”
That “amen” represented the self-control of the servant assuring himself that
the work He had done was compatible with the counsel laid down in the
Scriptures. In this again we see Christ transcending Moses, for Moses dashed the
tables of stone to pieces. By this we mean that Moses not only robbed the
sermons of confession of their text, but he also robbed his sermons of promise
and comfort of their text a priori. Moses hurled the first proof of the
Scriptures (the engraved tables of stone) away from him, and then he made the
first great, “messianic”[1] attempt, the first messianically intended effort at
substitutionary suffering. Hence Moses’ offer of substitutionary suffering was
in no sense to be authenticated as essentially religious. The experience of
Moses was not legitimate, for it was not based upon the Scriptures; and that
which was Scriptural in Moses (in reference to the substitutionary, messianic
sacrifice) was not “experienced.” But by means of genuinely human experience
Christ gave a place to God’s sound Word, and vice versa. He transcends the
paradoxes, He emerges from them, because He, while steeped in them, searched all
the Scriptures and pressed the tables of stone against Him. He did not neglect
to read one jot or tittle.

[1] Moses is called “mediator” in the Bible; see this volume, chapter 11, p.
228-33. Our fourth point, closely related to the third, was that Christ who
utters His “amen” may be entirely emptied, and completely exhausted, but His
Messianic self-awareness is pleromatic nevertheless. And He demonstrates that
precisely by uttering the “amen.” We must refer to Moses again. When he climbed
the mountain to present his notion of satisfaction to God for further
elaboration (mark the folly in those words), he could give the people nothing
better than a “maybe.” Before he climbed the mountain, he said: “Peradventure
(perhaps) I shall make an atonement for your sin” (Exodus 32:30). Twice he used
the “peradventure”; to men first, who had to hear him say it; and then to God,
from Whom he must hear it said in order to be mediator. Yes, indeed, he even
approaches God with nothing more than possibilities, not with certainties.[2]
This man, this Moses, and his “peradventure” is contrasted now with the man who
says “amen.” “Amen” means sure and certain; but a “peradventure” leaves
everything uncertain and unsure. Such is Moses. Not so Christ Jesus. He is
completely exhausted, entirely emptied. In this connection that means that He is
without any external semblance of persuasion, and without any externally
attractive right of apology, and without any divinely immediate, uncontested
certainty. And this Christ says not “peradventure” to the murderer, but “amen”.

[2] The three plans: see chapter 11, p. 230. This is His Messianic fulfillment.
Moses is like an architect who does not know how to find rhyme or reason in his
own print. Moses had three plans, and had presented them all to God. But a
master of architecture, a man who sees and dominates the purpose, the
environment, the time and situation and elements of the house to be built, and
whose spirit, moreover, is disposed to present a completely adequate blue-print
for its erection, can only submit one such print; he would regard a second as an
unbecoming experiment on his part. The better the architect, the stricter the
form of the plan. Such an architect of God is Christ, and such a builder is He.
He is the Master! He can only submit one plan; in this plan the unity of all the
Scriptures and not only one specific idea of the Scriptures will be fully
expressed. Hence He is the only one who can conquer the “peradventure” of Moses
— and of others — by His curt “amen.” It shall certainly be so; it cannot be
otherwise; only in this way does this detail fit into the scheme of the Lord.
Simply an “amen.” In the fifth place, although Christ is entirely broken, His
“Amen” is a cry of triumph. He is entirely broken and beaten down. Even in
spirit He is that. Hence He recognizes His “God as being God”; His “amen”
consequently is in conformity with God because it is uttered in conformity with
“all the Scriptures.” At the same time, however, His “amen” arises from Himself
(by a complete mastery, a complete appropriation and assimilation, of “all the
Scriptures”). It is a triumph in which the slave who because of heaven has been
rejected, can now introduce another person into heaven. He who has nothing more
to say on the basis of His own worth or merit, to the extent these are a human
phenomenon, has nevertheless so absolutely included and worked His way into the
legal status of things that He, in the hour in which He knows Himself to be the
accused, does the work of the judge. Having begun as servant, He concludes as
Judge. He manifests to the lost person hanging beside Him all the majesty of the
Judge, of one who is in charge of heaven’s throne. He pronounces His simple
“amen” and then proceeds to bleed until He is quite empty.

Yes, this vision is also an “esthetic” one, and is full of tenseness, but this
is an esthetic which has conformed itself to prophecy, and which could not
depart from it. God shines through Golgotha, that perfection of ugliness, most
dazzingly. My Lord and my God! For all these reasons we know that Christ is now
in a state of triumph. Paul teaches us in the second chapter of the Philippians
that Christ was lifted up as a reward for His humiliation. But that exaltation
began on Golgotha. This “amen” is a glimpse of His Messianic glory. No wonder.
Now that He has Himself by means of His struggle gained everything from the hand
of the Judge, the Revealer of all the Scriptures, He can celebrate the triumphs
of His “amen.” The day of His death in other moments, too, permits Him to reach
out ahead to the exaltation in the very moment of humiliation.[1]

[1] Think, for instance, of Christ’s surrender of His spirit to God, of the
signs which accompany His dying, of the new grave in which no man had yet lain,
of the third utterance of the cross (requisition) and of the fifth, in
connection withJohn 19:28.

Thus in Jesus Christ the paradoxical humiliation earned its perfect logical
exaltation. He hurled the “amens” of the angels[2] who go before, here on
Golgotha, and so Himself became “the Amen”(Revelation 3:14). By maintaining the
Scriptures as a means of rescuing Him in His own thinking, He earned the right
to inspire Scripture. The Logos, the incarnate Word, is standing here at the
division between the Old and the New Testament. This Word incarnate long before
this time, under the old covenant, had given the Scriptures of the Old
Testament, but now He earns the right to do that as Christ, by being
paradoxically tried because of the Scriptures, and by singing His
super-paradoxical “amen” after the conflict of obediently following the
Scripture.

[2] “Amen” also before the Lamb (Revelation 5:14); this must be taken in
connection with the Lamb ofRevelation 7:12; seeRevelation 7:9-10also.

Thus He according to His merits becomes the rightful inspirer (by His Spirit) of
the New Testament, and also of the Old Testament. He earned the right to send
out the Spirit, who inspired Scripture, as a gift given by Him; this right He
earned because He was forsaken by the Spirit when He was in His human spirit and
nevertheless, although abandoned, believed in the manifest character of the
Scriptures. Moreover, as man and servant, He became really one with all His own,
also in the absolute assimilation of God’s Word. He earned the right to admonish
the “foolish and slow of heart” on their way to Emmaus to search “all the
Scriptures.” He bore the Scriptures and loved them even when He Himself
presented the problems. This is faith in God and in the Word: to know that God
as the God of the Word proposes a riddle, and nevertheless to cling to Him. In
the “amen” of Golgotha we have the breaking through of the Christ together with
the Scriptures, with His own Scriptures, with His own God. It is the climax of
perfect faith, breaking through the vicious circle of empirical appearance.

However, this hymn of praise still seems dangerous, immature, subject to
pollution, for we have not answered one of the questions which we originally
proposed. We have refused to say that the “amen” of Christ seems to be worth so
little. It was easy for us to praise Christ as having transcended Moses, because
Christ says “amen” and Moses “peradventure.” But all those words do not take
away the fact that Christ — and this is the question we have not answered —
after a few hours again gives expression to His “why.” Then He utters a “why” in
which His “amen” sinks to a plane lower than that of Moses’ brave
“peradventure.” Again we ask, Did the “why” of the fourth utterance from the
cross completely supplant the “amen” of the second, did it completely push the
second aside and empty it of its triumphal content? Can all those doxologies
which we have just been singing about the Christ be sustained as we consider the
bitter “why,” as we consider the “Why hast Thou forsaken?”

Indeed it is true from a human point of view that Christ’s “why” is an
annihilation of His monumental “amen.” But He who relates His thoughts by means
of faith’s assumption to the Scriptures, also to the question of the
relationship and coherence between Christ’s experience and Christ’s faith in the
Scriptures will find the solution to that problem also. The fact that Christ
triumphs now in His “amen,” and sinks to a very humiliating plane again in His
“why” cannot be due to Him, as He is in the moment of His confident “amen.” The
cause of this descent must necessarily lie in the external circumstances.
Something new must have intervened; not He, but “the situation” must have
changed.

If you seize on this thread in the maze you will be guided to a vantage point
from which a very wide perspective is opened to you, and you will marvel anew at
the sublime style, the divine harmony, which fully informs the history of the
passion of Christ. Then you will see that Christ was twice placed in the sieve;
once without a direct act coming from the outside, and once because of an
intentional, and if you will “mechanical,” intervention of a new force coming
from without, which struck Him down in order to test Him again on the question
of His utter obedience. In order to make our meaning clear we shall have to go
back for a moment. When Christ was oppressed and grieved in Gethsemane, He, all
alone, had to fight out the conflict and master it within the walls of His own
soul’s dwelling place. Only after He had been attacked within (without the
intervention of people or powers coming from without) and only when He had
conquered there,[1] did the externally accruing trials come upon Him. The secret
of Christ’s sorrows in Gethsemane arose not from the fact that fetters were
binding Him from the outside, but from the fact that He was putting the problem
to Himself, and was struggling with it, and was solving it in faith. And only
when His own spirit had escaped the bonds did the murderer descend upon Him from
without in order to take Him captive.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 20, pp. 369-372.

Another line ran parallel to this one. In Gethsemane Christ first had to force
His blood out of Himself by a process which began within and worked to the
outside. Only after that was the blood driven from Him by human hands. Only then
did the influence coming from without, working to the inside, accrue to Him (the
scourging, after the sweating of blood). Each time, consequently, that He
carries a conflict which arises within the walls of His own spirit to its goal,
to its end in faith, there follows the distress which comes from the outside,
and which steeps Him in distress anew. Christ must treat all His fundamental
problems twice, and must conquer them twice; the first time He must do this
without, and the second time He must do this with mechanical force.

Such is the law of the conflict of paradox. First this conflict accrued to Him
without “anything strange” (something that did not belong to the schedule, to
the program of the day). The mockery, the dice, the scoffing laughter, alas,
these all accompanied the cross. These could have come to Isaiah, to Peter, or
to anyone. True, there was a problem in all these things for Christ, but it was
a problem which He Himself had to sense, which He Himself had to ponder, and
which He Himself had to solve. This He did by making the events of the day
paradigms and revelations of infinite necessity and its law. He followed the
conflict to its conclusion in His own soul’s dwelling place and thus arrived at
the utterance of His “amen.” But then it is necessary that a strange,
mechanically intervening force thrust Him back into that same struggle, and then
it is necessary that this force come from the outside. This new intervening
movement coming from without is the darkness of three hours which we shall
discuss later. Up to this time the darkness was not present. That which came
upon the Christ from the outside was, once the sentence and the cross were
given, a very “ordinary” thing. They could be “expected”; these people, their
spikes, their words, their gestures could be expected. If Christ Himself had not
borne them into hell, Golgotha, as far as the external things were concerned,
would have witnessed nothing unusual. Then all the events would have flowed
logically from what had gone on before. But now it is God’s turn. Now a
mechanical force comes down from above. This is something which does not lie in
the natural course of things or in the “logic” of the events. The sun covered
itself; a miracle took place. Nature also set up its camp against the Son,
robbed Him of the gift of Diogenes, the gift of all paupers. He was allowed a
light no longer. For three long hours the order of nature opposed itself to
Christ. Darkness came at noon. In this God cast Him back into the conflict a
second time. The paradoxical stress returned. Again the struggle to cling to the
knowledge of His righteousness before God against the appearance of things
recurs. He utters a bitter “why” after three long hours. Ah, how distressed He
is! First He had reconciled the “ordinary” course of actual history as He had
endured it up to this time overagainst the revelation of the Scriptures and the
revelation of events. Now this new element comes, this darkness! It referred to
the beginning of the Scriptures, for light was called into being by God’s first
created word; it referred to the beginning of history, for God begins the course
of history by calling light into being; it referred to the beginning of common
grace, that course of life which came after the advent of sin, for the first
miracle after the fall was that the sun continued to shine! And now He is being
proved by this very first thing. The sin of Adam could not put a stop to the
shining light, and could not extinguish the lamps, but God darkens the sun for
Him. Thus God calls into question His right to life and light, His
demonstrability, His right to the privilege of the poorest of men; thus God
proves the Son by means of a paradoxical appearance a second time. Paradox
again, yes, not in Jesus’ own soul this time, but in the most general revelation
of God, in nature, and in His own most special and most recent experience. This
is a catastrophe caused not by nails and spikes but by the deeds of Genesis 1.
And in this second struggle which covered the same difficulties as the first
Christ had to triumph again, and in such a way that He eventually can say: It is
finished. By that He will mean that the program, the schedule, the sequence of
events has been maintained, that nothing strange has accrued to Him. Father,
into Thy hands I commend my spirit. In this way we arrive at the legal intention
and dispensation, at a delineation of the historical place of the darkness which
lasted three hours. It seems to be an irregular hiatus in the pulsing activity
of Golgotha; nevertheless it now demonstrates the awful harmony, the divine
style of the day of the great sacrifice. Thus we arrive at an answer to the
annoying question which we have been putting, to Christ’s “why.” Now we can
answer, and can state the reason for which the “why” of Christ does not make His
“amen” worthless, and does not supplant it by vitiating it. Our answer is: It
does not! The “why” did not destroy His “amen,” but confirmed it, and is an
evidence of the fact that God recognized Him. For God was awaiting that “amen”
before He could oppress the soul of Christ by means of His externally
interjected darkness. First the Son had to endure die struggle alone; and when
He had really defeated Satan within the walls of His own soul’s dwelling place,
and by means of a self-achieved and puissant “amen” He had stunned the devil,
then God could introduce His darkness. This He could do, not to tempt the Son,
but to prove Him.[1] Christ puts His “why” overagainst His silence in that first
“organic” process, and overagainst that second, mechanically imposed process.
Overagainst Christ’s “amen” as the conclusion of the first immanent process of
the plague stand His sixth and seventh utterances from the cross as the triumph
over the second process of paradoxical spiritual struggle.

[1]From this it also becomes apparent that the period circumscribed by the first
trio of utterances from the cross (socially considered) delineates the
descending (struggling) and the ascending (the amen) line, and that thereupon
the second period, circumscribed by the four last statements from the cross
(considered only in reference to Christ Himself) gives expression to the same
descending (fourth and fifth) and ascending line (sixth and seventh) (the fifth
constitutes the transition).

Now the fourth statement from the cross is more intelligible to us. There is a
harmony now between the two abysses of Christ’s humiliation and abandonment; it
is a harmony determined by the strictest necessity and by the austerest divine
style.

We can say, then, that the “amen” of the Lord Jesus Christ was purchased at a
precious price. It unchained, it set loose, the last power of annihilation which
sought Him from without and which was kindled against Him, bent on consuming
Him. The divine command, “Sword, arise against this shepherd,” had been forced
to wait for this dynamic “amen,” as evidence of the fact that the first
struggle, the immanent conflict, had been completed. Only then did God
(figuratively speaking) stop the sun in its course, and drive the clouds
together over Jesus’ triumphantly lifted head. Yes, indeed, the “murderer” was
compelled a little later to believe in a Saviour who asked His “why’s.” That is
what we said a moment ago. But there was no other way of salvation open to Him
save this way of foolishness. For us, too, there is no other way than this one.
We have advisedly been attempting in the last three paragraphs to enter into
those abysses of the spirit out of which the fourth utterance from the cross had
to be borne. This had to be the case. The descent into hell is not a separate
activity which we can limit to the three hours of darkness during which God
closed the doors, but is the drama itself. Perdition may come upon the head of
the Son of man by means of never so many leaps and catastrophes, by means of
never so sharp a contrast of convulsions overagainst calm devastation and thus
develop both inside and outside of Him, but the descent into hell never becomes
one of the activities in the drama; it becomes the drama itself. And in this
drama Christ is compelled to fight out the controversies twice: first in the
microcosm, the little world of His created humanity; then in the macrocosm, the
great world in which the play will begin with the action of the Son and with
nothing less cosmical than that.

Consequently, Thou hast not yet done, Thou who utterest the “amen” in the house
of Satan. Thou wilt have to suffer unspeakably for this confident “amen.” This
is the hour in which death demands its consequences. These had never been
granted it, nor the one who drove death on: namely, Satan. Thus the sorrow moves
from within to the outside, and from without to the inside. Consequently the Son
is quite alone, for He is suffering consequences; and the consequences have ever
been withheld until now. We, too, O Saviour, cannot follow Thee. We shall leave
Thee alone. But speak a simple “amen” in our ears. That will be enough for us;
and that will be enough for Thee. Whisper Thy “amen,” before the hour has
elapsed, for today Thy “amen” is no longer being contested. The sun of the
Passover continues to shine; there it is always mid-day. Set us as a seal upon
Thy arm; for, amen: it certainly shall be! No matter how high distress may
arise, Thou wilt destroy the head of the enemy, and annihilate every dragon. In
all this Thou art more than conqueror through Him whom Thou hast loved. Amen,
yea, amen!

Yes, indeed, we too want to shout “amen” very vigorously. He has taught us this
Himself; He has given us this Himself. However, our giving does not correspond
to His. Nevertheless this does not rob us of our comfort. Give Him His honor in
the dynamic of “amen-saying” — and give us for Christ’s sake the grace of the
amen-relationship, O God of all grace and comfort. For the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who was preached among us, was not yea and nay, because He was “amen”
and “why” — yes, both of those and in righteousness. “Why” and “nay” are not
identical; they are to be essentially distinguished. Thus He was to us yea in
Him. For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen (see 2
Corinthians 1:19-20). This the amen, the true and faithful witness, now made
manifest as the beginning of the creation of God (see Revelation 3:14): Amen,
thou with me in Paradise.


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  CHAPTER 19: 14. CHAPTER 14: CHRIST CONFRONTING THE DEAD JUDAS WITH THE DEAD SCOUNDREL
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C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N Christ Confronting the Dead Judas With the Dead
Scoundrel And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy
kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be
with me in Paradise. —Luke 23:42-43. IN OUR first volume, and again in our
third,[1] we alluded for a moment to a legend of the Middle Ages according to
which the Saviour was likened to a “nightingale” which sings a song of pure
“love” in the May-tree of the cross. And we did not neglect to deny every
attribute of genuine beauty to such a “vision” because the true significance of
the crucified Christ and the power of His love is denied in it. Will it still be
necessary for us, after the immediately preceding chapters, to develop our
objections to such a legend further? We do not think so. We pay attention now to
the second utterance from the cross;[2] it was directed to the scoundrel who was
hanging beside Christ. That singer of the Middle Ages also gave attention to
this theme: The nightingale is singing Out of the thorny tree; His heart is full
of loving, He sings for you and me. The rapist cried, Peace I pray, And he was
given the prize. The nightingale sings on: Today With me in Paradise.

[1] SeeChrist in His Suffering,chapter 12: p. 269; also this volume, chapter 13:
p. 296.

[2] We shall not discuss further the “verily” of verse 43, inasmuch as chapter
13 dealt with that. But we shall not contend against this any longer. We merely
repeat that the love of Christ was not a natural emotion seeking an outlet in
self-satisfaction; it is official, personal religion. His is not an uncritical
love, but one which very critically distinguishes and separates the various
relationships. The love of Christ is a distinguishing, a discriminating love.
For Christ, hanging between the two malefactors, accepts the one and not the
other. Two condemned shall be dying on the hill of a single cross: “The one
shall be taken, and the other left.” You see that there is distinction,
selection here. Christ who is today being confronted by the dead Judas[1] in the
other world, presents Himself at the beginning of the session of the gods[2] of
the universe in the company of a dead scoundrel. He asks the privilege of
speaking first and He takes that privilege. He says: Give me Judas; I confront
the dead Judas with this dead bandit. And He let all the gods hold their peace.
A hand wrote an awful word on the wall: the sovereign good pleasure. The devils
grimly suppressed their wrath; they had no apology to present.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 12.

[2] See Psalms 82.

Well, then, for the sake of Christ, we shall consider first the scoundrel and
his embarrassed questioning.

I hear someone say: Be very careful in your treatment of that brother-scoundrel.
He mingled fragrant incense with the stinking vapors of hell; into these he
introduced the sweet incense of prayer. However we must say that the offering he
gave was exceedingly meager. Thoughtful Christians may not make the prayer of
this man more beautiful than it is. Those who say this are quite right, and it
is to be hoped that they really wish what they say. We may not forget that this
time the nard was contained in an ugly vial; the bottle had not been rinsed
before it had been filled. Unclean thoughts. Confused ideas. Inadequate
elaboration of saving grace. The contents are none too good. But there is the
form! God likes beautiful forms. But in this respect, also, everything is
equally meager. The voice is a crude voice, the face is distorted, the spirit
giddy, and the hands are not even folded. One almost feels like joining in with
the Pharisees who, a few days before His death,[3] asked Jesus whether He was
actually going to be charmed by the prattle of children. “Hearest Thou what
these say?” they ask in disgust. And, adopting their manner, we at first sight
would ask: “Hearest thou what that fellow says? It is but the grumbling of a
scoundrel. Say now, canst Thou take the man seriously?”

[3]Christ in His Suffering, chapter 9, p. 133 ff. And that is but the form of
the prayer. But alas, the content, the essence of the prayer! Is it really
prayer? Yes, someone hastens to say, I am sure that it is; for his approach is
very beautiful. He calls Jesus: Lord. In saying this, one, however, forgets that
there are manuscripts which have the word “Jesus” instead of the designation
“Lord.” In these we read: “Jesus, remember me, when Thou comest into thy
kingdom.” But the mere use of this name and nothing more does not warrant the
inference that this speaker thought through the salutation of the prayer by a
sound logic and in fidelity to the revealed truth.[1] [1] Even this reading
(punctuation) is not definitely ascertained.

Yes, someone now adds, but the man certainly shows unusual courage by confessing
Jesus and by asking a favor of Him. Surely, by putting his body and soul into
Jesus’ hand he was acknowledging to the judges and the people that he found
Christ beautiful and good. He blesses the One whom they curse; he calls aloud to
Him as to the lord of a definite kingdom, to the very One whom the Jewish
authorities have thrown outside of the gate. Can it be that such a protest
against these judges is not a virtue? Is it not an act of faith on his part to
choose against his people, and to oppose the man who is hanging crucified with
him by asking him why he does not stop reviling Jesus?

Thus there are some who wish to infer from all these things that the prayer of
this man was truly a prayer. In response to this we must reply that these
particulars as such by no means constitute evidence for the ethical quality of
the murderer or for his piety and religious sense. This man had lived for years
by way of protest against judges, against a majority, against the half plus one.
Very likely the man was one of the many rebels against the Roman authority; in
any case, he was one who had never taken very nicely the attitude of the
majority and of the intent of the government. As a matter of fact, he had always
been among the objectors. Hence the fact that he is opposing the people at the
foot of the cross by no means constitutes evidence of a sincere repentance.
Jesus had better be careful, we would almost anxiously advise Him: there are so
many people who agree with Thee simply and solely because they like to disagree
with others. Who, consequently, can infer from his opposition that this murderer
appreciated the mystical union?

We know that the man asks Jesus to remember him when He has come into His
kingdom. With respect to that, we would say that if we write the text on a
little piece of paper and then examine it carefully without thinking of Christ
Jesus who replies to it, what it says tells us nothing about the soul of this
murderer. It might very well have been selfishness which induced him to say a
good word for Jesus, or to ask for a safe place.[1] We know them all too well —
the people who during their lives have no regard for the rights of others and
then when their own hour is at hand are extremely anxious for themselves. Try to
imagine Jesus’ answer as not extant, and you will be able to exploit the
question of the embarrassed rascal by writing a gripping chapter of a book,
entitled: De mortibus persecutorum. Being interpreted, that means “Those who let
blood” — and how anxious they sometimes feel when approaching their death. But,
yes, take the favorable position that the man had good intentions and that he
really wanted to honor Christ and not only safeguard himself. Even then the
thing that motivates him may merely be an “impression” and an impression
received at the last moment. What a moment to receive an impression! Jesus,
mother Mary — we still know the exclamations — and do we not all have reasons
for mistrusting that man? We read that both of those who were crucified with
Christ when they first were hanged reviled Jesus[2] just as did the others.
These murderers also asked the question pertaining to might: they also inquired
whether Jesus would be able to give freedom. And now — is that one murderer
changing sides? He keeps back his reviling; he takes thought; he ponders the
question concerning the might of Jesus; and finally comes out with a servile
question in which that same issue of Jesus’ might is again lurking around the
corner. There is to be a kingdom, and the ruler of that kingdom will be able to
hand out good positions. Strange, is it not, that it is again the consideration
of might which comes to the foreground? What about considerations of justice?
Christ, remember Thy forgotten chapter.[3] Yes, we know, the man is praying a
prayer. To pray, according to the Greek, means to ask, but according to the
Greek text all that we know is that the man said something. The account could
not possibly give a more neutral impression. Can it be said in any sense that
the man’s request has the earmarks of virtue? Be careful, people! In any other
case you would shrug your shoulders and at best leave the matter in God’s hands.
We know that the time in which the murderer might have proved the integrity of
his prayer was not allowed him. Very soon he must believe in a dead Saviour, we
said.[4] But even now all generations must believe in the life of the dead
murderer.

[1] We shall consider the question itself presently.

[2] In our opinionMatthew 27:44when compared withMark 15:32does not admit of a
different interpretation.

[3] The priesthood; the satisfaction: seeChrist on Trial, chaptee 23: p. 428 f;
also this volume, chapter 12: p. 256.

[4] J. van An del, “De Avondster.” p. 172; see also this volume, chapter 13: p.
278. The matter becomes even more dubious when we pause to consider the words
which the man spoke. He is talking about a kingdom, about a kingdom of Jesus.
What can he possibly mean by that? The disciples for three long years were
willing to open their ears to the words of Christ and, nevertheless, after that
time they still had such foolish and impossible ideas about the kingdom of
Christ. That being the case this man certainly will have very strange notions
about the nature of that kingdom. He sees something very vaguely at a distance.
But a clear recognition of the reality God has in mind and is even now busy
creating, the man did not have. This becomes specially evident from the fact
that of all the questions about Jesus the one point he raises first is the very
same which has been in the foreground throughout. During the process of the
trial of Jesus, to the extent he heard of it on the way to the place of
crucifixion and afterward, he has repeatedly heard the issue of Jesus’ might
spoken of; we have referred to that before. Can He, or can He not? That was the
question. He is called a king; then let Him come down from the cross. The charge
against Him was suspended over Jesus’ head. That, too, contained a reference to
the alleged kingship. There was not a man who believed in it. At first he
himself did not, and now that he finally does believe it, he, like a typical man
(it Isaiah 19 centuries ago), thinks — well, perhaps a case of arrogant
rebellion against the majority. Very likely the man was one who claimed time and
again that right belongs to those who are rejected by the majority. All rebels
and revolutionaries begin their speeches that way. But what, concretely
considered, is the kingdom of which he is talking in the dire stress of his
death? We do not know. We do know that one important word is not mentioned here.
The word “priest” is not named. The priest-king[1] of Zechariah 6 — that is far,
far beyond his sight.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 23: pp. 429-432. In addition, the man speaks of
“remembering.” Jesus, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom. What is the
significance of that word? We can say this to begin: he makes the “remembering”
indefinite, does not limit it to a specific time. Even if he had been thinking
of a messianic kingdom he would not have dared to look for its coming until
Jesus after many miracles would have arisen over his cross-knolls and king’s
graves and Caesar’s thrones. When that will be? He prefers to leave the time
indefinite. Moreover the use of the word “remembering” warrants the suspicion
that his notion of the Lord Jesus Christ was still very vague and confused. For
it does seem that the request to “remember” him may mean a prayer for a “good”
position in that new kingdom.[2] In that case we could make this the point of
connection to which to fasten the contention that he saw the Messiah, and not
merely one of the harbingers or saints — in Jesus. But if it was intended so, we
should certainly think that he was beginning to dicker for an honorary position
a little too abruptly and early; then his longings would immediately have soared
in a flight which is hardly appropriate to his embarrassment. Moreover the
prudence we ascribe to this man can be appreciated better as a request for
intercession. The word “remember,” then, must be regarded rather as a petition
for a “good word” than for a “good position.” Something of the concept of
intercession shines through his petition. Jesus must serve as his intercessor
with God, for he has nothing to lose any more save that one thing which men call
everything. But what are the implications of that? We know that many Galilean
mothers brought their children to Jesus in order that the rabbi of Nazareth
might place his hands on them and bless them. These women proceeded on the
assumption that Jesus was able to put in a good word with God.[3] Now this
request that He intervene between God and them, amounted, of course, to a
virtual ignoring of Christ’s own authority as the Messiah to forgive sins and to
take over the kingdom. Just so, now, this malefactor in his confused thinking
may have looked upon Jesus as an upright man[4] who because of His pure life and
unusual holiness enjoys the special favor of God. Such a Jesus, then, could
serve as his intercessor. But that he recognized the Messiah in Jesus, the
Messiah who in virtue of His own justice and merits governed the keys of the
kingdom is a fact which is by no means evident from the words which he speaks.

[2] Think of the familiar question put by Salome in the interests of her two
children.

[3] Dr. F. W.Grosheide,Kommentaar op Mattheus,p. 228.

[4] “This man hath done nothing amiss.”

What we want to say, therefore, is that the prayer is by no means perfect. Even
though it is possible to discover the essence of true prayer in the words, we
must also say that Christ was able to detect the bad odors of sin in the
fragrant incense of the petition. Remnants of the old man, the foolishness of a
diseased theology (if indeed a “theology”), and the earmarks of human
misunderstanding characterized it. Now if anyone, whether somewhat angry or not,
should ask us why we choose to emphasize all this so pronouncedly, this would be
our reply: It is not our intention to take anything pleasant out of the picture.
But we must ask what the source of the pleasantness is, and how we can discover
it. Phantasies are not pleasant on Golgotha. If the account is to become very
dear to us, we must not let the embarrassed bandit say what we want to hear.
That which the man asks might — if I simply exegete his own words — have been
asked just as well by an unconverted man. His prayer, taken simply as it stands,
does not contain a single bit of proof to show that this poor fellow who cannot
even express himself in the vernacular of the visible church is a living member
of that church, and a true believer in the Christ.

Only when we have told ourselves plainly that we cannot prove the virtue of this
prayer by pointing to its own forms will we get something pleasant in return for
that which was first subtracted from the picture.

Now it is our turn to explain. Fortunately, we cannot derive a bit of evidence
from the malefactor himself for saying that his prayer was real and genuine; for
the evidence lies in Christ. Not the unconfident word of a crucified malefactor,
but the confident statement, the absolutely binding promise, of the Messiah is
conclusive evidence for us that this corrupt son of Abraham was the object of
the favor of grace. Christ accepts him. This means that Christ recognized him as
His heir, and that is proof positive that the truths of eternal election have
germinated here. Such fruit cannot be determined on empirical, psychological
grounds and cannot be inferred from a prayer. This must be accepted on a basis
of faith, and be believed on the basis of Christ’s word of promise. Not a
religious psychology, but the words, the promise, the statement of the Messianic
awareness of the Saviour, provide the constructive answer to our problems. The
amen of the answered prayer provides the exegesis to the amen-relationship of
this praying malefactor who has not the amen-formula,[1] that gives the
explanation of this bashful and embarrassed man who seeks refuge with a Jesus
who has been put to shame. Be quiet, embarrassed brother; we believe the
integrity of your prayer not because of you, but because of the Lord. We believe
that Christ, under the paradoxical confusion of the developments of God’s
decrees ever and again, as He speaks of the decrees of the God of election,
finds the sure bottom of His sovereign good pleasure. And we believe that on the
basis of that He assigned you a place in Paradise. He gives His admission
tickets to Paradise, only with the stamp of the foreordination of God on them.
We learn nothing about this admitted applicant by following the bypaths and
avenues of a psychological route; we learn everything along a theological road.
This more than suffices us.

[1] See for an explanation of this “amen” and for the concept of the “amen-
relationship,” p. 273, 275. And now that we have discovered and acknowledged
this new brother as a member of the mystical union of the second Adam, now, on
this basis, we know that at bottom his protest against the people who reviled
his king was not an assertion of his old nature, but a revelation of his new
one. Now we know that although his prayer may have been mixed with the elements
of a diseased theology that prayer also was in essence a true prayer. We know
that he was broken by the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that his diseased brain
would even “today” be given healing, the moment his pulsing heart had been
silenced. Now we know that his exception to the people surrounding the cross
included in itself a self-accusation; we know that although he did not
“understand” Christ he did “know” Him, he accepted Him in faith as He truly is.
We know that in the roots of his being he did not allow himself to be guided by
the false light of his confused thinking, but that he vanquished such thought.
He surrendered himself. To whom? To Christ. By what means? By the hearing of the
preached word. Small bits of the revelation of Christ Jesus had fallen into his
“heart.” Was it not a beautiful thing that he joined himself with the very last
things which he himself heard and saw in Jesus? Christ Himself, as intercessor,
has revealed Himself as such in reference to His enemies, and His revilers, in
His utterances from the cross which had immediately preceded this one. True, the
malefactor understood very little of the eschatological and history-making
significance of Christ’s intercessory prayer. But so much he understood: a host
of mockers and revilers on the one hand, and the vital and living energy of the
intercession on the other. O God, he himself had been one of those who had
reviled.[1] But God had placed the intercessor next to him, had given him
spiritual support, spiritual sustenance — how shall we say it — God had looked
upon him. And now he reflects upon the most recent revelation. At once he takes
the initiative and lets himself be heard. At one leap he stands head and
shoulders above the theologians of the nation. Thou, who art the intercessor for
Thy murderers, I too am a murderer, I too. Be mine, also be mine. Give me the
crumbs, Lord. They are still falling from the table of the children, are they
not? Remember me, Jesus,[2] when Thou comest into Thy kingdom some day. Can it
be that this man is thinking about Jesus in much the same way as Joseph thought
about the butler when he asked the butler to remember him when he should
presently be serving Pharaoh again? Ah, ask no such questions. There is such a
thing as coming to God through Christ with our human heart. The man believed God
and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.

[1] Both Matthew and Mark report that the two crucified malefactorsreviledHim:
only of the one who hardened himself do we definitely read that he blasphemed
(Luke).

[2] The translation “Jesus” named possible in the discussion above is not being
set down here with absolute certainty; see Nebe,Leidensgeschichte, volume
2,1881,p. 266. Was he converted, you ask? Surely, he is converting himself. When
he first came here, he himself sanctioned that cry of the blood:[3] save thyself
and us. A rude question, an unbelieving question, that. Now he speaks a
different language. The great miracle must accrue to him now, not on this side
of death but on the other side. The Christ must not help him down from the
cross, but must bear him, cross and all, into His kingdom. See, he is already
coming out of his byways and alleys and he will leave the matter of getting
suitable clothing for the banquet to the King himself. He is going along at
once, just as he is. Surely, this is progress, this is gain, this is
development, and it comes all in a moment. This is to take refuge in the
mediator of God and of murderers, this is to accept Christ just as He has
revealed Himself. Can it be that he is exalting himself above his spiritual kin?
Has he suddenly become too “important” to count himself a murderer? How can we
say that? He is asking for nothing more than he knows Jesus is willing to give
to — murderers! For he has understood the first utterance from the cross. That
first statement from the cross was a prayer for the murderers, and now he is
simply asking to share in the blessing which Christ had for murderers. Who can
say, now, that he is nurturing pride? He is not denying his kin, for he takes
his stand as one of those bloodthirsty ones, of those murderers. He does not
choose a lofty vantage point, from which he, as a spiritual new-comer,
arrogantly condemns others; and he is not active now, as we first deemed
possible, in his old negativistic role. No, he just takes his place at the table
of the condemned; he is satisfied to have Jesus give him something of that which
He gave to those who crucified Him.

[3] “Of the blood”: Nebe points out (p. 258-259) “that (see our present volume,
p. 151) the execution of these two may have been advanced somewhat, because they
were eager to put Jesus to death quickly. In that circumstance it was for His
sake that they now had to die, unexpectedly. This is a possibility with which we
must reckon, inasmuch as it makes the reviling of both easier to understand and
less demonic in character.”

Yes, the answer recognizes the question. Prayers have been conceived and born.
Prayers, for, according to the Greek text, the poor fellow prayed repeatedly.
Jesus, Jesus, art Thou not listening yet; may I be in Thy kingdom? Dost Thou say
nothing,

Jesus? I wanted to ask, wilt Thou be my intercessor there? Jesus, Jesus, Thou
canst be mute so long, and, alas, I have deserved nothing; but wilt Thou
remember me in Thy kingdom? Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, I know very
well, I can plainly see that Thou hast too much to be anxious about, but alas,
pray for me too! Wilt Thou speak for me in that kingdom to which Thou didst
allude? The man persisted in prayer. That goes to show that Jesus allowed him to
persist. He knew when to be silent, and He did not disturb the birth of prayers.
But when the man who prayed had eventually opened his soul entirely, and when
his hoarse voice had finally exhausted the last word in his distorted mouth and
he could go no farther, the Mediator of God and of murderers raised His sublime
voice and said: Amen, I tell thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise. And
from this we know that not only Jesus’ kingship but also the idea of Christ’s
Mediatorship as a priest seized on this broken heart. The man understood the
core of the matter; he said: Remember me, remember me. His faith removed
mountains. It believed and embraced an intercessor who presently was reduced to
asking His “why’s” And that was even more wonderful than the acknowledgment of
the dead intercessor, for, in order to return to His kingly power,[1] Jesus —
and he knew this very well — first had to be submerged. No, it was not the
physical but the spiritual death which frightened the man, if, indeed, he was
still in a condition to experience fright. But there were mountains for him to
move: he was to be in Paradise; the fourth utterance from the cross did not put
him to death.

[1]“En”; not “eis” (Greek).

Enough of this man now. What is there to see in the Saviour on this occasion? We
begin with the general truth. In this we see Christ’s strong faith. Christ opens
Paradise to the man in His communion. Paradise is the name used here for life in
blessedness with God, such as awaits those who fear Him, after their death.
Well, the Saviour is absolutely certain that He will enter Paradise; He also
takes upon Himself the right of introducing others there. He has faith in God
and in Himself. To this we must add that Christ’s response to the malefactor is
a pedagogical reply. It serves to purge the imperfection in the questioner. The
man asks something about the kingdom; in answer he gets a promise about the
Paradise. The kingdom is an “institution,” the Paradise an “organism”; the
kingdom (in the fallen world) is a luxury which has been achieved by struggle;
the Paradise is a restoration of natural grace. The human in Christ is glorified
in the kingdom; the divine with all its glamor and blessing is again returned to
the human in the Paradise. The kingdom of “Jesus” comes at the very end of
Christ’s struggle as Mediator, but the Paradise of “God” was at the very
beginning of God’s creative campaign prompted by His will to peace. The kingdom
(of Jesus), the “murderer” says, is an anticipation of the end of time; Paradise
(the Paradise of God, for such the Saviour intends it) is a recalling of the
elemental beginning of time. The kingdom is a representation of Christ at the
end; Paradise is the manifestation of God at the beginning. Because the word
“Paradise” refers to the beginning, to the beginning of creation (the period
which preceded that of the re-creation, the conquest of the kingdom by “Jesus”),
it refers also to the new world which is to harvest the fruits of Christ’s
service as Mediator. Presently Paradise will refer to the communion of the
blessed and of God; in that communion the renewed mankind will be allowed to
enjoy the luxury and the riches of presence with God in a restored order of
life. Paradise — as long as history has not yet come to an end — is a name to
indicate the condition of rest which is reserved behind the clouds of the ever
“becoming,” the ever developing kingdom of heaven which must still experience
its struggles here on earth under the clouds. Hence, when the murderer asked for
the intercession of Christ in His kingdom he was attaching himself to the person
of Jesus. He says: Remember me; that is: Reserve a little place for me, behind
you. But in His answer, Christ uses the word: With me; thou shalt be with me in
Paradise. Not Christ, but the eternal God, is the First and Last here. Jesus
must “decrease,” but God must “increase.” Thus He who gives puts Himself on a
plane with the one who receives, the Lord sits next to the servant, the One who
takes the lead places himself on a par with the one who follows. “With me in
Paradise.” In this promise Christ does not subordinate the one who prays to
Himself, but co-ordinates the petitioner with Him. Brother, he says in effect,
together we shall go — to God. The king in Christ takes a position behind the
servant of the Lord. The Mediator does not put Himself on display, proudly
parading in His kingly robes; He gives all the honor to God.

Therefore this word is also a true utterance from the cross; it faithfully
preserved the style of the cross. The Mediator is present in it, but in a
position of concealment. He does not exhibit Himself or parade until God
expressly gives Him the privilege to do so. But just now God is busy with Jesus
in the matter of justice, and God will not break up the clouds which cover His
glory before the time has come. “With me,” not “behind me.” Yes, that is true,
but that is putting it very neutrally. By adopting this manner of speech, the
Most Beautiful of all the children of men goes into humiliation and concealment.
He says nothing about “remembering,” or about His most peculiar kingdom. He
speaks very calmly, and clings so firmly to the veil which God has on this day
thrown about His beauty, that He, the General, chooses a word as simple as the
language of His privates. And is it not true that every simple, pious person who
lives by grace can say the same word to everyone who, he believes, is also
God’s, should they both die on the same day? No, Christ is not expressly
referring to His priestly intercession here; nor is He quoting Daniel 7:13, as
He did, directly or indirectly, in the presence of the Sanhedrin.[1] He does not
manifest Himself as the Son of Man who is to enter into His power at the right
hand of His Father. On the cross He makes use of a vox media. He leaves to God
the glorification of His Son and tells the murderer precisely as much as is
necessary to unite the man with Christ, yes, but especially with God, and to put
the murderer in obligation to Him for all eternity.

[1]Christ on Trial,chapter 7: 140 f.; see Dr. J. Ridderbos inDe Bazuin, 78th
volume, number 31 (August 1, 1930). From this, Christ’s word proves to be
extremely obedient. He has gained new spoils. Someone is coming up behind His
chariot of victory but that chariot has not become to Him the stately coach of
Satan. He did not, because of His rejoicing over these spoils forget His cross
or the struggle of justice which He is suffering. He simply gave the spoils to
His Father; He was a mighty hunter, but always before Jahweh (the Lord). The
second utterance from the cross did not profane the style; this one, just as was
every other, was an instance of revelation in concealment. The will awakens; the
sovereignty assures itself of itself; but that which is heard besides is so
lowly, that my age-ravaged grandmother can say it on her death-bed to every old
person who together with her enters upon death in God’s name. The word is so
peculiarly an act of concealment, that “Hopeful,” the character who supports
“Christian” in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as they together wade through the
dark waters of the Jordan of death, can literally repeat it if he wishes to.

Learn of Him, for He is “meek and lowly.” No one will ever enter Paradise unless
He has pleaded for the guest. He is still using the language of the guests, and
not that of the Lord of the banquet or of the Paraclete of the guests. He says
nothing about sitting to the right or to the left of Him, as He did when He was
still “within the gate.” He does not manifest the bearing of one seated upon a
throne, but that of one who takes His place “with” the least at the table of
God. “With me, with me,” you and I, we together. O God, He still remembers: the
language suits His place, it is spoken outside of the gate. When God has taken
all adornment away from Him, He will not put Himself on display crowned with a
Mediator’s crown. The figurative customary language which very facilely refers
to the “pearls” in the crown of the Mediator — He made no use of that as He
stood at the gate of hell. He selected no adornment for His crown, for He simply
did what His office required. He has no time to turn the coin around and to see
that the other side of the burden is the delight. The private in the vanguard of
His camp should listen closely to Him now; this servant on the great day of days
will say precisely the same thing to the least of God’s poor, when the
Antichrist kindles the fires against both, or when God will draw both upwards
into heaven.

Plainly, He who does not parade His words, is a perfect man. O Christ, Thou who
(lost not insist upon Thy rank in the state of the curse, and who dost not make
a display of the pearls in Thy crown! O Servant who risked a maschil on this
child but newly born in the house of Thy Father! For it was the language of the
riddle, of the maschil. It said enough, but it concealed and kept covered more
than enough. That is what we would say; we are fond of saying verse at a
death-bed.

Yes, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise. Now because of the concealed
sublimity we love the words. We had to struggle a long time before we[1] could
sense the awful struggle of ideas lying behind it. Now follows the “amen,” great
and full of energy; but the self-announcement of the Archegos[2] of our
salvation is so small and restricted as it can possibly be. He went through His
paradoxical mountain passes; finally He climbed His height and spoke His first
word. That word could not have been simpler. In fact, it can very well teach us
to make our words few.

[1] See the immediately preceding chapters; especially the one concerning the
“amen.”

[2] “Chief Leader.”

Therefore Jesus’ second utterance from the cross is His own and our salvation.
Our salvation — that means the salvation of murderers.

Yes, it was His justification. If Jesus had by an untimely display of majesty
inappropriate to the authentic style of Golgotha impaired His self-concealment
He could have saved neither Himself nor the murderer. But now, inasmuch as He
obediently remained concealed behind the veil of humiliation, He achieved His
glory.

Moreover, He achieved His apology, not in words this time, but in facts. There
are times when words do not suffice to defend a person. Blessed is he who at
such times is justified by facts. It is in that way that Christ Jesus is
justified by the fact today. Not by words. We have already given much space to
the consideration that on Golgotha, when burdened by the mockery of hell, the
right of apology had been taken away from Him: He had to suffer without the
gate. That was the first line of thinking. Just now we discovered the
continuation of that line: As Mediator He pronounced a word which is indeed a
wonder as far as the consciousness of the speaker is concerned, which is quite
unique in the world,[3] but which as far as its external form goes, was so
ordinary that everyone who believes can say it to any other believer. It is
matter for rejoicing to us to discover this glorious harmony between what we
learned in the foregoing chapters and that which confronts us now. Our thinking
of that can point out the way we should take next.

[3] The “super-paradoxical amen”chapter 13. In the calm deliberativeness which
characterizes the second word from the cross we honor the pure response of
Christ’s spirit to His legal status at the moment. Just as it always does, so
each word which Christ speaks now stands in immediate relation with what accrues
to Him from God. The Mediator, although called upon as the Mediator,
nevertheless is quite silent about the honor and name which as the Mediator is
justly His. He does not announce what He is doing, or what He is going to do, or
what He can do, but only what is to accrue to Him together with the murderer.
The answer which He gives, in short, is not that which eternally distinguishes
Him from the man who petitions Him, but that which He will eternally have in
common with the man. True, His statement gives expression to the triumphant
certainty that Paradise is awaiting Him, but this very assurance serves but the
more to amaze us because of His controlled silence about His status as the
Mediator.

We cannot recover from our amazement until we see the Christ as a Mediator who
is governed completely by the legal relationship of things, by the legal status
of everything which accrues to Him here. Christ’s glory as a Mediator is so
cautious, so pure, in singing its own praise because it would not play with a
crown in the moment in which God is taking His splendor away from Him. No, His
glory would not even play with a crown constructed entirely of words.

Strange, mystical confusion this; strange manifestation. They exchange garments:
the Saviour, and the man who has been rescued as a brand from the burning. The
murderer hopes that Christ will plead for him, will witness for him before God,
but Christ bears this murderer as His vindicating witness into heaven, and feels
free to present the man there as such. Does not this strike you as strange? The
soul of the servant Jesus, did not despise the benefit of a good witness. His
complete subjection, felt to the very marrow and bone and reins, to the
compelling logic of the authentic fact that He Himself really is the accused,
the one accused in the whole universe, becomes apparent from the fact that He
did not despise having a witness, when this witness justified Him by fact In
this He could rejoice as a child rejoices. If it does not gladden Him, He is but
playing a role. That man, hanging there in his pitiable misery, and nevertheless
soon to be a guest of Paradise — he is in very fact a witness for our accused
Advocate and Paraclete, for our great Witness, Christ Jesus. Was His not the
right to present an apology? Well, if He must hold His tongue in check, let the
facts speak. Here is a man who was burned by the flames of the same fire which
drove Judas Iscariot into a spiritual death. But look at the result. Judas
hardens himself, and by means of his obstinate death — probably at this same
moment — accuses Christ as an impotent redeemer before God; this “murderer”
stands up on the other side as a witness for Christ. And he comes to declare
that Jesus of Nazareth can not be the cause of misfortune, of perdition, of
misery in any man. May no one be surprised to see that we allude to Judas again
at this time. We are not resurrecting him from his grave, for he is just
stumbling into it. God sees the crosses standing right next to where this
happened to Judas. We have already observed[1] that on the day of Christ’s death
the trial of Christ Jesus caused a disturbance in the world of departed souls.
On the same day as that of Jesus the soul of Judas passed over from the visible
world into the invisible, and concerning the complications of life on earth this
last infallible sentence was uttered. And that immediately.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 12: pp. 239-259, especially pp. 244-249.

Now there is a third soul here. This soul will be with Jesus in Paradise today.
This soul was also greatly perturbed because of Christ. It is the soul of this
praying bandit, of this broken-hearted rebel. On the one hand, then, even as it
is to Christ’s own consciousness, the Saviour is confronted by the dead Judas.
But, on the other hand, He can confront Judas with this converted murderer,
coram Deo, before the great white throne, around which are the souls, both
living and not living (Revelation 20:4-5; Revelation 20:11).

There were points of similarity and points of difference between Judas and this
“murderer.” The point of similarity is that both of them took offense at Christ.
Judas took offense eventually, and the other man at first sight,[2] of a Messiah
on the cross. Moreover, and it is this consideration which invites the
comparison, both made the kingdom of Jesus the problem of their life. The
kingdom is the great concern of the last hours of both, and greatly perturbs
both. In addition, we can say that both ponder the “kingdom” at the cost of
“Paradise.” The kingdom, the immediate, visible, externally effective power, the
reliable institution, the imposed force[3] — it is that which interested Judas,
for which he yearned, it is that which he would rather have had today than
tomorrow. But this man who prays from the cross keeps referring to the kingdom
also by his last words.[4] Last words are weighty ones; you can see how anxious
he is about that kingdom. But neither Judas nor the crucified malefactor gave an
equal amount of attention to the Paradise, and to the concept of Paradise. Judas
preferred not to indulge any fancies about the “next world” as men foolishly
say; he disliked the fact that Jesus was always referring to that “other world”
and seemed always to want to solve his problems by referring to it. As for the
“murderer”— he too, apparently, had breathed very little of the atmosphere of
Paradise. The “other world” could not charm him either. Hence Jesus’ benediction
contained a silent protest for him. He was straining hard to reach a kingdom,
and he finds that he is standing on the border-line of Paradise. This had never
occurred to him; Jesus’ carefully selected word makes him think about it. Is it
not true, then, that there are several points of similarity between Judas and
this malefactor as far as their questioning goes?

[2] Both murderers reviled.

[3] It will not do here or elsewhere to oppose the concept “kingdom,” as the New
Testament speaks of it, to the concept “empire” as if to say that “kingdom”
refers to a voluntary organization of people naturally drawn together by ties of
culture, birth, race, or similar interests, and “empire” to a form of external
force which artificially and artistically creates and forces national unities.
The Greek language employs the word “king” even for the most autocratic despots,
tyrants, or world dictators.

[4] The word “kingdom” takes on richer meaning when we remember that the man
persisted in his petition (see chapter 14: p. 323). A further point of
similarity inheres in the fact that Christ opposed them because He had to. Just
as Christ opposed the murderer— see what we have just said above — so He took
issue with Judas. Making His appearance in this world, and maintaining His
prerogatives of God as God, He did not hesitate to oppose Judas and He said that
this world cannot be rightly seen nor rightly placed unless there is a
preliminary acquiescence in God’s holy order, an order which must still struggle
in this world to penetrate the chaos but which has already created the blessed
condition of a beautiful Paradise behind the clouds. He did not hesitate to
point out to Judas that one can achieve the kingdom only if one begins at
Paradise. Consequently there was no antithesis for Jesus Christ between the
concepts “this world” and “Paradise.” God would govern both, would join the two
together, and would be served in both. But Judas had fixed an antithesis between
two “worlds.” He knew of but two types of people: zealots of the kingdom or
idiots of Paradise. This is no idle fancy; the word “idiots”[1] means those who
have no office, idlers, good-for-nothings. So Judas regarded things. He who
fought for the kingdom, had nothing to do with a Paradise “today.” For the
kingdom demanded actual and visible effort here on earth. But those confused
people who mumbled things about a Paradise did nothing either constructive or
productive and therefore amounted to idiots. Thus spake Judas Iscariot. That
citizens of the kingdom could possibly think that they were colonists of
Paradise[2] and could derive the inducements for constructive labor in the
kingdom from that fact was a thing he could not understand. So Judas thought and
lived and so the murderer also thought and lived. If the murderer was in very
fact a rebel, a revolutionary, this is even truer of him. Thus they together
took offense at Jesus and opposed Him. That which Jesus had against Judas, that
which He wished to charge against him as the total of things opposed during the
three years of contact with him, is epitomized in His answer to the praying
recruit who would enlist in His service. Both, Judas and the malefactor, raised
the problem of the kingdom; this problem was not stricken from the agendum but
Jesus says that the problem of Paradise comes first. Such was His protest. It
had most important consequences, for both Judas and the malefactor looked only
to the hand and to the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth for action. This Jesus had to
accomplish the great deed. He had to make history. But Jesus recedes in the
presence of God. My son, give God the honor. This is His answer: God himself has
been proclaimed as the End and Goal of all things, and also as the Beginning,
and as the Maker of history. Jesus enters into the evolving kingdom, but He
leaves the completed Paradise (1 Corinthians 15:24; 1 Corinthians 15:28). This
Judas did not understand; he had no patience for such things. Jesus took His
place with the simplest in the visible world; He used the language of “Hopeful”
in His critical, fundamental moments, He went about (as with this murderer) with
defenceless ones in Paradise, and He referred everything to the Father. These
were precisely the things that fatally offended Judas. And these were the things
which were given the “murderer” as the hard and unalterable truths. Was there
similarity between the two? We see the problem of Judas returning in the
murderer. Judas’ obstinate opposition to Jesus continues. The man goes to hang
himself; but his plaint is still vague here, anew, at the cross. That man simply
will not die; his demon seems to have entered into a crucified bandit; plainly
the bandit has a piece of it in his throat. The kingdom, O God, the kingdom. A
former lesson in catechism and now this recent Jesus! But does this Jesus fit in
these lessons in catechisms? He talks of Paradises, It almost seems as though
Satan, who has been driving Judas and has just now most actually realized his
work in him, would now inoculate the error of Judas into the murderer, in order
that he tempt the Saviour with the problem of Judas. And if not, perhaps the
man, grim and stoical, like him of Kerioth, will turn aside from this unreal
guest of Paradise.

[1] According to the Greek (also the Greek of the New Testament).

[2]“Our conversation—ourpoliteuma—is in heaven; from whence also we look for the
Saviour” (His “coming” from there “into” His kingdom:“En”; not “eis” (Greek).Php
3:20). That raises a question. Will Satan really place Judas next to that
murderer? Will it really be true that on one day in Hades two witnesses will
rise up in judgment against the Nazarene? No, that will not be the case. A great
gulf of difference is fixed be­tween Judas and the murderer. The points of
similarity between the two were many and striking; but the difference is
incomparably great. Judas took refuge in himself when he faced these problems
and he suffocated in the stench of his own contaminated atmos­phere, but the
other went to Jesus. What he understood of the Messianic concept, he used. His
problems were the same prob­lems, but his attitude was different. He, too, —
especially if it is true[1] that he. joined in the reviling first — had to
struggle in con­flict with the Idea of a kingdom which saw its Sovereign pass
over the hill of the cross. But the problem did not destroy him. That which
destroys man is not this or that problem; it is his unbelief.

[1]See pp. 274 (chapter 13), 317 (chapter 14), 322 (chapter 14). And now the
fundamental difference between these two finds expression in their fruits, Judas
wanted to see that which he de­sired at once, “today.” In the morning he said:
Jesus, today I would be with Thee in Thy kingdom. But he gets nothing today. And
tomorrow — alas, let us say nothing of the morrow. But this late-comer, who,
unlike Judas, had the patience to wait for a distant future,[1] gets his reward
today. Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

[1] Chapter 14, page 331. This then is the apology of Jesus Christ. The facts
spoke a conclusive language about Him even in the hour when His thought and His
words and deeds were bound. Living history vindicates Him in every complication.
Two witnesses rose up in judgment against Him. One of them, Judas, we might have
called a “sympathetic” witness. But for the other no man has any respect. Judas
at least struggled for three long years in the company of Jesus; and he gave
others much of what he himself possessed.[2] But that murderer asked for
something for himself alone; he had neither time nor room for anyone else, at
least not in the kingdom of — Jesus. But in the world in which the law of
Paradise has been restored, and in which the sequence of God very naively
unfolds itself in the transparent facts, the “sympathetic” Judas will prove to
be a false witness, and the frightened murderer will be declared acceptable as a
true witness.

[2]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 8, p. 168.

He will say many good things about Jesus there, for Jesus Christ saw the same
sin in him that He saw in Judas, and He had meant the same to both originally,
and He ministered the same Word to both. Moreover, He lodged the same protest
against each. Now the one who charges Him with idleness is sent away from Him
empty because of his own perverseness. He is turned away; he is sent away
without office, an idiot against his will, from the eternal bliss of Paradise.
But the other who allowed Christ to speak until He had spoken out completely,
and who surrendered his soul to Him, was redeemed eternally by that same
Saviour. He became an office bearer; he was given a crown in the kingdom which
became Paradise after Christ’s return.

Thus Christ entered into the gate of Paradise. His case could not be adjusted in
terms laid down by men. But they understand Him readily in Paradise. Mark how
joyously He raises His voice, a glimpse of gladness in His eyes. Amen, together
we will go to Paradise. Not a word too little and not a word too much. An angel
supported Him in Gethsemane and then left Him alone again. A human being comes
to Him at Golgotha, a witness, and this one accompanies Him later, and will say
good words among the angels about Jesus Christ. The Advocate of all souls is
grateful for this gift. God who comforts the lowly, gave Him close attention in
order to determine whether He was lowly, so lowly that He would allow Himself to
be comforted by the advent of this poor creature. Now He rejoices, for
simplicity of heart is still His. Come, speak, brother-stutterer, speak right
out, and firmly, and say something good about Jesus. Do not be embarrassed by
the angels; just leave that to Him. As for you, the angels are very eager to
read your heart. Present your testimony about the Son of man very simply here in
Paradise. There they will at once conclude that this Jesus has done nothing
amiss, that He simply proclaimed the Word and that He, for the rest, did not
disturb the fundamental law for the life of the world, the constituency of the
sovereign good pleasure.

Now, as far as we are concerned, we can not be present when the books are opened
in the world behind the clouds, when Judas is to be confronted with the murderer
by the strictly constitutional Prince whom he reviled as a rebel.

What, then, shall we do for edification? We shall read His Word, and confess to
ourselves that everything will remain uncertain here, under the clouds, unless
we believe His Word. Yes, indeed, if we abandon our hold on His Word, everything
will remain unsure and infirm. Then everything will be a prayer which cannot be
proved to be a prayer. Then we will have a repentance which is not fundamentally
distinguishable on the basis of human argumentation from hardening of heart.
There will be a confessing person who might very well be the most flagrant of
egoists. There will be an election which represents too closely the other object
of reprobation. So much for the outside, for the external. Who can prove, by any
other means than by Christ’s own word, that one murderer is any different from
any other one? Take Jesus out of the midst of them, and the two outside
crucified persons immediately become kin and remain kin, and both equally
obstinately will deny Jesus the right of self-explanation. Take the word of
Jesus out of the picture, or refuse to believe it unreservedly and the three
crucified persons together will constitute a lugubrious society of death, a
sterile college of babblers. But if you begin on the basis of Jesus’ Word, and
if you let His light fall upon all, you will see at once that Christ is one who
judges between the living and the dead, between the elect and the reprobate,
between faith and unbelief, between repentance and hardening of heart. Again it
is His Word, and His Word alone, which proves that the dying of these three is
not a conjuncture of nature achieved within the circumference of the vicious
circle, of interplay of death and life, of righteousness and unrighteousness, of
zealotism and idiotism, but a product of that mysterious decree of God, eternal
election and eternal reprobation.

Surely the comforting word of Jesus is more than the music of natural love. This
is what Calvin calls the mysterium tremendum; this is a concealment which should
cause us to quake before it. No man hath seen God at any time, but the Only
Begotten Son of God who stoops to the heart of a murderer, He it is who has
explained God to us, and has recognized God in it. Lord, depart from me, for I
am a sinful man. Stay near us, Lord, for the night is falling, has fallen; it is
getting very dark here. Remember me, Jesus, now that Thou hast come into Thy
kingdom.[1] [1] A short poem of Anna Bijns, included in the original, is being
omitted in the translation.

He will hear, and He will say to His little ones: With you. And they, answering,
will say: Behind you. Yes, a preposition is an annoying thing in the sensible
and intelligible world. My Catechism knows all about it, but does not solve
it.[2] Nor is that necessary: He does my thinking for me, before He has come
into His kingdom.[3] [2] Lord’s Day 13.

[3] In an incidental way we discussed the self-revelation of Christ in saving
the malefactor on chapter 8, page 158. The comments made there are related to
what was treated in the immediately preceding pages, but we shall not discuss
the matter further at this point.


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  CHAPTER 20: 15. CHAPTER 15: CHRIST SUBSTITUTING HIMSELF
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C H A P T E R F I F T E E N Christ Substituting Himself

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary
the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother,
and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman,
behold thy son!

Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that
disciple took her unto his own home. —John 19:25-27.

MARY AT THE CROSS. That is the way many, especially esthetic natures, begin
their discourse or their sermon when they set out to explain the passage we have
placed at the head of this chapter. Well, in doing so they can appeal to old
authorities. The classic Stabat mater dolorosa Iuxta crucem lacrimosa has since
of old in the church placed the figure of the oppressed mother at the cross,
whose soul was pierced by the sword, in the center of the meditation. And in
later days there has been no lack of poets and homiletes who felt the spirit of
this “Stabat Mater” burn in their souls and who have written or spoken in the
same spirit.

Indeed the picture in which the Bible sets off Christ in the company of His
mother and His relatives is a moving one. At this point the drama is more
stirring than at any other.

However, in our case, that is not our purpose, it is not the mater lacrimosa,
but the filiuslacrimosus, not Mary’s maternal heart, but the passion of her Son,
of God’s Son, her Lord, which is being proclaimed to us here, and which must
save us. The moment we put Mary and her grief at the center of our thinking, we
have done injustice to the Son, and — fortunately! — to Mary also. It is not the
fact that the mater dolorosa stood there, but the fact that Christ dolorosus
hung there that is of significance in this preaching. A cause of our salvation
is not Mary’s silence and Mary’s departure, but Christ’s speaking, and sending,
and remaining where He was.

Again, therefore, by means of the statement Christ addressed to His mother and
to the disciple whom He loved we want to find our Mediator and Surety, just as
we have wanted to find Him throughout this book. We cannot agree with the claim
of those who write of the suffering of Christ in a spirit of love, and who, as
they approach the third utterance from the cross remark: “Yes, the first
statement which Jesus pronounced on the cross, He spoke as the Mediator, the
second as the Son of God, and the third as the Son of man who is anxious about
the relatives He is leaving behind.[1] In fact, we can say that in general we
have objections to this attempt to point out the “qualities” which distinguish
between Christ’s utterances from the cross. For we believe that Christ made all
His statements as the Mediator, as the Son of God, and as the Son of man. And we
also have our objections to the contention that Christ in this third utterance
was laying a special stress upon Himself as a man among men, that in this
statement He was placing His humanity “in the foreground.” In the first place,
and speaking generally, it is an exegetical and dogmatic error to present Christ
as though He turned Himself towards His mother on the cross, pointing His face
as it were to the domain of “natural life,” and thus turning His back upon His
“official life.” The domain of natural life, even its outermost recesses, is for
Christ the domain of His office; besides, the argument itself as indicated in
the few words which we cited as being typical, is unwarranted. It is said there
that Christ is anxious about the “relatives He is leaving behind.” But that
cannot possibly be right. Surely He had more “relatives” than His mother, and,
if we work on this assumption, we face the question why Jesus sus, in this
respect, does this work now, and not before.[2] Or, again, why now, and not —
though it may sound strange — later.[3] Obviously, Christ knew that it would not
be right to speak definitely of “relatives being left behind.” The Friday
evening was at hand, the Sunday morning almost dawning, and on that Sunday
morning Christ would be living again. And, even if after the resurrection His
attitude to people and the world would be entirely different, there certainly
would be time enough then to care for His mother, and to do this tranquilly and
calmly. Indeed, if we think that we have exhausted the significance of the words
which Christ addressed to Mary when we have explained them in the way indicated
above, many questions remain unanswered.[4] [1] P. G. Groenen,op. cit.,p. 498.

[2] John was in the room of the Passover; the burial was directly mentioned (in
the anointing).

[3] After the resurrection; the departure on Good Friday is (if we regard these
things as they really are) preliminary; the departure at the ascension is
definitive, is final.

[4] We must state in fairness that the author mentioned in his further
exposition of Christ’s statements suggests much broader perspectives than it is
possible for us to indicate in the words quoted.

No, it is plain that in the historical events which have their manifestation
now, in these as they are in their naked reality, our Saviour is coming to meet
us, to meet us all. We are His “relatives” if we do the will of His Father. He
is seeking His church, now also, His church and especially His God. Nor must we
distort the historical record which John gives by playing an allegorical game
with it. Some do that. There are those, for instance, who present Mary as a type
of the Israel which has remained faithful, as “the mother of Christendom.” Thus
they look upon Mary in the struggle in which she is involved today. Hence they
see in John the type of the new Christendom itself. The conclusion then follows
naturally: “Mary” and “John” must find each other. The Israel which has remained
and the new Israel must support each other, and must enter into the relationship
of mother and son.[5] “He is our peace, who hath made these two one . . .” Go
one step farther, and you can use the narrative to point out an alliance between
Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and this, too, has been done.[6] [5]
Niebergall,Praktische Auslegung des Neuen Testaments, p. 254; Holtzman, referred
to by Groenen,op.cit.,p. 501.

[6] We by no means wish to say that these two stand in the same relationship to
each other as do Israel and Christendom.

However, we shall say nothing more of the interpretation. We come not to see
Mary, but to see Christ. At bottom Mary can do nothing but accept, but receive —
just as we all. Today she cannot even be with Him in Paradise; the Son does not
grant her this privilege.

Now it strikes us at once that Christ by addressing Mary is making a selection.
His mother was not the only one who stood at the foot of the cross looking on.
Besides Mary, we are told, these others were present: the sister of His mother;
Mary, the wife of Cleophas; and Mary Magdalene.[1] Four women: first, Jesus’
mother; second, Salome, the sister of Mary, and aunt of Jesus; third, Mary, wife
of Cleophas, and inasmuch as Cleophas was the brother of Joseph, also the aunt
of Jesus, just as Joseph was the “father” of Jesus in relationship to the law;
fourth, Mary Magdalene. This was a small group but it “represented” all family
ties. Here were the physical mother (Mary), and the aunt (Salome). Here were the
aunt according to the law (the Mary of Cleophas) and the intimate relative
according to the Spirit (Mary Magdalene) who learned to “do” the “will of the
Father.” In addition other members of the family were present. From further
information given in the gospels it appears that the family circle was very well
represented. John himself was there; Salome and the other aunt have already been
named; besides, there were many women, who had followed Jesus from Galilee and
had served Him; and — the expression used in Luke 23:49 is as general as
possible — all His acquaintances stood at some distance. Now it strikes us that
the Saviour addressed none of all those persons save his mother and the more
intimate disciple John. And Jesus addressed Himself to John only to the extent
that He was brought into connection with His mother. Christ spoke to no others
in the circle of the family and acquaintances. Nor do we find that anything was
said to the group in general. We must say, therefore, that Christ’s address to
His mother has peculiar significance. It represented a sovereign choice.

[1] There is a difference of opinion among interpreters about who are meant
here. According to many the sister of Jesus’mother is the same person as Mary of
Cleophas, but if that is correct two sisters both had the same name (Mary). This
fact, besides many others, results in a great many suppositions about the
identity of Mary (the wife, or the sister, of Cleophas) and the relationships of
the families in general. We agree with Groenen,op.cit.,491-494, and with Dr. S.
Greijdanus, (an article “Salome” in theChr.Encycl.) and with Dr. C. Bouma(Korte
Verklaring desH. S.,“Evangelic van Johannes,” p. 232) who says: “It is not
likely that John is mentioning three women. Were that true both sisters would
have borne the same name. And it is quite in accordance with John’s effort at
anonymity for himself and his family that he does not name the sister of Jesus’
mother. By comparingMatthew 27:56andMark 15:40it appears that the mother of John
stood at the foot of the cross, and that her name was Salome; and, inasmuch as
John names three women besides Jesus’mother, apparently the same, it seems
likely that John’s mother was the sister of Jesus’ mother. Jesus and John were
cousins. According to Hegesippus, Cleophas was a brother of Joseph, the husband
of Jesus’ mother. This would make Mary, the wife of Cleophas, an aunt of Jesus.
Therefore those who surround Mary Magdalene at the cross really represent one
family. Thus we can say that there were four women at the cross.” This is all
the more striking if we remember that the last word which Christ spoke in the
state of humiliation to men was this address to His mother. The remaining
statements from the cross are all about Himself. In this He is very obedient The
last word by means of which Christ enters upon the domain of the second table of
the law (the domain of the neighbor) is addressed to her who, according to the
first statement of that second table, deserves the first attention according to
the rank which she enjoyed in natural life. His thirty-three years of life, of
life given to the fulfillment of the law, are being typified in this today and
are being found acceptable to God and men. Observe how he gradually
individualizes more and more. His first three statements affected men. He begins
with those farthest away from Him (the enemies), follows by a reference to His
friends (the murderer), and concludes by an address to the mother who had been
placed first in the second table of the law (Joseph the father seems to have
died already). A holy order, this. It does justice to the neighbor. Thus He
passed over — just think of the fourth utterance from the cross — to the first
table of the law. He came to God and had no other gods before Him even though
God robbed Him of everything. This upward struggle of Christ toward the second,
then toward the first table of the law, and this prophetic-servile emphasis on
the first words of the two tables, is new evidence to us of His obedience, and
of His faithful service to God and His mother. “He that loveth not his brother,
his mother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” This
alone suffices to point out the division we referred to above to the extent that
we human beings are able to “explain” anything here. In one sense, Christ
addressed Mary “pro omnibus”: He spoke to her for all. He spoke to her, not
because this mother had to become “the mother of the church.” The church has no
mother; the church is itself called the Bride; and it has besides a head, a
father, a king. The church has no mother; she must herself become a “mother”
(Galatians 4). Nor did Christ intend, by addressing His mother, to raise the
“natural” relationship in which He stood towards her to the plane of the most
important relationship in which He can ever stand towards men. We shall point
out after a while that just here Christ is subordinating[2] the natural to the
spiritual, that He is putting the natural in the service of the spiritual, and
that He makes the ties of blood subservient to the bonds of the Spirit. Christ
does not permit Mary to come to the foreground here as the first among women
because she had been His mother and because that fully accounted for her service
and for His. For, to repeat, we hope to see that His statement to Mary is but a
subordinate part of this relentless process of Word and Spirit, in which His
mother as mother is thrust into the background, and finds her glory and her
consummation not in the exceptional circumstance which raises her above the
plane of all women (the motherhood of Jesus), but in that which she shares with
all women, that which she has in common with all believing women (her being a
member of the church).

[2] Not in the sense of “inferior.”

No, the reason for which Christ while dying directs His last statement given to
men to His mother is that the law commands Him to do so. The law placed father
and mother in the foreground in the second table of the commandments, and the
law as the revelation of the Word would be so unreservedly trusted by us as to
have us believe that whoever does justice to its first charges (for father and
mother are that) thereby proves to be doing justice to his neighbor in all of
the relationships of that concept. Whoever does justice to father or mother has
fulfilled the whole second table of the law and has in principle kept the first
table also. The paradigms of the law suffice because they are not paradigms but
such as demand the whole service of the whole man. In the primary relationship
existing between parent and child the beginnings of life unfold themselves, and
the first imperatives of the law in reference to our neighbor there manifest
themselves, and in them God comes to us in the forms of authority, and excites
conscious life into being. The I-you relationship connects us with our neighbor,
and more closely with those two who according to the will of both nature and
Spirit are primary to us, namely, the father and the mother. Thus Christ, by
means of His immediate sense of the harmony of the law, directs His last
statement to His mother. To Him, she stood on the boundary line between two
worlds, the two worlds He had to traverse today. In a certain sense He is
speaking to her pro omnibus. If He fulfilled the law in reference to this
closest neighbor He has fulfilled it in reference to all.

Nevertheless, even though this statement by which Christ seeks out His mother
has a general bearing it also has a more specific tendency. Christ places
Himself in a specific, individual relationship overagainst mother and disciple.
For both He had a command, for both He had a mandate. He Himself, as standing
overagainst these two, has received a mandate in respect to them from the Father
of all. He puts Himself on a plane above them and on a plane beneath them also
inasmuch as He bears their burdens before God, inasmuch as He takes upon Himself
the cross for both of them, and inasmuch as He leaves them. Why does He leave
them, why does He keep Himself at a distance from them? Because He, not today
only, but in the days to come also, presently, that is, after the resurrection,
must in an absolute sense be busy in the things of His Father and in those of
all His people.

We do not know to what extent Christ saw His brothers as He hung on the cross.
We believe that we must accept the fact that He had brothers, both according to
the law and according to the birth given them by Mary.[3] Were these brothers
present? It is possible that these were numbered with “all His acquaintances”
who “stood afar off.” Now if it is true that these were actually present at
Golgotha, the choice, the selection, the division which He makes between family
and family, and relative and relative is the more striking. He does not choose
one of the brothers according to the flesh to care for Mary. He looks over all
His brothers as they pass by Him one by one, and He chooses John, the “intimate”
disciple, the candidate for apostleship, the young man who within a few weeks
will not only be the spiritual brother of Mary by reason of the resurrection of
the Prince of the Passover, but, by reason of the spirit of Pentecost, will also
be her apostle. Apostle is a weighty concept. It means that John will be
entrusted and fitted out with official authority over Mary as a member of the
church; it means — think of Ananias and Sapphira — that he will have official
authority over her life and death.

[3] We believe that we must on various grounds reject the interpretation of
those who say that “the brothers of the Lord” were not children of Mary and
Joseph. However, there would be no point in entering into a discussion of that
issue at this time.

Now we can come to grips with the real issue of this matter. Yes, Christ, as He
addresses this last statement to His mother, does so as the Son of man. For this
name does, in the last analysis, include the general meaning that He is a man
among men. As the Son of man He is identical with all men, but He is also the
Mediator of God and of men; He is the Surety for His own; He is the history of
all times; He is the Prince of the church and the world. As such He performs the
work of His office: He compels the natural to serve the spiritual. He remelts
the ore of natural life in order that it may again become an instrument which
the spirit can employ as the great Worker of religion. He forces the blood into
the arteries of the Spirit; He puts the mother on the ways of the apostleship;
He makes natural birth the servant of spiritual birth; He makes the specific
(Mary’s individual honor) subservient to the general (the formation of the
Church). And thus He arrives at His essential business: namely, to provide a
substitute Himself, as a blood relative and as an historic wanderer upon the
earth. He puts John in His own place and thus fulfills the law of the Kingdom of
heaven, fulfills it in and for Himself, and fulfills it in and for those He
loves.

Those were weighty words; they were full of significance. But now let us observe
their content by pointing out their meaning from the Biblical account read in
terms of the unity of all Scripture, and in terms of the analogia fidei. The
story looks domestic and consequently is well known. When Christ, hanging upon
the cross, saw His mother standing there among all the other relatives and
acquaintances, and saw John standing next to her, He made some dying
stipulations about His home. Well, that is also the municipium of all who are
about to die. The Christ becomes one of these. And still we must correct our
phraseology; for while giving His family those commands He is again in the state
of His concealment. Giving His family commandments? But it was not His family;
it was not His home. He could give His home no commands, for He had none. Foxes
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, and the Son of man lived under
the law: the house, the home, remained that of His mother. Well, then, He gave
the home of Mary certain commands. And, inasmuch as He is far more qualified
than either you or I, He at once goes farther. He also gives commands to the
house of Zebedee and Salome, the parents of John and James. He boldly interferes
with the program of that home. He demands that the son of Salome support His
mother. Woman, see thy son; son see thy mother. The statement does not include
two commands, but is a double view of one and the same command. Mary may not
with her own hands draw the sword away that is piercing her soul; this is to
remain the privilege of her Son. It was for His sake that the sword had
originally been thrust through her. He gives the care of His mother into the
hands of John. This is the simplest possible meaning of the words. The mother
must now give up her own son; for His sake she has been called blessed among
women; He has made her life a thing to wonder at. Let the wonder also
characterize the separation now: at His behest she is to have another son in His
place. As if the wonder could be repeated! Yes, there are mercies which are very
brutal. This other son is to be John. Undoubtedly John is the best whom Jesus
can choose for this tender charge. Not that we can decide that positively
ourselves; but we know that Jesus’ choice is infallible and is not an
experimentation. He selects the disciple whom He loved especially; He chooses
the son who was related to Mary by ties of blood as his aunt and to Jesus as his
cousin.[4] Him the Saviour places next to Mary, and sends them on their way home
together; may the sorely wounded soul permit itself to be soothed by the most
loved disciple and by the most trustworthy nephew. Thus these two went away hand
in hand. And it was evening. And it was night. Thy people are my people, thy God
my God.

Sometimes that must be said in this way: What thy God conceals, my God will
conceal; what they people mock, mine will mock. This is a love greater than the
love of Ruth and Naomi. Can this be the reason for which they conceived of no
new name for Mary, and never called her Mara (Ruth 1:20)?

[4] See what was said above in the note #1 above and also the article of Dr. S.
Greijdanus on “Salome” in theChristelijke Encyclopaedie,Kampen, Kok, volume 5,
p. 22: “The sister of His mother, then, is Salome (compareMatthew 27:56andMark
15:40) and she, accordingly, proves to be the sister of Mary, the mother of the
Lord.” Moreover, she was the mother of James and John (Matthew 4:21). But let us
say nothing further about their love lest we forget the lost Son. It is for His
sake and because of His love that the Holy Spirit is in action now. This Spirit
admonishes us to look closely, for we may not accompany Mary and John before we
have seen Christ ministering His office again, before we have seen Christ
serving in the capacity of His Messianic office. Yes, He is in His office. Again
He exercises the old law which held for all of His work of revelation up to this
time. Again He is concealing Himself to “the flesh”; again He is being
overlooked and misunderstood in His true essence; but to faith He lays Himself
bare. To the believing person He manifests Himself as Prophet, Priest and King.
In all these things He lays Himself bare, “even”[5] in the things of the home,
the garden, and the kitchen as the Messiah and the Surety.

[5] “Even”—between quotation marks. For the Mediatorship reaches out to all
things in its passionate nisus towards redemption.

We mentioned a moment ago that Christ undergoes a concealment as far as the eye
of man is concerned. You wonder what we meant by that? It is indicated in the
title of this chapter. Christ is providing a substitute for Himself by putting
John in His place.

Christ is concealing Himself. He is even concealing Himself from the members of
the family. And is this the farewell of the One who after a few days will be the
Prince of the Passover? Is this the tone which He adopts who, three days later,
will greet the women and speak to Magdalene and John, and give them a message of
life and eternal youth, which they are to communicate to His mother also? Once
His brothers “did not believe on Him.” And no one knows with certainty whether
they have come to the faith since then. Perhaps they have, but we do not know.
It may be that they have, but if so this last statement of Christ, unless God
prevents it, can again sweep them on in the course of unbelief, He speaks as if
He is not to be found again in all eternity. He acts precisely as does everyone
who must postpone the “meetingagain” until the day of judgment. He is hanging
among His family and He is silent about the sweet mystery of His resurrection on
Sunday morning. You say, He could not speak out freely because of the unbelief
of the crowd. If only, then, He had said nothing to His mother. His silence,
then, would not have been half so painful as this suppression of the idea of
resurrection which now characterizes His statement. In the presence of the whole
family He selects a substitute for Himself, a substitute in the home of His
mother. Surely this seems to suggest: I am going now, and for the rest you can
do nothing except to buy balm, and to let me lie until the last day; for the
rest, look to the bosom of Father Abraham. Woman, see thy son — with these words
the Messiah conceals Himself by virtue of His Messianic power. As we see it, He
is not being “friendly,” the Messianic secret is preserved unimpaired. It is
kept a secret even from the family. He seems so cold and distant — dare I use
those words? — He leaves the family with the Scriptures as their only support.
The Scriptures speak of the resurrection of the dead and of the Messianic day of
life. For the rest these relatives had better deal directly with God, and,
exercising their faith in the Bible, struggle with the concept of resurrection.
This is the great concealment!

It is a concealment; also for John. It was the tenth hour when John had come
from his former teacher, the Baptist, to Jesus, that Lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world. Well, he had thought to himself that now the kingdom of
peace would dawn and that now, after the powerful statements of the Baptist,
sweet honey would flow from the lips of the “Lamb” of God. This must have
disappointed Him; the new “teacher” accepted this nephew-disciple with an even
stronger term: son of thunder, Boanerges. That is what he and James had been
called by the new master. And he had accommodated himself to it, had struggled
with the eloquent epithet; this much of it he had understood, that he had to
bring much violence and tumult to bear upon the world, that he had to be a son
of thunder. For three long years he had pondered the Messianic issue of how
human beings make thunder, and how God lets the lightning strike in. But today!
Where have the Master and his eloquent epithets gone, Alas, He Himself is
quailing in the sombre night; and to the son of thunder, He serenely says, Son,
see thy mother. Is this the world mission: to comfort fort a widow[1] inside the
four walls of a home and for the rest to await the salvation of the Lord, ad
kalendas Domini? Of course, it may be a part of “religion” pure and undefiled to
“visit the widows in their affliction” (James 27), but after all, if one has
been called a son of thunder, one expects to receive weightier mandates. Jesus,
why dost Thou conceal Thyself?

[1] According to general belief, Joseph, who is never mentioned again throughout
the whole narrative, had already died.

Yes, He conceals Himself. He vanishes from the vision of His people behind the
vessels in the home of a widow. Once this word had fallen from His lips so that
the bystanders heard it, He could not escape the consequences. Now the mockers
knew that He did not expect to come down from the cross. He is making His
arrangements; He is talking to His mother. It is the preparation of His
testament. There is not a single voice to suggest the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Is He to be cast into the sea presently and then to be spewed back on dry land
again? No, He is adjusting His business, and, to all appearances knows nothing
about the great fish and the wonder. So forthrightly does He acknowledge that He
Himself is expecting death, and so publicly does He avert His eyes from any sign
of redemption, that the mockery, still to be heaped upon Him, will really be a
rather flat and uninteresting kind of scoffing, for they will say: “He is
calling Elijah; let us see whether he will come.”

Thus He conceals Himself. To what end? “In order that seeing they may not see,
and hearing, they may not hear.” Mother, see thy son. What else is this but a
reassertion and further maintenance of His maschil,[2] here, among these
unbelieving? Now this self-concealment of the “Christ” has its culmination in
“Jesus’ ” substitution of another man for Himself. This is a strange matter: His
place is to be taken by another. Can He be supplanted by another? He? Surely the
Christ can have no adequate substitute. It is impossible to suppose that anyone
in His stead could be His substitute, could fulfill the task of Jesus either
partially or completely. Nevertheless, it is a part of the law of incarnation
that He as Jesus, as an historical person who moves about on earth at this
particular time, and lives here and there in Palestine, is to be supplanted by
another in part. In His human activity, in His social relationships, He
subjected Himself to the law which God laid down for all.

[2]Christ on Trial,chapter 5: p. 103 f., chapter 19: 363 f., and chapter 21: 388
f.

Yes, indeed, to a certain extent, Christ can choose a successor to Himself. We
are not going beyond the bounds of reverence or faith when we say that,
superficially considered, Jesus’ substitute in caring for His old mother could
take much of Jesus’ work from His shoulders, could possibly give her even more
than He Himself could. For Jesus in these last days surely could not have “meant
much” to His mother. The office which God had assigned to Him laid its claims on
His entire time. It carried Him far from home; it made Him the servant of all.
The more the years elapsed, the more basically Mary had to relinquish her first
born. Thus it is quite possible that on a “calm Saturday,” in which John gently
comforted Mary, he gave her more of companionship and consideration than Jesus
had given His mother for some time. Therefore, considered in general, much of
the ordinary human contact between mother and son could be transferred to John;
this would be quite possible, if only the substitute understood the soul of
Mary, and if only he belonged to the “remnant of election” which in those day
was concealed in Israel and shattered at the cross.

Nevertheless all these considerations do not remove the fact that Jesus as He
was in essence and as He was in His true calling could not possibly have an
adequate substitute. There is no “Seth” to take the place of this Abel for Mary
(see Genesis 4:25). Together with Him the great mystery entered into Mary’s
life. Angels sent a ray of light down to her house straight from heaven. The
power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. The wonder accompanied the Child. She
was unique among women, but only because He was unique.

Now if it is true that Christ is allowing His place to be filled by His nephew
John, what can we say of this except that it is a further instance of His
self-concealment? “The” Son of man gives His afflicted mother an ordinary
solace, as though He were “a” son of man. His name was an ordinary name, His
house, His life, His business were as ordinary as those of others. So was His
departure. In it a son was caring for his poor old mother.

If you would fathom the riddle contained in this, place the first mother on the
first page of the New Testament next to the first mother on the first page of
the Old Testament, place Mary next to Eve. Only by introducing both members in
that way can we justify ourselves in comparing the one with the other. Both
mothers stand at the beginning of a new epoch of time. But there is this great
point of difference: The one mother bears sons which have adequate substitutes,
but the other mother was given her firstborn son as one for whom there could
never be an adequate substitute.

Eve had her Cain, and she had her Abel, and Seth came to her in Abel’s stead
when Cain had put his brother to death. Seth is the substitute, the successor;
the name which Eve gave him indicates that beyond a doubt. “I name him Seth
because God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel.” Give Eve the
privilege of saying this. She bears sons solely by reason of “the will of man.”
The one can substitute for the other to the extent that is possible among men.
For, Eve’s is the wealth of the poor. She has the many; her children are
numerous; men can count them and give the number. And that which can be
numbered, that which can be assigned a “number,” can be given a substitute. The
limited and finite can fill the empty place left by the limited and finite. At
least “to a certain extent.” And maternal feeling doubtless will not quarrel
about the reasonableness of the phrase “to a certain extent.”

Now return to Mary. Hers is not “a” son but “the” son. She has given birth to
the great Son, to the “man” child who was “to rule all nations with a rod of
iron” (Revelation 12). The relationship of Eve to Mary cannot be seen rightly
unless it is seen in the light of Revelation 12. In that transporting chapter
all the mothers who bore the “seed of woman” into the world are subsumed under
the one visionary image of the “woman” who has her head in the clouds, the moon
under her feet, filling all heaven and earth, she who gives many birth, but
really gives birth definitively but once. She gives birth to many, for there is
a reference to the “remnant of her seed.” Yes, there are many. However, there is
but one definitive birth. For in the fullness of time she bears the one son, the
man child, who by His power will dominate the clouds. That one is the Christ. In
this way everything is given its proper position, and in this way the
relationship contained in the birth registers of the seed of the woman are
properly delineated. Thus Eve takes the right position, and Mary also. And thus
the mystery of the third utterance from the cross is disclosed. For who is the
woman of Revelation 12? She is not Eve, and she is not Mary. She is not a queen
of heaven who happens to have been given a human name. For, all mothers giving
birth by the Spirit for the church and in the church are included in this one
woman. She is the church, and Eve and Mary are members of this one great body
which is the church. Eve is one among these many; and Mary is one. To the
extent, now, that Eve and Mary have been incorporated into the mystical body of
the one church the maternal travail and the maternal joy of the one is set on
the same historic plane as those of the other, and both become of coordinate
importance together with their children. On the other hand, however, this
chapter teaches us also that a great difference exists between these two mothers
and their children. It is an eschatological difference, a very important
difference. The son of Mary is the great One among all sons. He is the man child
among those many anonymous persons who have been classified under the common
title: “the remnant of her seed.” These others are incompetent to perform the
“masculine” deed of turning the world upside down and ruling it. To the extent,
then, that this one masculine Son cannot be adequately replaced by any of “the
remnant of her seed,” that which Mary accomplished by her travail as God’s
religious woman can be compared with nothing. It is a unique thing. In this way
we can find the connection between Revelation 12 and Luke 23. Here on Golgotha
is “the man” son who was to rule the heathen with a rod of iron. Now He has
become the weakest son of all. He sinks to a plane below “the remnant of her
seed.” Never was any of them so weak, so emptied. He is “a worm,” and not a “man
child.” He is the object of mockery and disdain. This is His objective
concealment. Now, by means of His utterances, He is appropriately fitting
Himself into that objective pattern. By means of His third utterance from the
cross He is fitting Himself in with the legion of anonymous ones. These are the
little ones who can possibly find their name mentioned in the books of history,
but who are too insignificant to be specially mentioned in the apocalyptic
vision of Revelation 12. The one man child takes one of those many anonymous
sons, and substitutes this one for Himself. Thus He hides Himself, He who is
unique among many, He who can be assigned no “number,” but is the head of all,
and therefore irreplaceable in all eternity. He is the center, but He speaks as
though He were the periphery. He is “the first of many brethren,” but He acts as
though He were an ordinary brother, one who can be replaced.

Nevertheless, even in this concealment, He is revealing Himself to those who
believe. It is precisely for those who believe that He asserts Himself as the
unique man Child, whom none can replace, as Surety and Mediator. “Woman, see thy
son.” He must help you to overlook him, and to understand the Great Son in His
Messianic essence. Son, see thy mother, — but see her in faith; it will consume
the honor of being my substitute, and give me alone the honor. Yes, Christ
ministers His office, and, accordingly, does the work that can be transferred to
no one. Faith detects its Prophet, Priest, and King, and in these constantly
detects its Surety and Mediator.

Christ speaks as prophet. This is the work of a prophet: to place historical and
natural life in the light of the eternal, the creative, the sovereign good
pleasure of God. Thus Christ prophesies now. What is the salutation He uses? He
does not say “mother” but “woman.” Is this a lack of respect? No, it is an
assignment of position. Precisely by assigning another son to her and thus
basically separating Himself from her eternally as far as the ties of blood are
concerned, Christ is delineating the future and illuminating the present by
means of eternity. Mary is no longer His mother; accordingly, she is put into
her place. She is a member of the body of the church; her travail has gone by,
but that of the church not yet. As for her, as a church member among many
members she is given a general, and not a specific and individual name. From
this time on she will no longer be regarded in a concrete, actual, historical
connection as “the” mother of Jesus, but as “a” member of the church. Hence she
is called “woman.” The Angel of the church, the King of the church, assigns a
chair to her in the great congregation. The chair given her is not a chair of
honor, such as Rome has provided for her, and such as Rome each day takes the
trouble to dust off anew. For Mary must completely sacrifice herself. She, too,
must spurn every display of glory which would place her in the center of things,
which would darken the sun of Jesus. Her chair presently will be standing in an
inconspicuous corner. That becomes apparent from the first chapter of Acts; in
that chapter an irony sufficient to perturb us greatly is speaking. Presently a
little group will gather “in an upper room.” There they are to await the feast
of Pentecost (the return of Christ). There the company present are named in a
significant order. The men first and the women afterwards. First the apostles,
the office-bearers who have been called to their duty; after that those who were
related to Jesus by ties of blood — Mary and the brothers of the Lord. First the
spiritual family; then the “natural” family as members of the spiritual
communion. Mary is seated in the background. The apostles now are seated in the
place of honor; theirs are the best positions; their names are written first in
the register, not the name of Mary. Mary no longer has a special position of
honor, but the apostles, John included, are given a special mark of honor, a
special privilege which distinguishes them from others. At the time Mary had
been called to an exceptional service in the domain of nature, in the domain of
flesh and blood. Now the apostles are to be called to a special service, and
this time in the domain of the spirit. They are given an office which can be
transferred to no one in the world. This office will be just as untransferable
and incapable of substitution as Mary’s motherhood had been. Theirs will be the
calling of the direct ministration of the office, of prophesying the Word, of
ruling the church; this spiritual charge has been given them in a specially
sealed letter of privilege. Mary, too, will presently have to bow reverently
before this apostleship.

Now it is true that not all of this is proclaimed in the salutation “woman,” for
Christ is concealing Himself; but that salutation does make room for these
consequences. As often as Christ called His mother “woman” He wanted to assign
Himself and her their respective positions in relation to the office. What we
have here, therefore, is an instance of prophesying.

Thus the third utterance from the cross puts Mary in her place. In Luke 2 and in
Luke 23, next to the manger and to the cross, she is standing on ground which
has already been covered; there she stands head and shoulders above the others.
But Revelation 12 sees this exalted figure dwindled into smaller size. Only a
member of the church remains. These are the two methods of revelation contained
in the Scriptures: the historic and the apocalyptic. The third utterance from
the cross, together with its salutation, constitutes the link between them, and
illuminates the connection between them. Step aside — this is an instance of
prophesying. Woman, relinquish your hold on me and take another son. Endure the
fact that he is to accompany you. Do not touch me, do not cling to me, that is
what He will say to Mary Magdalene on Sunday morning. But in the complicated
form of this self-concealing word He is already saying it to His mother, to her
who formerly was His mother. Let go of me, Mary, do not touch me, for the ways
of the kingdom of heaven, and the campaign songs of the Lord God which impinge
upon history eschatologically, make for schism. Woman, let go of me; I am yours
no longer; hereafter I belong to everyone; thus it is meet for us to fulfill all
righteousness. I am still descending to Satan, ascending to my Father.

Thus He comes to His second office and becomes Priest. He gladly gives away the
gifts of God. He gives Mary hers; what more can she ask? No man can live by that
which distinguishes him from others; he lives only in fellowship with the common
gift. Thus Christ blesses His mother. He gently leads her from the natural union
with “Jesus” to the mystical union with “Christ.” He removes the form of
“Jesus,” in order that the figure of “Christ” may take form in her. He does not
lead her into temptation but delivers her from evil. She was being tempted —
more than Thomas — to isolate herself from others because of her special
experiences, to exalt herself above the apostles, to appeal to her beautiful
past. Now He puts an apostle next to her. Very gently the Son leads the mother
to the feast of Pentecost; there He will be returned to her, but to the others
at the same time. He accepts the member of the church, and therefore He
relinquishes the mother. He cuts the ties that bind Him in order that they may
continue to bind. He thrusts her back, but essentially He strengthens her. He
rescues Mary.

He has gifts for John too. John has been called “Jesuphile” in contrast to Peter
who was given the name “Christophile.” The names were intended to show that
Peter tended to elaborate the idea of Christ as God’s office-bearer, whereas
John loved intimacy with Jesus in His historical manifestation as friend and
rabbi. However, we shall not accept this distinction. Jesus, who chooses His
intimates with great care, condemned it. It was John who had to sustain her in
that conflict of soul which resulted from her relinquishing “Jesus” and
accepting “Christ.” Thus it was John’s duty to help Mary become
“Christophile.”[1] Thus the Priest also puts John in his place. He ordains him
for his work in life. As a mild Patron, He does this step by step, stage by
stage. Just now John, as a son, is still subordinate to Mary. The priest keeps
John in a condition of subservience because it is good for him. It is not the
day of Easter yet, and therefore John, too, may not enjoy a premature Easter
gladness. But, in the meanwhile, Christ prepares for new situations, and
arranges these according to His good pleasure. John is subordinate to Mary now,
for one person must anoint the feet of Jesus with nard, and the other must shed
tears on Mary’s veil, and both must do it in preparation for His burial. Now the
maxim still reads: Woman, see thy son; son, see thy mother. But after a few
days, when Easter has come, these two will be the equal of each other in the
exalted Lord. For in the “Kurios” there is neither man, nor woman, nor “mother,”
nor “son.” Then the maxim will read: Sister, see thy brother; brother, see thy
sister. And on the day of Pentecost — think again of the first chapter of the
Acts — the relationship existing today will be reversed. Then John will be a
prince of the church to Mary and she will be without office in a growing
fellowship of church members. Then the maxim will read: Church member, see thy
apostle; apostle, see thy church member. The Priest is in God’s house here; He
assigns each to his own place, for in the house of the Father, here below also
“there are many mansions.” And meanwhile, by virtue of the satisfaction He by
His priesthood has achieved, He awakens their religious talents in them, and
willingly takes the gifts of the Spirit from their trembling hands. O marvellous
deed of the Priest. He Himself enters His catastrophes, but He saves His own
from them. He sees to it that — in spite of their many troubles — the homogeen
continuum of service is assured them. He sanctifies them.

[1] We shall return to this point presently. Have you seen your Priest properly?
For He is the Priest of us all. He relinquishes His mother, for He does not wish
to belong to her by fleshly ties any longer but by spiritual bonds. O gentle
voice of a priest. I hear Him saying softly but positively: Let the dead bury
their dead, but do you two arise, and follow the Christ by seeking Jesus no
longer. Perform your actual service in that way, for this before God is
religion. Who is my mother, my cousin, my brother? He that doeth the will of my
Father, he is my brother, and my mother, and my sister, and my cousin. By this
statement Christ also asserts Himself by virtue of His kingship. He is King on
this occasion. You remember how often we related His kingship to the exercise of
His right of requisition. On this occasion He proves to be a royal Requisitioner
fully conscious of His authority. As a matter of fact, this third utterance from
the cross is the crown of all His acts of requisition. Salome, the mother of
John, and John himself are here. Now Salome, according to the belief elaborated
above,[1] was the aunt of Jesus, the sister of Mary. Always Christ demanded and
laid claim on that which seemed best for Him, for His own official ministration.
He interfered with the business, with the big business, of his uncle Zebedee,
when he told James and John (two brothers), sons of Zebedee and Salome, and
Jesus’ cousins: Follow me. They abandoned their father’s business and followed
this remarkable cousin. This was the first act of requisition. By it He was
saying to Salome: Aunt, woman, overlook thy sons; and He was saying to John:
Son, overlook thy mother. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me. That was the beginning. And then? Christ also interfered with the
finances of the family. Not only did he take two representatives out of the firm
— for they were active in their father’s business[2] — but He also made demands
on their capital. Salome gave him some of her goods; and it certainly was no
easy thing to let thirteen people live for several years without working. And
now — as if that were not enough — this moment. First He took Salome’s two sons
from her, then He demanded money, and thus He interfered with the future of
both. Now He is hanging on the tree, everything seems lost, but He does not
hesitate to exercise His right of requisition, and take Salome’s son from her
beforehand for the period to follow Hisdeath. John must leave his house and his
ship behind for all time, must take Mary with him, and must take care of the
aunt instead of the mother. Still it was true that John’s mother had also been
wounded in her soul, for she had also loved Jesus greatly.

[1] See again the article “Salome” by Dr. S. Greijdanus inChr. Enc.,volume 5, p.
22, in which, however, we must not overlook the phrase “it seems likely.”

[2] This thought is based on the indication that hired servants were kept for
the business (Mark 1:20).

Such is the will of the king. But who is there who would dare to contradict? He
does not make His demands for Himself; His royal act is also the act of the
priest. True, He acts in conformity with His dominant style. He began the week
of the passion with a double demand. The first was for the city of Jerusalem by
way of stating for the last time how matters stood (the foal of an ass).[3] The
second came by way of telling the church how[4] matters would stand in all
eternity (the room of the Holy Supper). Now He makes the last demand of the
week. He makes a love-feast — an “Agape” the first Christians called it — of the
Holy Supper. Just as the first Christians in their gatherings added the
love-feasts to the Holy Supper; that is, they added the natural care of the
needy whom Jesus had left behind (mark that modification here), to the
proclamation of His death. And just as they in this united the requisition of
the room of the Passover and of the soul of cousin John for Aunt Mary, so Christ
willed that it should be. He is proclaiming ecclesiastical law, He, the King of
the church. This represents a holy order, a lavish love; and at the same time it
represents a regulation of the new church which is to arise out of this blood.
Indeed this act of requisition is already a self-display of the coming prince of
the Passover.

[3]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 5: p. 106 f; see also chapter 7: p. 150 f.

[4]Ibid,chapter 7: p. 150 f.

Hence we can also say unhesitatingly that this act of requisition is not less
marvellous than Christ’s super-paradoxical “amen.”[5] His last “amen” is being
followed by a super-paradoxical requisition.

[5] See chapter 12: p. 245. At this point the tendency of our thoughts returns
to the point from which they departed. It is beyond doubt that the person who
makes claims and the person upon whom the claim is made are two different
people. And it is also true without any doubt that the person who demands and
accepts the gifts of souls for himself is more than he who is claimed. The
(absolutely) claimed one is the one who can (relatively) be replaced; but the
absolute Requisitioner is always the One whose justice and beauty dazzle us. No
one in the world can substitute for Him. To take something, if we follow it to
its logical conclusion, is to take something absolutely; it is a simple deed,
the deed of one, and not the deed of two or more; it is the deed of my Lord and
my God. Therefore we say, that Christ, although He concealed Himself from the
Jews and from “the flesh,” revealed Himself beautifully and gloriously to those
who believed. He triumphed also in this act of requisition. His right to lay
claim — we elaborated upon that to a considerable extent — was completely
challenged and at bottom was denied (See chapter 11). When His coat was raffled,
this denial, this acute, sharp, bitter and demonic denial issued in the
extremest possible consequences. Nevertheless Christ, although He was completely
naked, fully exercised His right to requisition in the presence of the rafflers
and dickerers. Surely, this is triumph. He comes up out of the abysses of
paradoxical conflict in triumph as a thinker when He utters His
super-paradoxical “amen,” and in His super-paradoxical act of requisition He
comes up out of the eternal abysses as the Owner. In the great, fundamental
issues of the state of privilege and of the possession of privilege, Christ
gloriously asserted Himself overagainst all appearances. In all this He is our
Surety. Blessed is he who is not offended by such a Surety. As Surety He
proclaims the place of the history of revelation, the place of His death. That
first. And as the Surety He also enters into this death. That next. As the
Surety He puts His own death on its proper plane by means of the third statement
from the cross. He gives Mary and John work to do. He has no patience for
letting Mary or any other person be troubled by His “death,” from the late
Friday evening to the early Sunday morning (a day and two parts of a day). He
does not want them to suffer because of the death in itself. Nothing exists “in
itself,” He does not want to see a single day lived in lamentation about the
death of Mary’s lost Son. His mother may not be a Rachel, for Rachel refuses to
be comforted because her children are not. Woe to Mary, if she, a second Rachel,
should make the death of her Son the uninhibited cause of comfortless sorrow. A
Benoni is not acknowledged in God’s house. We are the children of His sorrow;
let us not reverse the order. Thus He presents a Benjamin to His mother; He
cannot die in God’s house. He places that disciple on her right and on her left
side who was chosen of all men by the spirit of God to write the profoundest
things which were ever said in the world about the interrelationship of God’s
thoughts in the historical life of the man Jesus. He has His mother supported
not by a “synoptic” soul, but by the spirit of John. John was the disciple who
up to this time understood most about Him, and who was permitted to write about
the Word made flesh under the impelling drive of the Spirit. John had apparently
been predestined by the creative father of spirits in his thinking and being for
that task from his birth on upwards; he had been prepared for it by virtue of
predestination, and this man, Jesus places next to Mary. This is the quiet
Saturday. That was a day in which John 1:14, the great prologue of the great
gospel of John, was already approached by two seeking souls. On that day the
Holy Spirit overshadowed those two who could say the most about the Logos made
flesh. The flesh was Mary’s; it was torn apart by God. The spirit was John’s; it
was torn apart by God. The one, Mary, knew how fleshly the Logos was; He had
assumed her flesh and blood. The other, John, knew how truly the Logos had
entered into the flesh: the Logos had assumed his spirit, the spirit of John,
son of Zebedee. Therefore Jesus gave His mother the best He could give: He
assigned the death suffered in His Suretyship to the right place. In other
words, He strictly forbade these two intimate persons, intimate according to the
flesh and intimate according to the spirit, to accentuate the moment of His
death in a way cut loose from faith, or while their backs were turned to God,
the God who implants faith in human souls. This third utterance from the cross
resembles “natural” love (philein); but from A to Z it is spiritual love
(agapaan). Christ’s most devoted care for His mother Mary is a strict command,
carried out on Good Friday, not to look upon His death “erotically,” not to
approach it “psychologically,” or “sensually,” or “naturally,” and not to become
steeped in it by way of impossible grief. Francis of Assisi is helpless
overagainst this utterance, and all erotic souls of every epoch are being
summoned here to convert themselves to the spiritual love. Christ proclaimed His
death as the death of His Suretyship (again on the assumption of faith). He
said: This death is the way; it must take place thus; and therefore John, doctor
dogmaticus that he is, and already waxing strong in the spirit, must support the
mater dolorosa until he shall sometime write an account of the gospel. For it is
not the nature of flesh and blood, but the spirit born of God, which can see the
death of Jesus in the proper light, and can struggle through the transition from
the last Sabbath to the first Sunday on a quiet Saturday. So much for the first
point. And this for the second. Christ also assumed His death in speaking that
third utterance from the cross. To suffer shame in the presence of those nearest
us, to see those nearest us as the ones who are really the most distant, is also
an instance of the passion of the Surety, for it belongs to the essence of the
penalty. In hell each person turns aside from every other, because there no one
can love. Christ is not such; He can love, and He does. And hence He, by an
effort, sets the others apart from Himself, and Himself apart from the others.
But this active obedience is again related to the passive obedience. He is being
segregated from the others, from those whom He loves. This is His suffering;
this is His suffering of the penalty for our sin, a penalty which takes the form
of disruption. What is sin at bottom but the primary and elemental principle of
schism. It introduces segregation between father and mother, parent and child;
it puts the single individual to shame in the presence of the most intimate
communion which life knows. This penalty, and this punishment, He now assumes,
looking it full in the face. Thus He suffers a spiritual death. However, He
suffers as the Surety, that is, He gains the victory over the spiritual death.
That capacity to unite by means of which He draws John and Mary together,
consumes the disruptive influence of sin. This it does at the right time. For
this power of disruption which is of the essence of sin had just accrued to Him
on that stage of mockery which we discussed before. The mockery of hell with
which He was afflicted was a clear manifestation and assertion of the disruptive
power of sin. Hence we can say that the third utterance from the cross refers to
the past as well as to the future. Rejected and abandoned Himself, our Surety
makes a great effort to bind the disrupted together again. He unites disparate
entities; He unites the profound spirit of John with the sensitive soul of the
mother; He unites the man with the woman and makes sons out of cousins. The
robbery which He commits against Salome becomes a blessed delight to her. This
is because of His Spirit. He triumphantly metamorphoses the reflection upon the
day of the definitive death, into a preparation for the most beautiful of days,
the dawning of Easter. In all this, however, the Surety assumes His isolation.
For He cannot dispose of these profound feelings of love to anyone. His love is
so spiritual (agapaan), that they can find no adequate forms in which to express
themselves (philein). Such a love is a consuming love. At least it consumes
human nature. Hence He must be consumed because of this love. No wonder,
therefore, that it carries out its fatigued command immediately before His
descent into hell. His love can no longer express itself without a struggle; He
is approaching the edge of hell. He is alone. Another moment, and it will be
dark upon Golgotha, and the darkness will last for three hours; thereupon the
last struggle will impinge upon Him from the outside; when that happens Love
will have forsaken Him entirely. Nevertheless He assumes His lot and His
isolation. It is remarkable, is it not, that before the darkness, and before the
great exclamation of the fourth statement from the cross, He sends His mother
away. Did He know what was still coming? Did He feel it? We dare not say any
more than we know, but we believe that He wanted to be in a right relationship
with all men, with all forces of the earth, before He sank away in the
bottomless abysses of the griefs of hell. And He knew that these would come.

Thus He enters upon His isolation. At the Valley of the Shadow, we say, all
friends forsake us. Yes, that is the way we put it. But He could not say it that
way. When He enters upon the valley of death, He bids His earthly friends adieu,
He puts Himself into a state of isolation. Again I understand Him better now as
He says, not “mother,” but “woman.” Hereafter He will have no mother anymore.
Even on Easter day and on the day of Ascension He will give His mother
conspicuously little, much “less” than many others. The austere logic of His own
sublime diction subsides not at all. Yes, woman, just go now; I am taking leave
of mother for all centuries, and for all eternity.

Thereupon Christ entered upon the final trial. But by sending His mother away
beforehand He in the final act as a Priest creatively fulfilled this stipulation
of the law: Greet no one upon the way. In the hour in which one must serve God
directly, no one must be spoken to enroute. Greeting God, one automatically
greets all those who are His. And this must suffice for them, whether they
understand it or not. Greet no one upon the way. For souls and movements of
souls may not pause on the open routes of the Spirit. Just as a priest in Israel
may not grieve because of the death of those dear to him, inasmuch as a priest
may not allow himself to be interrupted in the ministration of his office,[1] so
Christ forbids, by way of making the command and its austerity even profounder,
that any lamentation be made for Him without faith. The High Priest sends His
mother away before the utmost of the penalty is demanded, of Him, and before the
extreme of punishment tortures Him. He did not pause on the way; His eye was
steady in spite of the proximity of His mother; He kept His gaze steadily upon
His helplessly embarrassed people.

[1]Christ onTrial, chapter 8: pp. 161, 162.

Accordingly, we can say that this substitution on the part of the Nazarene was
an instance of church-service. The family received the official ministration of
religion. It grieved Him greatly, it caused Him extreme pain to minister this
service. We alluded to Eve a few paragraphs ago, but the conflicts of Eve are
explained here. When Adam had seen the light of evangelical grace dawning over a
cursed world,[2] he changed the name of his wife. First she was called Woman,
but after God had pronounced the blessing of the Redeemer which should be born
of her seed he changed her name to live, for she was to be the mother of all
living. This in Adam was faith. The name woman is a name for the present. The
man is for the woman, and the woman for the man. They play together in the
present. But the name mother here is an eschatological name; it represents a
struggle for the future, and a reaching out for benefits to come. God Himself
had said that redemption was to come from their children, from their future.
Hence Adam now names his wife not after herself, but after his posterity, She is
no longer here in order to play an Arcadian game with him in the present (man
and woman), but they together are here to suffer and to travail for the future
which must produce the seed.

[2] In the familiar mother promiseGenesis 3:15.

However, his faith was still groping, was still uncertain. When was the Great
Child to appear? Alas, Eve is the mother “of all living.” Hence it may still
take a long time. . . .

Now that great birth has finally taken place. And the mother, she who could
really be the mother of this prince of life, of this great seed of the woman,
might stand here . . . but stand next to a cross. The woman has entirely
disappeared, and the game, the game of life, has ceased. The mother arose; she
was entirely broken, and the Great Son sends her to the house of hard
consolations. He sends Himself into death. If Adam could have seen this hour
from afar the name of the mother of all living would have died on his lips. But
the second Adam who conceals all His strength in the words of His
self-substitution, still asserts Himself as the Prince of life. The game had
died out; but thus it was restored again. For, now that the issue is squarely
confronted, it appears, not that the Child is to be explained in terms of the
mother, but the mother in terms of the child. And hence the Child leaves the
mother in obscurity. Only faith can remove the darkness.

Thus Christ is our peace also, in nature, in flesh, and in blood. Adam and Eve
are explained today. The Son explains the parents. Yes, this Son explains His
fathers and His mothers, all of them together. Father David, also, finds his
explanation and fulfillment in David’s son. David, during his life, had also
been aware of an afflicted mother who directed a question to his house. We are
thinking of Rizpali (2 Samuel 21), who took her place next to Rachel, and who
stood on the boundary line between the house of Saul and the house of David,
weeping. When Saul fell, he left a gloomy legacy behind: an unconfessed evil,
the core of a curse. He had defiled the oath of God. And when in the time of
David, this curse was destroying the people — for no one[3] had given any
attention to it — they took seven — the sacred number — of Saul’s children,
including two of Rizpah’s, and hanged them on a tree of shame. These were
declared to be exlex: each was an exlex in his accursed death. But the curse
proved not to be destroyed by this sentence; the plague (a famine) persisted.
David’s sacrifice no longer had the potency to satisfy.[4] Was David himself
praying too little? Was the old tension present no longer? Be that as it may,
there was one who felt the tension, and that one was Rizpah. She struggled long
in prayer with the Lord. She kept watch by the seven gallows, in order that the
curse might be removed, and those who had been hanged might be buried honorably.
Her persistent watching and her dramatic wrestlings in prayer with God, begging
Him to hear and to allow the miserable remnants of Saul some little vestige of
honor in the form of a decent burial — this persistence of Rizpah we said was a
good thing still. It was a salutary counterweight[5] overagainst the apathy and
indifference of the many who were satisfied with the opus operatum[6] of an
accomplished curse-judgment. But for the rest, how pitiable, how miserable!
David had not avoided Saul’s sin; neither had he made satisfaction for it. And
an afflicted mother must support and complete the inadequacy of King David.

[3] Not even David!

[4] There was sin in his own house precisely at this time. His sons (we read in
the Hebrew) were called priests. This may have been a mere gesture in the
direction of priestly honor by means of the royal house (the evil which had
caused Saul to stumble returned to the house of David). Disobedience in the
fulfillment of the office; concealment of the messianic image.

[5] “And after that (Rizpah’s struggle was a contributing factor) God was
entreated for the land.”

[6] A religious act satisfactory when externally effected even though
insincerely done.

Back to Golgotha now. Mary is here. Her child, her royal child, is hanging on an
accursed tree. In Him David himself is being accursed. But there is a
difference, and the difference inheres in this: Mary, in contrast to Rizpah, has
nothing to do; she has been dismissed. The struggle of Rizpah’s soul was the
necessary complement to an opus operatum. True, the house of David is making
sacrifices, but is itself playing with sin. And although the house of David can
follow Saul into his death, it cannot break the curse. Hence Rizpah did
something. Her tension and her perseverance overagainst Jehovah completes the
sentence, and assists in compelling the blessing to come. But Mary — the second
afflicted mother standing by an accursed tree — can go home. Today Jehovah can
be inclined to favor the country without her. The sacrifice of this day is not
an opus operatum; Christ surrenders Himself “through the eternal Spirit.” He
Himself puts the tension of prayer into this sacrifice of the curse. There is
nothing for Mary to do; the mother can go home. The Son has now finished
everything, everything. Not only does He have the knife employed in the
sacrifice, but He also has that tension of soul required to drive the curse out
of the atmosphere. These two had been separated in David but are united in the
Son of David. Rizpah: the ecstasy of complementary sacrifice; the public
intercession. Mary: a calm dismissal; a hymn of praise lifted up about the
adequacy of Christ, who gives His mother nothing to do by way of atonement, but,
as the Son, consumes in Himself all of the evil committed by David and by Saul
when Saul or his condemned generation, and the remnants of David, believe in
Him.

Thus Christ takes leave of men. He kept His two staves in His hand, the staves
of Beauty and Bonds. Having come to nature in the power of the Spirit He remains
its peace.

Now we have pondered half[1] of the utterances Christ pronounced from the cross.
The harmony of these was beautiful, was it not? In the first utterance He asked
God for time and indicated His will for the time which would then ensue.[2] By
means of the second statement He opened eternity to a person who was lost to
time and made known His will to him.[3] Now, in this third utterance from the
cross, He has subjected time to eternity, subordinated the days of men to the
law of the day of the Lord; in this statement He caused two people in a quiet
home on a quiet Saturday to ponder the dark mystery which later would be defined
and described by John. John would write of that later. John, driven by the
Spirit, could then teach Mary that in the beginning was the Word and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And
the Word was made flesh, and both of us beheld His humiliation, an humiliation
as of the last begotten of Eve, but full of grace and truth. The great
substitution comes by way of the great absolution. For the Eternal, the
Infinite, moved to redemption in time among finite values. In this way Christ’s
self-substitution represents the fulfillment of the washing of the feet. The
Master became as one who serves. The Master cannot be replaced, but servants
(slaves) could be bought in those days. These could be replaced; adequate
substitutes could be found for them. Thus Christ washed the feet and the eyes —
it was all the same. The Lion became the lamb; food went out of the eater. This
is a riddle you will not guess. And when you say “I give up,” the great Samson
will clothe you in His own change of garments. He wove them with His own hands,
and He did not kill a single Philistine to get them for you.

[1] See chapter 7: pp. 130-31.

[2] See chapter 7: pp. 134-35.

[3] See chapter 13: pp. 275, 302.


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  CHAPTER 21: 16. CHAPTER 16: CHRIST EXLEX IN THE DARKNESS: CHRIST OUTSIDE OF THE GATES OF GOD
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C H A P T E R S I X T E E N Christ Exlex in the Darkness: Christ Outside of the
Gates of God Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until
the ninth hour. —Matthew 27:45. IN ONE of his books Nietzsche has his hero
Zarathustra say: “There many suns are cavorting in space; their rays have a
message for all that is dark, but to me they are silent. Ah, such is the enmity
of light against everything which itself gives light!” These are well turned
phrases, but phrases in which the arrogance of the speaker is evident. Regarding
himself the while as a bearer of light, he glories in the fact that the world’s
bearers of light have nothing mere to say to him, and by way of
self-glorification (perhaps it would be honest to say by way of an unconscious
attempt at self-vindication) he creates the fable of the jealous suns.

How very different is Christ Jesus. He who Himself is the Light, calls for
light. He avidly accepts the luxury of light which the mount of transfiguration
offers Him, and even after that He cries aloud for a ray of light, for a kiss
from heaven.

Redeem me and give me a trace, Of the light of Thy comforting face.

Hence for Him it was suffering and not the cause of a false glorification when
light was taken from Him for the space of three hours on Golgotha. Now all the
generations may rejoice because of that darkness and say: “In Thy light we see
the light.” Hence we must follow Him into the darkness. The context of the story
is well known to us. When Christ, while hanging on the cross, has suffered the
first affliction, the acute act of the crucifixion, He enters upon the second
phase of His suffering. From the catastrophe of the crucifixion He enters into
the passion of being crucified. Gradually but certainly His blood ebbs.
Gradually His wounds become swollen; these pained Him grievously; His blood
congeals because it cannot course freely; fever consumes His body. The work has
been done; the social act, save for the extreme sacrifice, has been finished.
The intercession for the soldiers, the opening of Paradise to the murderer, and
the assignment of the mother to John — these have taken place. When this work
had been completed, God said: The preparation is finished; now follows the
essence of the sacrifice itself; now He must enter upon the darkness of night.
After the six preparatory seals the pre-emptory seventh seal of the book of
death and the curse is broken. A hand intervened in the clouds; it hung a veil
before the sun and receded again.

Then it was dark. It was dark and that was all. Silence everywhere. A drop of
blood fell to the ground. The centurion plainly heard it falling. It was quiet
and that was all. That and the passion. And silence everywhere. Silence above,
and silence below. The mockers dared go no farther. The tumult subsided. The
chest of the murderer was heaving audibly; they in the back rows of the
spectators — no, of the bystanders — could hear it.

What shall we say of it, you ask? Not too much learning, perhaps, and nothing,
surely, that can serve to “explain.” Attempts at an “explanation” of this
darkness have been undertaken, but they mock themselves. There are people, after
all, whose pet ambition it is to “explain” by natural means what God does by
miraculous means, — as if God and nature were antitheses, as if nature were not
as miraculous as a miracle. But let that be. People of this temper have said:
Very likely it was an eclipse, a very ordinary eclipse. No, all alarmed
believers hasten to reply, glad that for once they can boldly take issue, that
is impossible. Easter, they say, coincided with the full moon, and when there is
a full moon an eclipse is impossible, the moon is then directly opposite to the
sun, a circumstance which cannot make an eclipse. True, others admit, but are
quick to add: Then the darkness must have been caused by an aggregate of
particularly dense clouds, or by a sudden rising of mists from the earth. These
point to the fact that each year in Jerusalem, especially in the month of April,
dark days frequently occur, usually called “black siroccos,” during which the
atmosphere is hot and full of dust. In fact, Origen committed himself completely
to this supposition.”[1] However, although we do not regard this possibility as
being excluded “in itself,” we believe that the word “darkness” has been too
strongly accentuated to warrant such a natural explanation.

[1] P. G. Groenen,op.cit.,p. 512. In any case this at least is of the greatest
importance to us: that we must see an intentional and direct influence of God in
this intervention of darkness.[2] Or, if we want to put it that way, we can say:
This was a wonder. God spoke objectively.

[2] We may call attention in passing to the fact that various testimonies which
men have tried to glean from sources other than the Bible by way of confirming
this historical datum of the Bible, can contribute nothing to explaining this
darkness. Men have appealed to the letters of Polycarpus and Apollophanes.
References have also been made to Phlegon, to Thallus, and to others. We shall
pass over all these things without consideration, inasmuch as they do not affect
the gospel account, and inasmuch as these testimonies are quite superfluous to
the believer.

Naturally, God is first of all speaking about and speaking to His Son, the
Surety of our soul. For this is “the hour and the power” of darkness. He said so
Himself, and consequently He must experience it as such. Hence God comes to
express this truth which in its essence touches on the invisible world, in
visible forms also. In Bethlehem night was once converted into day; on Golgotha
day is metamorphosed into night. In Bethlehem there are many angels whose light
dispels the darkness. On Golgotha there are many devils who — as it seems — gain
a triumph in the conquest of darkness over light.

How could we possibly see the proper relationship of these things except in
terms of Christ’s descent into hell? The darkness in which Christ now hung
suspended accrued to Him, impinged upon Him, in that second of time in which His
sorrow became so aggravated that it finally had to give expression to the
statement: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? He was suffering the pains
of hell. What God wanted to say to the Son was this: Have you desired to suffer
the passion of hell? Then you must do so fully aware that you are doing so.

Therefore we can say that the Father, as Judge, now continues what the Son, as
Accused, has begun. When Jesus first came to the hill of death, He refused the
drink of wine mingled with myrrh. He did not want to be dulled by the sedative.
He chose to look the Father full in the face, even while the Father thrust Him
aside.[1] Now God keeps Him to the course He Himself chose at that time. He who
would be alone with God and would feel the eye of God burning down upon His own,
must be in the dark. Where else can one see God, save in the dark, at least in
that which the people of today call the dark? Was not the night always reserved
for the prophets and the poets who were taken away from God and forsaken of Him?
Now Christ comes as Prophet and Surety. He enters upon the extreme penalty.
Consequently, the night is meet for Him.

[1] Chapter 5, page 96.

It could not and it might not be otherwise. True, it is possible for God to give
someone the privilege or the imperative of looking into heaven or hell on a
brilliant day, but when this happens, it happens only in an instant of ecstatic
transport. Such a transport immediately dims the eyes. When God takes Paul, and
gives him a vision of the third heaven, Paul is experiencing a
trance-experience. When John is given the imperative on Patmos of looking into
the second heaven, he does so on a brilliant day, but while he is “in the
spirit. ” When Abraham is called upon to see God on the day when God wants to
disclose the history of the future to him, Abraham also is in the spirit.[2] [2]
Genesis 15 : The light in the smoke.

Consequently, God could have showed the terrors, the realities, of the other
world to Christ Jesus upon a brilliant day, if only Christ had been “in the
spirit,” if only He had been in a state of ecstatic trance. For then, too,
Christ would have been attentive solely to the things of heaven or of hell. But
that is not the manner in which things must take place for Him. Trance
experience, and the condition of being “in the spirit,” makes a person passive;
it excludes his own activity. Christ may not be passive merely; and He may not
be that merely in relation to the things below. No, He must remain active to the
very end; He must be busy personally, must keep Himself in suspense, must
continue seeking for His God, and must descend to Satan by His own act. He must
not, like John, Paul, and Abraham, be made attentive solely in a passive way,
but must by an act of His own cause His eyes to penetrate every obscurity,
seeking out God and the devil. His ears have been “opened.”[1] He can listen
very attentively, He can be very alert, and must faithfully accept the calling
of being that now. By an exertion of His own effort and not by a mechanical
compulsion He must receive the sounds coming to Him from the other world. An
ecstatic Christ cannot redeem us. If the Saviour had been “in the spirit,” His
activity would have been lost in compulsion. Then the unity of His work would
have been broken. Then He would have been a servant who because of His
limitation could see only that which had been placed before His eyes. That is
the condition of those whom God puts “in a trance.” They do nothing themselves;
they draw nothing to them, neither God nor devil. If Christ had been like them
He would not have descended into hell by virtue of His own energy, but would
merely have been forced past it. Or, to put it more strongly, then hell in its
various aspects would merely have passed by Him. Such would not have been an act
of redemption. Such is not to see God or to see the devil. That causes nothing
more than a mechanical convulsion, one which can take the body and soul captive,
but which cannot by means of body and soul permit Him to take captive the devil
and his straight-jacket, and God and His sublime book of law.

[1]Psalms 40:6: Mine ears hast Thou opened.

Hence the reason for which God now puts His Son in darkness is to keep Christ
faithful to His own work in the office of His Mediatorship, and to try Him as
such. The second Adam may in no sense enter into a coma. The covenant of works
has just been placed upon the table. The dialogue is beginning. God and He are
to stand overagainst each other. Now the curtains must be drawn; God can be
spoken to only in the dark. Light serves to unite people living on a single
horizontal plane, but it cannot unite men with the other world. Light is a
medium of intercourse, it is “social.” But God is not our socius; He is the
Other. He can be found in the dark — the others must step aside then. And what,
pray, can Christ do in the cleft of the rock in which He is to meet God and the
devil, what can He do there with a medium of intercourse employed among men?
Thus far He has done His work among men. He has dealt with and dispatched the
last point on the “social” program of the day.[1] Light does not make sense to
Him any longer. There is nothing to do now, except to achieve the great
sacrifice. As far as He is concerned, He has been shut out of the range of
communion. The Mediator who comes to achieve His most unique function no longer
needs an intermediary. The light is a means of communication; what can one do
with it after the great excommunication?

[1] See chapter 15: pp. 366-67 (the first three utterances from the cross); see
chapter 7: p. 130. The last question forms the transition to a second
consideration. The darkness gives expression to the burning of the curse which
is accruing to Christ. He has been robbed of the light; affliction suffered in
the dark is more. Affliction in a night which has been “made,” which has been
intentionally made for Him at mid-day — that is everything. Things cannot go any
farther on earth. The darkness creates possibilities for the severest suffering
possible, and accordingly is an expression of the extreme curse.

We know that light was the first gift of God’s preparatory[2] creation. This
very first gift — which was still the privilege of everyone after the fall — is
now withheld from Him. “God causes His sun to shine upon evil and good.” But He
does not cause it to shine upon Him who as the Surety and Mediator is “less than
evil.” Even this world has no garment which would fit Him, for the best it can
do is to oppose common grace to the common judgment, and hence it cannot isolate
the Surety in the absolute judgment. Accordingly, God brings a portentous sign
to bear upon Him: He takes the light away from Him in order to indicate by this
act of stripping the Surety that the Surety is sinking beneath the level of the
first of God’s gifts and media. The person whom God has robbed is cut off from
access to the primitive gifts. Today He is that man. He is made the equivalent
of a Thief. The curse is coming, and it is coming with catastrophes.[3] Three
days of darkness in Egypt, and the first-born die, the first fruits of Egypt’s
might. Three hours of darkness, and the first-begotten dies, the first-born of
the power of God.

[2] There are two kinds of “creative” activity: the making, the constructing of
the world (Genesis 1:1), and the preparing or furnishing of the created
earth-world (the work of the six days of creation).

[3] See chapter 6: p. 114 f. But the advent of this strange darkness affected
not only the nature but also the degree, the intensity, of Christ’s suffering.
We must know that the intensity of His passion is a separate problem. For — as
we pointed out previously — the Mediator confronts the humanly impossible task
of suffering an infinite burden of penalty in a finite period of time. Time, and
an hour of time, must necessarily have an end. Else that moment will never come,
that point of time, in which the historical process of God’s work of grace can
be transformed from suffering into triumph, from cross to crown. And then the
“payment” of the Surety cannot mean a cancellation of the debt. Nevertheless,
the burden of the suffering must necessarily remain infinite; for the burdens
which God’s unrestricted, and “unrestrained” wrath brings to bear upon those who
are outside of Him is infinite. The Mediator is being required to suffer, not
for something else, but for the same guilt which sin has deserved, a suffering
beyond human computation.

Now the suffering of Christ receives its infinite value first of all from His
Person. His human nature is related to the Person of the uncreated Son of God.
However, this suffering must be characterized by an intensity which exacts the
utter extremities of His capacity for awful tension. Just as the successive
periods of time (three hours) must be subordinate on this occasion to the
intensive suffering, everything depends upon the fact that this intensity wholly
consume the Man of sorrows. And is it not true that in this world the hour of
darkness is peculiarly the time of intense experience? The daytime and the
daylight speak to us in successive, in quantitative language; these count out
their hours and their minutes, and permit us unintermittently to measure time
and space. But darkness and the night, and especially the strange darkness, the
artificially created night, suppress the succession of moments from the active
consciousness (to the extent that they can) and permit the influences being
brought to bear on us to have their full effect of intensity (to the extent that
they can). Counting is the work of the day; weighing is the work of the night.
The night puts the concept of depth in the place of the concept of length.

Now, precisely because in Christ’s burden of suffering length must give way to
depth, and intensity is more than a passing of time, night and darkness take on
significance. The burdens of His spirit are infinitely heavy upon Him. Therefore
God thrusts Him into the dark. He must experience what is meant by the term
“outer darkness.” This was one of His own teachings: outer, extreme, darkness, a
darkness unknown on earth. He had always genuinely and purely exposed the
content of this doctrine. Today He must experience it, and the experience of
darkness demands a medium of darkness.

Indeed exegesis must go hand in hand with experience for Him. Once John the
Baptist testified of Him: He may teach us about heaven; for when He tells us of
the house of light, He is talking about something which He has seen and heard;
for He was in the house (John 3). In other words, the exegesis which as a man He
gives of heaven, is one and the same thing to Him as the experience which is His
as the Word, as the Logos. Today this word is being changed into its opposite.
Does He, as the Logos, wish to learn of hell? Would He present the exegesis of
this sombre concept through His Word? Good, but then His “teaching” of the hell,
house of darkness as it is, must become a teaching of that which He has seen and
heard. He must have been in the house of hell. The exposition of hell, which He
gives as the Logos of the Scriptures by means of the apostles and prophets, must
be made His experience which He must undergo now as a man. He must experience
the darkness.

Say nothing, pray; He is experiencing it already. He is experiencing what chaos
is. He is caught in the caesura of that inclusive “day of the Lord” which
circumscribes and comprises the history of the world. God brings darkness on at
twelve o’clock. By this means God proclaims that the normal condition of a lost
world would be just such abandonment, such desolate suspension in unfathomable
darkness.

Thus Christ experiences the absence of any comfort. Once one of the prophets had
said: At the time of evening it shall be light. A comforting word, indeed, but
now He confronts the exact opposite: at the time of light, at twelve o’clock
noon, it shall be night. In the “day of the Lord,” it is noon, it is twelve
o’clock, the time for a chaotic interference with the cosmic scheme. Just as the
spikes and the hammers of the soldiers were by Him placed between the beautiful
beginning and the chaotic ending of the world, and just as He, when He prayed
for the soldiers, consciously took up His position between the first day of the
world-harmony and the last day of its chaotic disruption, so He is here. The Son
hangs suspended in darkness at midday. At midday, you understand, not of one
specific “date,” but of the history of the one day of the world. Thus His
attention goes back to the beginning and to the departure of the history of the
world. It goes back to the beginning first of all. In the beginning of the great
“day” God opened the doors of the world by creating light. And these doors He
left open, even after the fall of devils and men. But that which was in the
beginning and remained afterwards, is denied to the Son. He feels and He knows
that history is being made here, that God is doing something new (chedasjah),
and that He is permitting the Son to be swallowed up of it. For this darkness is
also pointing ahead to the evening of the world. Listen to the voice of Joel
(Joel 2:10): The sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw
their shining; it is the day of the Lord; therefore the Lord shall roar out of
Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall
shake (Joel 3:15-16). Again listen to the voice of Isaiah (Isaiah 13:9). Behold,
the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, for the
stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the
sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light
to shine. And again (Isaiah 50:3): I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I
make sackcloth their covering. And in all this the Lord hath kept from me the
tongue of the learned, and I must lament: why, why? I know that I am not in the
place of God; I am the brother of the blind and of the cruel. Day of the Lord,
day of days: It shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will
cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day
(Amos 8:9). Christ in the catastrophic curse! He stumbles — there is a fall; the
abyss of outer darkness confronts Him. He has stepped over the border-line; He
has no valid passport. The “day of the Lord” has been in Christ’s soul. He did
not count the years in their succession, nor, looking back upon them, reckon
them, but these years weighed down upon Him, and He experienced the tension of
history in all of its gravity. Just as a dying person, according to the opinions
of some, sees the panorama of his life’s history flitting past in a second, and
just as a seer intensely experiences what the daily people merely pass through
extensively, thus Christ experienced the whole of the history of the world and
of the history of redemption, and each moment was equally present in His
attention. With this addition: for Christ it was not a dream, and it was not an
apocalypse. He awoke in the dark, and He worked, and He felt Himself being
thrust outside of all God’s gates. The gate of Jerusalem had suddenly grown as
wide as the whole world. For — to elaborate the last point — the darkness
affects not only the nature or intensity, but also the legal significance of
Christ’s suffering. That moment in which Christ was driven outside the gate, a
moment we have discussed so often, now takes on a universal significance. The
sentence becomes reinforced and at the same time is declared effective for the
whole universe at this time. Without the gate of Jerusalem — that now became the
equivalent of: outside of all gates, not only of the gate of Jahweh, the gate of
the covenant and of redemption, but also of the gate of God, the gate of
creation, the gate of light.

Yes, indeed, this darkness has something to say about Christ’s relationship to
the law, His struggle with the law, and the fulfillment of the law. God barred
the way along which the Son was passing. Every alley and every bypath was closed
to Him. Personally and absolutely, God closed all His gates to Him. God now
calls in a loud voice over Jerusalem, over Judea, over Palestine, over this
world, and presently over all the stars and all the world: Is there a gate
anywhere; then let it cast Him out. Now the scapegoat which was sent away really
suffers. This is the great day of atonement; the day in which the scapegoat must
be sent into the wilderness. And can we say that there is any real wilderness in
this world that we know? Wilderness, faithfully translated, means hell.
Accordingly, Christ must be cast outside of the gates for He deserves to descend
into hell.

We must return for a moment to the beginning of this volume. There we spoke of
the legal significance of Christ’s being cast without the gate as an exlex.
There we emphasized the fact that in Israel, among the people of revelation, the
casting out of a condemned person, and the rejection of such a person from the
domain of legal activity, of legal words and deeds, to the extent that men could
see that domain, contained a confession within itself. It was an acknowledgment
that human words and modes of punishment were insufficient to give adequate
expression and application to the essence of the punishment and of the sin
committed. Neither the words nor the legal execution of guilt completely reached
the fullness of God’s justice and wrath. Even the revealed law, even the
materials of punishment that had been drawn up after the example displayed on
the mountain of the lawgiver, were not adequate to execute the full measure of
the law. For human beings there is an inexhaustible remnant of divine wrath;
this appeared to us to be the great assumption underlying and also the clear
confession contained in the institution of the exlex who is hanged before
Jehovah without the gate (page 20). This wrath which could not be expressed in
human language now accrues to Christ. The darkness has something to say to Him.
It gives Him its extreme message. It is the form in which the Lord gives
expression to the wrath of hell. It is also the ministration of that wrath; it
belongs to such materials of punishment as human beings have no access to.
Darkness is that, certainly is that, even though it is not that alone. The
inexhaustible remnant of wrath now descends upon the Christ. Human beings can
make a cross; but this is mere child’s play when compared with the materials of
punishment which God now applies. He lays His hand on the suns. His taking away
the light is an extension of the worst that human ingenuity can devise for an
accursed person. The language which God speaks by means of this darkness is so
absolutely devastating, disarming, stripping, erosive, and consuming that the
legal sentences of Pilate and the Sanhedrin, and the mockery of Golgotha, are as
nothing as compared with the language of God which places the exlex in the dark.
Yes, we know that Christ had by the act of His own thinking, and by His personal
“fear of the Lord” transposed all these human methods into a hellish and eternal
intensity. But now God makes His approach from the other side. The Son had
transposed the penalties of man, but now He is confronted by the impositions of
the Judge, by the inexhaustible remnant of wrath, by the unutterable puissance
of wrath, by the super-earthly, by the extra-mundane, by the infernal in the
language and deeds of the irate Judge. This, and this coming from Him, now
accrues to Christ. The darkness coincides with the descent of the Son into hell.
It is a form which God’s unmitigated wrath chooses of all things created to make
Himself known and to satisfy Himself. God molests the Christ by means of the
possibilities for molesting which His human nature and the whole of created
things offer Him as the Judge. For the rest, who shall say what the body of
Christ suffered? Who shall say what was going on in His soul, in His spirit? Who
can say to what points His thoughts were stretched? In this way Christ was
thrown outside of every gate, outside of every sphere of life, outside of every
world. We hear Him say that this is to be forsaken. And from that we infer that
this act of the darkening of the sun has a negative as well as a positive
influence of devastation. It presents the Christ as one who is brought to
justice in an extra-mundane, that is, in an infernal way. Extra-mundane: that
means that no single “world” may receive Him. A “world” is a thing which belongs
together and which remains together. It is an organism. But He, the Great
Sinner, can find no place in any organism. Adam is passing through all the
worlds, and heavy darkness surrounds them all. Consequently Adam sinks down; the
exlex becomes an exile; He has no ground under his feet any more. He passes out
of time, yes— even though His heart is still beating in time. He has been thrown
outside of space, even though the cross is still standing, its beam still
planted in the ground. And now that He knows that He has been cast out of all
organisms, now He descends into hell. That is the simplest because it is the
only result. It is the opposite side — we might say it is the translation of
“not being acceptable to organic constituencies.” That is by no means saying
just how it is, but is at best suggesting how it is not. There is no light, and
there is no sun; there is the absence of God’s first and greatest gift: namely,
the light. But to the struggling spirit of Him who immediately gives all things
a covenant name, a religious name, this negative element immediately indicates a
positive act. It is not as a king but as a recruit, not as the head, but as a
man, not as rabbi, or prophet, but as apprentice and proselyte to the angels
that He is being degraded before the universe; and so essentially degraded that
the first gift given to all, the gift of light, is taken away from Him. This is
extra-mundane suffering. And this is converted into the positive, into the
infernal, into the hellish. No, beyond this point we cannot go, because we can
not write of hell unless we have been there.[1] We shall not strain to find
words, God forbid. We cannot get beyond the word He used in His own teaching:
outer darkness. Now the Saviour has been completely disarmed.

[1] The next chapter will discuss this theme further.

We human beings think it is something to see the eye being “broken” in a dying
person. Well, presently Jesus’ eyes also break. But before that takes places,
His eyes are made useless. Is He blinded? No, it is much worse than that.
Seeing, He sees not, and hearing, He understands not. He had frequently spoken
of that Himself. There is concord between the eye and the light, and life
sustains the harmony. But here this concord is broken, not because life fled,
but simply because God said: He has been made sin. Thus God spoke to all angels:
Cut off every thread connecting Him with other things; leave no avenue open to
Him. The conduits, the aqueducts[2] of nature lead everywhere but to Him. No
longer need He pray to God that the avenues of grace be opened to Him.

[2] Ezekiel 31 : The waters under the earth, that nurture the trees; see chapter
3, page 57. The darkness as an answer to “Christ’s extreme service of the Word.”

No, no, He need not pray for that any longer. For it is precisely when He lets
Himself be made sin, and curse, and pollution, when He lets Himself be truly
made that (2 Corinthians 5:21), all “conduits” have been cut off from Him. The
world always depends upon these conduits. But now there is no access for Him to
any good, not even to common grace. Now He has been excluded from everything,
even from the benefit of dying from exhaustion. Not long ago a book appeared in
which someone who had been tortured — in Russia — in a dark prison, told how it
had been possible for him not to cry aloud under the impact of the most terrible
tortures, and not to lose consciousness. He decided — at the suggestion of
another — to keep a point of light steadily before his eye, a lamp, a shining
thing, something of copper or of brass, or the like; so long as he could keep
that point of light within the focus of his eye, he could remain himself, not
lose himself, nor be crazed by the pain. No one who reads the book can say how
much of truth there is in it. But even this last resort was not availableto
Jesus Christ. His was not the privilege of light, nor the privilege of sight; O
God, how can He preserve Thee and Himself?

Nevertheless a very clear light has been kindled in this darkness for us. For
Christ performs His service as Surety; and God admits Him to the weightiest of
all service. Those are two separate considerations; we must study each in turn.
The Christ is performing His service as the Surety. We know that the
extra-mundane suffering, which released itself infernally upon Him, is the
suffering which we have deserved. Today Adam is taking his own place.

Why do we preach, and why do we think, ten times, no, a hundred times, about the
transfiguration on the mount to once about the darkening on Golgotha? Is it not
self-evident that we should put these two contrasting moments into relationship
with each other? You remember that the great theological problem which was
raised on the mount of transfiguration[4] was this: Where is the possibility,
where the reality, where the legal basis for an unhampered progress of the
“kebood Jahwe,” that is, of the glory of the Lord? The greatest representatives
of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, had experienced the glory of the Lord in
themselves, but could not give it to others, could not pave a way for it in
Israel. They could not provide the route by means of which the “kebood Jahwe”
might pass on to the people of revelation, to the people of the covenant.
Therefore they came to Christ on the top of a high mountain, and asked whether
He could do that. They asked Him whether He could let God’s people partake of
the illuminating “glory of the Lord.”[5] The light of heaven which could find no
passageway under Moses and Elijah, could find no route along which to pass to
Israel, that right Christ had to provide for all the world, and that effectively
and justly.

Thereupon Christ swore with a precious oath upon the mountain that He would do
this, and that He would lay the legal basis for this. Now this oath is being
exacted from Him. He must confront it now. Therefore He sinks to a plane lower
than that of Moses and of Elijah, and is deprived of the light. This is an
antitype of what happened to Him on the mountain of transfiguration. Then the
night was made day,[6] but here the day is made night. He hears a voice saying
to Him: “See to it that Thou doest it all in terms of the promise Thou gavest on
the mountain; see that Thou doest this even though God is changing the pattern
shown Thee on the mount. See to it that Thou purchasest the privilege of light
by entering into outer darkness Thyself. Make sure that Thou canst cause the
“kebood Jahwe” to go out from Thee, by first of all radically choosing it
Thyself.” Then the mist fell; it could not be penetrated. He is not asked what
the people asked Moses. No one asks Him to cover the glory of His face, for the
eyes of none ever suffered pain because of Him. True, a veil is thrown over His
countenance, not because He is too beautiful but because He is too terrible. He
is too much for the eye not because of super-abundant light, but because of
ghastly death. His dulness became unhuman, became sub-human. But when the bearer
of the light had been denied by the light, He gave us both light and life. The
glory of the Lord receded, the light returned to its source, the foundations
were removed, He was bound to the pale horse, and the first preparatory act of
creative providence was withheld from Him. Thus our Surety earned the right to a
beam of light. To a beam of light, and to the line of a psalm: God’s friendly
countenance beams, in joy and light.

[4]Christ in His Suffering,chapter2,and especially chapter 6.

[5]Ibid,chapter 6, p. 91 f.

[6]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 1, p. 26.

Joy! And light! For, in the second place, we must make the point that the Surety
was admitted to the severest of possible examinations. Up to this time He had
been acknowledged as Surety. The sound of rejoicing echoed through the air.
Certainly, admission of any person to the heaviest possible service, is official
proof that up to this time He has passed his course with good success. Thus we
can say that the darkness takes the form of a kind of honorary diploma for the
thirty-three years of Christ’s ministration and activity on earth. For it was
not Christ who caused the darkness; it was God. From Jesus’ point of view, and
in the way Jesus sensed it, this darkness came upon Him mechanically.[7] By
means of this wonder the Judge acknowledged that the curtain can be raised for
the last act. He Himself summons Christ to carry out the severest and the last
examination. This is God’s approval of the thirty-three years. Christ gets His
credentials. The Son of man has carried out His work satisfactorily. This means
that three of the seven utterances from the cross have also been accepted as
good utterances. And inasmuch as these three statements spoke to us of His
relationship to men, God is by this act testifying that Christ has dealt justly
with all men. Now the final question must be asked, the final examination given.
He must prove His merits to God, and the Judge will say, thereupon: It is
enough. Now that God is personally ushering Him into the torture chamber of the
universe, God is saying to Him: Up to this point the service was perfect.
Rejoice all ye heavens, and be glad, for, although a curtain was placed before
the sun, the light of the Passover is already breaking through. The time
remaining is but a short time, for we are now to witness His last act. With one
hand God strikes the heart of this man, but with the other He puts the hands of
the world’s clock to one minute before twelve, the turning point of “the day of
the Lord.”

[7] See chapter 13, pp. 305-9. In this matter the simplest Christian is wiser
than the Greek philosopher Diogenes. Of him they tell the tale that when a
usurper of the world asked him what he wished, he answered: “Only that Your
Majesty be pleased not to stand in my light.” Diogenes thought light was his
best gift. Well, this choice of one of God’s gifts was inadequately motivated
and not entirely sincere. But that does not concern us now. Let us transcend his
wisdom and learn after Golgotha to look upon a ray of light as a gift of grace.
The sun shines each day for Christ’s sake. Christ’s first utterance from the
cross was a petition not to stop the sun’s course. Christ proved to be the great
Joshua, who caused the sun and the moon to stand still for the sake of the
battles of the Lord.[8] In fact, Christ took the position above that of Joshua.
But now He is a lesser than Joshua. As far as the sun is concerned, Christ has
been robbed of the privileges which every armour bearer and officer’s valet may
call his own. Now that He has borne this, the sun of His grace sings a song.
Psalms 19 is an intensification of His hymn of joy, sung after the “twelfth
hour” of the great Good Friday; and Romans 1 is its threat.

[8] Chapter 7, page 147.

We know, of course, that this sun cannot say a word without Him who explains it.
The sun can make its language intelligible to us only if we have read the Word.
God does not want to have His Christians instructed by speechless suns, but by
the living proclamation of His Word. No, the sun is not disclosing its own
pauper. The children of the Samaritans and of the Batavians kept on playing on
Good Friday. We know that the darkness did not cover the whole earth,[1] but
only the (Jewish) “country” only this particular “region”; it is hard to
translate the original otherwise. In other words, no intentional mission was
entrusted to the sun. That mission was reserved for the Spirit of Pentecost, by
that Spirit Himself.

[1]See Grosheide,Kommentaar opMattheus,p.353, 354. There are some who are eager
to cling to the interpretation that “earth” is the proper translation, in order
to think of it as a striking symbol of the fact “that the whole world” is
suffering convulsion because of the “murder” of Christ. They regard the
universal scope of this darkness as one of the travails of the last judgment.
However, we cannot accept this thought. Up to this time, only the people of
revelation had been addressed; for confirmation, consult the text. Moreover, the
concealment is as apparent in the suffering on the cross as is the revelation,
and the domain of the one constantly defines that of the other. Moreover, the
interpretation is in conflict with the history of revelation, for it would see
catastrophic events affect the whole world before the spirit of Pentecost has
completely become effective, and it would accept a sign, when a sign is
unaccompanied by the word. We could with equal justice contend that the light on
the eve of Bethlehem has to illuminate the whole world. Or that the
metamorphosis on the mount of transfiguration had to be a public spectacle. No,
the issue here, is not a garment of mourning which God wishes to throw over the
whole world, but the imposition of judgment on the Christ. The share that men
have in this must be considered but must also remain secondary.

Nevertheless, God does have something to say to those people who are gathered
here. He leaves the pagans at rest for the time being, but speaks only so much
more eloquently to the people of revelation which has gathered in the holy city
for the feast. It was enough that God spoke to Israel; for the veil over yonder
had not yet been rent and Israel still enjoyed its privileges as the people of
God’s covenant and revelation. God addresses the children of Abraham and gives
them what was promised: “the sign of Jonah the prophet.” This He gives them in
the last act. This He gives them as He sinks out of sight in the depths, in the
darkness. But even this sign will not be intelligible without the Word. The rule
still applies: “In order that seeing they may not see.” And in this case, the
statement may be reversed: “In order that seeing no more, they may nevertheless
not doubt that they are seeing rightly.” The great question remained: If the
darkness was a sign of wrath, who is being admonished by it? If God by placing
His hand on the sun and the Son, wants to threaten, who is it He wishes to
threaten? The Christ or His judges. Is this eclipse of the sun a confirmation of
the sentence passed upon Joshua of Nazareth or does it call down judgment upon
that sentence? That is a question no one will answer except by means of the
Word. The Scriptures alone can answer it, “all the Scriptures.” Presently the
Nazarene Himself will complain that He has been forsaken of God. Then all the
judges can breathe freely again: Look, they can say, He certainly is taking it
hard; He knows very well that the Father of lights is opposed to Him. It is not
impossible that in the evening someone defended capital punishment on the score
that execution sometimes succeeds in moving a person to repentance at the last
moment.

But, if we read the Scriptures, we see in the darkness that God is addressing
Chrises murderers. Say now, you beautiful priests, is Easter the great feast of
Egypt’s fall? Once it was dark in Egypt, and Goshen was lavished with light. But
today it is very dark around you; as for Goshen, well, where was Goshen?

Ask no more questions. They did not repent. They said to each other: Be quiet;
let us see whether Elijah will come. They suppressed all their questions, and
acted brave and confident. But what of those who believe? Has the Lord something
to say to them? Yes, indeed. Everything which the Suretyship preaches to them
about the content of faith. But not that only. He wishes to tell them also of
the method of faith, something about the way by which one can attain to faith.
When Christ suffered the pain of hell no one saw Him. Not in Gethsemane, for He
stood at a stone’s throw away. Not on Golgotha either. No man saw what terrors
distorted His face, or how the affliction of hell entered into His body. God
attracted His children of Pentecost to Him by the thousands, but He attracted
not one of them by means of a “glance” at the wound. He allowed no one to look
into hell.

Accordingly, we return to the mountain of light, to the mount of
transfiguration. There also we saw light playing around the head of Jesus. On
that occasion, the last word which God spoke to men, and to the candidate
Pentecost-preacher, to Peter, was this word: Hear Him, hear Him. Hearing was the
sine qua non. The thing that mattered was not seeing, the light, or not seeing
the light because of the darkness, but the hearing of the preached word.
Therefore feel free to step out of the darkness, feel free to open all the
shutters, and to light your lamps at night. Light is a good thing if enjoyed
with thanksgiving. Open your Bible, and explain this intermezzo on the day of
the Lord in the light of all the Scriptures, and of the dogmatics of the heavily
laden Paul. Then come and recite your psalm. Now, however, you can sing on
earth: God’s friendly countenance gives light and joy to all. You can be sure
that the voice of Christ in heaven is saying to the Father at this hour: One day
in Thy house is more than a thousand without Thee. For He had been in hell. One
cannot keep the count there. For the accursed exlex there the thousand days are
as a fragment of one day, and three hours are as a thousand days. Hence He lived
separated from God a thousand days. Nevertheless the house of the covenant is
opened and the watchers at the gate are approaching. Meanwhile a certain Paul is
learning at the feet of Gamaliel. He is learning to decline the noun light in
all of its inflections, in order that he may presently write an epistle which
will extend far beyond the country of Judea. The content of that letter will be
distributed farther than the rays of the sun; it will contain a mystery about
the inheritance of the saints in the light. When they read John, the narrator,
those who listen to him will say: My heart sinks within me At this eight. Who
would think this of thee O eternal light! (Justus de Harduyn) But when Paul, the
exegete, will have done speaking, these same auditors will add: The people who
sat in darkness, and who therefore did not notice the darkness, have seen a
great light: the light in the dark. Such was the order; thus everything was in
order.[2]

[2] We shall not discuss the part taken by the darkness in the suffering on the
cross as an organic whole at this point. Concerning that, see pp. 305-9.


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  CHAPTER 22: 17. CHAPTER 17: CHRIST THRUST AWAY BUT NOT SEPARATED FROM GOD
========================================================================

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N Christ Thrust Away But Not Separated From God
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama
sabachtani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? [1]
—Matthew 27:46.

THOSE of us who have attended a rendition of Bach’s Passion of St. Matthew very
likely can recall the moment in which “the evangelist” announces the fourth
utterance from the cross. In many programs this announcement does not harmonize
with the immediately preceding moment, in which the other soloist interprets
Christ’s words by singing that fourth utterance. The first announces that Jesus
cried with a loud voice.[2] But when the second soloist interprets that which
Christ said he generally presents it in a restrained voice, and the organ
usually accompanies the solo in hushed tone.

[1] In this chapter we shall discuss the significance of the “why” only
indirectly. We have discussed that already in chapters 12-13, especially the
last. The reason for this method of treatment is indicated on chapter 13, p.
309; see also chapter 1, pp. 25; chapter 12, 242-3; chapter 13, 282 f., 305-8.

[2] Und um die neunte Stunde schrie Jesus laut. This seems to us to be an
unfaithful interpretation, if not of the composer certainly of the Biblical
evangelist, the first composer. The fourth utterance from the cross was not
spoken softly and in a restrained voice, but was cried aloud. Those who cause
the organ and the human voice to subside at this point misunderstand the matter
entirely. There was violence in Jesus’ crying; He exerted Himself to raise His
voice. Never did the world quake as it did when the Saviour cried: Eli, Eli,
lama sabachtani? His utterance rent the clouds and again pushed back the sun,
which at first did not break through because it might not and therefore could
not. It was a super-individual expression of a superindividual emotion. The
whole church was groaning in this cry with groanings that cannot be uttered. And
the Spirit groaned with groanings that cannot be uttered. Heaven and hell were
included in the same act and were placed in the proper relationship overagainst
each other in a single cry. However, on their part this was not made possible
for the anima sensitiva of our Lord Jesus. Hence His crying with a loud voice
was an extreme demand on that voice. In this portentous hour the highest demands
on exertion possible to human nature were given outward expression.

Accordingly, we must say that the power which Christ puts into His cry is a
bitter admonition to us. He wishes to suggest beforehand: No one will be able to
understand this today. It is as if He wishes to suggest that at best we are but
groping for the significance, inasmuch as a revelation, even though it is itself
now preserving its manifest character, impresses upon everyone the undefilable
character of its mystery.

Accordingly, we shall be able to “comprehend” nothing of what we say now. We
shall not be able to “explain” the content of the fourth utterance from the
cross, at least, not the essence of it. Of course, that is also true about
everything else which we have written here concerning the suffering of Jesus
Christ. But the impossibility of an expression which explains the essence is
more firmly impressed on our hearts at this point than at any other. A well
known saying has it that those who would understand the poet must go to the
poet’s country. And now the Poet par excellence is appearing on Golgotha. Be
quiet, for Jesus is speaking. The creative spirit. The sensitive soul. And the
Author of the psalms. Now He will sing, will recite His severest hymn — and no
longer endure His own verses. You all remember that the fourth utterance, to put
it that way, is a “quotation.” It is literally the overture of Psalms 22. The
Son of David is repeating the song of His father David.

Recently a book appeared written by an Israelite about Jesus of Nazareth. The
man wrote that very likely the account of the fourth utterance from the cross
was not historically reliable. Why not, do you suppose? Well, he said, because a
person who is suffering the extreme passion of dying does not “quote.”

We are already contradicting the general bearing of this objection, of course.
Anyone who understands anything of the piety and mysticism nurtured by the
Scriptures will know better. Pious people in anxious moments of life almost
naturally quote the Scriptures. There are many of those who pray, and who, when
they reach the point of strongest feeling in the prayer, immediately start using
the phraseology of the Bible. A citation from the Scriptures is more effective
at the ministration of the Holy Supper than a “beautiful” discourse. Death beds
succeed in eliciting more and more texts from the soul in proportion to the
extent that the wall texts in the dying room become paler and paler to the
breaking eye. Whoever lives in the Scriptures will, precisely in moments of
great stress as in moments of great joy, speak in quotations. So much in
general. But we must say something also of the Saviour in particular. He speaks
in quotations because in a strict sense He never uses quotations. The Scriptures
are the product of inspiration; the author of the Scriptures is the Logos
through His Spirit. Thus the Logos is the poet, the creator of the thoughts and
of the poems in the Bible.[1] Accordingly, when as man, that Logos feels back,
goes back, in experience to that which as the Logos he announced beforehand
through the Spirit, we can say that the specifically human in this experience
can undoubtedly be characterized by saying: Notice, He is quoting. But on the
other hand, Christ, who as a Person remains the Son of God also in His human
nature, is not quoting. As a human being He does indeed refer to a statement of
the Bible, but as God, as the Supreme Wisdom He once Himself announced the very
statement He quotes. Accordingly, He is not “quoting” another person whom He
recalls, but He is repeating His own words which He had spoken beforehand
concerning Himself, and which, as man, He now fulfills and realizes in Himself.
Now they prove indeed to have been written and spoken with Him in mind. Now the
tension between the divine Person of the poet, on the one hand, and the human
nature of the man Christ Jesus who is struggling with His own poem, on the
other, is given expression in the loud, harsh cry: My God, why dost thou forsake
me? Thus He perturbs Himself again.[2] He stirs His own waters with His own
staff. He moves His own spirit. The Word became flesh, the flesh has recourse to
the Word, experiences its own inspiration, and is in the same moment the one to
receive and the one to conceive thoughts and poems. Thus He accepts Himself at
this moment, but accepts Himself as He is being thrust aside. Thus His God has
not forsaken Him, but He is busy primarily in maintaining Himself and confirming
Himself in His own words. This is a great thing: to maintain Himself as He is in
His own words. To God that is everything; if He does not do that He is not God.
Hence God the Lord, God the Logos, exercises, maintains His own words. However,
inasmuch as His own words of abandonment are speaking their message, His
self-maintenance and self-insistence upon His own words is also self-rejection.
God thrusts the man aside, because the Logos cannot thrust Himself aside, but is
searching for Himself in His own Scriptures.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 13: pp. 273 and 275 (“The Author Sings His
Own Psalms”).

[2]John 11:33; also chapter 18: pp 432-433. This is mystery. We cannot
appreciate it because—to refer to what was said a moment ago — we have not been
in the country of the poet. His country was heaven, and it is hell. We have not
understood the poet, will never understand Him, because He is God, because He is
in heaven, and because He therefore in His speaking transcends our
comprehension. Nor will we be able to think as we should about the poem itself,
for the poet is now in hell. Whoever would understand Him as He is in His
hellish torture must have been in hell; and may God forbid that. Yes, God
Almighty forbid that we should ever enter into the country of this poet. May He
protect us from a comprehension of the fourth utterance from the cross. God
forbid that we should concoct a theology of experience for we shall have to pay
the expensive price of damnation for it. In fact, even if someone after this
life, and in the real suffering of the lost condition, should want to reflect
upon the torture of Christ, which He experienced as God forsook Him, he would
find that an eternal impossibility still. For whoever is in hell outside of
Christ is there as a sinner; his pollution has not been annihilated. But Christ
suffered the pain of hell as the holy man, and besides as the Person of the
Eternal Son. No one ever was in hell in that way, and no one will ever be there
in that way. The fourth utterance from the cross is unapproachable to every
creature on earth, in hell or in heaven.

All that we can do, therefore, is limited to this: to try obediently to
appreciate the revelation, even though it does not permit our comprehension,
and, in doing this, to follow the lines which the Scriptures have laid down for
us.

They tell a story about a man who had thought for a long time about the fourth
utterance from the cross, and who finally arose with the cry: God forsaken by
God; who can say anything about that?

Now we can say at once that although we cannot comprehend the mystery, we can
say what it was not. It is plain that it was not what the man said. God did not
forsake God; that is an eternal impossibility. Even in the moment in which the
Son as Christ was rejected from God in His humanity,[1] God yearned for God, and
accepted God. Even in the moment of forsaking the Surety as Man, God’s desire
for Himself expressed itself eloquently and maintained its yearning. We said
that a moment ago, but now we add this: precisely because God desires Himself,
He willed the redemption: His own world might not be allowed to escape Him.[2]
And inasmuch as the way to this usurpation of the world had to lead over
Golgotha,[3] and over the point of being utterly forsaken, therefore God in this
very moment is busy maintaining and asserting Himself.

[1] Presently we shall discuss whether that objective can be understood, p. 401.

[2] Infra-lapsarian terminology which does not wish to contradict the lapsarian
idea.

[3] It “was meet for God” (Hebrews); “it was necessary” (Matthew, Luke)

No, it is not God, but man, who is here being forsaken by God. The man Christ,
as the sacrifice for sin, He is being abandoned. And it is of this that Christ
is speaking in His human language.

Now the language of men is inadequate for exhausting the eternally real and the
really eternal things. We have said this so often that we need not elaborate it
here. However, we do well to be impressed by this fact in connection with the
fourth statement from the cross. A clear sense of that will at the same time aid
our progress by inspiring humility; he who humbles himself as a thinking person,
shall be exalted. In human language Christ complains that God has forsaken Him.
The language of the fourth utterance from the cross can therefore at best give
but an inadequate and incomplete expression to what He experienced. We know that
the abandonment of no single person, not even of the poet of Psalms 22, was
complete. No person in the world was ever completely forsaken by God as a giver
of gifts and as a preserver. For we can say this of “the world” in general: it
is still included in the plan of common grace. God’s worst enemy can still pluck
fruit from its trees, and wear the clothes which God Himself has woven. The
generals and the recruits of Satan’s camp are all going about in armor which
heaven provides. Abandonment, called such not because of its ethical or legal
bearing but because of the consequences, abandonment, therefore, defined as
complete disarming, is not possible in this world. Now you ask whether such
abandonment is completely realized in those lost persons who have already left
the world and the answer must be: no, it is not perfectly realized in them. For
no one has as yet been steeped in the complete affliction of the torture of
hell. Hell will be exposed to the raw winds of God’s wrath completely only when
the day of days shall have passed by. Hence, the complete content of the concept
“abandonment,” of the concept “forsakenness,” is not yet known in hell.

We think, finally, of the children of God. They, too, sometimes speak of being
forsaken. But in their case also this abandonment is never entirely real. They
have been accepted of God. They have been regenerated by His Spirit; they live
in Him eternally. Abandonment in principle is impossible to them in the absolute
sense. It is true that they sometimes speak — and in speaking follow the Bible
in part — of “spiritual forsakings,” when a fever afflicts their heart, or when
the comfort and the fellowship of God wanes or is swallowed up — but surely this
is something different from an objective, divine act of forsaking, inasmuch as
it is purely negative. They lack a certain amount, a certain degree, a certain
fullness of the Spirit. But God does not thrust them aside, He does not deny
them, He does not close His doors to them. Even though their spiritual lack does
not exist independent of His providence, inasmuch as He takes that means to be
their pedagogue both negatively and positively, a pedagogu who lets them feel
presently that they have need of Him (see p. 234), nevertheless He does not
positively allow perdition to accrue to them. And when He has led them back it
becomes apparent that “their being forsaken by God” was but the other side of
God’s being forsaken by them. They themselves had retreated on the way which His
grace had paved between Him and them. He, on His own part, can say: My child, my
child, why have you forsaken me? As for Himself, He still extends His hand to
them. And that which had actively accrued to them from Him during the “period of
abandonment” was a subordinate part of a process of acceptance. Not so the
situation for Christ. For Him everything is different. Compare Him first of all
with the lost people on earth, and you will see the difference. They eat from
the table of common grace; He lacks that privilege now; even the rays of this
sun do not caress Him. He wears no armor which God Himself has prepared for Him;
for His spirit and body and soul are radically broken. Next compare Him with
those who are even now steeped in the torture of hell and you will see the
difference again. Their torture is that they are incomplete there; their body is
not there; wrath cannot express itself in their body. But Christ is hanging on
the tree in His body and the plague accrues to Him as He is in His whole human
life. And, finally, compare Him with the believers, with a believer such as the
poet of Psalms 22, and again you will detect the difference. They on their own
part have forsaken God, and do not know how grievous it is to do without Him.
But He has not forsaken His God on His own part, is not yet forsaking Him.
Heaven has no charge to lodge against Him: My son, my son, why dost thou forsake
me? Moreover, overagainst the Christ, God is not the mild pedagogue, who by
letting Him feel what it means to forsake Him is really leading Him back to the
state of favors and privileges. For Christ has been forsaken here because of His
relationship to law. God is ministering the full wrath of justice to Him. Hence
the distinction is very sharp: when the believers think they have been forsaken
of God, they can return to Him, and must return to Him, and have no need of
laying down a new legal basis for the return. Woe to them if they should refuse
to undertake the return to the gate of heaven. But Christ in His abandonment is
not warranted in accepting God’s hand on the old legal basis. He must now set up
the legal basis for the return. He must wait. He must suffer. His abandonment is
not a phase of a latent process of acceptance, but is the essence of the process
of rejection itself. And this last process cannot be divided into “phases,” for
suffering is infinite, and that which is infinite is not cut up into phases nor
measured in periods of time. Besides, He Himself as He is in His Person is
infinite; the awful significance of that is terribly impressive. And, inasmuch
as Christ nevertheless was forsaken in time, this was not a phase of God’s
approach to Him, but of His messianic achievement of God’s fellowship by means
of His power as the Mediator. He was allowed to seek God’s hand, and had to seek
it, but He had to wait until it was extended to Him again. It is the same hand
which is never withdrawn from the grasp of the believers.

Therefore we can say that the situation is fundamentally different for Christ
than it is for the others, than it is even for the poet of Psalms 22, even
though this poet gives expression to a unique poem. For this poet, apparently
David himself, the abandonment is a relative one. For Christ it is absolute. For
David it is a feeling that he lacks the blessings of grace; for Christ it is
reality. David is the type, Christ the anti-type; in other words, David must
refer to the Christ, but the Christ is the real. In the case of David, God is
far removed from his “roaring”; in the case of Christ, God is completely removed
from it. True, David misses the external support, but in the same moment the
Spirit inspires him, and in the same moment he exercises faith and prophesies.
But Christ, besides missing the external support, misses the internal sustenance
also; and although He prophesies, His prophecy is one which was attained at the
cost of struggle by arduous conflict (remember His “why”) and without any help.
Compared with Christ, David is the child. A child’s hand can be filled easily
and can be emptied very quickly. But Christ is the giant; in Him “deep calleth
unto deep.” David senses that he is in danger of death; Christ is in the midst
of eternal death. David does not live under the curse, but under the blessing;
the fact that He can compose a psalm proves that he is in a state of grace. But
Christ is under the curse; He has neither grace nor glory; He would have been a
repulsive spectacle, if God had not hidden Him in darkness.

All this, accordingly, was very strange. The like of it will return neither in
time nor in eternity. For this Christ, God in the absolute sense was the “wholly
Other.” That, and the wholly and diametrically Opposed One. The human language
was strained to the breaking point of its capacity for expression in the
utterance of the fourth statement from the cross! It gave expression to
something which it had never heard. In spite of that, however, this most mighty
of statements was expressed in the Aramaic vernacular, in the language used
daily by Jesus and the people. The official priests could quote Psalms 22:1 much
more beautifully and better modulated than He. But our High Priest puts it very
ordinarily in the language of the people; He had never learned the official
Hebrew employed in the temple.

Therefore we can say that the law of the incarnation is again being fulfilled in
this fourth utterance. Hell lies wrapped in bonds. And heaven also. The demonic
is given expression in Aramaic. God speaks in dialect. Eternal reality is put in
the language of the men at the market and the girls in the kitchen. Things are
moving in the direction of Pentecost,[1] but for the time being we cannot
comprehend it.

[1] The ordinary language of daily life is declared adequate for the holy
things; the official (limiting) Hebrew of the temple is no longer prescribed.

Nevertheless we want to come closer, and attempt, if we cannot understand, at
least to become acquainted with these matters.

One question which arises very early is this one: Does the fourth utterance from
the cross give expression to something which is really true, or to something
which Christ “felt” was true. We sometimes say that the gross sins of God’s
children remove grace, and yet not grace, but the sense of grace sometimes.
Similarly, we can ask now: Was Christ really forsaken of God, or did He simply
feel that He had been forsaken? Is His word a prophetic statement; does it
disclose an objective reality or is it a subjective expression of feeling? To
this question Reformed interpretation, in the language of Bavinck, answers:
“Some have regarded this utterance from the cross as a cry of despair giving
expression to the fact that His faith had been lost and that God had forsaken
Him . . . and others take it as an expression purely of His human feelings, of
the psychological pressure suffered in that moment of greatest pain. Others
again compare it, even though in broad outline line only, with the cry of a
mother whose heart must break because of the shame of her child, but who,
nevertheless, motivated by her great love, assumes the shame herself and bows
before the judgment of God. But all these interpretations do not do justice to
the Word, and conflict with the continuous description of Jesus’ death as
delineated in the Scriptures. The lament of Christ is not a subjective, but is
an objective, abandonment. It is not only that He feels Himself to be forsaken,
but that He actually is forsaken of God; His sense of it was not the product of
imagination, did not rest on a false assumption, but corresponded to
reality.”[1] [1] Dr. H. Bavinck,Geref. Dogmatiek, volumec, pp. 431-432.

Yes, what Christ gives expression to here is, in the first place, a fact; in the
second place this fact He senses genuinely and to this fact He gives genuine,
if, as throughout the Scriptures, anthropomorphic expression. The abandonment on
the cross therefore was an objective abandonment. That in the first place. God
is doing something. Now the forsaking by God as an act can be described
negatively and positively.

Negatively considered, this forsaking may be regarded as a complete withdrawal
from Christ of all those gifts by means of which God through His common and
special grace has comforted and sustained His creature. The sun was gone. His
honor had been put to shame. He was too repulsive to look upon. He had neither
form nor comeliness; in fact He returned to that acosmical condition of a person
broken in the presence of God. Moreover, spiritual fellowship has been
withdrawn. There are no angels to support Him. The Holy Spirit does not comfort
the Office-Bearer; the Holy Spirit neither confirms His being ordained to the
office, nor His qualifications for it. The Holy Spirit comforts Him neither by
whispering to His heart, nor by opening His eyes as in that portentous hour in
which Christ saw Satan falling from heaven as a lightning. Christ had never
received the oil of anointing, but where was the spiritual comfort, the vocatio
interna[2] as a restful and delightful feeling? There were paradoxes, too, but
that was another matter. And the Spirit which gave no comfort, gave no strength
either. Influences and sustaining forces do not issue from Him—but stop here . .
. who shall ever be able to state plainly what the withdrawal of the gifts of
the Spirit means for a sinless heart? The matter is a riddle to us, and would be
that even if we were standing overagainst other men. For no one can accurately
describe the manner in which the spiritual world, the angels, the Holy Spirit
Himself, influences human souls. We know that such an influence exists, but do
not know how it “functions.” We can write about it, but we cannot define it. And
because we do not know how it takes place, we can not say in what manner and by
what specific means it can withdraw itself and check its influence. How much
more, then, are we embarrassed now that God stands in a specific, never
recurring relationship to the sinless, human nature of Christ. And we must
remember that His is a human nature which multiplies its riddles inasmuch as it
is impersonal.

[2] Internal calling.

We stand abashed and scarcely dare to open our mouths. All we know is that the
religious passion in Christ cried aloud for fellowship with God and upon a
crystally clear internal testimony to the fact that He desired God. But that
which God caused to accrue to Him from the outside was not an adequate response
to this internal passion. “Thou dost not answer”; we can hardly get much farther
than this negative phrasing (Psalms 22:3). But exactly this negative element
turns everything topsy-turvy within the pious soul of Christ. The issue,
consequently, was not one of uniting, but one of indwelling. It was not one of
uniting. In Christ the two natures are united, but God is not challenging that.
Being forsaken means in a person where uniting has obtained, disruption,
antithesis, eternal relinquishment, the breaking of the bond. However, next to
the uniting of the divine and human nature there is such a thing, we know, as
God’s indwelling in man, in the man He has chosen, and in the man Christ Jesus.
“The unity of the Divine and human nature in Christ is essentially
distinguishable from the indwelling of God in His creatures and in the
believers.”[3] Christ as man also shared in this indwelling. And although the
union, referred to above, allowed of no change, of no schism, the indwelling is
indeed susceptible to various degrees of strength, and can at times be withdrawn
entirely without surrendering “the house” in which God “dwells” eternally. The
concept “dwelling” leaves room for variation, for more and less. For the union,
designated above, this law holds: everything or nothing, eternally or never. But
for the indwelling of God in Christ there is a law of more or less, of ascension
and descension. Therefore we can say that each withdrawal of God’s grace, each
retraction of heavenly energies and divine acts of fellowship, can oppress the
man Christ Jesus. These take Him out of His element, make disputable His whole
right to life and His power to life from a human point of view and raise the
question whether, inasmuch as God is divided against Him, He is not also divided
against Himself, and whether He does not therefore fall back into the chaos of a
life not nurtured and strengthened by God. External affliction this.

[1] Bavinck,op cit.,p. 331. But the forsaking of God is also positive. God is
directly sending the torments of hell against the Christ. A cry of pain surges
up in His soul: lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. And when
God fails to hear this prayer, and persists in the failure to answer it (thus
negatively withholding Himself, Psalms 22:3), Christ knows with immediate
certainty that the representation of an inactive, and negatively withholding God
by no means exhausts the truth. God is also actively busy in this inactive
supervision. Just as an active influence of God leads us to the battle ground of
temptation, and just as in the admittance of sin God the Almighty Himself
appears as active inasmuch as all sin can exist only by means of the active
permission of God, so the action of the Father against Him is simply
unmistakably known to the Christ. It exists. It is God who looses the devils
against Him, the devils and the four winds of the earth. The spirit of Christ,
as it battles against the forces of hell for three hours, sees the devils rising
up against Him, and as He sees it, God is taking the role of the supervisor in
the arena, and it is God who releases the lions, the bulls and goats and cattle
of Bashan, and it is God who releases the dogs (Psalms 22) against the great
martyr with an agonizing calmness. It is God who lifts the doors of the cages.
There is a voice, a lamentation, a mourning; there is the sound of groaning;
deliver me from the lion, deliver me from the roaring lion and from the dogs.
Plainly, He who really prays that, has acknowledged that God is doing something,
that God is not afar off. Just as the martyrs in the arena saw the man who
opened the doors of the cages, and maintained the supervision from that point
on, so the Saviour saw God in His arena. God did not do much; but He did
everything that needed doing; He released the dragon. The same Saviour who once
saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven, now saw Satan coming up out of
hell. All the winds of God’s storehouse blew in one direction. All were blowing
against Him. Afflavit deus, dissipatus est: God has released His winds; the son,
the shepherd is being destroyed. Listen to the summons of the Lord of heaven:
sword, awake thou against my shepherd. No, the doctrine of an inactive God can
afford no solution. In very fact the forsaking, the great abandonment, was
objective. In the second place, this objective abandonment is genuinely felt,
subjectively, by the Christ. And, what is more, this subjective feeling is
genuinely and purely, if anthropomorphically, expressed. We notice that Christ’s
statement “corresponds” perfectly to the content and the form of that which has
just proved to us to be an objective reality. The diction of His reply is a
response to the negative element in the “abandonment” of God. Even though He
knows that the devils are descending upon Him, and that the gate of hell is
being flung wide by this supervisor of the world, He does not complain about the
attack of the devil or about the abandonment of God. We read of the attack by
dogs and bulls in Psalms 22 also, but Christ does not recite the whole psalm; He
simply states the theme of the poem, simply quotes the first verse of the psalm.
That which is dominant in this first verse is not the declaration of what the
devil does, but the proclamation of what God does not do. There lies the
possibility, and not in what the “dogs” do. In the last analysis the devils and
the “dogs” are but the “second cause”; God is the first cause. And he who would
say something about the essence of a fly or of the cross, of a match or of a
stroke of lightning, about a child’s wagon or about God’s chariots winging their
way through the cosmos, must begin a parte dei. He must proceed from God, must
begin naming things by naming God first, and must put God in the center of his
thought complexes and of the turmoil of his words. And doing that, he notices
that God is withholding the commandment which could serve to stop the dogs. Had
it not been so, the “dogs” would not have had a chance on the steps of the
forum. The question is not who the devils are, who the dogs, who the bulls, who
the people. The question is who is not here. It is not the coming of God in
wrath, but the recession of God’s love which determines the diction of the
fourth utterance from the cross. But the positive element in God’s objective act
is also reflected in the concrete statement. Christ says that God has forsaken
Him. A person who has been related to us at any time cannot leave us without
performing an action, without turning aside, without taking a different position
overagainst us from the one in which he stood before. In other words, Christ is
applying to Himself that which the Bible, anthropomorphically speaking,
expresses when it says that God “repented.” Now the idea contained in this
repentance of God suggests just this change of position. It is true that back of
this change in external relationship there lies the unimperilled unity of God’s
counsel and decision. But these belong to the hidden things. And inasmuch as
Jesus by His “why” definitely indicates that He is not asking about the hidden
thing, but that He is arduously struggling with the revealed things, with the
expressed works of God, we must also find the explanation in a similar manner.
Now there is another thing that we know. He hears God saying to the angels — not
even to Jesus: I regret that I made Jesus king. Or again: I regret that I made
man. We must even go a step lower before arriving where we should be: I regret
that I have made man a slave, saith the Lord, the Almighty (see Psalms 110:4 :
Hebrews 7:20-21). Is it true that this matter of repentance has a bearing upon
the real point with which we are concerned here? How could it be otherwise?
Forsakenness implies fellowship. It implies fellowship between God and man. We
know that the fellowship between God and man is a religious communion; it
creates a unity, not of essence or influence, but of fidelity to covenant. The
covenant has been placed between God and man. From that covenant, religion
arises. By means of the covenant the relationship existing between Creator and
man becomes a personal relationship of love. By that covenant also the
fellowship becomes a consciously known communion; the fellowship recognizes
itself, confesses itself, and enjoys all the times and seasons which the Father
of love has in His own power appointed. In that covenant, in which God Himself
fixed and declared and announced all the terms and forms and postulates — for He
never ceases to be Sovereign — God accepts man, His creature, as a friend. Man,
who exists in a relationship of duty, now stands in a relationship of privilege.
Man, His pure product, He now makes a producer. By this means God makes His own
servant a friend. It is in that covenant that He now has religion in all of its
entering in and going out, in all of its movement, become a communion, a medium
of fellowship, and a manifestation of the union of God and man.

Christ as religious man was also placed in that covenant. He serves His God:
that already represents the covenant relationship. He serves God as the Head of
the covenant of grace, and as the supervisor of the covenant of works. By that
the covenant relationship is in an absolutely definitive sense made central.
Throughout His life Christ felt this relationship, and this union, this
fellowship with God. It blessed Him, it gave the blessing, it colored and
determined the blessing, it was the blessing. “Father, I thank Thee that Thou
hast heard.” “But I knew that Thou didst always hear” (John 11). But now, in
this hour, those words with which He opened the week of the passion[1] stick in
the Saviour’s throat. The unity between God and Him no longer attracts, is
active no longer. No wonder, we zealous students in His own school dare to say,
no wonder, for now He was being treated as a covenant breaker, and therefore the
union had to be cut off. Yes, yes, that is easy to say, but, even though the
statement does name a legal basis for the broken relationship, it does not
explain everything; in fact, it explains nothing about the legal basis for that
action, nothing about the way which this dispensation of justice takes when it
proceeds to remove all Christ’s rights. The manner of it simply defies
description. The only thing which we are able to confess to ourselves is that
the meriting of the covenant relationship by the covenant interdict, that the
achievement of the peace of the covenant by the suffering of the wrath of the
covenant, was an infinite grief to the Christ, a return to the origins of the
world, to the beginnings of religion, to the bases of all joy, and to an
acknowledgment there of His own essential excommunication.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,p. 56. This gives a further perspective to the
narrative:John 11:41-42stands overagainst this fourth utterance from the cross;
see chapter 17, p. 418.

Even the Scriptures cannot help Him here, for the Scriptures were given in and
by means of the covenant of grace, and although they speak of the covenant of
works, they speak of it only in its relationship to the covenant of grace. These
find their point of orientation in the covenant of grace which has entered the
world since the fall of Adam and which explains itself in the course of the
history of the church and the world. But in this astonishing hour Christ lacks
not only the covenant-relationship as it was preached to the Israelites in terms
of the covenant of grace, but He also misses the form in which it presented
itself to Adam in the relationship of the covenant of works. He always “worked”
in conformity with the demands of the covenant, but the reward which the
“working” carried with it is consumed by the supplicie. Hence God is now
referring to the epilogue of the sixth “day of creation.” God says: I repent
that I made Adam a sharer in my covenant. That is God’s unexplained word. The
covenant was mono-pleurical in character. It was announced by God; hence the Son
can do nothing but endure that this same God from His own side can, in His
sovereignty, proclaim that broken man retains nothing save a confused “why.” At
this point, however, we hear someone saying that the expression about God’s
“repentance” is a mere anthropomorphism, not particularly serious inasmuch as it
was not quite true. The person who raises that argument by way of claiming that
the spiritual struggle of Christ was less severe than it is here presented — by
use of the word “hellish” — means by His “anthropomorphism,” a manner of speech
in which God, and the divine, are represented to men in human figures. There are
well known instances of such usage. God is a spirit, and still He is represented
in human figures as a God who has hands, feet, as one whose eyes comprehend the
whole earth, as one who senses sacrifices, and as one who sometimes repents. No
one accepts these modes of expression as an adequate statement of what God
really is. In fact, when we hear them, we feel at once that they are somewhat
unreal.

Arguing in that manner, such a person draws his inferences in connection with
this point also. He will say that in the last analysis it is but an
anthropomorphic expression which presents God to man as one “who forsakes.”
Christ is really accommodating Himself to the Biblical diction, and consequently
is expressing Himself by means of anthropomorphisms. The significant conclusion
follows quickly: the “forsaking” was meant only in a figurative sense, and
consequently was not as serious as it is sometimes made.

We completely reverse the roles. Precisely because the Scriptures speak of God
in an anthropomorphic manner and precisely because Christ makes use of their
figurative language, the suffering was much severer for Him than we can ever
imagine.

Just what, generally speaking, is the significance of the anthropomorphic in the
Scriptures? In answer, we must indicate that it includes two elements: a
humiliating, and a comforting element. Yes, the anthropomorphic element in the
Scriptures is humiliating. It tells us in so many words that we cannot know God,
that we could not know Him if He spoke in His own language, and in His own
language gave expression to His unique completeness. He must condescend to us,
He must address us in our own language, must make Himself known to us in images
taken from our sense experience in order to enable us to understand Him at all.
In other words, we are treated in the same way that a pedagogue treats small
children. But the anthropomorphic manner of speaking also contains a comforting
element. It proves to us that God in His love does wish to make contact with us,
and that in doing this He is very merciful, inasmuch as He takes account of our
capacity for comprehension, even though His sermons must necessarily be
freighted with significance.

What, now, was Christ’s relationship to these anthropomorphisms — Christ, that
is, as man, as a creature limited by time. This much is certain, for Him the
comfort inhering in it for us was not present. And the humiliation, the terror,
included in this phenomenon, held for Him in an absolute import.

Yes, He had to forego the element of comfort contained in the anthropomorphic
figures of God. If someone is doing his very best to make it plain to us that he
no longer wishes to do his best for us, can we call that comfort? By no means.
If he were to leave his brutal message shrouded in a cloud of obscurity, very
vague, and quite beyond our reach, it could not possibly hurt us. But because
the speaker is actually exerting himself to make it very clear to us that he has
rejected and denied us, he wounds us grievously by the very intelligibility of
his cruel word. Now this was the case for the man Christ Jesus. The Scriptures
out of which He as a man of God had to learn His own ways, also speaks of God’s
wrath under the unmistakably anthropomorphic figure of being forsaken.
Accordingly, God does His very best to teach the Son of man that He has no good
word to say to Him. The very transparency of revelation is an agonizing message
to Christ for precisely this reason at this time. And that is why nothing
remained for the Christ but sheer suffering, precisely because He was addressing
the Scriptures in anthropomorphic language, and precisely because He had to
express Himself in such figurative speech. For the reality about God is always
much weightier and more powerful than the anthropomorphic figure of speech can
express. And this is true also of the forsaking. The phenomenon of forsakenness
among men is never something absolute, is never given without reservation, and
is never infinite in scope. But for Christ it was all these things. Being
forsaken among men is never a fundamental rejection, is never the act of a
perfect sovereignty of justice, is never an absolute withdrawal. But for Christ
it is all these things. Hence being forsaken never represents being put to death
among men, and if to be forsaken does mean to be put to death, the cause of the
death is never the abandonment solely, and it is never the cause of an eternal
death. For Christ it was all these things. And hence His suffering was
infinitely greater than the anthropomorphic way of speaking could indicate.

Listen closely, Second Adam: God repents of having made Adam. No humiliation
remains, only the servile attitude. God is a terrible God, His sword cuts
deeply. Christ listened to the psalm of David and conformed Himself to David’s
God. He did not cry out His lamentations in the language of His experience — had
He done so all prophets would simultaneously have been consumed — but in the
language of the anthropomorphic Scripture. Adam was here, and God was here, and
all the doors were closed. Let that which is dying, die. Thus God had spoken and
He had turned His back. This is to be forsaken! But precisely because Christ
assumes the law of anthropomorphic revelation, He is the greatest sufferer among
the prophets. Now the word characterizes Him also: Thou hast overwhelmed me. The
statement fits Him as an auditor and as a speaker. It fits Him as a bearer of
the message, and as the suffering victim of the message. There is no weightier
theology than the theocentric theology; there is no more significant theology
than one which proceeds from God. For this is the kind which now proceeds from
the Christ. We have observed already that He made no mention of the second
causes — of devils and of man — or of the powers which God’s active permission
allowed to descend upon Him, but that He spoke only of God Himself. In this His
words about the “dogs and bulls” are placed under an awful tension, for He
proceeds from His God. Now it may be, as we hope to point out later, that this
is a manifestation of obedience inasmuch as it will save our souls, but for
Christ it nevertheless is the root and cause of His passion. He who cannot get
rid of God, cannot take a sedative, cannot dull the ends of the goads, cannot
break the point off any lance, necessarily aggravates all His contrasts to the
point of infinity. In this fourth utterance from the cross Jesus Christ is the
absolute victim of the sermon on the mount. His theocratic thinking and speaking
has placed these griefs upon Him. Only by means of such thinking and speaking
can the “forsakenness” take on a positive content and a negative; only in that
way can it prove a real perdition, paradoxically grieve His spirit, cut off
every approach to God, and disrupt every scheme of organization within Him.

Now we must note that the expression of God’s objective acts of commission and
omission, the saying aloud of the fourth utterance from the cross, was a
separate and necessary element in the suffering of Christ. He not only felt and
pondered the fact that God had forsaken Him, but He also stated it. Why, you
ask, is the expression and the pronouncement of this abandonment of such
significance?

We can appreciate that fact better if we think, for instance, of prayer. The
physical shape which we give to our petitions, the outward expression, the
actual phrasing of our desire, is a separate element. We can say that in the
last analysis prayer is an attitude of the spirit of man; we can give the name
“prayer” to our desires, and God can reckon them as such, even when they still
have only the form of unspoken thought and desire. But it is a part of the
technique and of the essence of prayer to make it verbal, and to present the
completed expression of it to God. A complete prayer is a speaking prayer. Not
the objective need, or the awareness of it, not even the subjective sense of
need arising from the desire, or the ideational approach to God determines the
essence of prayer. A mature prayer is put into language, is expressed in words.
This is true for more than one reason. The oral presentation, the express form
of prayer, is necessary first of all to keep the prayer pure and genuine. The
cautious formulation of the petition, the oral phrasing of the desire, makes
concrete a need which is first vaguely felt, and puts it into human language. In
other words the spirit of man presents itself after preparation; it exerts
itself to express adequately its needs. The naive upsurging of need disciplines,
controls, and conforms itself to God’s speaking, and forms words. The naked soul
looks for a cloak. It cannot appear before God in a frolicsome gait, because it
knows the nature of its sin. The soul hides itself behind a cloak, feeling
justly ashamed of unwarranted boldness, and making the approach in humility. It
shapes its words, and adapts its phraseology to the revealed word. By speaking
its own words in conformity with the word of God faith conquers false shame, and
converts every feeling of such shame into a genuine manifestation of humility.
That is why the oral presentation is necessary to prayer. That should suffice to
make clear why the oral expression of His forsakenness constituted a separate
and indispensable element in Christ’s suffering. He preserved the essence of
prayer. Now the psalms sung in churches may raise the song: Hallelujah, amen!
The High Priest did not for one moment defile the essence of prayer. His
distress did not make Him curse and, surely, the vitiation of prayer is called
cursing in heaven. He has spoken, hallelujah, amen! His soul was like a parched
land. This He had in common with all purely natural life, the natural, created
life which has no tongue, inasmuch as it was not foreordained and created for a
covenant relationship and therefore had no capacity for speaking in a covenant
language. But He also gave oral expression to His thirst. He spoke in human
language — He has no other — and gave physical shape to His experience. Thus He
gathers His ideas together, now, when they are downright terrible. He is very
ashamed of Himself, put on display as He is before God’s angels, but His shame
does not become a false shame False shame never wants to give expression to
itself; it stands mute, or it talks about every other thing, in order to divert
attention from its own unworthiness. Consequently, it is disobedient; it can
neither pray nor confess, it asserts sin, and rejects virtue, for virtue serves
with simplicity of heart. But Christ in this nadir of His suffering must still
speak, for only in that way can He preserve His prayer intact and pure, and
still be qualified for prayer. He fully appreciates all that God is doing to
Him; He acknowledges that this is called rejection; that He no longer represents
a mission, but a dismissal. Thus His shame remains holy. It is weak, yes, but it
is not sinful. He has not on His own part broken the covenant by spurning
language. He kept on speaking, even when God was mute. He continued to speak.
Never did any man speak so shamelessly. The unrighteous Judge of the parable —
ah no, he cannot be found in this reality; however the righteous Judge will have
to arise from His tranquility. Here is a creature who persists in speaking, even
though the First Speaker long and essentially held His peace.

Even that, however, does not exhaust the matter. A second reason exists for
which Christ had to speak. And that precisely when God refused to answer. The
first reason, you recall, is that the prayer had to remain prayer. The second
reason is that the prayer must remain subservient. It must remain so absolutely
subservient that it confesses God to be the first cause of created life,
independent even of the covenant. It must remain so subservient that it
continues to seek Him, even when the man, the original enjoyer of the highest
possible scheme of creation (the domain of the covenant), is steeped by the
silence of God in the lowest possible scheme of creation in the humility of the
purely natural life which must acknowledge the duty of serving and seeking God.
And that even though not as much as a single privilege ever accompanies the
imperative of duty. Have you noticed that Christ comes to God in spite of the
fact that He is not called to do so? That is the nadir of the suffering. When I
as a human being am called to do a thing, when I have been summoned, I know that
a covenant relationship exists between me and the one who calls me. And a
covenant always is accompanied by those privileges which man in distinction from
the other creatures has received. But the covenant is monopleurical; in other
words, the predominant element in the covenant is that God is sovereign, that
man must refer the enjoyment of the covenant to the duties of the creature.
“Even though He slay me, I shall have to come to him . . .” Even though God
takes the grace of enjoyment and all the forms of fellowship from him, even
though He mocks these by virtue of a light inaccessible to our broken thoughts,
does not this duty-bound servant remain a creature? Is he not one who has been
thrust into existence by a sovereign good pleasure and a monopleurical will?
Even though every enjoyment and every delight recedes, is it not the duty of all
things made to honor the Maker?

Here now is your Saviour. God no longer answers Him, but He continues to speak.
He clings to Himself as a creature, He excavates the ground of His own covenant
until He comes upon the created foundations of His humanity, and dares to become
one with every creature, and to say: Maker, why dost Thou reject me, Thy
creation? In this He confesses His God in terms of “the whole creature.” This
was His nadir. Now that Christ can no longer enjoy religion as a covenant
relationship but continues meanwhile to acknowledge it as the duty of the
creature, and now that He because of this duty undertakes to speak to God even
though God does not speak to Him (Psalms 22:3), now the problem of His suffering
has become the problem of every created being. And now the utterance of the
fourth statement from the cross is one which proceeds from the deepest
profundities of an unreserved (if need be, joyless) obedience and of absolute
(without regard to special privileges) dependence and pain. He seats Himself at
the table of all created beings and takes the lowest place for Himself.

Now we recall the discussion of anthropomorphism previously indulged. Every
covenant relationship demands oral expression. Covenants serve to open the
mouth. In a covenant relationship there is a fellowship between personal beings
who declare their love to each other. Thus they stagger joy to higher levels. By
means of the word they surrender to each other, by means of the word the
association and fellowship are lifted to higher levels, and by means of the word
spontaneity becomes conscious, a song of love becomes a psalm of love, life
becomes a confession, and life is logically celebrated in the spirit. Hence the
covenant fellowship of religion is a fellowship of speech. God calls and
answers: man answers and calls. But we noted above that the language of the
covenant is an anthropomorphic language. Such is peculiarly the language of the
covenant between God and man. In this very anthropomorphism we discover an
element[1] which humiliates man, which forces him to condescension, which keeps
him humble, and another element which comforts, exalts, and buoys man up.[2] The
thought that the covenant between God and man in its deepest manifestation is
monopleuric in character, inasmuch as God in it proves to be the Sovereign, the
“wholly-Other,” the one who in Himself is unapproachable to us, the one who
cannot be understood unless He condescends to us in anthropomorphic language —
that thought, we find now, is in conformity with the humiliating element of
anthropomorphism. But there is also something to correspond to the second
element and this something is the reality of the covenant as covenant. By means
of the “anthropomorphically regulated” communication, God exercises fellowship;
by that means He exercises and permits us to exercise it. Therefore Christ had
to speak, His speaking preserves Him and the whole of creation. By speaking at
the place of natural creation He arises together with her to the plane of the
covenant. The speaking is a part of that. Just because the idea of a forsaking
God is anthropomorphic, and just because it cannot be exhausted in the depths of
its terrors, Christ has to speak. He must speak, even though God remains mute.
He must speak, not on His own authority — the creature has no authority— but on
the authority of the Word. We can say, therefore, that the anthropomorphism is
the thin thread which He obediently grasped in order to climb from the plane of
the natural creation to that of sonship.

[1] The first predication is appropriate after sin (the covenant of grace); the
two second predications are appropriate before sin (paradise, the covenant of
works).

[2] As in note 1. By speaking to a silent God, Christ confesses that He does
indeed lack religion as a covenant gift but that He still clings to it because
of His duty as a creature. Having arrived at this nadir, the creature asks for
the rights of a human being, and the human being for the rights of a covenant
child. The duty-bound creature does not ask for release from duty, but he asks
for a manifestation of a communication in which duty is pleasure. The unashamed
prayer of the creature is the profoundest language which humility ever spoke.
God be praised, He keeps the shame holy, relates it to religion, and manifests
faith even in the extreme temptation and rejection. He is redeemed by His
theocentric insight and His honest speaking. By His oral communication with the
God who has forsaken Him, He becomes the Corrector and Atoner of the first Adam.
The first Adam hides himself among the trees, and does not make his appearance
until a voice of God definitely summons him and asks: Where art thou? This is
the false shame. This is a loss of language. But Christ is the unsummoned One;
no one pays any attention to Him; all voices are mute. Nevertheless He opened
the gates of heaven by calling up out of hell, by calling to God. The uninvited
guest stood at the gate of heaven and knocked. Pray, He admonishes Himself, and
you will receive; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.
The creature in the garb of a widower knocks at a door behind which the
celebrated judge is celebrating a feast and is now sleeping. He says to himself:
Would God not deal justly with a person predestined to be a creature, and open
the door again? You see that this being forsaken, that this not having found,
that this empty heart and empty hand, and that this locked door have not yet
been explained. All these are still punctuated by the question mark of the “why”
“why”? But above the fact that the abandonment is inexplicable stands the fact
of the certainty of His wanting to and having to approach the gate of heaven,
even when there is no voice to summon Him or to invite. Must His approach to God
be an entrance into the “wrath of the covenant”? Then it must be that, but He
will come, and He will also say that He is coming.

We feel at once that the turning point of the thought has been reached here. Up
to this time everything issued in the idea: Christ is being rejected. Now we
must amplify that epitome and add: Yes, He may be rejected, but He has not yet
been separated from God. The tie which united Him with God continued to draw
Him, and He Himself as a mere creature preserved that bond.

Therefore Christ’s speaking in the state of His soul’s distress is the
reinforcement of our thought. At this point His own redemption and ours begins.
The uninvited Guest redeems us. He takes us in behind Him. He who by His
speaking condescended to the creature which was silent, ascribed no unreasonable
things to God. The paradox, the apparently unreasonable did not drive Him away
from God. He did not derive the notion of being from the notion of reason, and
the notion of duty from that of thought. He lived on the principle of God’s
glory and honor. Surely, God cannot condemn His creature, for the name of God is
written upon it. This the Saviour knew not on the basis of extensive argument,
but on the basis of faith. The fourth utterance from the cross is a practical
denial of deism.

Moreover, when Christ by His crying aloud to God lays Himself bare as a needy
child who cannot live in His abandonment, He proves to take no delight in that
which is not of God. “Whom have I in heaven but Thee” — in those words I
recognize the psalm of Golgotha. Did He despise the hell? By no means, but He
hated it terribly, and feared it mortally. Why? Because the penalty grieved Him?
No, not for that reason. He hated and He feared because God is great and good,
and because our heart is restless within us until it finds rest in Him.

Again: why does He lament? Because of the pain, because of God, of Satan? No, in
the last analysis He does not lament, He does not complain. He merely asks. Not
even the fact that He is the victim of hell grieves Him. But the fact that He
has been surrendered to hell by God, that wounds Him terribly. He Himself had
the high courage to deduce chaos from God, and to look for the principle of its
explanation in Him. In other words, He denies the chaotic in the chaos. He
denies that the hell is another world of equal worth, standing sovereign
overagainst the world of God. He takes His “why” to God whose justice and power
and will assert themselves also “in the element of hell.” This is obedience, and
it is a primordial obedience. He does not speak of a possibility, but of a fact.
He says nothing of what can be, but much of what is. A person often suffers most
from an imagined care; the grief he thus anticipates burdens him with heavier
weights than God gives him to bear.

We human beings very often say, do we not: God will forsake me now; alack, He is
forsaking me already. We often shout aloud our anticipations of abandonment, and
convert these into the realities of being forsaken the moment we feel the first
suggestion of the suffering coming on. It is not so for Christ. He did not say:
My God, wilt Thou forsake me now? but Thou hast forsaken me. There is a fact,
and the fact creates a circumstance. No, this person does not bear a greater
weight than “God gives him to bear.,, That would be impossible anyhow, for He
had been given every burden, and when one has everything, one cannot speak of
“greater” ones. But what we mean to say is that He suffered nothing but that
which God gave Him to suffer. His suffering never became mingled with unbelief.
He reverenced the fact even in hell. As a matter of fact, we are told as much by
the words of the text: Christ cried aloud in the ninth hour. First we have been
told that darkness came and lasted from the sixth to the ninth hour, that is,
from midday until three o’clock in the afternoon. For three hours, therefore,
the son struggled in torture and held His peace. He did not utter this statement
until the end of those three hours had come.

Hence He is not guilty of the sin of the poet who created Psalms 39. The poet of
that psalm was one who had wanted to hold his tongue in check lest men should
see that he was no longer able to cope with that which God sent down upon him.
That was the man who could not hold his peace in the calmness of faith because
he derived his strength from God, but one who by means of a false manifestation
of strength overagainst the people virtually tried to conceal his restlessness.

Christ is not such. For when He finally does speak, the message is an honest
acknowledgment of His being defeated, and of His condition of defeat. He
camouflages nothing: He cries with a loud voice. He cries so loud that the cry
of victory which He had allowed Himself at the grave of Lazarus is now absorbed.
For the sake of the people — you ask whether He takes account of the people! —
for the sake of the people He had said: I know that God heareth me always (John
11:41-42). That had been the first impetus given the government by way of
rousing them to thrusting Him out.[1] And now He again says to the people: God
does not answer; I have been forsaken. I aroused Lazarus, but I cannot save
myself. When “his heart is hot within him” it is burning with a holy fire.[2]
Moreover, in this He also transcends the singer of Psalms 39, in that He first
speaks when God has done speaking. The darkness receded in the ninth hour, and
Jesus opened His mouth the ninth hour. He allowed God to have His full say; He
did not hurry and act impatiently overagainst heaven and God.

[1]Christ in His Suffering, chapter 3, p. 56; this volume, chapter 17, p. 407.

[2] See the confession ofPsalms 39:4.

Christ is obedient especially because as the theocentric theologian He exercised
religion in His theology, even when the majesty of God was subduing Him. He did
not address “God” but “His God.” “My God, my God, why dost Thou forsake me?” It
was a “quotation,” but nevertheless absolute experience.

We can say now that He was in hell as the perfect stranger. He did not belong
here, He could not acclimate Himself to that place. There was not a single
reality of hell which He did not gainsay. His strangeness overagainst hell was
not something negative, but something positive. He was a stranger in hell,
because He remained a son and member of the family of heaven, because He
remained theocentric in His thoughts, words, and deeds.

Therefore He shuddered in hell. He shuddered and trembled. True, the devils also
tremble (James 2:19). Nevertheless, the difference is infinitely great. The
devils tremble because they are divided against God and against each other.
Christ trembles, because God is divided against Him, yes, and because He cannot
sustain Himself independent of God any longer. But He Himself is not divided
against God, and therefore not divided against Himself. He fears and trembles,
but “fear and trembling” are not the same in Him as they are in Satan; they are
not evidence of a destructive life, but means to a constructive end, a positive
comprehension. “Fear and trembling”, that is a phrase which assumes its classic
significance, the significance it always has when used in the New Testament,
when it means exacting suspense, awful tension, but a suspense, a tension, which
accomplishes something.

Brethren, we are saved by this means. Christ descend into hell solely because
that is necessary. To descend into hell means to perform a personal deed, and to
put oneself into hell by an act which results from personal choice is an
abomination, and an instance of terrible haughtiness — unless it is necessary.
Forget for a moment that Christ had to because of the theocracy, and the
predication He descended into hell means: He played with God and with fire; He
repudiated His God. But now that we know that it had to take place, and that
while in hell He asked in God’s name why He was not acceptable in heaven, now we
can say that He was a stranger in hell, hallelujah!

Brethren, we are redeemed by this. He passed through, He emerged from the
darkness. He lived in it for three long hours, and then passed on. Observed from
a human point of view, this represented a period of time. He Himself knew
nothing of such a period of time; to Him it represented eternity. Before Abraham
was, I am, He said. He said it to people who measure time by periods, who use
such words as “sooner” or “later.” But He hung suspended in darkness for three
hours, and was able to speak again only after these had elapsed; therefore He
cannot distinguish between a “sooner” or “later.” He said: Abraham lives, and I
am dead. He did not say — not now: I die. He did not say: I shall die. Nor did
He say: I died. He no longer was familiar with the imperfect, past, or present
tense. All that He knew was the perfectum absolutum. I am dead. God has
completely forsaken me. Yes, we designated it right. He passed through hell; He
emerged from it. There was no scream, and no one heard an explosion when the
darkness fell, when the darkness fell on Him. A scream was no part of His
sublime character; it had become a second nature to Him to let God have His full
say. Nor did He start with sudden fright, for He sank beneath the possibility of
fright. The possibility of being frightened was suddenly lost to Him; this was
worse, this was very different . . . . A person who becomes suddenly scared, who
is frightened of a sudden, will scream, will be “changed in an instant of time.”
But Christ gave expression to a full predication, He gave voice to a question,
after what for you and me was a period three hours long. Satan simply could not
frighten Him, not even when God the Lord confronted Him with a sea of darkness
at bright mid-day. We are redeemed, for no one stumbled into hell. He strode
through it; but His eyes were sad. His eyes were turned towards Himself; not
that He was absent-minded, not that, but, yes, I hardly know how to express it,
I simply wanted to say, that this one question was written large on His eyes;
but for the rest He strode on, He passed on, He emerged on the other side. He
was not subject to fright, and nevertheless He was true man, and not acclimated
to evil. In His case we would not even dare to talk of becoming used to hell. .
. . He could not be frightened, for the situation was much worse than that. It
was not an obsession; it was much worse. It was not a stroke, it was not a
broken eye, it was not a convulsion, it was not even a combination of the seven
travails, of the seven woes. The reality of this was below the reality of those.
It was an endless woe, and it is just possible that human thought can best
appreciate it from a consideration of these negative suggestions. It was not
this, it was not that, and for the rest: God alone knows the mystery of the One.

Brethren, we have been redeemed by this. This was the second death, this was
what the others had to suffer after the first death. This it was about which
Revelation says: “The rest of the dead live not.”[1] Ah, the comfort of that,
for that, too, is “but” a negative predication.

Brethren, we have been redeemed. For now it is high time to remind ourselves
that He at one time also taught us about the nature of hell. He told us about it
by referring to two symbols: that of the worm, and that of the fire. The worm,
he said, would not die there, nor the fire be extinguished. In saying this He
was speaking in agreement with Isaiah. He, too, at one time depicted an
irresistible death, the second death, the death of hell, by referring to these
two symbols. First, he said, there is the worm. This symbol indicates that law
of death which is the law of disruption. In this disruption death proceeds from
the inside to the outside, for the worm — we may as well be honest about it —
when you think of the worm you think of a dead body, which reaches the stage of
decay, which disintegrates, and does so without any effort on anyone’s part. It
“just happens,” because the blood is contaminated and the body simply
relinquishes itself in all of its parts. But there is a second symbol, the fire.
The fire refers to a devastation which does not proceed from the inside to the
outside, but which consumes and devours the condemned person from the outside.
Fire is something which is ignited externally, which burns the outside first and
then scorches the inside. Accordingly, we have a picture of hell given us in
these two signs, a proclamation of death in two ways. In the first place there
is the worm. No man will ever be consumed by the fire of God’s judgment unless
an influence of death, a disruptive influence has been active within him
beforehand. Death begins within: sin is perdition, it is the principle of
disruption, and the worm does not come until the end. and then it gives an
honest picture of the condition. Only after that does fire have a place as an
objective, an externally consuming and scorching influence. In the figure of the
worm we get a picture of the human being as already dead, and therefore a voice
comes to us from the fire saying: Let the dead be consumed by death: flames of
the Lord!

[1]Revelation 20:5. Dr. S. Greijdanus; “did not become alive”; “sinking away in
eternal death”; “lost in all comprehensive sense” De Openbaring des Heeren aan
Johannes(Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schrift), p. 302.

Therefore, brethren, we are saved in Him. Now a vision of the truth begins to
dawn upon us. Christ was in hell, not according to the law of the “worm,” not
according to the law of essential perdition, but solely according to the law of
the fire, of the external perdition. His fourth utterance from the cross,
theocentrically speaking and theocentrically expressed, proves to us that He did
not for a single second repudiate God. Hence He was not disrupted by a perverse
influence operating from within. The worm was not in Him; there was no sin in
Him; all that was present was the fire. And when the fire of God’s wrath
devastatingly accrued to Him, that “fire,” that objective death, found no “worm”
in him; it found no subjective death in Him. Only the fire was there. There was
no correspondence between His external attitude under the judgment (the fire)
and His internal attitude under the same judgment (the worm). Death consumed Him
from the outside, but was not present inside Him. In the case of all human
beings, and in the case of the devils, the fire comes only where the worm has
been active already, and the objective death follows upon the subjective death.
In the case of these there is death within and death without. Not so for Christ.
And hence death was swallowed up in these three hours of absolute abandonment,
He could go no farther. “Something new” had accrued to Him. At first it
devastated Him from without, but it found no contact inside. Then death died; it
had become exhausted. Where the correspondence between the external and the
internal relationships is wanting, no hope for death or life is possible.

Death found no contact within. As for life? God simply could not break the
contact. Just listen. Out of the depths of the affliction He cries aloud with
His mouth and with His heart. He cried aloud to God: Eli, Eli. Eli, Eli — the
whole of church history is concerned in this, and the two natures, and heaven
and hell. And no one can learn that grave and sombre hymn, either in heaven or
in earth or in the abyss which has been passed. Beware, do not recite it; and if
you can, think of heaven, of hell, and of the earth. Think of heaven —a hand was
extended from hell, laid itself on the steps of the Throne, and the Throne was
not polluted. Think of hell — there was a fire which could find no inner contact
and could go no farther and was extinguished.

Think of the earth. Do not say too much, but ponder this. Someone once wrote,
and many are eager to read: a hundred and forty-five sermons about the bruised
reed. But how many sermons do these same people desire about the green wood that
was put into the fire? Of course, it is not a question of number, for those who
have understood at least. Each man is weak in the things in which he is
“clever.” A hundred forty-five sermons — but He is too great for even that. My
God, my God, why hast Thou accepted me? I live on the earth, and in very fact I
have not denied it, neither it nor its numbers. I confess that I myself have
busied myself a hundred and forty-five times with my own ego as compared with
how many times that I suffered, and labored for His sake. I dare not determine
the proportions, but I am much ashamed. I hear a voice saying there is
forgiveness. But twenty centuries of the history of the church and of dogma
certainly should suffice to make us aware of our duty.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 23: 18. CHAPTER 18: CHRIST ADAPTING HIMSELF TO HIS DEATH
========================================================================

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N Christ Adapting Himself to His Death And after
this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture
might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar,
and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and they put it upon hyssop, and put it
to his mouth.John 19:28-29. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will
come to save him. —Matthew 27:49.

He gathered his feet into the bed” — that is a way of expressing the death of a
patriarch in the Old Testament. A man who was old and full of days sat upon the
bed. He has run the course, he draws up his feet into the bed, greets the world,
and meets his God.

Now it is rather difficult to compare a cross with a bed. But the great
“patriarch” and Captain of our confession who lived and worked in the strength
of Father Jacob-Israel[1] will also die in the strength of Father Jacob. He
arranges His feet upon the cross, and dispatches His business well. He cannot,
like Moses, mount a hill, in order to give Himself up there to God. He has
already climbed all of His mountains. Nevertheless He does a deed which
transcends the deed of Moses in its strength. He takes, He demands water of the
people, water designed to clarify His thoughts in these last moments, in order
that with a clear mind and with a clear voice He may commend His spirit to the
Father and stride out of this world to the Father’s bosom. Observe closely.
Jesus is drawing up His feet upon the bed. That this is but figurative language
is something that you may feel free to forget this time.

[1]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 23, p. 400 f.

You wonder how He was able to surrender Himself so peacefully. The narrative
tells us this, The Saviour on the cross was suffering from a parching thirst.
That was quite natural, we all say. Yes, indeed; the last time Christ had taken
a drink most likely was in the room of the Passover; and the gruesome
crucifixion, the preliminary abuse, the scorching sun, the tortures of the
cross, the spiritual struggle — all these tell us enough. But there is another
thing which strikes our attention. Not the fact that Jesus is thirsty, but the
fact that He says so causes us to wonder a little. Those who stood by heard Him
complain. And the question must have arisen: Does He regret that He refused a
little while ago? For He refused to take the drink concocted of wine and myrrh.
And did He have in mind now to recall His haughty and positive refusal? Look how
avidly He drinks now. The reason cannot be the exceptional quality of what has
been given Him, for it is not perceptibly better than the other. Myrrh was
bitter, but this “vinegar,” this sour, acrid, bad wine of the soldiers is not
much better; just some water and some vinegar . . . and yet how eagerly He
drinks it. Just a moment ago He could still lift the cup to His mouth with a
free hand and then — He did not want to, And can you see now with how great
difficulty He bends His head forward in order to keep the sponge from slipping
from the reed? Does He regret His former action? By no means. We shall see that
Christ by calling for a drink, so far from indicating regret, was maintaining
Himself as previously manifested. But in order to see the harmony of His
thoughts as He drinks and refuses to drink we must first of all determine the
place which this utterance from the cross occupies m the whole context of
things.

It seems that the “thirst” was uttered after the fourth statement from the
cross. We know that mockery, while Jesus was being given the drink for which He
asked, sneeringly said: Let us see whether Elias will come. The name Elias is a
wicked punning on the text of the fourth utterance from the cross: Eli, Eli,
lama sabachtani? This makes it plain that Jesus lamented His thirst after the
period of the three-hour darkness, the period which was concluded by the fourth
utterance. The Saviour asked for a drink. Thus He returned to the world. You
wonder whether this thirst had not caused Him to suffer before. Naturally, but
the hellish suffering gone through just now had sunk to a plane so far below
that of human suffering, that during the course of those three hours not a
single word came from His lips. Then too He thirsted; then not for water, but
for the living water, which, when men drink it, they live eternally. That thirst
had been sub-human; it conducted Him into the next world. There a cup of water
is nothing, is far beyond sight. And Christ’s asking sustenance for His body now
is in a certain sense evidence to show that Christ has come up out of the
deepest abysses. He is among us again in this peopled world. He feels His flesh
again. He can pay attention to the material of the sacrifice again: praise be to
God.

However His turning around in order to see the materials of the sacrifice was a
work of Christ’s spirit. He becomes aware of His body by means of the spirit.
Both of these are necessary for the sacrifice that is to come now. Be quiet,
people; the last thing is about to happen. The Gospel itself points out these
things. Christ’s thirst-motivated cry, John says, can only be felt and
appreciated if we make a spiritual problem of it. No, we do not mean that this
thirsting should be “spiritualized.” By no means. The Saviour is suffering from
physical thirst, and He is given the ordinary wine of soldiers; and He gladly
accepts this. Why, then, should anyone wish to “spiritualize” this cry for a
natural drink? It is not necessary; it is foolishness. For everyone, and also
for Christ, in fact, for Him first of all — the spiritual is present in the
natural, and God demands to be served also in the natural functions of life. The
natural is immediately related to the spiritual. That becomes very apparent from
what John says in connection with this story. The fact that Christ’s request for
water is not a purely natural expression such as the bleating of a dying animal
might be, but is a spiritual problem, is apparent from John’s indication that
Christ in His short utterance knew, first: that everything which He had been
asked to do was finished; and, second: that He had in mind to fulfill the
Scriptures. Now both of these things are two strong achievements of His spirit.
He knows something, and He wills something. His knowing extends itself over the
whole of His past life, and His willing extends itself over the whole of His
coming death; and He has the desire withal in His dying to remain faithful to
the course of His life. We said that His knowing comprises His whole life,
including the difficult work of this day. He has finished that which was given
Him to do according to the Scriptures. As for His willing: He intends to relate
the death which is almost upon Him now to His life, by means of remaining
faithful to the Scriptures also in His dying. As He dies, He assimilates a
Scriptural problem, He follows the direction pointed out in the Scriptures. It
is a small indication, hidden, often forgotten, lodged between so many other
words. But in that tiny indication Christ’s whole life is opened up for us. For,
precisely in the manner in which He died He had ever lived.

Christ knew, therefore, that everything was finished. That is a most significant
piece of information. In other words, the content of the sixth utterance from
the cross (It is finished) proves to be present in Jesus’ spirit and soul when
He utters the fifth. In speaking the fifth one, He is already eager to utter the
sixth. Thus He lays all His stones one by one in the walls which He is building
by His death. He arranges and rearranges His words: He builds a temple of the
Word. The fifth utterance from the cross builds the sixth, the sixth lies
concealed in the fifth, and the fifth is explained by the sixth. And not only
that, but the fifth statement referred to the fourth and to what preceded that.
We have stated already that the fourth utterance from the cross was the turning
point of Christ’s dying. In making that statement He arrives at the bottomless
abysses, and arrives there as Conqueror. That which must follow now is lighter
than that which has gone by. First He suffered the pain of hell, and died the
eternal, and the spiritual death. But that has gone by now. All that is left for
Him to do now is to surrender the body, to give up the instrument, the tortured
instrument in which and by means of which He had faithfully served God. In this
instrument and by means of it He also as a spiritual man accomplished His
hardest work: namely, the descent into the affliction of hell. The body too
suffered in that descent; it did even if we cannot say anything about the manner
in which it suffered. And now that the work assigned to Him has been completely
finished in the body, it is the most natural thing in the world that He Himself
should give up this body to the God who gave it. But how can He do this? Not
according to the law of the former Paradise, in which the body would have
developed to a higher form of existence without an intervening death, but by the
law of the fallen world in which the curse takes its course. Surely the curse
takes its course also in breaking down the body, in segregating and cutting off
the soul from the body. The dissolution of the instrument—the body—is also a
part of the punishment.

Christ knows that this last part of the penalty has now almost come. He feels
that He is to die now.[1] Now the thought contained in the special note that
Christ knew that all was finished is evidence to us that He did indeed
understand the significance of His own complexes as a Mediator.

[1] We will discuss this presently, chapter 18, p. 439. In speaking about the
darkness of Golgotha, we pointed out that this darkness represented an objective
expression of God. It was a humiliating, and at the same time a comforting,
intervention; it was an acknowledgment that up to this time Christ had
faithfully finished everything.[2] [2] See chapter 16, p. 385.

Frankly this last observation, even though it gives us a necessary and logical
link by which we can relate the darkness to the whole of the passion,
nevertheless would have been too bold a contention on our part if it had not
rested on this remark of the evangelist John. But John assures us that Jesus as
man knew that He had finished everything. His conscience says a good word to Him
about Himself. And when Christ in that darkness felt Himself called upon to
begin the last arduous struggle, He entered into the battlefield and He sought
out death and the devil in their own home. The result of that? Well, if the
advent of the darkness for Christ spells that moment in which God according to
justice sends Him into the worst of devastation, then the moment in which light
breaks through again, and the darkness recedes, must be an objective testimony
to Him that God regards the struggle as having been satisfactorily finished. If
the coming of the darkness indicates an admission to the severest examination
and trial, then the recession of the darkness indicates the presentation of the
diploma of justice which tells Him that He has passed the examination. Jesus
descended into hell when it was dark; God Himself draws Him up out of it when He
again sends light down upon Golgotha. Again, you see, Easter is here in
principle. Above the clouds they are already feeling for the ropes by which to
sound the bells to the coming feast. Just as the resurrection of Christ from the
dead on the first Sunday morning to follow will be a public, legal
acknowledgment of Christ’s being declared acceptable — He and His work and His
justification, acceptable to God — so this new advent of the light is evidence
to Him that God acknowledges Him as the Worker and Second Adam justified in
reference to His last arduous struggle, the passion of the pain of hell.

Accordingly, Christ knew that the suffering of the pain of hell was the severest
suffering; He knew that this was the eternal death, the second death. He knew
that He had emerged from this second death and He knew that He had not yet been
subjected to what the Scriptures call the first death, the dissolution of the
body, the silencing of the heart, the withdrawal of that life which one has by
virtue of birth. Very definitely a worse time could not be forthcoming any more.
The turning point had been reached; the about-face, the upward flight, this time
to eternal life, simply could not be prevented any more. There was but one thing
to do besides — to die. That which takes place first in the life of men, takes
place last in the life of Christ. He had to suffer their “second death”
consciously before their first death, if His life here on earth was not to end
in vanity. But now that He has suffered the “second death,” now He can die in
the body; His death in the body is already being regarded as a conquest of
eternal life.[1] Listen to the utterances from the cross still to follow. They
will be confessions of life, and of power, and of the deed. This is the first
approach to a Passover hymn in the form of a fugue.

[1] By which of course we do not mean to deny that the dying belonged to
thesacrifice.Read, for a consideration of the relationship between this and
that, chapters 20 and 21.

Therefore everything which is still to happen is to be His praeparatio ad
mortem: His preparation for death. The cry: “I thirst,” must be related to this,
and derive its explanation from it; so much the reader of John knows beforehand.
The Saviour again carries His spirit in His own hands. He is again compos
mentis, that is, He is master of Himself again. He has loosened His soul from
the clutches of hell. God be praised: the Christ can exert Himself again. And as
He does so the work of religion which He believes is most peculiarly His now is
that He devote His full and fine attention to the body and that He care for it.
For within a few moments now everything will converge upon that, and everything
will end in that. The Christ had done with the spiritual death. Now the body was
left. O God, the last act of the Priest must take place now. Therefore provide
Him with means which can help Him to make this act perfect and complete before
God. O Greatest Majesty, clothe Thy Priest in righteousness. He is performing
the last deed. Fill His hands; give Him the material with which to sacrifice;
put vinegar in His mouth, and praise, and whatever else is necessary for this
last thing. Do not be too hasty, too hasty. John makes a second comment. He
knows so certainly that Jesus by His fifth utterance from the cross was
fulfilling the Scriptures and He knows just as certainly that He definitely
intended and willed to do this. Literally He says: Jesus knowing that all things
were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
At least, that is the way our Authorized version puts it.

There are three interpretations. Some think that Christ by means of the words “I
thirst” and by means of those alone wished to refer to the Old Testament.
According to these interpreters He announced His thirst in order to cause a word
of the Old Testament to be fulfilled. For the Old Testament reports that a pious
person had also cried because of thirst. This is an interpretation, however,
which has its difficulties. It is not easy to suppose that this very short
sentence, a single word in Greek as a matter of fact, was a quoted phrase.
Moreover, who will point out the words in the Old Testament which Jesus actually
quoted? You can find them everywhere and nowhere. A second interpretation is
that Christ did not wish merely to give expression to His thirst and to nothing
more, but that He wanted to elicit from the people all that they did in answer
to His cry, in order to fulfill the Scriptures in that way. In other words, the
vinegar’s being handed to Him (in answer to Christ’s lament) comes into
consideration here. These interpreters point to specific words in the Old
Testament; for instance Psalms 22:15 : My strength is dried up like a potsherd;
and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; And thou hast brought me into the dust of
death. Or to those of Psalms 69:21 :

They gave me also gall for my meat; And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to
drink. This second interpretation has something appealing about it. It does
indeed establish a relationship between Jesus’ statement and the historical
report in all of its implications. To that we must add, besides, that Psalms 69
comes to the fore more than once in the Gospel of John (2:17, 15:25) and that
Psalms 22 also required our attention in the account of the passion.

Nevertheless, we have objections to this interpretation also. This kind of
“quoting” has too little of quoting in it; it is just a little too
mechanical.[1] If this had been the intention we should have expected that John,
after reporting that the vinegar had been extended to the Saviour would have
written: Thus was fulfilled that which was written in the Scriptures of the Old
Covenant. Nevertheless, it is very plain that Christ intended that which He does
and says as a means by which He on His own part intentionally and expressly can
fulfill the Scriptures. The events here certainly do not indicate a fulfillment
of the Scriptures which is unrelated to Jesus’ intention. No, He derives the
fulfillment of the Scriptures from the facts, from the events; He does this
Himself and He does it independently. He compels the facts to reveal the content
of the Scriptures in their fulfilled reality.[2] This is the more convincing
because John indicates that Christ knew that up to this time everything had been
accomplished. Up to this time: “now.” That makes us ask, naturally: And what is
to follow? However, our greatest objection to this interpretation arises from
the fact that in this way they regard the Christ as one who Himself elicits the
presentation of the vinegar in order in that way to fulfill the Scriptures. Now
in its setting in Psalms 69 the presentation of the vinegar is indisputably an
act of enmity; it was given with an evil intent. It represented sin and
blasphemy. And can we say, then, that Christ elicits something from men in order
to accomplish something which at the same moment comes to Him in the form of a
sin? Even though He greatly desires to see the Scriptures fulfilled, He cannot
intend on His own part to induce men to do a deed which is sinful to His spirit.
It is true that He sometimes constrains men to choose what they wish to do, to
take a stand on certain great questions raised in prophecy, but that is
something very different from eliciting an act which is named a sin in prophecy.

[] IfChrist’s statement isto refer to the“literal” vinegar,then the
gallisan“annoying” particular; this “gall” plays a “very subordinate role” in
the cup of myrrh which Christ did not take (Matthew 27:34; see pp. 91-2) but
this “gall” is lacking here inJohn 19:28(just as the allusion to Psalms 69 is
lacking in Matthew 27). Moreover the favorofthe “gall” and “vinegar” in Psalms
69 is not intended as a favor, but is there an act of enmity. On this occasion
the presentation of the vinegar was not in itself an act of enmity; only the
ensuing mockery became that.

[2] It is true that the Greek “hina” need not always have the strong connotation
of “that” or “in order that.” But this word, too, must be taken in the context
of the whole, a context which makes us think as indicated above (see the
formulas for the references to the Old Testament; see also the discussionofthe
“expected” consequence, even when “hina” is used in a consecutive sense;
Robertson Grosheide,Bekn. Gramm. op. het gr. N.T.,Kampen, Kok, 1912, paragraph
298, 2).

Therefore we choose a third interpretation which rearranges the order of the
words in the translation without doing injustice to the Greek text.[3] If we do
this, two translations are possible. The first is this one: Jesus, knowing that
all things were (now) accomplished, said, in order that the Scriptures might be
fulfilled: I thirst. And a second, equally admissible translation would be this
one: Jesus, knowing that all things were (now) accomplished (that which He had
to accomplish) in order to fulfill the Scriptures, said (realizing that): I
thirst.

You see the difference between these two translations. In the first the
expression “in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled” is related to the
utterance of the fifth statement from the cross. If this translation is correct
the Saviour intended to fulfill the Scriptures by means of His utterance. In the
second translation, however, the expression “in order that the Scriptures might
be fulfilled” refers to the immediately preceding statement which said that
Jesus had now accomplished all things. According to this Jesus would have had a
clear and strong sense that He on His own part now had accomplished everything
which had to be accomplished in order to fulfill the Scriptures.

[3] See Blass,Gramm, d.ntl. Gr., 1902, p. 297.

Now we believe that the solution of the difficulty lies in a merging of both
translations. Christ knew that He on His own part had fulfilled the Scriptures
by accomplishing what had been outlined in them as the task of the Messiah. He
also knew that the great examination had been passed, that the severest trial as
the servant of the Lord who is faithful to the Scriptures had been fulfilled.[4]
But the work of Messianic suffering had not yet been entirely completed. The act
of dying still had to follow. In other words, He orientates Himself perfectly.
He knows exactly what point God and His people and He have reached. And in this
clear self-determination, and by virtue of the “good conscience” which He has
“before God,” Christ now acknowledges that there remains but one thing for Him
to do: to present the sacrifice of His body. Here is His body which must be
broken for many unto a forgiveness of sins. Here is His pulsing blood, which
must be poured out for many unto the forgiveness of sins. Well, since this is so
He must prepare Himself for that sacrifice. He must prepare Himself, He must
“gather up his feet unto death,” and must accommodate His flesh and blood to the
altar. Certainly He is not to enter into this death without knowing of it. Death
does not come upon Him unawares. The suffering does not strike Him unconscious.
On the contrary, He orientates Himself to His position with a perfect
sensitiveness to the very end; this had been His way throughout the day. At all
times He is perfectly aware of the lay of the land of each of His domains. He
knows that until this time He has lived in conformity with the Scriptures, and
now He says, again intending to fulfill the Scriptures: I thirst. Accordingly we
would like to give this paraphrase of the text: Jesus, knowing that He had now
accomplished everything He had to do in order to fulfill the Scriptures, said
(because of that knowledge and with that specific intent): I thirst.

[1] “Already”; see chapter 17, p. 440. In doing this, we have taken the letter
of the second translation, but have preserved the sense of the first. This
teaches us how sensitively the evangelist John indicates to us the manner of
Christ’s dying. A vessel of vinegar, a handful of soldiers, a sponge, a reed,
and the drama has been completed. But there is another thing, the incarnate
Word. John presents — quite in accordance with his purpose — that incarnate Word
as it manifests itself also in the dying of Jesus. That which seems to be a “cry
of nature” as weak as the bark of a thirsting dog, or as the panting of a
thirsty land, now becomes a revelation of God’s immeasurable strength. Why does
Jesus want to drink? Why does He present a request to God and to the people, why
does He appeal to them for a last little modicum of “humanity,” why does He ask
whether they will give Him a little water or something else to drink? Because
the Scripture makes demands upon Him even in His death, just as it has
throughout His life. No, He is not looking for a mechanical, for an accidental,
fulfillment of the Scriptures, one which is accomplished without the spirit,
when He says: I thirst. Nor is He looking for a fulfillment of the Scripture in
which “the detail” of the vinegar receives the whole emphasis. In this the
Scripture is being understood as broadly as it is possible to take it. No
wonder, people, no wonder: for we are standing on the plane between the second
and the first death. Just listen. The Christ who has struggled with all the
Scriptures throughout all His days, now seizes on this main idea which He takes
out of “all the Scriptures,” the idea, namely, that the Messiah of the promise
may not accept His death as His fate but must perform it as a deed. His death
must be a gift, a priestly donation. In His last act as Priest, in His last
gesture by way of preparing the Sacrifice, He must act with a free will.
Certainly He has not been given back His free will for nothing. True, His
thought, and in general His voluntary life, has been afflicted, has been driven
into a limiting cleft by God Himself, but in His triumph, as He emerges from the
depths of the terror of hell, He again keeps His rights before Him, the rights,
namely, of the Priest, the Prophet, and the King. And now, strong in His
regained assurance, prepared for the complete service of God and of the people,
He demands for that service what is necessary to Him in order to fulfill the
last act at the altar in righteousness, He demands water or its quivalent. O
God, but He is thirsty! As a hart panteth for the water brooks, so His soul
pants for Thee, O God. He would drink something, for He would satisfy the thirst
of all those who are to stand around the Father’s throne. He wants to drink
something, for He is going to sprinkle the garden of God. He holds His sacrifice
in His hand — for He is His own priest, and must therefore be alert when the
time for the last act of sacrifice conies. Hence by a royal command He asks for
a drink. Vinegar or water, no matter, just so it strengthens for a moment. It is
Israel’s God who imparts strength; His are the gold and the silver and the
cattle upon a thousand hills, and the vinegar in ten thousand vessels. Now He
arises in a spiritual way and draws water from the rocks of the hardest of
souls. He will not lose His mastery of Himself. He exerts His effort to command
His last powers. Exhaustion is not to put Him to death. The last altar of
sacrifice beyond the reach of the arms of nature. She is soullessly amiable, and
unreasonably brutal. But today her dementia will spoil nothing. Look, He is
drinking. He calls His forces back into play, clears His eye, resembles Jonathan
tasting his honey — vinegar is good — in order to fight to the very last. As He
does so He sings the psalms of David (“all the Scriptures”) and carries the
power of divination within Himself. Moreover He is true to Himself. At first He
did not drink, for He did not wish a sedative.[1] Now He does drink, because He
does not wish to be dulled.

[1] Chapter 5, especially p, 96.

Ah, angels of God, He will help Himself. In Gethsemane it happened for the last
time that an angel came to sustain Him; that also happened in order to prevent
exhaustion, in order that He be sustained for the burdens God would put upon
Him.[2] Now He must command His own resources and must reinforce Himself.
Besides, the question now is not one of a spiritual capacity, but of a
concentration of His attention, a physical preparation of the body for the last
act. Hence He strengthens Himself by a final drink, in order thereupon to
pronounce His two last utterances greatly and sublimely and then to give up the
ghost in His own strength.

[2]Christ in His Suffering,chapter 20, pp. 357, 358.

Now it is not necessary to “look up the references” made to the Scriptures
wherever these speak of thirst and vinegar, For the whole of the Scriptures
bears down upon the soul of Jesus, and the whole history of Revelation is
concealed behind a vessel of vinegar.

Now that we have put this emphasis in the foreground, now it strikes us that the
arrangement of the events is a fulfillment of the letter. Inasmuch as Christ on
His own part wishes to fulfill the Scriptures without looking for particular
details about vinegar or gall, the special providence of God is by no means
ashamed of details. Now the Spirit and the letter correspond. Scriptures become
literally fulfilled in an unexpected way. Yes, Psalms 69 contained a lamentation
about those who hated the poet, those who gave him vinegar to drink. But in the
case of the poet that was a figurative way of expressing himself. “The vinegar”
was the mockery, the defiance. But in Christ His figures of speech become
concrete fact, become real history. Here we have a vessel filled with ordinary
wine, a sour drink common among the soldiers, a mixture of water, vinegar and
eggs. This they give to Jesus. One of the soldiers takes a sponge — perhaps it
was used to wipe off the blood of the crucifixion, or perhaps it served to close
the vessel of the soldiers — dips it in the liquid, and conveys it to Jesus’
mouth on a reed of hyssop. Thus Psalms 69 was alluded to, in order immediately
afterwards to be spiritually fulfilled.

Yes, also to be spiritually fulfilled. For that which the poet had in mind by
his use of the figure of vinegar was the mockery. And the mockery is also heaped
upon Jesus. But of that later.

I know then that I cannot unctuously and spiritually overlook that vessel of
vinegar if I want to know and say something about the Christ who, through the
eternal Spirit, sacrificed Himself to God blamelessly. The child lay in
swaddling clothes, and was the Word of God. The Man drinks vinegar, and swallows
it, and He is the Word of God. The word was made flesh and dwelt near the
knapsacks of soldiers. His spirit, the Spirit of God, are absolutely present,
and are also active in this manner of drinking and dying. One word still
deserves our attention: namely, the word “already.” Jesus knew — we read in the
original — that all things had now (already) been accomplished which according
to the Scriptures needed to be fulfilled. Quite justly we deduce from this that
Jesus was conscious of His approaching end before He asked for the drink. And we
may also deduce from it that He assumed this early conclusion to the day and to
the manger-cross road as an arrangement of God which gave Him peace at heart.
For it is true that the rest of death came to Him quickly. The angels said:
Come, Lord Jesus, yea, come quickly. Others had been hanged on a cross who had
to suffer for hours, sometimes for days. People who should know assure us that
some crucified victims died not because of this brutal punishment itself but
because of starvation. Certain it is that death sometimes waited long before it
came to a crucified person. In death by crucifixion after all no single
indispensable part of the body was directly harmed. But Christ did not have to
suffer long. Everything had been accomplished “already” . , . He Himself also
seems to be surprised. Is it possible that after the resurrection He Himself
whispered the little word “already” to John by way of telling Him how He had
sensed the approach of death? We do not know; it does not concern us. All things
were accomplished already. That suffices. After He had strode through the depths
of the pain of hell, He was surprised at the shortness of the distance He had to
traverse. For, from the viewpoint of time, His affliction was almost past; the
length of it by no means harmonized with the exceeding great eternal weight of
His perdition (1 Corinthians 4). O sublime majesty of the fifth utterance from
the cross! He cuts straight through the Word of God in its relationships. In the
temporal world it is easy to say “already.” But in eternity — ah, just be quiet:
you still remember that those three hours did not suffice to give expression to
a single word. Time and eternity, they are two entirely different things. We
would not have dared to write such an “already.” But what of that — often what
we do clashes with what is of God. But we must not relate this “already” to any
other word. Do we read that Jesus had already been released from the suffering
and that He felt He had been released? No, the work had already been
accomplished; the Father had already been satisfied. It is that which gives
strength to the heart. His “already” does not betray a secret opposition to the
passion. It is not intended as an Elijah-statement: May life now quickly ebb
away; komm’, susser Tod. On the contrary, He who is here is the Offerer. Gladly
He now goes on His last journey, rejoicing as a hero to walk the path of love,
grateful that the Father can already dismiss Him in peace, according to His
word. For this proves that the eyes of the Father have beheld His own salvation.
Already He will enter Paradise ahead of the murderer; He will have His chance to
prepare the mansion. Youth returns: because of this suppressed “already” He grew
in grace and knowledge with God and with the angels.

We can say, therefore, that He was patient to the highest degree. He had been
rejected beyond the pale of common grace. No garment, not a single ray of the
sun, was His. But He had hardly returned from His abysses before He asked for
His gifts of common grace, and He received a gift, a dash of vinegar. And He
immediately converted this gift of common grace into a service of special grace.
Yes, He is the sovereign Claimant. Do the angels persist in staying away? No
matter, He has His servants, if not above the clouds, in the world of the
angels, then under the clouds. Under the clouds, and among the people. He has
His servants among the people, for the soldier is a Roman. A Roman hand helped
to give the Son of God the last powers which were necessary to Him in presenting
His sacrifice for the world. Psalms 22 ends on an international note. But what
of the vinegar of Psalms 69; what of the mockery! We must devote a thought to
the mockery which made this “humane” manifestation of a friendly gift of drink a
suffering for the Christ, They had heard Him crying: Eli, Eli. Naturally they
knew what the word meant. The insipid pun which changes the word Eli into the
name Elias could not have been inspired by the Roman soldiers who knew nothing
about Elijah, but must have been the invention of the Scribes, certainly of the
Jews. They, surely, were well acquainted with the significant position which
Elias occupied in the Jewish expectation of the Messiah. They knew also that
Elias was expected as a precursor of the Messiah. Accordingly, they knew what
Christ’s cry meant: Eli, Eli, my God, my God. They know Hebrew, and they know
Aramaic; they know Psalms 22, and they know very well that the Hebrew name for
Elias is not Eli, but Elijah, a word which has a sound very different from
“Eli,” or “Eloi.” Consequently, no one can suppose that they did not quite
understand. Nor are we to suppose that they were moved by a certain fear which,
according to some interpreters, mastered these people and prompted the question
whether Elias would come with fire and sword to interfere with this violence
against the wonderful Nazarene. No, this again was an instance of mockery. It
was a mockery which had to serve perhaps to rationalize the secret dread
inspired by the darkness. But in any case it served as mockery. It was an
admonition to pay attention to Elias in case he should come.

Now this was an excruciatingly painful mockery, for it was designed to break
Christ’s Messianic consciousness. This point had been raised (see page 245) also
in the mocking speeches they delivered a few hours before. And the lance-thrust
of their words consists of the fact that they make the self-vaunted messiah
summon a man who must come before the true Messiah. Elias was not to be a
messiah, but a harbinger walking on the Messianic path. These mockers simply
want to suggest in passing that the brain of this Nazarene is a bit confused:
today He is a messiah, tomorrow He will be looking for the Messiah’s precursor.

Yes, this was the gift of the vinegar. Even the soldier who was rather
congenially disposed cannot avoid joining in with the others as they break into
rocking laughter about the Nazarene and His unfortunate case.

Christ did not reply to the mockery. It could injure Him no longer. The mockery
which was heaped upon Him before “the sixth hour” was something quite different
from that which accrues to Him now after “the ninth hour.” For this mockery is
coming to Him after the great crisis. The first mockery, which took place before
the fourth utterance from the cross, was a part of the paradoxical conflict
which issued in an all-consuming “why.” But now the Gospel records that Christ
knew all things had already been accomplished. His super-apologetic right, His
sacrosanct right, is now entirely certain to the incarnate Logos. He has
regained all His certainties. Just let them mock. Unshocked, He passes on to His
next statement and says: It is finished. Elias has come, and they have done to
him what they wished. The Messiah has come, and they have also done to Him as
they pleased. But God has fulfilled His counsel by means of their wicked
counsel. It is finished.

He was a man thirty-three years old, but He died a death on a plane higher than
that of a patriarch. He accommodated His feet to the dying, made His
announcement, and went on. For a great anxiety was in His heart; no part of His
deed of sacrifice might be sluggishly done, no part of it in a slovenly way.
Mark, how He strains to be alert in order that He may do everything according to
the example shown Him upon the mount. Both the tabernacle and the temple thought
they were altogether too nice for Him, and altogether too dignified. But never
was an offer so harmoniously and purely prepared as was this one. We celebrate
His Supper, and it is a cause of special gladness to us to know that He gave His
flesh and poured out His blood, and that He made careful preparations for this
final gift. Careful preparations! And He was faithful to His people and to His
God, according to the impervious style of piety and religion. Do you go on now,
and leave me here alone. I want to look at Him long and carefully. But no, I
cannot. However, do you stand aside; I want to read my Bible here. I can do
that.

I read the eleventh chapter of John. I shall restrict myself to John this time,
for he alone told me that Jesus suffered awful thirst and that in His thirsting
He announced it with a purpose. With a purpose! He is so punctiliously
Scriptural, that my neighbor in the church would shake his head about Him if He
had been any other. Yes, I hear the man saying — What? So close to death and
still clinging to the letter of what was written. . . . Indeed, He had a purpose
when He said that He was thirsty, and I am sure that my neighbor would get a
following if Jesus Christ had been a member of our church in our village. Then
we would all have found it a little incredible — such extreme “objectivity” to
say “I am thirsty,” and to have a purpose, a purpose, mind you, — this is so
terribly obvious. . . . But away with those church members and away with me, and
my neighbor. John knows what he is saying. Go away now; I must learn to read the
Bible, I must learn to read it alone.

I read the passage again. I hear a cry: I am thirsty, O God and men, I am
awfully thirsty, I parch with thirst. This statement was not artificial; it was
the simple truth. He was moved. That is the first thing. I read: He was moved.

I read a second truth. He knew, while He was moved, that He had fulfilled all
the Scriptures. And this assured knowledge was related to His crying, to His
craving for drink. His spirit did not yield to silence because of the parched
flesh, His piety did not become Leidenschaft. In all His words of emotion His
spirit was one. I read a second thing: He was moved in the spirit. Be quiet a
moment longer, for I read a third thing. He has a purpose as He speaks. My
Sister of Mercy becomes angry with me when I say that He is not natural. But did
I say that? Does she know a word for it? I can find none. I know only that John
says that God, the Holy Spirit, declares that Jesus Christ had a purpose in
announcing His thirst. He still wanted to do something in conformity with the
Scriptures, for, O the letter of those! Now that He desires a drink, He
confesses that He desires it. He decides to speak. His voice vibrates and is an
expression of sheer integrity. His voice is the voice of forthright honesty. He
is moved, He is under the pressure of emotion, even though He is not exalted.
His voice was deep, and it was hoarse. Nevertheless He is absolutely Himself. He
moved Himself, He acted on His own initiative. How can I say all these things in
a single word? I know no word, and even though I exhaust all the dictionaries
and commentaries and psychologies I shall not be able to find an appropriate
term for it. I can only circumscribe it as my third point and say: He exerted
Himself. It was entirely forthright, and entirely purposeful. It was natural and
spontaneous; intentional and conscious. It was not a fabricated thing, but it
was absolutely prepared.

Dare I write this on a piece of paper now? Three points. Lord, forgive me, if
the statement is very meager, and very sketchy. Three points: He was moved; He
groaned in the spirit; He was troubled. But now I recall what I read in the 11th
chapter of this same gospel. When He went to the grave of Lazarus — He was on
the battlefield of His powers, someone said — the same thing was written. He was
moved; He groaned in the spirit; and was troubled.[1] It was John who wrote it
(John 11:33). Matthew, Mark, and Luke have other things to tell us.

[1]See Dr. S. Greijdanus, “Eene bladzijde uit het zielelijden van onzen
Heiland,”Geref. Theol. Tijdschrift, volume 14, number 3 (July, 1913, p. 112):
“He was not passive but active in this perturbance. He was not troubled, He
troubled Himself. This was not a manifestation of weakness in Him, but a
manifestation of strength. . . p. 114: “This was not merely being affected or
moved by something external, but it was a personal response to an external
stimulus.Etaraxen(troubled) connotes shock, fright, confusion.. . .”p.115: “John
11:33does not. . .present a figure of speech; a reality in the Lord’s emotional
life is there being described. . .”In this article also the perturbance of
Christ as written in John 11 is regarded as enmity against Satan, and as an
organization of what was immediately before Him and the whole history of
redemption, that is, “and all the Scriptures.”

Thus He returned here to His former strength. He can cause strength to go out of
Him. Be careful. Very soon He will cause a “loud” voice to issue from Him. When
Jesus went to the grave of Lazarus in order to battle with death, He groaned in
the spirit and was troubled because of an influence which issued from Himself.
In that way He conquered at that time.

Now I have peace again. Just come back now, and we will read on together. I have
heard it said that when He uttered His Eli, Eli, He had to recall in the
presence of everyone and in the presence of the crowd, that which He had spoken
and spoken aloud at the grave of Lazarus (see page 418). That was enough for the
“proud.” They had understood it perfectly. But who is He internally? Who is He
in the spirit? You have the answer on the tip of your tongue: internally He is
the same as He was. He is just as strong as when He went out to recall Lazarus
from an ugly death.

Surely, if He is just as strong and powerful and self-sufficient as when He
raised Lazarus from the dead and knew that God heard Him always, then He is now
back in that strength. Listen: He can save Lazarus. In very fact He can save
Himself. The only question is: Does He want to? No, for He sacrifices Himself,
and this He does by that same will. Hence the fact that He rescued Lazarus from
death was much; but the fact that He sends Himself into death is everything. He
accommodates Himself to His dying. He knows that the Father hears Him always,
for He has just moved through hell. And knowing that the Fatherhears Him always
He asks for a drop to drink. ... Do you thinkIhave understood it now? There was
a rich Man. He wasrich in mighty works; He could rescue the dead from their
graves. This rich Man had been “in the pains of hell.” He opened His eyes in
hell, being in torments, having descended into hell. He opened His eyes, felt
thirsty, and asked a drink. And Abraham came, the vinegar of a stranger was as
sweet as the water of the fountains that flow in Zion. Abraham could refuse
nothing to this rich Man who had opened His eyes in torments. Strange — that
broad, deep gulf had suddenly disappeared. My humanitarian sister, piety is not
sentimentality here. And, my high-strung brother, piety here is not
Leidenschaft. Not unless you want to call Jesus Christ vanity. But He has given
us an example. On Golgotha you can find raw materials out of which to construct
a religious thirsting, and a dialectic for honest lamentation. [1] [1]
Concerning the position which this fifth utterance from the cross occupies, see
chapter 21, pp. 493-96.


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  CHAPTER 24: 19. CHAPTER 19: CHRIST IN THE JUSTIFICATION
========================================================================

C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N Christ in the Justification When Jesus therefore
had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. —John 19:30 a.

Now He goes on from strength to strength. His fourth utterance was an expression
of weakness. In external form His fifth statement from the cross betrayed the
need of help, but an infinite strength consciously expressed itself in it. Now
we listen to His sixth utterance. It gives expression to a strength which is
also indicated in its form.

It is very short. In this respect it resembles the fifth statement. In the Greek
language it consists of a single word. It is full of heavenly realities,
however. And, consequently, it is just as fully charged with earthly realities.
It consists of a confession on the part of our Prophet and Priest, and is fully
informed by the praise of God.[1] The incarnate Word glories in the fact that
the moment of Jesus’ dying does not represent a stumbling into the night, but a
prolongation of the day of the Lord. It is an extension of that “day of
redemption” which in the moment of Jesus’ death may turn over another leaf in
its journal.

[1] Again it is John who is writing of this.

“It is finished.” What did the Saviour mean by that statement? In order to
answer that we must first ask ourselves to what it refers. Does Christ mean that
the Scriptures and the Prophets have been fulfilled? Or is the statement simply
designed to say that His cup of suffering has been emptied, and that the
suffering once placed upon Him has almost passed by.

Many think that they must choose one or the other of these possibilities. As we
see it no such choice is necessary. We do indeed believe that the fulfillment of
the Scriptures vindicated the Christ, and gave Him a free conscience; and we
also believe that the completion of His life-task filled Him with an infallible
and hence irresistible sense of joy. He was going home.[1] Is it necessary,
then, to fix an antithesis between the one and the other? Surely no one desires
that. Must we separate the one from the other? No one has need of that. If we
remember that the content of the sixth utterance was in Christ’s thoughts when
He uttered the fifth,[2] we can better understand the meaning of the sixth. We
noted in the preceding chapter that Christ knew all things had been
accomplished; and we also considered the fact that He gave His full attention to
the definitive and general fulfillment of the Scriptures in this awareness.
Hence that was already in Christ’s spirit which He now utters.

[] SeeJohn 3:31-32. The word of the Baptist: He came from above; He saw and
heard what was taking place in heaven. See also chapter 16, pp. 377-78.

[2] See chapter 18, pp. 430-31. This at the same time points out to us the
meaning of the sixth word. All that had definitely been given Him to do had been
accomplished. In other words, He had in His historical life achieved everything
that the Scriptures had indicated as His Messianic task. The eternal and the
temporal, the counsel of God and the deed of Christ, are combined in this
utterance of our Victor. These two have found each other, have clung to each
other throughout His life on earth, and are now brought together. In the sixth
utterance from the cross Christ confesses that His life from the time of His
birth to the time of His death has faithfully achieved what the Father gave Him
to do. The eternal did not soar over His temporal existence, but entered into it
and accompanied it. Standing before the abyss of death He now knows that He is
both the fulfiller and fulfilled. He is fulfiller to the extent that as a
servant and as a man He has done what was demanded of Him. He is the fulfilled
to the extent that as servant and man He worked not on His own authority; He did
not do His own work, but the work of the Father expressing itself in the Son.
This statement of the sixth utterance was an exclamation of joy. Moreover, the
joy was thoroughly human. There is an objective capacity for joy in the Christ,
which always remains itself. It is the deep basis, the vital source of His
delight in God and of a good conscience. But the man Christ Jesus has been
placed in time; He accompanies the seasons, He develops along with the ups and
downs of His work. It is this which makes His joy so moving in its thorough
humanness. You can notice it at once. He rejoices because He has something new
to say: It is finished.

Yes, but just what is finished? The Messianic work? No, not that; absolutely not
that. For if Christ had not arisen from the dead, had not continued to perform
His service, all would have been in vain, and we would of all men be the most
miserable. What is finished? The satisfaction of the justice of God? No, not
that either; for He will not have satisfied the justice of God, and will not
have satisfied that justice in its exacting aspect, to the extent it makes its
demands in the history of Christ, until He shall have delivered up the kingdom
to God, even the Father. What is finished? Being a servant? Not that. As Kurios,
as exalted Saviour, Christ also remains subservient to the Father. What is
finished? The humiliation? No, His sublime utterance cannot pertain to that
either, for His dying presently and His burial later, will also be a part of the
humiliation. What is finished? The fact that He has been appointed an offence?
No, not that. For Christ is an offence in His exaltation also.[1] He is an
offence also in those respects in which we cannot see Him but can only believe.

[1] This is opposed to Kierkegaard, Barth, Althaus, etc.

No, when we ask just what is finished a single thing serves as the answer. That
which is finished is the consciously suffered humiliation in body and in spirit.
Not the serving, but the being a slave in humiliation; that, observed from the
active side, has now been finished. The torment of the payment, the suffering of
the penalty, and both of these consciously, that is finished. The effort at
compensation for the wrath of God could not be taken away from Him even if the
dying and the burial had not accrued to Him. But the suffering in which Christ
had to appear actively, in which He, the Second Adam, by His own effort had to
surrender Himself, that is finished. True, the bearing of the humiliation, the
experience of disgrace and disdain, the being a foolishness and an offence, all
these will still be His in the immediate future. But that which could still
accrue to Him after His death by way of adding to His humiliation no longer
demands His personal deed. When everything has been given in the Spirit, then
the recession of life itself will no longer have to be an active deed on His
part. The surrender of the spirit is the last act; thereupon death comes of
itself. As for the grave, for that He has His “servants and maids.” His deed
will not be necessary for that. The sixth utterance of the crucified Christ
consequently is a prophetic declaration about God as well as a joyful
declaration about Himself. It is full of subjective gladness. But this gladness
has assumed discipline; it is an obedient joy. The speaker remains the servant
of the Lord. Learn of Him now, for He speaks meekly and lowly. He does not
say:[1] I have finished. He says: It is finished. He Himself is not the subject
of His sublime statement. If the servant makes his own work the theme of the
discussion, he does not leave the work, the name, the glory of the sender on the
highest plane. But Christ, who in this respect is theocentric in His religion,
does not place Himself, and His own share in the work, in the limelight, but
names the whole program of work which God has done through Him. What does He
say? He does not say: Eureka, I have found it. It was not His own inventive
faculty, but His qualification for the service of the office, completing a task
delegated to Him, which rejoices His spirit. He speaks as a servant who had an
assignment to accomplish and not as the master architect. It is finished — by
this statement Christ not only draws Himself but also the Satan, all the devils,
and even these wicked people here, into the circle of His attention. Nor is He
saying: I am free; I have escaped from the snare; I have not been unsuccessful.
For — even though because of the physical pressure He could hardly breathe — He
had to drink first, we remember — He prefers singing of the steadfastness of the
Scriptures and of God’s counsel to rejoicing in the temporal experience of the
day or of the days which have just passed. Not His own “tension,” not His own
“suspense,” but the unravelling of the seasons of God, the consummation of God’s
decrees, these are the theme of His paeans of victory. God be praised, the
mandates of the Messianic life have fortunately had an end. Not the fact that
His plan has succeeded, but the fact that God’s plan has been finished in Him
constitutes His joy. No wonder, we say again (but afterwards, of course): no
wonder, for though faith in these days may be regarded by some as an enormous
risk, Christ never once regarded faith as a risk. Living according to the letter
of the commandments by the Spirit — that was His primary, His sole, and His
perfect security. The Scriptures took their own course, and now that the
revealed will of God had been His food and His expression, it is certain that
the hidden will of God must delight in His joys. His faith is not conditioned by
the success of its result, but His faith postulates the effect. He is in no
sense uncertain about the result; if He had been that, His entering upon death
would certainly have become a risk. In other words, it would have been an act of
unbelief. However, quite to the contrary, He is personally certain of God’s
response to His Messianic life of service. And He gives expression to a terse
epitome of that certainty in this plainly and unmistakably uttered statement.

[1] If we sometimes use the expression that Christ “did not say” this or that,
we do not mean to establish a contrast between what He did say and the other
possible formulations which are lacking here. The issue here is the formulation
and the structure of the sentence, for this cannot be accidental.

Thus Christ is justified. Both in the presence of God and in the court of His
conscience He is completely vindicated. It is finished: the counsel, the
Scriptures are finished. And this sublime paean of rejoicing, stating that the
suffering He has undergone has accomplished the one good service, the service of
God which in its own entrance upon the Sabbath takes a whole people with it into
the Sabbath-joys through vindication in Christ Jesus, is now given expression in
the joyous: It is finished.

Therefore we can say that not this or that detail of the Scriptures, but that
all the Scriptures were present in His spirit as He uttered these last two
statements. This is another reason for which we do not believe that the sixth
utterance from the cross was an intentional quotation. Some wish to regard the
“It is finished” as a conscious illusion to the last verse of Psalms 22. This
psalm closes with the words: A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to
the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness
unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

Now some choose to regard this last clause, “that he hath done this,” as the
original of the sixth utterance from the cross. They point out that in this way
the whole of Psalms 22 had its fulfillment in and dominated Golgotha: the
beginning, the middle, and also the end of the psalm. The beginning: simply
recall the fourth utterance from the cross. The middle: for the parting of the
clothes, the mockery, the disdain, the thirst — all these were motifs derived
from Psalms 22. And now the end: It is finished; it has been done; God has done
it.

Nevertheless, we raise objections to this interpretation. Psalms 22 pertains to
that act of God which is being praised by the poet: namely, the rescuing from
death, the ascending line. But Christ not only includes His deliverance from His
distress, but the distress also in His vision. Not only the victory, but also
the struggle, not only the powers of glorification, but also that which
humiliated, was before His mind’s eye. In this, Christ sees God’s counsel
fulfilled and in this He sees the Scriptures and all of prophecy brought to
rest.[1]

[1] We say nothing about the factthat the Septuagint apparently is not
thinkingofanything that Goddoes,butof“the people whom Hehath created.”

Thus this statement of universal power and glory in all of its genuine humanness
also becomes a statement of our Lord and God. Past the vessel of vinegar which
lent physical strength to the utterance of it, His thoughts go on and reach to
the abyss of time, to the culmination of all the eons. The Word was made flesh,
concealed itself in a crying babe, and required a sip of vinegar in order to
speak. And when it spoke, it spoke of the great deeds of God; it said that these
were finished.

Yes, my Lord and my God said that up to this point it was finished.

Three times the Word of God uses this phrase in history. The word “finished” is
clearly and ringing]y heralded at the beginning of history, in the middle of
history, and at the end. At the beginning, for in Genesis 2:1 we read: “thus the
heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” Already at this
time the eternal Word, the Logos, appeared before us: for by the word of the
Lord were the heavens made. At the end of time we hear the same sound repeated:
the Revelation of John tells us that some day this voice will sound throughout
the world: it is done (Revelation 16:17). That is the call which closes the
history of the church and of the world as it is brought to its culmination by
the Spirit of Christ. Now these two extremes, the primordial beginning, and the
accomplished end, are bound to each other by the sixth utterance from the cross.
There the Logos speaks in the state of humiliation. There He bears the world
which was once created “by” Him into the Father’s hands, surrendering it. It is
ready and ripe for the last act. The curtain may rise to it now. The
consummation of the Spirit may begin after the consummation of the work of God
in the earthly tabernacle.[1] Now that He has labored according to the
Scriptures, and now that He can neither be tried nor grieved in all eternity,
now that He has fulfilled the covenant of works which came to the Second Adam as
a proof and an examination in righteousness, and now that He has lifted every
labor of the covenant above the plane of an examination, now He also takes the
Spirit in His possession, that Spirit who ever brings to fruition what is
latently potential, that Spirit who ever consummates what the will has
established in principle, that Spirit who presently will exhaust the Christ
until He too can say: It is finished.

[1] Tabernacle, for after the resurrection the body of the Logos is temple-
“building.” (2 Corinthians 5).

We have made two discoveries: the sixth utterance from the cross proved to us to
be human, and it proved to us to be divine. Now let us permit our thoughts to
return to their course. We think back and observe that the sixth statement from
the cross represents a two-fold function. In the first place, Christ as the Son
of God takes the proper position in the divine being, and there makes His
report. In the second place, Christ as the Son of man, as our Mediator and
Surety, takes the proper position among His own. As for the first, Christ as the
Son of God takes His proper position in the divine being, and there presents His
report. As the Son of God He reports to the Holy Trinity. The word “reports” may
have an irreverent connotation for some, and not seem to be a proper expression
for indicating the relationship between the three persons of God, but we shall
let it stand as it is nevertheless. We must not regard matters here in a human
light, but must take flight to God with our thoughts. If we do that, the word we
use is in place. For it is a peculiarly divine activity that the Father, and the
Son, and the Spirit report to each other about their work. The divine life in
the three persons is not merely a mutual knowledge, but it is also a reciprocal
communication. The glory of the divine life, the strength of the divine life, is
always announced by the one to the other in the secret language of that good
pleasure of God which ever returns to God, the self-esteem of God, the self
sufficient. Now the Son is entering into fellowship with the Father and with the
Holy Spirit and — mark, He is rejoicing about this great day. It is finished!
The song which gave expression to the divine joy of creation was not as
sublimely moving as this short song of God’s regenerative capacities. The Lord
has introduced “something new” upon the earth and this new thing has now
progressed to a certain point of ripeness and crystallization, a point at which
it can be said: It is finished! It is finished! — that is an evening hymn, and
also a mid-day hymn. It is an evening hymn if it is observed from the viewpoint
of time; then it is the evening hymn of Christus Moriturus, the evening hymn of
this strange Pilgrim’s journey which took thirty-three years. But this evening
hymn of Christ’s temporal existence also becomes the mid-day hymn of God’s
sublime working day. God has created and regenerated; He has dug under the
creation, and placed a firmer foundation under it. Now the Son comes and says: I
see all that I have made, and behold, it is very good. For without the Word
nothing was made that is made. By it were all things made, and without the Word
nothing was regenerated that is regenerated. By it were all things brought back.
Yes, “the beginning of the creation of God,” the Almighty God, rejoices in His
acts. In God there is a sublime pleasure in creation: He sees even before it is
finished. And there is also in God a recurring joy when He sees the work after
it is finished. It is finished: perfect time, perfectum.[1] A verb in the
perfect tense has smilingly fallen from God’s lips. Perfectum beatitudinis,
perfectum quiescens. God’s present tense hovers over history — hide yourself
from the emanating power of a God who in His created passion is expressing
Himself!

[1] (Present) perfect time; not: it is being finished, but: it is finished.

Joyously singing, The mighty God Sings praises to His name.

He sings praises to His name. It is finished. In a perfectum of perfect rest the
Son announces His victory. Simply, directly, He says it to the Father and to the
Spirit. He stands infinitely above the evangelizing practitioners. He makes the
immanent announcement in which the Father, the Son, and the Spirit enjoy each
other. And His sublime announcement of peace, of the finished act, that
condition of rest which is ever there, His perfectum of seven blessednesses, is
known only in heaven. On earth we can at best fumble with the meaning of the
blessedness of such reciprocal announcement between the three persons. On earth
perfecta are very temporary, they are constantly replaced by others, by the
imperfect tense. But the perfectum is peculiarly heavenly; all the verbs of
heaven are first conjugated in that tense.[1] It indicates the completion of the
action, and all heavenly action is in its relationship to God completed. “Thou
art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.” “Thou art my Father, this day have I
finished it.” Such is the language of heaven. Why? Well, this perfect condition
of restfulness is strange to Satan, is quite unknown in hell. In hell there is
only the tension, the imperfect time; there nothing is completed, and a
condition of rest is an impossibility. Before it could utter a perfectum
propheticum, hell would have to cease being hell. In hell there is an unbroken
suspense, which can never be lifted. In hell there is only fearing and
trembling.

[1] Naturally, this is figurative language, but it is derived from the usages of
the Old and New Testaments (those of the poetry and the prophecy), and from
dogmatic considerations. But the Son arises to His rest. He also arises into His
rest. His rising represents a standing, and all His standing is a sitting, a
resting. Thus the Son now enters into fellowship with the Holy Trinity. The
human word of Jesus the Nazarene causes a flash of the light of the divine joy
in regeneration to dazzle the heavens.

Yes, the Son enters into a pure relationship with the three persons. He has
finished the creative renewal and redemption of the “great Day of the Lord.” Now
we know that “the Day of the Lord” is divided into phases, into hours. It was
evening, or it was noon, or else it was morning; but in any case there were
phases, there were milestones. There were separate hours, transitions. This day
of creation also is divided into milestones of creative evolutions.

Listen now. Presently a voice is heard in this “Day of the Lord.” My Lord and my
God is speaking. He says “Finished!” Now it was morning, and it was mid-day. In
this the joy which is surcharging the heart of God at once finds an outlet, an
expression by means of which it can reach the earth. In that sixth utterance
from the cross God’s Sabbath rest is being vindicated. But because God wants men
to enter into His Sabbath, there immediately takes place a reaction to His
Sabbath-evolutions here below. In the sixth utterance from the cross God, my
Lord and God, announces the approach of the Christian Sunday. It was finished,
but finished at mid-day of the “jom Jahwe.” Hence the arduous labor, the
exacting strain, and the feverish effort to arrive at the condition of rest was
now completed. Completed by the Son first and completed for the people next.
Hence it is part of this statement which divides the day of regeneration into
segments, that now the sun which shines down upon the “jom Jahwe” must turn.
Henceforth it will not be a matter of laboring arduously in order to achieve a
state of rest, but of a work whose benefits proceed to the outside. It will be
this for the Son first, and for the people next. It is finished: now the Sabbath
of men on earth will no longer be at the end of all their arduous effort, but at
the beginning of the days and the weeks. The recreating procedure of God, the
creative appointment of the new things in the kingdom of heaven changes from an
appointment to an ordering, from an establishing to an elaboration, from a
struggle to introduce the new things to a joyful service in ordering them, and
so this procedure reaches the state of a princely and eschatological enjoyment
of the established and ordained “new” works of grace. Therefore at this turning
point of time the Sabbath is transferred from the last to the first day of the
week, for it is the privilege of earthly realities to be a reflection of
heavenly realities. The Christian Sabbath is being announced beforehand, is
being legally established by this sixth utterance of Christ, and it will be
proclaimed and actually instituted on the day of Christ’s resurrection.

We began, when we wanted to listen to the Speaker of the sixth utterance from
the cross, by paying attention to the three persons of the divine Being. In this
utterance God called to God, the incarnate Word called out to the Father and to
the Holy Spirit. By means of what was otherwise a genuinely human expression,
God called to God. That we have observed and what else was there for us to
observe? The sixth utterance from the cross placed us human beings on display as
empty and very poor. A cry is passing over our heads. God is calling to God with
us, about us, without us. The announcement of the Son to the Father and the
Spirit echoes around us; we hear a trembling, a vox humana, but in the deepest
essence of the call, this utterance going from God to God passes over our heads.
God’s announcements first of all seek Himself. Only after they have found Him
and because they have, are we saved. The redemptive fact has by the power which
is from above delineated its own paths upon the earth. It is finished! Looking
at it this way, I detect the sovereign language of free grace.

Now our second consideration. In this sixth utterance from the cross Christ also
proceeds to occupy the right position overagainst His own. He stands erect and
in His own place, in the commission of the covenant. We gave expression to this
when we set down as the title of our chapter the phrase: Christ in the
Justification. Why that strange term? Because it really is impossible to find an
adequate substitute. The word “justification” is a fixed expression, suggesting
vindication. By it the justifying announcement of God is indicated, by which the
sinner is acquitted of the guilt of sin, and by which his right to eternal life
is proclaimed to him.

Naturally justification in this strict sense was not given the Christ. He has no
sin, hence it cannot be stricken from His record. If we cling to the word in its
strict meaning, we must say: He does not share in the justification, but
distributes it.

Nevertheless Christ — on the other hand —has been made sin, and has been made
curse. He has been condemned by the justice of God, and must by that same
justice be restored to favor. A punishing justice was aroused against Him. Thus,
as the “Ebed Jahwe,” the suffering “servant of the Lord” entered upon His shame.
But now Christ is again being vindicated. He has done what was required of Him.
All the obligations of the covenant of works He can cancel by adequate payment.
He is righteous, also in His own conscience. As for this last remark, He knew
that all the Scriptures had been relived in Him. He says as much. And now He
places Himself overagainst the justice of God and glories in His justification.
The divine order of God’s work is apparent in this too. We are emphatically
reminded of the fact that Christ in His processes of justice first solves them
within Himself, within the four walls of His own spiritual house, and only then
presents the same con­flicts to God and thus by means of influences proceeding
from the outside, again opens the gates, and presents the issue for new
dis­cussion (see pages 305-309). We can detect the same order here. For who
proclaimed Christ as being righteous ? Yes, the sun shone again, but that was
the only thing which said anything for Him, which had a friend­ly voice for Him
But for the rest Christ’s own spirit moved and prompted Him and He assured
Himself that indeed all things were accomplished according to the word of God.
And He as­sured Himself that the Second Adam can look upon His day with
rejoicing, that now He is righteous before God. Only after He has said this to
Himself, and has assured Himself of the right to the Passover does the Father
intervene with an external act: then the Father rends the heavens on Sunday
morning, thrusts Jesus’ grave stone to one side, lets life quiveringly enter
into His body, and then Himself also proclaims the justification, of the Christ.

Thus the least of the Passover had its beginning in the spirit of Christ; there
He righteously arouses Himself and does not sin. The least of the Passover had
to have its beginning in Him. He must believe in His own justification. Not that
it is actually anchored in His own righteousness only; it must also be embraced
by His own faith, and by His own faith be proclaimed. And this is what happened.
That becomes evident to us in the statement from the cross still to follow. In
the sixth He announces that all things are accomplished and the broken covenant
of works can no longer lay any claims upon Him. He says to God: There is no
tension in the atmosphere now; there is no need to struggle now; this matter of
justice is no longer among the uncertain things; no one can charge me with
guilt; the punishment is passed. This is the first element in the justification.
And in the next utterance from the cross, the last one, He accepts His right to
eternal life, vindicates His eternal life as transcending His temporal death,
and says: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. This right to eternal life
is the second element in the justification.

Accordingly, we say that Christ is in the justification. Therefore this sixth
utterance from the cross is one of the historic moments which proclaims and
confirms ours.

Let us rejoice now. It is true that in the fourth statement from the cross He
heard a voice saying: God repents that He made Jesus a king. But in the sixth
utterance His voice declares: See my works; the rejected king certainly may be a
king. He no longer hides Himself behind the vessel. Surely the king is in His
justification. The prophecy is His self-defense: again He is in a state of rest.
He admonishes Himself, saying: Sleep on now, and rest. It is finished: again,
for Himself and for man, there is a perfectum quietivum[1] The Son of man, the
Second Adam, can now speak as man in a condition of perfect rest. Thus He may
enjoy God. Christian dogmatics has often said of Him: He was “not comprehensor,
but viator.” By that is meant: He did not go through life as one who as a calmly
calculating individual was playing a carefully studied role, as one who with a
purely intellectual insight and oversight went through life as a strange,
dispassionate guest, but as a pilgrim here below who constantly experienced as a
new experience that which confronted Him as a new phenomenon.

[1] Perfect time: the rest-imparting thought that the work is finished.

We shall not contradict this eloquent statement taken from the tradition of
dogmatics. In a different form we ourselves have repeatedly stated similar
things. However, we must amplify the statement. The comprehensor, who
intellectually comprehends the relationships of things, and the viator, who
experiences them, are never contrasted to each other in the Christ. The
discrimination is not a separation.

We see that here. He is the comprehensor; for He says: It is finished. Yes, that
much He had ever understood very well. He had never been able to think of it; in
any other way. He laid His stones regularly every day, and never once doubted
Himself. But He is the viator too. That He actually is finished row is a
discovery He makes in a moment of time, and it is a blessed feeling of delight
to Him in this joyous moment; it suffices to make Him shout. He looks at this
marvellous thing in a genuinely human way, being much moved and greatly
perturbed by it. A comprehensor is here. He has seen this moment beforehand in
connection with all of His times. The viator is here. He enjoys this moment as
though He understands it not at all, and as though it comes as a surprise. He is
the comprehensor: He sees the day and the things of the day as by a bird’s eye
view from His sublime heights; He knows the lay of the land, and sees the
various thoroughfares in their essential inter-relationship. He is the viator:
He is as surprised as a person who suddenly turns a sharp corner and discovers
an unexpected panorama of beauty. He is the comprehensor: He reckons in terms of
time. He is the viator: He enjoys His moments, His seconds.

Recently they talk a great deal in the church about “the moment.” By that they
mean that “moment” of life in which we touch on eternity. I think I shall let
them talk, for Christ suffices for me. He has His “moment.” This causes an
interruption, an accent, an emphasis in His rhythm. But in the last analysis it
is included in that rhythm. It is a “selah,” but the psalm goes on. Selah means
a moment; but the psalm was the condition. He is the viator who experiences “His
moment,” but also the comprehensor who definitely knows that this is mid-day of
the Day of the Lord.

Therefore we can say that the “mid-day” of Jahweh was enjoyed with trembling in
the “moment” of Jesus. He confesses to Himself: I know that I have fulfilled all
the Scriptures, and I have cried aloud in order to fulfill the Scriptures even
more. I believe passionately in the Scriptures. And He puts a question to
Himself: What benefit is it to me to believe all this? He knows His own answer:
“That I in myself am righteous before God, and heir of eternal life.” He sings
His evening hymn as a man thirty-three years old but it becomes the hymn of His
justification. Thus He teaches the angels the mid-day hymn of the Lord,[1] and
announces the morning hymn of God.[2] [1] Jahwe: covenant God, regenerator; jom
jahwe, covenant of grace.

[2] God; as creator of the world (before regeneration).

How rich He is, how immeasurably rich! And yet how poor He is. Poor — in the
world’s reckoning. For, strictly interpreted, what does this amount to, this “It
is finished.” Does it give Him anything in common with “great men?” Ah, no. He
did not say “I,” but “it.” The sixth utterance from the cross is not a
conclusion written large in capital letters under an autobiography; it tells us
nothing about Himself. He did not “disclose” Himself. Nor did He “characterize”
Himself. He is by no means “a great man” who drew up His position on top of a
conspicuous rock on the mountain of humanity, there where hardly any human being
can reach Him, where He alone can carry His head in the clouds, shouting victory
to the sun. God be praised, He is not one of the “great men.” He is infinitely
more; He is wholly different. He is the basis, the foundation, the cornerstone
of human life. And hence He speaks so terribly generally now. “It is finished.”
All heretics can read their interpretations into it. And all exhausted little
men when they die can repeat it. This is the same old song: the least of His
brethren can take His utterance from the cross upon his lips (see page 325 ff).
It is finished: that is a word of self-concealment. But in this self-concealment
He is my Saviour now. No Caesar and no king, no philosopher and no great man,
can possibly conclude his discourses as vaguely as this. They all conceive of an
autobiography if they wish to leave a final typifying biography behind. But
Christ has no biography, cannot bear one. As man He is entirely swallowed up of
the work of God. This was “His meat,” not His pose. It was His life, not His
type. The zeal of God’s house has consumed all biographical notice of Him. It is
finished; the work is completed; the seeds have germinated. There is nothing
else to say; the matter of a “biography” is quite out of place. He cannot endure
the thought of a “life of Jesus.”

Therefore He will die in a world which has died in giving birth to “great men.”
The impersonal human nature left with a statement which sounded impersonal. Men
shook their heads; they beat against their breasts, when an earthquake came.
They cannot be frightened by impersonal words, even though these really can be
spoken by no one else and really are a miracle in Him, far more miraculous, in
fact, than an ordinary earthquake. The people left: He had literally said
nothing particularly striking by way of further explanation or justification. It
— it — and that was all. But the reaction in heaven was quite different. When He
ended impersonally in this way, but allowed His next to the last statement to be
borne aloft by the Spirit, they in heaven said: God be praised: the first Adam
has been made a living soul, and the Second Adam a life-giving spirit.


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  CHAPTER 25: 20. CHAPTER 20: CHRIST GOES OUT: GOD GOES ON
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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y Christ Goes Out: God Goes On And when Jesus had cried
with a loud voice, he said, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit: and
having said thus, he gave up the ghost. —Luke 23:46.

THERE are no pauses in the kingdom of heaven. Just as the floor in God’s
work-room has not a single hiatus, so His labor is never interrupted. In the
kingdom of heaven there is haste in everything. When one thing is finished, the
next follows immediately. The one woe passes, and behold the other comes. The
one benefit passes, and the other comes.

Now if this is a law of the kingdom of heaven for everyone who would breathe its
atmosphere how much more must it be a law for the Great Worker of God’s world
labor. Has He pronounced the “finished”? Has His working program been completed
so far? Then there is only one question which is still a pious question to ask:
namely, what now? The Servant has done His work and has also reported it. The
report, too, has come to an end. What can God’s service require beyond this? Has
He said: It is finished? If so, He is immediately caught in His own words, for
He must immediately go on. There are no pauses. Lord, what next? But He Himself
knows, of course, what is pious. He stands ready for the new deed. Notice. This
is what He does: He makes His departure from life the continuation of God’s
work. Jesus’ departure becomes God’s progress. He immediately makes His own
evening hymn the mid-day hymn of God.[1] This struggling Hero does this, and at
once both stands and speaks in the abundant life. That is the life of God. No
one lives in it really save God alone, God, who alone is immortal. And hence He
utters the word of a created human being who stands in the midst of human life;
He speaks aloud, He cries with a loud voice, He utters the word of God’s
faithful day-laborers, for He Himself is God’s servant, who was hired “in the
first hour,” and who will work until the last, and who will have no complaint to
make when the payment is made. He now gives expression to the word of the person
who stands on the mid-day heights of life. He says: Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit.

[1] Reference to the preceding chapter, pp. 456, 462.

Perhaps there is someone who wonders and who asks himself: But is this really
true? We understand each other, of course. The man who wonders in this way has
heard the statement standing at the head of our chapter so often, and has
learned it so well out of the little book in grammar school under the caption
“The seven utterances from the cross” that he immediately attaches the idea of
death to this text. All you have to do, is to ask him: Just what was it that
Jesus said: Into thy hands, Father, I commend my spirit? The answer will come
promptly: That was Jesus’ farewell speech. You can hardly expect Him to say:
That was Christ’s farewell speech; and even less: That was the speech uttered at
Christ’s continuation of the work. No, he will say: Jesus’ farewell address.
Jesus’ last word. It is a particularly good answer, in fact, if he says: That
was the last word spoken by the humiliated Christ. And you will find that this
brother will not easily relinquish his interpretation of the matter. Do not
misunderstand him: he wants to exert all his effort, or rather he wants to exert
no effort at all — for he finds this as natural as can be — in order to preserve
his “edification.” Was it not an edifying word, he asks, the word with which
Jesus took leave, the pia anima? And the association of his thoughts immediately
calls up images of other death beds, the death beds of “dear ones.” He finds
that it is not easy to forget the last words of a dying person, and by means of
an appeal to this universally human experience he would protect this last
utterance from the cross against those who would desecrate its atmosphere, its
dominant tone of delicate tenderness. In other words, the man has staked off the
cross by means of the death beds of dear ones. And now he asks you to pass all
these dying people in order to create the proper mood for reaching the cross,
and for accepting the last statement of Jesus. Now it may be that you want to
protest mildly in your thoughts against this desired mood with a remark that
Jesus does not die on the cross as others do on their beds. For, you add, these
others all whisper, but Jesus cries out “with a loud voice.” Of course, the man
knows that also. He has his answer. That loud voice, he says, proves that Jesus’
death is a deed; the Saviour was not yet exhausted; He could still cry with a
loud voice. He was strong enough to live, you see, but He dies by a deed. The
man has placed the death of Jesus under a caption, and he knows the paragraph in
his book of dogmatics in which he can read about that “loud voice.” Meanwhile,
he has not been shocked by that loud voice, has not been frightened by it, and
he has for the moment lost the other paragraphs of his dogmatics. Hence he likes
to call up that series of death beds for you, in order that you may devote a
consecrated and reverent attention to the word “Jesus.” For our brother simply
cannot be persuaded to relinquish his interpretation. All right, let that loud
voice be a “strange” element in Jesus’ dying, but you certainly cannot deny that
His last utterance from the cross is indeed a moving farewell address; it was a
word which eloquently introduced and set off the moment of death. Would it not
be better for us to extinguish the lights and meditate upon it by candle glow?

No, we are not going to extinguish the lights. We are going to take up our
position in the light of full day for, may we say it with your permission,
brother, God’s sun has also just broken through the clouds. Moreover it is not
true that Jesus’ last utterance spoken in humiliation was intended as a farewell
statement. For Christ is not taking leave. His last word addressed to the people
was a third utterance from the cross, and according to the structure present in
the order of the seven utterances from the cross (see page 130), a farewell
address directed to men at this time would profane the harmony of the series. By
no means is He addressing the people here. He has sent His mother away. Yes, but
surely a dying person characterizes himself by his last words. Again we must say
that this is not “a dying person.” This is the Dying One, and at the same time
the Living One. He has no need for characterizing His death and His life by an
epitome, for He has no characteristic words; He transcends these on the one
hand; and is far below these, on the other hand (see pages 462-63). In the last
analysis He has no words which far transcend other words He has spoken. His last
statement should not have a whit more of attention than do all those others
which He spoke throughout His life. All His words are so full of the law of God,
that they themselves naturally assume the character of that law. Now it happens
that the law is terribly monotonous and uniform. Why? The law has not what
people call an ultimatum. Human beings demand and ask things ten times without
emphasis and without success; and then it does not help to repeat; and then,
trying it an eleventh time, they speak with an ultimatum. Then, they say “they
really mean it.” But the law, the Word of God, never utters such an ultimatum.
God uses the same will in uttering His last word that He uses in uttering His
first. Hence He speaks without any real variation of inflection. It may be that
He employs inflection as a pedagogue to the souls (not because His own attention
fluctuates, but because the attention others give Him changes), but He Himself
does not impart more worth and more strength to one word than to any other that
He speaks.

Christ’s speaking is similarly uninflected, similarly “monotonous.” His last
statement is just as “ordinary” — or extraordinary — as His next to the last
statement, His mid-day utterance, His morning greeting. All of His statements
carry the same weight.

Therefore we may not listen to this last utterance from the cross with a mind
full of the impressions of death beds alluded to a moment ago. To do so, is to
spoil our thinking. We must not explain our Great Dead in terms of the little
dead. What? Do we seek the Dead One among the dead? He is not here; He has
entered into Hades in His own strength. Hence His dying statement must be
interpreted solely in terms of Himself. In terms of Himself — and therefore of
the Scriptures.

Consequently, that last statement does not wish to punctuate or emphasize His
dying. Whoever could think that would be falling into the greatest theological
error. He would be saying that the moment of Christ’s death is of greatest
importance, even though that is doing violence to the fulness of God’s
revelation. The moment of Christ’s death, independent of the course He took in
its coming, means nothing. Independent of that, it has no content. It must be
regarded as an extension of a condition which was, and the beginning of a
condition which follows. Undoubtedly Christ’s dying has its own significance,
but He who would emphasize the dying at the expense, for instance, of Christ’s
preliminary processes of suffering the pain of hell, say, His conscious
surrender, his permanent grief, has not understood essentially Christ’s dying
and death at all. True, His death sheds His blood; but His giving His blood was
also of the greatest importance. And the giving of that blood, if we set it
rightly, took Him thirty-three years.

We just said that this last statement from the cross can be understood only in
terms of the Scriptures which reveal Him to us. And what are we doing but
following the Scriptures when we say that the last statement from the cross is
not a dying utterance but a word of life. You know very well that this last
statement is — to put it that way—a quotation. It is taken from Psalms 31:5;
Psalms 31:7-8 :

Into thy hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

* * *

I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: For thou hast considered my trouble;
Thou hast known my soul in adversity; And hast not shut me up into the hand of
the enemy: Thou hast set my feet in a large room. Is this a “typical” dying
utterance? Is this the kind of thing which those people whose death beds we have
been asked to visit a moment ago are wont to whisper? No, you feel it at once.
The person who is speaking here, is a man standing in the midst of life, who is
rejoicing in the day of His deliverance. He is not a man standing in the narrow
gate of death, in the cleft of the rock of His dying, for — He has just been set
in a large place. But this is a new discovery, someone says, a discovery of a
later time. That is not true. Even the old Jews understood it in this way. The
remark has been made that these verses of Psalms 31 were prescribed in the
rabbinical literature as a short evening prayer. Pupils in the schools had to
pray this prayer before they went to bed, and in general every Israelite was
advised to use it as an evening petition.[1] [1] Strack-Billerbeck,Kommentaar
zum NeuenTestament, volume 2,1924, p. 269. But even if the Jews had not
understood it in this way, we know that Christ Himself always understands His
own psalms perfectly. By this we do not mean to say that He cannot use a
statement derived from the Psalms, or some other Scriptural quotation, in such a
way that it surprises us or causes us to wonder for a moment. On the contrary,
Christ repeatedly in His Biblical references presents an interpretation of a
statement in the Old Testament which far transcends the meaning of the poet, or
of some other Biblical writer, which far exceeds the meaning of what such an
author consciously had in mind. Every statement which Christ quotes becomes much
more eloquent in His mouth than it had been on the lips of any other. He gets
everything out of such a statement that is in it; He taps the whole of its
riches. But now, the other side of the matter. When Christ quotes a Scriptural
passage He never cuts loose from the core, the quintessence, the elemental sense
in which that quoted passage was originally employed. Christ always says more,
but He never says something different than His poets and prophets of the Old
Testament said. Accordingly, if we can indicate that the poet of Psalms 31 was
not in a specific sense thinking of death, when he composed this prayer, but of
life, then we are thereby proving that the last utterance of Christ from the
cross cannot be said in the first place to refer to Jesus’ approaching death. As
we do this, we must keep the assumption in the foreground that the last
statement from the cross in its profoundest significance must cling to the
elemental reality which was the essence of the psalmist’s poem. If the question
of death-or-life is a subordinate one in Psalms 31, and if God’s progress with
His life and with His power is the predominant theme, then that must also be
true of the passage cited in our text. Now it simply needs a little work to
point out that such is actually the case in this Psalm. The poet of Psalms 31 is
not thinking of the certainty of death. He is petitioning God, in fact, to
prolong his life, to break the counsel of the enemies, and to protect him. He
knows that he will certainly continue to enjoy the favor of Jahweh, and
accordingly he sings a hymn of life. Now this poet says that he commits his
spirit into God’s hands. By this he means that through a conscious act of faith,
his eye fixed on the life-work he has still to continue, standing at a milestone
which encourages him to go on, he, in his inner being, in the very basis of his
life, commends his spirit to his Creator for governance and direction. It is a
statement uttered not at the end, but at one of a number of milestones on his
way. A moment ago we pointed to the active deed involved in Christ’s committing
his case to God (see chapter 12, pp. 262-263). Similar activity, purposiveness,
and consciousness, is present in the statement of Psalms 31. The poet knows that
his enemies are lying in wait to take his life. Overagainst that situation he
convinces himself by an act of faith that his life is in God’s hands, and that
consequently all those threats cannot cause him to doubt for a moment that his
life will be prolonged for further service of God. Knowing that, he turns aside
from his enemies, announces that the future is by no means uncertain to him, and
performs that act of faith by which he places his life in its deepest essence in
God’s hand.[1] In other words, he does not let himself be hampered by the
enemies. They cannot really touch him. He simply goes on his way, and commends
himself, looking to the life still coming, to the Father.

[1] The word “spirit” in Psalms 31 must be taken to mean “soul,” and this word,
in turn, is to be explained as “life,” or the principle of life. More than that
we may not try to find in it.

Hence this sense of life which is the theme of the poet of Psalms 31 must also
be the theme of the last utterance from the cross. That, and all that is
elementally related to it. In the first place, then, there is the active deed of
faith. Christ’s word also is full of this thought. If we compare the several
usages which the Greek has for the word “to commit” (“commit my spirit”) as
found in the New Testament, we will see that in every case it means a conscious,
active assertion of faith, in which, with faith in God, one commends some
specific desire to Him, or leaves the decisive turn of one’s life in His hands.
Thus we read of committing a certain task to someone (Luke 12:48), or of
committing elders of the souls of believers to the Lord (Acts 14:23; 1 Peter
4:19), or of commending a number of Christians to God and to the word of His
grace (Acts 20:32), or, similarly, of entrusting and transmitting the content of
preaching to faithful witnesses (2 Timothy 2:2), or of enjoining a command (1
Timothy 1:18). Christ, therefore performs an active deed. Yes, now we remember,
He spoke in a “loud voice.” A second matter now demands our attention. Just as
the poet of Psalms 31, by committing Himself and all his own into God’s hands
was virtually denying the assumed power of the enemies, and denying that they
had any determinative influence on his life, so Christ also does the same. The
enemies think that they have determined the course of the life of the Nazarene,
but the faith of Jesus Christ says that God determines its course. He is just in
every way. He has just humiliated the friends in His next to the last utterance
from the cross. He spoke to God with them, above them, without them (see chapter
19, p. 455). Now the enemies are humiliated. He speaks with them, beyond them,
without them. Now He raises the hymn of His continuation. They say: This is the
end. He does not even look up, but announces to God: At this milepost, I want to
pause a moment and direct a petition to Thee, as men are wont to do at
milestones. Then we will go on together: Father, the work will go on.

Now if we relate the things we have gained in the preceding paragraphs to the
whole, we have the significance of the last utterance from the cross. That which
echoed from the cross was not the dull sound of death, but the sonorous song of
life. “Ring clearly, ring loud,” hymn of life. The enemies think to have put Him
to death but He who is here acts as though they did not exist. He negates them
in a more sovereign way than the author of the psalm. Calmly and peacefully He
says His evening prayer (see chapter 20, p. 471), He falls asleep until
tomorrow, Father, until the new day. He pauses for a moment, prays, and then
waits the morrow. “My times are in Thy hand.” This translated into the language
of fulfillment means: “My Passover seasons are in Thy hand.” Just as the poet of
Psalms 31 at bottom simply wishes to say that he is going to continue on his way
with his eyes fastened on God, so Christ calls from the cross: I shall simply go
on, my eyes fixed upon God. This last statement, therefore, is not an emphasis
of His dying, but quite the contrary, an affirmation of uninterrupted life. He
is not singing a song of death to Himself, but without taking His attention from
His death — we noticed that He was accommodating Himself to it! — and hence
without suppressing or concealing the fact of His death, He proclaims the onward
march of life. He puts the moment, the particular moment, in its proper position
among all His “seasons.” Very simply He goes on His way, for He has understood
God. Therefore God will take care of His spirit. He does not here, in the face
of an inevitable death, try to find escape in the life of God, but He publicly
declares that He will assert God’s life in everything which happens, and that
therefore He in no sense needs “a refuge.” No, brother, you who have just
returned from “a” death bed, you have not grasped the central significance when
you, noting His loud utterance, reverently say: His death really is a deed. For
if only we are willing to explain the vigor of His voice in the light of the
vigor of His thoughts we can paraphrase His statement thus: His deed in this
moment is to die; and He does this deed. His activity is primary; the dying is
secondary. This is not a taking refuge in God, because He who flees “must die.”
This is a service of God, and hence a dying, because the act of dying is
scheduled for the program of this day. He is incomparably great: by faith He
bears His capacity for work up to the moment of His dying and thus simply eats
His daily meat. His meat is to do the will of the Father.

This, then, was Christ’s last statement in the state of humiliation. Is it not a
meager manifestation, and a humble show? Michael is humiliating himself with the
humble, and walks humbly before God and men. How very humble He is in his
speaking. Oh yes, we know very well that the last word immediately becomes
exceedingly great if we explain it according to the hermeneutics of as-if. For
if we adopt that manner, we will treat it as if it were simply a word which He
spoke, as though He spoke it first, as if it had nothing to do with an old man
of the past, with the author of Psalms 31. But do you not find it to be true
also that it is best in the moment of dying not to give expression to these
as-if’s? His statement simply was not spoken by Him the first time it was
spoken; it is a statement by and for all of us. That is the truth. But not
everyone likes to believe that it is. We frequently meet with gross
inconsistencies. The same people who would like to conduct us past the death
beds of good Christians to put us “in the mood,” forget all those ordinary
people the moment they think they have come close to the Christ. Once they are
in the proper mood they listen to His dying statement, continue to look up to
Him, but then remain standing with their backs turned to those ordinary people.
And they think at every word they hear Him say: that is a statement of the
Messiah, the Son of God, and that, accordingly, is the sublimest, the greatest,
the most edifying possible of statements. Accordingly you find them saying all
kinds of eulogistic things about this last utterance from the cross. In order to
explain it they labor with weighty concepts. They begin to philosophize, or to
theologize about the concept “spirit,” or about the notion of “committing” or
“commending” the spirit. They have immediately forgotten the common people.

Now it is far from us to deny that weighty words are appropriate here. For it is
true indeed that a Scriptural statement in the mouth of Christ always receives
its full significance, and we are glad to acknowledge that the use of the word
“spirit” was not unadvised. We admit that coming as it does from Christ’s lips
it means not. only natural life, but everything in Him that is conscious, that
has a will, that motivates Him. And we also confess, consequently, that He
commends Himself to the Father with His whole conscious life, with His whole
mind, and with all His motive powers and drives. But even if we accept all this,
we need subtract nothing from the contention that the man who would excite the
proper emotions in us by leading us past “ordinary” dead people, before we come
to this great Dead, is quite inconsistent. For as we mentioned before, the
moment this person arrives at the cross, he forgets all those other dead. Just
that is his mistake; he suffers loss because of his own weak point. And, on the
contrary, it is we, who have refused to come to Jesus’ cross through a proper
“mood” it is we, who wanted to see the cross of Christ in its proper light,
independently of all those other “cases of death” who, listening attentively to
the utterance of Jesus’ mouth, naturally become concerned about all those other
death beds, and all the “cases of death,” of the other believers. We make this
beautiful discovery: Jesus’ dying statement is so very common that anyone who
believes in God can and must repeat it after Him. Look, now all those death beds
return to our line of vision, now, that is, when we look upon them in the light
of Jesus. Moreover, it is not only death beds which we see before us, Please be
quiet about all. your “escape” sentiment, the kind of sentiment which can excite
tears only in the presence of death beds and chambers of mourning. For besides
these nebulous dying chambers, all rooms of study in which faith is struggling
against the arrogance of unbelief, all shops, all hospitals, all battlefields,
all rooms of prayer, in short all places in which a human spirit seeks
reinforcement in God now have their place in the line of vision of the dying
Saviour. All these are included in the circle drawn by Christ’s last statement.
He shows me those dying people, yes, but especially the living ones, and He
tells me: Dying, I am one of them. For this is the miracle: Christ chooses a
word which anyone can and must choose, and thus becomes one with the common man
in His death. His last utterance from the cross is His last concealment.

We do well to think soberly about this. If we had had to choose a word which
would be suitable to place on the lips of the dying Jesus, would we not have
chosen a statement from Isaiah, from him who is called the eagle among the
prophets? Or if not from Isaiah, certainly from messianic prophecies in general,
or from a typically messianic psalm. But Christ chooses what we would call a
“very ordinary psalm” one which in no respect is more, or more directly,
Christological than any other text in the Old Testament. He chooses a Psalm
which the theologians have not included in their lists of messianic psalms. The
evening prayers of the little children of Israel and the dying cry of my Lord
and my God — both these use the same text. We have found the child wrapped in
swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. We have found the man bound in the
prattle of children, and kneeling beside a little Jewish boy as he prays at his
cradle. Together they repeat their evening prayers. The Lord’s Prayer became a
child’s prayer after Him, but the form of His dying statement became a
children’s prayer without Him. Good people, everyone can repeat what He
expressed in His deepest humiliation.

There is a great difference, is there not, between this and that which He said
to the Sanhedrin when He manifested Himself as the Son of man whom they should
hereafter see seated upon the throne of God and coming with the clouds.[1] A
great difference between this and that which He said only a few hours ago in His
last service of the Word to the women of the city (see page 55). Yes, indeed, He
is the Son of man, in speaking so positively and preaching so powerfully. But
now He has condescended to the language of the Christian tanners of Thyatira, of
the recruits of His army, of the toothless women in the hospital ward of the old
people’s home. For once we had better omit the capital letter: he is the son of
man. In the last analysis this statement means nothing more than: man. Not, it
is true, that this name, just as every “quotation”—see what was said above — has
a very specific and complete content when He uses it, but whoever has learned to
understand Him in the light of that fulfillment will see Him as He is now in His
emptiness, in His kenosis, in His concealment. It is almost enough to make one
weep, seeing the dying Jesus this way, and leaving not as much as a single word
which is suitable for embroidering on a banner. He is always difficult. He
always keeps us a long way from that plane of vision from which Constantine the
Great could find such beautiful inscriptions for a banner; for instance: in hoc
signo vinces. He does things so very commonly.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 7, p. 138 f. In terms of what we have said, we
cannot agree with those who in this connection allude to John 10:18, where
Christ says: “No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself. I
have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Some say that
Christ by crying aloud in committing His spirit into the Father’s hand by His
own act is proving to the world that He has the power to lay down His own life.
We do not agree with this opinion. Naturally we admit the fact that Christ
voluntarily and in virtue of His own power laid down His life and commended His
spirit to the Father. But we deny that He is at this moment saying that to the
world. For the seventh word on the cross also represents concealment. Can anyone
say that the poet of Psalms 31 also had the power to lay down his life? Do we
mean that the death of Christ is not a deed? By no means; but we believe this
not so much because of the letter of His dying utterance, as because of the fact
that He at this time gave expression to a word of life, a word which He can use
every day, and which He as a faithful interpreter of Psalms 31, and as one
persisting in prayer, we may believe, prayed and said several times. Christ
could make this statement as often as He was about to fall asleep, as often as
He had to preach a sermon, perform a miracle, conduct an argument, or flee from
persecutors because His hour had not yet come. How often do we not read: “His
hour had not yet come.” In another form, that is what Psalms 31 also says: “My
times are in Thy hand.” In such critical hours as those in which Christ
consciously prepared for sleep or moved from one region of the country to
another, passing those who cast their stones and those who drew their swords
against Him, He gave Psalms 31 its normal explanation: Into Thy hands, Father, I
commend my spirit. For the situation of the poet was also fulfilled in Him at
such times. Again, therefore: Not the letter of the word “to commit” but the
spirit in which He utters this word, the spirit and the letter together make it
clear to us that He continues His deeds by the work of His death.

No, do not overlook this strong will to conceal in this dying utterance. Now it
becomes our turn to say to the brother who spoke to us a moment ago: Revere the
attitude of this dying man. Who can say? Perhaps Mary and John prayed precisely
the same prayer that same Friday night before they went to bed. It may be that
bystanders caught up that last statement and told it to the mother and the
disciple. And then you need but give free reign to your fancy a moment in order
to picture this situation before you: Someone tells of the last statement of
Christ; a second adds that it is a text from the holy books; a third goes to
look up the text and finds it; they read the psalm in John’s house; he is giving
fitting attention to the needs of the intimate group. They sing and pray this.
Naturally all this is mere imagination; we know that. But we also know that it
seeks nothing extraordinary. Psalms 31 was very suitable for the
house-congregation of the scattered sheep of Jesus. When you have understood
well that Jesus’ dying utterance issues from His ministration of the office for
three years, you will appreciate that Christ’s death is the deed, and that it
seeks a prolongation of everything which has happened in that which still must
happen. By this last utterance He relates His dying to the feast of the
Passover. He repeated the psalm in His prayer when He assumed His office. Then
He was driven of the Spirit into the wilderness — to meet the devil. Now again
He repeats that prayer. Immediately He is driven of the Spirit into death —to
meet the angels of God.

However, it is only in His thoughts that He connects Good Friday and Easter. Had
it not been so, He would no longer have been in concealment. He conceals from
all unbelieving people the role of the book of the pure reason of God, according
to which His death has its extension in life, its continuation in the Passover.
He has more Rights than anyone else, for He has fulfilled the covenant of works;
nevertheless He declares Himself now to be a needy one. He is in the
justification, He has the right to eternal life, right to all power in heaven
and on earth. His rights are sealed in the sixth utterance on the cross: It is
finished. But this sixth utterance is not followed by a demand for His wages. It
is followed by a prayer for protection. Accordingly, He commits His spirit into
God’s hands. No, He does it in the manner of a child. He commends His spirit
into the Father’s hands. Now the hand of God when alluded to in the Bible is
always a figure of power and strength; it is a figure of strength over which
human beings have no command. Thus He comes utterly emptied and without any
manifestation of sovereignty at all, to surrender Himself to the Father. He
surrenders Himself according to the spirit, and that in the last analysis means
that He sinks back to the beginning of creation. Now He hovers about in space.
The Will, the Good Pleasure, blows Him, the created being, wherever God listeth.
As He Himself sees it He is being absolutely surrendered to the highest, to the
only Sovereign. For that reason He now speaks again in the imperfect tense. For
the perfectum of the sixth utterance, He expresses the imperfect of the seventh.
We pointed out a moment ago that the perfectum (see chapter 19, p. 456) —
perfect time — refers to the condition of rest, that it manifests the completed
task, that it designates the soul as being in a state of peace, and as being, to
that extent, an image of God’s own peace. It is finished — that is what He said
then. But now He utters His trembling word in the imperfect tense.[1] Now He
stands at the threshold of a new beginning. He must take up the thread of His
life again. He assigns His spirit to the Father’s hands. Hardly has the Servant
done His task, before He asks a new assignment. He had reached His milestone.
Perfectum. Now He goes on around the bend. Here a new vista is opened before
Him. God, be gracious to my soul,[2] but I must go on . . . God cannot wait, not
a day, not an hour.

[1] In all the versions of the text.

[2] In the sense of Question 12, Heidelberg Catechism.

Say now, is not this last utterance of the Christ a judgment? It is a judgment
by which He condemns every biased accentuation of His dying which would do
injustice to the spiritual process which has issued in His death, but without
which His dying would not be a positive thing. Precisely by uttering a final
word which had been in His heart also each time He reached a milestone in His
onward march, He proves that His departure is God’s progress. The Nazarene dies;
but the Creator of heaven and of earth simply goes on. The wheel of the
triumphant chariot of God moves steadily on; and God’s onward marches do not
pause in front of the funeral procession of the Nazarene. Where is the schedule,
where the program of the continuous kingdom of heaven? A great significance lies
in the fact that Christ utters a word of life in His dying hour, for He
confesses by that means that He is already in the ascendancy. He professes in
this way that He is already emerging from the lowest shafts of humiliation, and
that He, having arisen from “the second death,” now is already ascending to
heaven. On His way from hell to heaven, He must do what every pilgrim does: He
strengthens Himself in His God, confesses His God, and performs the act of the
moment. The statement He uttered also contains a judgment for us. How often the
church marvels at the “circumstances” surrounding Christ’s dying, without — and
this is the beginning of the error — relating the manner of Jesus’ death
organically to the course of Christ’s life. Can it really be that after so many
centuries of Christendom, after these hundreds of years of preaching, we are no
farther than — a heathen? The heathen to whom we are referring at present is the
centurion, captain of a hundred. He paid careful attention to this strange
victim of the cross, he reflected sensitively on the manner of His death, and
thus came to say that this was something most unusual.[3] He brought it as far
as lay within his power; he had been allowed to see the dying, but the life had
not given him the key by which to explain the riddle of the death. Alas, we
often resemble this poor pagan. We permit ourselves to be moved by the manner of
the death of Jesus and, whether we know all “Pieta’s” or not a single one, it is
often true that we look upon His death independently of His life. Then we are
much perturbed. But we have no more than that pagan had. May God at such times
be gracious to us all.

[3] This will be discussed further later.

Yes, indeed, He judges us. He judges our instituting stages in the Roman
Catholic Churches, and seven Lenten weeks in our Protestant churches. He does
not condemn our watching and our listening to His suffering. We can never do
that too much. But He condemns our attitudes. Seven times we are moved by the
dying Saviour, but we are not moved by the living Kurios another seven times. It
is that which He objects to in us. And if you are in dead earnest about the
assurance that the last wish of a dying person is sacred to you, do what He
commanded you, and repeat His words after Him. Give expression to a statement of
life, to a living utterance, for that is also the way He concluded His
preliminaries. As for the rest, He desires greatly the hour in which He may draw
the curtain to His last act. As He mounts the throne for the Last Judgment, He
will say to the Father for the last time: Father, into Thy hands I commend my
created spirit.

Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit . . . And now almost all people most
naturally say: Thereupon the curtain fell. But He said: The curtain rises to the
new act. The angels take up their positions to look on. Then He stood in the
full light, He, the dramatis Persona.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 26: 21. CHAPTER 21: CHRIST PASSING OUT AND ON
========================================================================

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E Christ Passing Out and On And having said
thus, he gave up the ghost. And he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. —John
19:30 b; Luke 23:46 b.

THEN The Saviour entered into His death. He had drawn up a careful covenant with
death. When His hour should sometime come, it had said, then death should take
Him. When death proved unable to do this, He took Himself, and made a careful
covenant with Himself. The hour had come; it was high time. He had asked His
God: What next? And the answer had been: Let the body be broken, for so it is
meet for Thee to fulfill all righteousness. And then: Thereupon enter in as the
perfectly faithful servant; enter into the joy of Thy Lord.

Two emphases, therefore. The first is that Christ’s dying was His duty; the
second, that, in case He fulfilled that duty, His dying would be the entering
into His glory.

Accordingly, it was a matter of necessity that He die. We do not wish to discuss
that at great length now, inasmuch as we have formerly analyzed what place in
our estimation the shedding of the blood of Christ and the disruption of the
body takes in the whole of the history of revelation.[1] There are only a few
things, therefore, we would still touch upon.

[1] See especiallyChrist on Trial, chapter 21, pp. 410-420. The first thing that
strikes us is that we do not know what it means to die. Death is a riddle, and
it remains a riddle even at Golgotha. Just what Jesus’ death was is not
definitely indicated; it is pictured to us only from one side. Twice His death
is called a “giving up of the ghost.” With that we must be satisfied. He
surrendered Himself according to the spirit. He surrendered Himself together
with what His manifestation in history determined and together with the
self-revelation which this historical manifestation implied. In other words, He
surrendered Himself essentially. He gave Himself up completely. In the book of
Ecclesiastes dying is called the returning of the spirit to God who gave it.
This is also the thing of primary importance in the death of Christ. However,
there is this difference now: His returning was His own deed. He did His
returning in the spirit. His spirit moved Him to return. We cannot explain this,
we cannot describe it, we can suggest nothing further about it. We must simply
accept it in faith, just as His having been born by His own deed is an article
of faith to us.

He caused His spirit to return. By this act His task as a servant was completed.
His death was determined by His own act. He allowed death, the great robber, to
come upon Him, and He hated all forms of robbery. But the Father had said that
it was necessary, Surely, nothing is more an act of the servant, than to give
the spirit into the Father’s hands without reservation, By this act, man returns
to the origins of his life; he allows himself to be dissolved. As long as we
have not surrendered the spirit to Him, we have not surrendered ourselves. Hence
Christ completes His life as a servant by placing His spirit into the hands of
the Father again. He risks it with His God; He lets Himself be led back to the
elemental beginning of all things. He undergoes the great re vision; His
determinants may be changed. God must begin and may begin assigning these to Him
anew. He risks, because he who is convinced of his innocence, knows no “risk”
(see chapter 19, pp. 452-453). This surrender of the spirit, this placing
oneself at the disposal of the Father once more, is a reference to His descent
into hell. When He suffered the pain of hell, He was fundamentally disrupted, He
was shattered within, and completely ruined without. He preserved His body, yes.
But that was neither a favor, nor a victory. It was simply an obligation. That
body had to keep Him as a living and working being within the bounds of time
(see chapter 1: pp. 24, chapter 6: 112, chapter 17: 399-400, chapter 18:
431-433) Then He tasted of death in the flesh. Then He tasted death as complete
man. And then He experienced that being in the body is by no means the same as
being alive. At that time, therefore, Christ had been dead. He had also endured
this death in His body, for His whole human existence suffered the affliction of
hell. The flesh, too, had been consumed in God’s anger, and forsaken. How? That
we do not know. The things of hell are unknown to us. But now that He in His
entire humanity has tasted of death as the “Second Adam” and has arisen from
that death again, still aware that His body is with Him, now He also gives that
body to the Father in order that in this way He may entirely submit Himself to
the Judge. The ruination must be complete. First He was completely organized and
united in His entirety; now He is completely scattered and disrupted. First He
tasted of death; now struggles with it.

Accordingly, it is the time now to leave that body by surrendering the spirit.
Before this it was not His privilege to do so. If Christ had desired the “first”
— for Him the last — death before the “second” — for Him the first — He would
have withdrawn Himself from the pain of hell, from the essence of punishment.
Then such a longing to leave the body in order to escape from the affliction of
hell would in principle have been the equivalent of the cry of the unwilling:
mountains fall upon us; hills cover us. For such will be the cry of that man
presently, to whom God does not give the instrument in which the eternal plague
must be endured. But Christ did not want to surrender His spirit while suffering
the pain of hell. He did not summon the robber against the will of God, the God
who beat and buffetted Him. He continued to bear His flesh, even under the pangs
of hell. But now that everything is finished He gives up the ghost and dies at
the right time. Thus He is the perfect servant who completely puts Himself at
the disposal of God. He kept His instruments together when He had to work with
them. Now that the work is done, He turns them in. There are no trophies today.
O Father of heroes, man does not hold his spirit in his own hands. The Father
says: Now it is time to return to me who have sent you. And He simply answers:
It is well. In this sense, the dying of Christ is the natural consequence of His
entire death (the suffering of hell), and of His whole life of obedience. It
represents a continuation of the task. It is the extreme form of
self-humiliation. For he who has thoroughly conquered the enemy, and who then
still allows that enemy to beat and buffet him before the public eye. he
certainly has absolutely humiliated himself. But that is what Christ did in His
death.

Nevertheless everything which Christ does actively is at the same time a passive
surrender to the force which masters Him. The active obedience (disposing
Himself to His death) immediately becomes converted into a passive obedience
(being disposed of). Thus the death of Christ becomes a sacrifice. We shall not
repeat here that it is impossible to look upon the death of Christ in the body
as a sacrifice as long as we pay attention to His dying alone. Behind the moment
of giving up the ghost lies that whole long course of His eternal death, and the
whole of His pulsing, conscious life. Only in terms of that can we, and may we,
speak of His dying. But after His conscious deed of surrender, and after His
persistent decision to surrender Himself, a decision which He maintained
overagainst every temptation and trial, the disruption of His flesh in bodily
death becomes the completion of the passion, regarded now as a sacrifice. This
does not mean that the surrender of His spirit in the moment of death is the
whole offer or the essential part of the offer. No, we do better to regard it as
the crown of the offer, as the last act of the sacrifice.

Now we are touching upon a problem which has great significance. What is the
significance, the legal significance, of the death of our body? Is the essential
part of the punishment, speaking generally, contained in this physical death
which God exacts as a penalty for sin?

We shall do well to calmly ask ourselves: Where do you read that this is so? The
question itself makes us look up Genesis 3, the chapter in which the first sin
and its punishment is described. Read in that chapter about God’s penalizing
utterance, and then ask yourself with what the penalty of “returning to the
dust” is compared. What other penalties are of equal importance? You will find,
if you limit yourself to human life, that this is the case. The death of the
body[1] is there named the equivalent of the travail of a mother at the birth of
her child, and the anxiousness of the father in the struggle for existence (the
thorns and the thistles) (Genesis 3:16-17; Genesis 3:19). Now no one will say
that this is the very heart and core of the punishment of sin. Look into the
outer recesses of hell and you will at once confess that there the essence of
punishment takes place. As compared with the punishment of hell, the travail of
a mother, and the perspiring of a father amounts to nothing. Nevertheless, those
two are made the equivalent of the death indicated by “returning to the dust.”
Is it not for this reason as simple as the day to remark: Surely, then, the
returning to the dust cannot be the essential climax of the punishment. That is
not the unique essence of the penalty. The essence, the reality of it, is hell.
The reality of it is death in the fullest sense, the death which in general is
threatened in Genesis 2:17 : In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die.

[1] This means something different from “being dead”even in the body, for that
is the punishment of hell.

You see then that according to the Biblical trend of ideas the “separation of
soul and body”[2] is not an essential part of the penalty of sin. True, the
necessity of this separation exists as long as the utterance of Genesis 3:19 is
in force according to God’s direction. But this separation is not absolute; it
is relative; it is not inherent; it is accidental; it is not a demand of
punishment as such, but only of the later more specifically described manner of
God’s exercise of punishment. Separation of the soul and body belongs to today,
but is an injunction which may be lifted tomorrow.

[2] We are following here the familiar expression, plain to all, which however
does not lay any claim to scientific accuracy. This is not the place to insert a
treatise on the concept of “the soul.”

If we admit, nevertheless, that the threat of death indicated in Genesis 2:17
also includes the eternal death,[3] death in its fullest import, complete
death,[4] then it follows that if this penalty had been meted out immediately,
fallen men would be condemned according to soul and body, would be given up to
“eternal death.” Then they would have fallen, not spiritually alone but bodily
also into the same affliction which hell will manifest after the final judgment.

[3] Dr. J. Ridderboe, “De boom des levens,”Geref.Theol. Tijdschr.,March, 1919,
p. 385.

[4] Dr. H. Bavinck,Geref.Dogm.,volume 3, pp. 159, 160.

However, something else is the case. No one can deny that after the fall the
threat of complete death was not immediately realized. “An element intervened
between these two by means of which this penalty was tempered and postponed.”[5]
Immediately afterthe fall grace intervened, and this now dominates history. God
is busy realizing the plan of redemption; and in order to make the fulfillment
of this possible, He postpones the complete realization of His threat, until
such time as the process of redemption has completed its course in the
consummation of the ages. Only when that consummation has come will that
condition be realized which in Genesis 2:17 is pointed out as the complete
death.

[5] Dr. H. Bavinck,ibid,p. 159.

Regarded in this way the announcement of the penalty before the fall takes on
the character of an announcement of the one great penalty of sin, whereas all
prediction of punishment after the fall must be regarded and explained in the
light of the fact that God now indicates in what way He plans to accomplish His
end in history. In other words, the essential punishment was indicated before
the fall; the accidental punishment was indicated after the fall. Before the
fall the theme; after the fall the realization of it in history. Before the
fall, the penalty (complete death) was announced, nothing more. But after the
fall the revelation of the postponement of the real sentence was announced and
hence everything which is said after the fall must be seen in the light of and
explained in terms of that postponement.[1]

[1] Dr. H. Bavinck says: (volume 3, 160) “Sin deserves nothing short of the
complete death. All other penalties which actually entered in, and which were
announced after the fall . . . assume . . . that God still has another plan in
mind for humanity and the world, and that He therefore allows these to exist in
His long suffering.” And: “All the penalties which enter in after sin have ... a
twofold character. They are not purely . . . penalties, . . . but also means of
grace.” This interpretation puts the statement “to dust thou shalt return”
(Genesis 3:19), which is often thoughtlessly quoted, in quite a different light.
The statement was made after the fall. This, too, therefore is an item on the
program of the history of the world, as that history will be “in the sign” of
long suffering and grace.

If the threat of death were contained in Genesis 2:17 (before sin) we should
have to regard the “returning to dust,” the disruption, the breaking of the
body, as a real part of the quintessential punishment, the punishment in itself.
Now, however, we cannot regard the destruction of the body in temporal death as
anything other than an act of God which intervened later. It is a condemnation,
of course, to those who are not in Christ. But for God it serves only to make it
possible for that complete penalty to realize itself in the new bodily existence
so many centuries after the first announcement. That will take place when
history has been completed and redemption perfected. That will take place when
it is possible to apply it to complete human beings. It is an act of God which
opens the way for the battle of God in Christ against sin and against death; and
this, in turn, is a battle which makes death an onward march to (eternal) life
for those who are born again.

Surely he who can agree with the statement[1] “that Genesis 3:19 does not
announce the complete realization of the threatened penalty but tempers and
postpones it,”[2] cannot regard the “separation of soul and body” as anything
else than a “temporal severance of the bond between soul and body which
intervened for the sake of grace in Christ,” necessary only in order to present
all people, and these in the body, before the judgment seat of Christ
simultaneously. “Dying the death” (Genesis 2) is the descent into complete
punishment. “Returning to the dust” may be compared to a person’s entering the
reception room until such time as the judge opens the session at which the real
execution of punishment will take place. This interim will have lost its purpose
the moment the judge has ascended His throne, and stands ready for the final act
of judgment after the ripening of the history of the world.[3] As soon as Christ
will have completed His Messianic work of grace the reason for maintaining
“temporal death” will be gone. Hence the people who are still alive at the last
day will not die, but will be changed in an instant of time and will be
transplanted to “the other world” in a moment. They will immediately be
withdrawn from the “forms” of temporal existence. These will not experience the
curse “death.” For the real, the essential, punishment of sin is the “second
death.” It is the suffering of the relentless wrath of God in body and in soul,
the suffering of hell.

[1] Dr.Η. Bavinck,op. cit.,volume 3, p. 188.

[2] Dr. A. Kuyper,Locus de Peccato, p. 97. Dr. Kuyper cannot agree with this
interpretation. According to himGenesis 2:17was immediately fulfilled by the
spiritual death of Adam. Surely, however, the concept “death” inGenesis 2:17is
broader than that.

[3] See my article, “De ondergang van den Antichrist,”Geref. Theol. Tijdschrift,
Vol. 21, 2.

Now there is one question which will not be suppressed. If the disruption of
soul and body — the so-called “first death” — does not belong to the essential
nature of punishment, why did Christ, after He had already in body and soul
suffered the essential penalty and the pains of hell, still have to undergo that
temporal death? Would it not have been possible for Him too, to have been
transformed in a moment, and in that way have been instantly transported to the
heavenly blessedness, instantly withdrawn from the earth without the preliminary
breaking of the body?

Various reasons may be given to indicate that this would have been impossible.
In the first place we must proceed in this matter on the assumption that the
dominant idea here is the idea of the offer. The offer consists of two elements:
first, that of the breaking of the body; and, second, that of the voluntary
breaking of the body.

It is the second element which provides the explanation in this case. Plainly we
cannot deduce the inevitability of Christ’s dying in temporal life from the law
according to which the holy sacrifice had to be broken, if we do not introduce
other factors into the discussion. If seen in the proper light the suffering of
the affliction of hell is in itself a living in a condition of brokenness
according to the body. Even though no one can speak specifically about the
suffering in hell, we can deduce from what is told us in the Bible that lost man
also suffers in the body, suffers death in the body. The body of the lost
creature in hell is also a basis of operation for the devastating wrath. His
whole life there represents personal disruption; the wrath penetrates
everything, saturates his whole life, and every single form of his existence.
Hence when Christ endured the affliction of hell, in Gethsemane first and upon
Golgotha later — during the three hours of darkness — He also allowed His flesh
to be broken. By that we mean that then also He suffered in the flesh, was
disrupted in the flesh, and offered Himself there in the flesh, with the flesh,
and by means of the flesh.

However this did not suffice. The offer as a sacrifice had not yet fully
realized itself in this way. For the suffering of the affliction of hell had
been compulsory. Perhaps someone will say that this also holds true of the death
of His body in the moment of His dying. That is quite true but for that reason
we must add that the suffering of the affliction of hell came with an
overwhelming coercion. Christ could not do anything about it even if He had
wanted to. When God forsook Him He was oppressed by a burden which weighed more
heavily than His human strength could sustain. It is for this reason that the
church confesses that His divinity had to support Him. When He suffered the
affliction of hell a force accrued to Him which struck deeper wounds, and which
permitted severer torments to come to Him than His human knowledge could
understand and assimilate. It is for that reason that He Himself in the life of
His confession becomes involved in the great impasse — witness His authentically
honest “why.” This was too much for Him; He could not master it. In this most
terrible hour He had the courage no longer to say to Himself, and certainly not
to the others: I can pray to the Father, and He will send me twelve legions of
angels to support me. The affliction of hell was more than His naturally human
life could master either by an act of knowledge or by an act of the will; it was
more than He could bear, more than He could fathom. The coercion, the
inevitability, became a consuming compulsion; an irresistible force. At this
time the balance between His having to do the thing and His willing to do it was
destroyed. Not in the sense, of course, that His will was opposed to it; not
that in the least. But this was true in the sense that His having to do it
gained the mastery over His willing and knowing it. He was being broken in these
moments, but His free will had not been able to express itself with an equally
great degree of activity as the force which passively had been able to express
itself in devastating Him.

Nevertheless the offer must be entirely voluntary. The Saviour of our souls must
not be taken by compulsion, by an overwhelming God, He must not be taken by
surprise, but must give Himself to His people. His love must always be willing
to take sole responsibility for the complete act of sacrifice; and this love
must take that responsibility gladly, without any sense of regret, even after
the sacrifice has passed. Love must delight to give the gift, before as well as
after the giving.

Now it is this last consideration which explains the necessity of His physical
death to us. Have we not heard the voice of Christ lamenting and crying, and
demanding: I thirst? This is the last time we shall refer to that. By His “I
thirst” Christ with a completely free will and with a perfect knowledge based on
experience assumes the burden of the affliction of hell. Throughout His life He
had done all that the Scriptures said; the fifth utterance from the cross was
saying nothing new. But there was this to add: He had now experienced what the
Scriptures wanted. He had learned a terrible thing. He had never known that God
could be so terrible, that God could do such a thing. That which had been mere
knowledge before now became experience: namely, the affliction of hell.

Now when God wishes to try a person, He asks not once but twice: Do you wish to
be obedient? Do you want what I want? He asks this the first time when the man
is still facing the experience of suffering. Then man answers in the
affirmative. But it might very well be that this puny human being after he has
experienced how terrible and how austere his God can be, would make this
confession: I did not know that it was so bad. Now that I know it, and have
experienced it, now my soul shudders at it. I certainly would not make the same
choice today, if I were given an opportunity to do so. And it is then that God
asks a second time: Do you want what I want? Does your free will in your
inclination towards your God acquiesce in the burden which He gives you to bear?
At such times there are people who resemble Abraham. They resemble not the real
Abraham but the Abraham of a certain person’s imagination who gives this picture
of him: “Silently he arranged the wood for the fire, bound Isaac to it, and drew
out the knife; thereupon he saw the ram, which God had appointed. This ram he
offered, and then went on his way . . . After this day Abraham became old; he
could not forget that God had made this demand of him. Isaac grew up rapidly as
before, but the eye of Abraham became dimmed; he felt no joy any more.”[1] [1]
Kierkegaard.

Now this image of the father of the believers is based upon unsound thinking,
but even if we accepted it, we could say that Christ in no respect resembled it.
When He had experienced what God can demand of a son of man, when He had felt
what no one before had ever felt, when God proved to Him to be the most terrible
of all in His punishing, and when He could find a ram nowhere in the bushes, He
said: I thirst. And He said this in order that He might fulfill the Scriptures.
He did not reject those terrible words, this terrible utterance from the
Scripture, after experiencing the harshness and terribleness of God’s judgment.
And He did not suppress these words. He immediately appropriated them. In that
way He assumed all that the Scriptures asked of Him with a free will which had
itself been enhanced by the experience of its own selection. He assumed the
condition of brokenness, the state of being broken, in the perfectum
damnationis[1] of the afflictions of hell. But that was not enough. It did not
suffice for God nor for the people whom He sought in His love.

[1] Completed damnation: the eternal, infinite affliction of hell. See by way of
discussion of thisperfectumas an expression of infinite worth, chapter 19, pp.
461-2.

It is not enough to suffer death in the perfectum.[2] He must suffer death in
the aoristus.[3] His body He had submitted to be broken, and consequently He had
not cursed God; but He must also voluntarily suffer death in the immediate
moment, in the second of disruption. In the case of others the brokenness comes
after the disruption; the condition of complete death follows upon the moment of
dying. Thus it is with those who die the natural death on earth, or with those
who are transformed in an instant of time. In both cases there is a moment of
immediate transition to the other world, of acute removal from the world which
held us and to which we clung, and there is a sudden return to the basic forms
of our existence, a basic being snatched up, vehemently, violently,
catastrophically, before God, the Creator and the Judge.

[2] Perfected death.

[3] An abruptly impinging moment of death. And this moment of dying which
precedes the condition of brokenness in all others, had to follow upon that
condition in the case of Christ. We have repeatedly indicated why this was
necessary for Him.[4] [4] See pp. 24 (Chapter 1),112 (Chapter 5), 377 (Chapter
20),399-400 (Chapter 21), 486 (Chapter 25).

Now we observe that everything is again governed by the accommodating hand and
accommodating spirit of Christ Himself. The cry “I thirst,” inasmuch as it
assumed the burden of the Scriptures after the experience of hell, was an act of
free will overagainst the condition of brokenness. And to the extent that this
cry proved to be a command according to which He wished to be bruised in the
body in the moment of death, it was also an act of the free will in view of this
coming dying moment.

Thus He assumes the sacrifice completely. Not only the being sacrificed, but
also the becoming sacrificed; for there is a distinction here to the subject who
wills it. Not only the condition of death, but also the moment of death. Not
only the being slain, but also the slaying. Not only what the accursed human
being must suffer outside of the gates of time, but also what he must endure
inside those gates. Christ passed through all our gates. He passed through the
entrance by His birth; He passed through the exit by this acute dying. And there
was besides that which intervened between these two: the extended human life
which He lived on earth. To which we must add, again, that which was suffered as
the affliction of hell quite beyond the bourne of time.

Hence we can say that the moment of dying is a natural part of the sacrifice
precisely because the sacrifice is voluntary. It is a presentation, an offer, in
the basic sense of that word. He allows Himself to be led back to His origins
now. He allows Himself to be placed a captive on the chariot of God which is
hurrying where God pleases. This is what is meant by dying in a moment. He had
His “moment” just as each one of us must experience it. This point of time would
have come sooner or later for the man of Paradise also, for, even though sin had
not intervened, man would at a certain point of time have arrived at that other
mode of existence in which He could live eternally, irremovably, and steadfastly
before His God, and could do it without eating, without drinking, without
marrying, without sexual relationships. Now this particular point of time, this
moment of transference to the other world-order, to the new world-scheme — this
every human being suffers in his dying hour. And those people who will still be
on earth when Christ returns will also experience their “moment” in the
immediate transformation which will withdraw them from this world and transplant
them to the other. In this way Christ broke His body before God in an instant of
time. Nothing human was alien to Him.

How the free will of this act of sacrifice dazzles in its glory! When life could
be endured again after that affliction in hell, when the burdens were
diminished, when the condition of brokenness existed no longer, when light
returned to caress His body, when His flesh no longer was the field of operation
for the devastation of wrath — then He had to present the sacrifice, had to give
the offer. He had to disappear in natural death, He had to commit Himself into
the hand of Him who had stricken Him. He gave Himself thus, and in this way
performed the extreme act of willingness.

How perfectly He loved God and the people! He surrendered Himself to the one who
was devastating Him. The devastation was fundamental, elemental; His surrender
is also that. His was a radical surrender. It was the thorough-going gift. He
omits nothing, no line, no point, no hour, no minute, no circumstance, and no
incident. Ah, how He dazzles now as a sign in the center of all epochs! If the
institution of temporal death, as we observed, was indeed punishment at bottom,
but also grace, then the punishment reaches its final culmination in Him, and
grace the point at which it breaks through. For there had to be a moment of
reversal in history. The moment had to come in which the vicious circle should
be cut by a vigorous life, conquering as it marched on. Now that point of
history has been reached. It is nothing if taken out of its context, if
separated from what went before and from what follows. But it is unique in its
significance also and is indispensable to its context.

Now we can go further. We can say that penalizing justice and life-giving grace
meet each other in this instant of time. The penalizing justice makes its
appearance in the moment of time which is punctuated by Christ’s physical death.
For we see Christ now as one in whom death represents complete penalty.
Elsewhere death in the last analysis is always a kind of preparation for Christ;
if not for the dying person himself, in the event that he is opposed to God,
certainly it is that for the church of humanity. For it has become obvious that
the temporal death must clear the way for Christ and His spirit, in order that
the curse of eternal death should not come before its time. But He was the One
in whom death could completely and satisfactorily realize itself. The way had
been cleared so that the second Adam might be cast out of “every gate” (see
pages 379-383). O God, but this instant of time is significant! It is very
painful, for the descent into the affliction of hell must still become a descent
into Hades. He must still permit Himself to be broken on that border-line of the
world which can be seen.

Again we say that this is a penalizing justice. It demands humiliation, and this
truth gives us a new subject for consideration. The necessity for humiliation
makes His entrance into heaven without the moment of dying impossible. It is a
part of that humiliation that the mark of shame be impressed also upon His body,
upon His remains. Yes, this had taken place already when Christ suffered the
pangs of hell. But no one had been a witness to that. Now that He has awakened
again and been brought into the light out of those three hours of darkness, He
must visibly carry the disdain of His own in the signs of His body, and be
completely humiliated. He must be publicly humiliated.[1] Men must be able to
see that Christ has died. His death in hell had been witnessed by none. So much
the more reason for which His earthly dying must be seen by every eye.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 15, pp. 297-300: being lifted up; also see the
present volume, p. 82. For the dying of Christ is also revelation. It represents
payment and compensation, yes, but it is also a revelation of the law which
demanded payment. We know that revelation speaks to men in its concepts, in its
forms, in its symbols, and in events which Christ sees before Him in the
ordinary things of life daily. If Christ had not died as every other person
dies, the terrible preaching of death as the curse of sin would not have been
intelligible. After all, death is visible to men only in the form of the bodily
dying. No one sees the essence of death. To be really dead means, on the one
hand, to be sinner, and on the other hand, to be wholly forsaken, to be the
victim of the robbery of hell. But sin is a robbery which no one sees,[2] and
being forsaken in hell is also a robbery which no one living in the world today
has ever seen. So we say that this disintegration of the body is the only thing
that men see of death. That is another reason for which Christ had to die in the
body. He had to manifest death to the world. Surely, we are taking the wrong
course when we say that His dying was solely a preaching of death, that it was a
naked expression of such preaching. For, as we have stated before, the dying of
Christ was also necessity; it represented compensation, payment. In addition to
that, of course, it was also an announcement. It was an announcement of the
guilt of sin. God’s harsh sermon did not correspond with the sermon on the
mount, with Christ’s discourses about the fire of hell, and about that death
which consists of being a sinner. No, God struck Him down in the presence of
men; Christ had to die the death in the very body in which men had known Him.

[2] The essence of sin: to be distinguished from the work which sin performs.

Having arrived at this point, our thoughts turn upwards. There is in the instant
of Christ’s death also the breaking forth of quickening grace. For now that
Christ has completely finished the course of obedience by permitting His body
also to be broken, now Paradise must receive Him in His glory.

Obediently He had permitted everything He had to be taken away from Him, His
seasons and also His moments. With all the instruments He had, with His soul and
spirit and body, He performed His service for God. Therefore the angel who
guards the gate of Paradise must stand aside when He impressively approaches.
The angel draws back the guarding sword in favor of a coursing justice headed by
the second Adam; he says to himself that this man must enter. That is the most
natural thing in the world once the covenant of works became of force. For that
covenant had attached the reward of blessedness to perfect service.

Therefore Christ now surrenders His spirit. He does not give it away
indiscriminately, but gives it to the Father. He addresses Himself to Paradise.
From the fact that He gave God His spirit we may infer His obedience and His
sacrifice, His offer. But that He could address Paradise as He did is evidence
to us of His faith; it represented the certainty of His reward. He was asking
for that reward; He was asking for the reward of the Passover. The Passover has
its beginning in Good Friday. The Saviour enters into the other world, is
instantaneously withdrawn from the bourne of time and space, enters into
captivity, for all this is implied in dying. Nevertheless He moved about freely
in God’s universe. He is the man who has fought His way to freedom. The binding
which accrues to Him in this instant of time really represents an unbinding.

We do not mean to say that His possession of Paradise is already complete. His
own condition, and the justice He has in mind for His people, will constrain Him
to come again. He Himself is still in the intermediary condition, the condition
of the “unclothed soul” (see 2 Corinthians 5)who is in Paradise without his
body. And intermediary conditions are never desirable in heaven to the extent
precisely that they are an intermediary condition. In heaven everything is
impelled in the direction of the conclusive, of the completed, of the perfectum
of blessedness. Christ, too, is not satisfied with this intermediate position.
From now on He will be constantly crying: How long, how long, O Father (see
Revelation 5)? He thirsts for perfection, for the perfected things. Hardly has
He by death obtained release from the hunger and the thirst of the earth before
He begins to hunger and thirst in heaven for His own return. Thirsting can be of
various kinds. The hungering and thirsting in heaven does not represent need,
but a passion for life. As such it represents desire and deep yearning. Hence
the intermediate condition, interim as it is, cannot represent His full peace;
as far as His rights are concerned He continues to be humiliated. His name is
honored in heaven, but on earth His flesh still bears the mark of shame
impressed upon it by the penalty. The angels regard Him as glorious, also as
glorious in His humanity; but on earth they are preparing a grave for Him. The
stigma of shame still attaches to Him. For His own sake, too, He will labor hard
for His Passover-victory in order that the stigma of shame attaching to His body
may also be erased. Thus, as a matter of fact, He is still struggling every day
in order to arrive at His last return, in order that His good name may no longer
be a source of mockery in the world. However, it is not for His own sake alone,
but for the sake of His people also, that He will from now on hunger to return
to the earth and to arise from the dead. For He would gather His church
together, draw them unto Himself, and make His power manifest in them. This is
the reason for which we called His dying the point at which God marches on
through Him. All His struggles for obedience to God, and for the glorification
of Himself, and for the exaltation of His people, now converge upon the act of
His death.

Accordingly, we do not like to speak of a Jesus who has “fallen asleep.” “Asleep
in Jesus” — that is a word which, we hope, may appropriately pertain to us. But
in reference to Him we must use the phrase: He gave up the spirit. His will
performed an action. To cry aloud with a great voice is an item hardly
compatible with the gentle phrase “falling asleep.” Rather than to use that, we
would abandon all figurative language. The Saviour gave up the ghost, and did
this by reason of a strong desire and will to march on from the manger past the
cross to the hall of the Passover, the hill of ascension, the deed of Pentecost,
and the last judgment.

Now be quiet, for the Saviour is dying. Be quiet, just as you must always be
quiet before Him, also when He is busy at work. Is Jesus exhausted? Yes, in a
certain sense He could not go any farther. However, He did not want to go any
farther here below, for here the work has been finished. Hence He could not go
on, and hence His heart could not go on. Is Jesus exhausted? Just say yes and
no; for you will be touching on the truth only if you combine those two in a
transcending unity. His strong will addressed death and said: I do not want you.
And when the time had come, He said: I have summoned you. Must we again appeal
to His “divinity” in order to explain this? As when we say that by an act of His
omnipotence He broke His own heart? It is much simpler than that, and hence it
is far more complicated. By an act of — human — obedience He permitted His heart
to be broken, and gave it up to the Breaker. And thus He bowed His head, and
gave up the ghost. Saint Augustine said that He bowed His head, as though He
were offering His face to us for a kiss. This is too pretty a fancy. He bowed
His head because He could no longer hold it up. God Himself bent it low. No one
was present to close His eyes. The angels did not look back upon His body; they
had other work to do. They praised Him reverently; their voice echoed behind
Abraham’s chair. Heaven witnessed a miracle. For the first time heaven caught a
glimpse of the Word which was made flesh. Heaven saw the second man, the second
Adam, but such a one as there had never been before. Heaven saw, and had to
believe, that this was the Head of the Church. A page of God’s Book was turned
over, and Adam, our father, said: He must increase here, and I simply cannot
decrease; how could this come to pass, O God of miracles?


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  CHAPTER 27: 22. CHAPTER 22: CHRIST AS MELCHIZEDEK’S ANTITYPE SUMMONED AGAINST LEVI
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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T W O Christ as Melchizedek’s Antitype Summoned
Against Levi And, behold,the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top
to the bottom. —Matthew 27:51. WHEN it is very quiet in heaven you can depend
upon it that a storm is in the offing. When John heard heaven maintaining a
silence for “a half hour” in his vision on Patmos, he immediately also saw the
seventh seal opened; the signal of a world-storm had been lifted. This was also
the case on Golgotha. Heaven held its peace. It was the hour and the power of
darkness. But hardly has the spirit of Christ gone on its way to the Father
before the storms break loose. The catastrophes of the last judgment first
realized themselves in Him in the invisible world, and heaped all their
tumultuous violence upon Him within the walls of His spiritual house (page 115).
But now these catastrophes become externally visible. Are these, however,
catastrophes of the last judgment, you ask? If that were true, Christ would have
suffered in vain, and the moment of His death would that very moment have been
proclaimed a vanity. Well, then, are these convulsions possibly the travail
accompanying the birth of unmixed grace? No, that cannot be; for His cross
cannot gain the effects of grace without the power of the Passover and of
Pentecost. Hence the catastrophes which now are made manifest are signs, and
these signs speak a twofold language. They spell judgment against those who
despise the death of Christ and refuse to take their life from His death. And
they proclaim grace to those who are willing to come to the temple, led by this
Priest. Yes, these are catastrophes, but they are not the catastrophes of the
curse. Nor are they the catastrophes of the blessing simply. They are signs of
curse and blessing both; for curse and blessing both have now been released by
Christ.

Brace yourself now, for God is performing greatly. He is splitting the earth,
tearing the graves asunder, putting the dead on their feet again, bursting the
rocks, and rending a curtain into pieces. Many centuries have been at work on
this curtain, and the exhausted love of a whole nation hangs suspended in its
folds. The curtain of the temple is rent in twain.

Revere this God now, for He begins at the beginning. Just as the Son who has now
died did not come to “the dogs,” without having first done full justice to “the
children,” and just as He ever took His departure from Jerusalem, so God also
would begin at Jerusalem. Jerusalem lives in the temple. That is where the heart
of the people is beating. Hence God’s first utterance after Christ’s separation
is a temple address. God makes His majestic appearance at its portal, and He
addresses His people from its front steps. It may be that an earthquake turns
everything topsy-turvy for us, but the order of God is not disturbed by it. The
seismographs of heaven do not indicate the slightest variation. The hour in
which God rent the earth and spoke in catastrophes was most orderly. The first
catastrophe was the opening of the temple. The curtain of the temple was rent in
twain. Do not linger too long over the many questions that arise. Many have
wondered just what was meant by the curtain which was rent on this occasion.
Well, we know that two well known curtains hung suspended in the temple. One of
these shut off the “holy of holies.” This was the inside or rearmost of the
curtains. And there was another curtain which shut off the “holy place.” Just
how beautiful these curtains were we can learn from old books of history in
which their glory has been eulogized. We shall not pause to consider that. The
only significant question is: which curtain is meant?

Many maintain that the inner curtain is intended, the curtain which had to be
drawn aside in order to enter the Holy of Holies. They base their interpretation
on the thought that this curtain which occupied the last place in the public
worship had the greater liturgical significance, and that it possessed more
symbolically suggestive virtue than the other. The Holy of Holies was the real
“dwelling place” of God. Only one person was allowed to enter it. It was the
most intimate, the most special place in the temple. In opposition to this,
however, others aver that the first curtain, which gave on the Holy Place, had
more real significance. After all, the rearmost curtain was seen only by the
priests; but the other forbade admission to the people and consequently was seen
by the masses themselves. Hence this foremost curtain made a far greater
impression upon the imagination of the people than the other; and thus this
would be the more likely one in which to manifest a sign intended for all the
people. If we accept, besides this reason, the fact that the Greek word which is
used here for “temple” has reference to the temple in its broadest sense, we
have good reasons for choosing the interpretation which says that the curtain
which was rent in twain was the one which hung in front of the Holy Place, and
not the one which shut off the Holy of Holies.

However, the question is not particularly important. The preaching of the
miraculous sign which God shows here remains the same in either instance. In
epitome we can say that the access to the temple, in which Levi and his priests,
separated from the people, had to perform their office, is now opened to all.
Levi’s house now is dismissed. Now God emerges from His cleft, from His prison,
leaves His exclusive dwelling place. Thus the order of Melchizedek becomes law
in the house of Levi. Melchizedek returned, and was fulfilled in Christ. Well,
it was not the hand of Christ as Melchizedek’s antitype which tore Levi’s
curtain asunder. But observe this: the spirit, the strength of Melchizedek and
his right, invade the house of Levi and throw his gates wide open to all those
unfortunates who up to this time were deprived of the temple and prohibited from
seeing God in His own house.

Before we go on, therefore, we must pause to adjure Jerusalem, and tell her that
Jesus Christ is very great. They may cast Him outside of the gate, and time and
again regard Him as an outcast, but He succeeds in making history nevertheless.
Whether He be good or evil, Christ or Antichrist, does not matter just now. In
any case He is of historical significance. After all, a torn temple curtain, a
temple door thrown wide is a thing for which not only God yearns but Satan also.
The rent curtain of the temple hangs on the way of the Antichrist as well as on
the way of Christ. An opening of the temple, an opening of the house of God, is
the eager desire of the Antichrist. Both aim at the temple. The only question
is, Who is to break it open, who and for what purpose? Who will tear the curtain
into pieces, who, and for what purpose? The temple of the service of shadows
proceeds on the assumption that there is a holy place in which the service of
God is ministered officially and that outside of this lies that profane area
which is not dedicated to God nor permeated by His grace. Hence the only
question is on whose victorious tour will the curtain of the temple be rent, on
the tour of Christ, or on that of the Antichrist, of God, or of Satan? If Satan
wins the victory, he will storm into the temple from that profane area,
introduce the unclean into the Holy Place through the torn curtain, and thus
make the holy profane. On the other hand, God through Christ would now take the
opposite course, God would now leave the temple, by going out of it from within,
by stepping away from the curtain behind which He has been concealed, in order
to make that which was common and profane holy also. Yes, the only question is:
Who is to rend the veil of the temple? It will be torn in any case. But who and
when? The histories of temples can never be silenced. The curtains of temples
always hang in the wind. If Satan can thrust aside the curtain, and open the
entrance, the whole world will enter it, swallow it up, and make everything “a
world.” But if God is to rend the curtain, the spirit of the temple will enter
into the world, throw every obstacle aside, and then the stream of grace will
overleap every boundary, and the church will be borne out into the world.

Thus we learn to see in a rent temple-veil an event of world- historical
significance. The great conflict of Good Friday, and also of the dies ater of
the Beast, is always: how does the curtain become torn? By revolution, or by
reformation?

Now Good Friday gives us the answer to this question. The curtain of the temple
was torn by God. In His own way and in His own strength He came from the other
side of the old veil, and entered the world. The hour had come in which the
statement “No admittance” could now be erased from God’s murals forever. For it
was a fact that a world sorrow had attached itself to this temple veil. We
pointed out before that in the time of the shadow-service the world continued to
be a profane area. Revelation, the ministration of atonement, had limited itself
to one people, the people of Israel; and among that people it had limited itself
to one city, the city of Jerusalem; and within that city it had limited itself
to one house, the temple. Behind the walls of that temple, and more particularly
behind the folds of this curtain, God was hidden. There the service was
administered by the hands of the priests but — pro omnibus: one for all. The
“common man” might not approach this place; no pagan might enter it. The
priesthood was a secret caste; it enjoyed privileges which were not open to the
“common man.” The furnishings of the temple were a delight to the eye; but they
spelled out two terrible words: No admittance! The approach to God was closed.
Throughout the course of many centuries this temple had passed through many
revolutions; but, irrespective of how everything had changed, the protecting
veil continued to occupy its place. God was separated from the people, and the
children of Levi stood overagainst the children of God in the poorest
relationship known to the world, the tragi-comic relationship of a hierarchical
system. The famous veil served as a sign of the hierarchy, and as a vindication
of it; the people did not know any better; they thought the curtain belonged
there. In the days of Christ’s sojourn upon earth the temple had not even been
completely restored; the renovation which was begun in the year 20 B.C. was not
completed until the time of Albinus in 62- 64 A.D. However, whatever else it may
have lacked, the curtain was hanging there a long time. That was, so to say, the
first necessity. Now this whole temple really was a great fort, a bulwark. The
middle court also was separated from the rest by a stone wall; placards of
warning threatened the death penalty against the unqualified who came too near
it. Hence this veil became a world issue. Heathendom was kept away from it, and
the people of Israel too in its common ranks was prohibited from passing through
it.

Now if this remains so, if the veil is not rent, Israel will remain an excluded
people, having an “exclusive” God. If that curtain cannot be put aside, the sect
and not the church is God’s final purpose and eschatological fulness. Indeed, a
solution must come. The world is waiting for it; heaven and hell keep their eyes
fastened on that simple veil. As long as it remains hanging, there is a status
quo; but so long also God will not be progressing, and, if seen properly, Satan
either. One or the other: God must step out from behind the curtain, and stride
into the open, or Satan must come from the outside, and step behind it. But in
any case, of course, one or the other of these two must remove the curtain. Who
had sensed the tragedy of this veil more excruciatingly than Christ? This proud
temple building was the building of His Father; but the words on the curtain “No
admittance” affected Him also. For Christ was from the point of view of the
world unanointed and unconsecrated. He had no priest’s cloak, and was not
ritually allowed to go into the Holy Place behind that curtain. His Father’s
house remain closed to Him. His priesthood was not acknowledged. That is no
wonder. His priesthood was of another order. It was a priesthood of the order of
Melchizedek, and Melchizedek is the priest who without a priestly genealogy and
without an inherited commission stands in the world quite alone by virtue of his
own peculiar calling. Thus he ministers the office to which he is called of God.
Abraham, and in him Levi, had fallen down at the feet of the Melchizedek in
former days. Abraham and Levi had reverently bowed before him and as a token of
his superiority had given him tithes. But when Christ came into the world and
wanted to be Melchizedek’s antitype, admittance to the house of Levi was denied
Him. Levi did not bow before Melchizedek; He had forgotten how to bow.[1] Levi
had exacted tithes of Him. The assessment levied by the temple, Christ had
obediently raised. This was a topsy-turvy world (see pages 179-182), for
Melchizedek is not now being enriched by Levi, but must give of his riches to
Levi.

[1]Christ on Trial,chapter 2, p. 24.

Christ had died in this kind of relationship. God had given Him nothing as a
loot out of the temple of Levi. On the contrary, the temple had rejected Him,
and God Himself had cooperated in the rejection. Jesus’ murderers sat there and
prayed there, and praised God behind the curtains. God was supposed to be of
their company still. Yes, the suspense is awful: something must happen.

Yes, it had to happen. But Christ Himself had never sought to gain by the means
of the revolution. He had not taken it upon Himself to raise a single finger
against the beautiful veil of the temple. Not to tear that curtain apart, but to
sear the placard “No admittance” with the fire of God’s righteousness. That was
the way He wished to gain the temple for His people, and that was the way in
which He wanted to place God on the broad roads of the life of the world. And
now He had died, in order to purchase the right to do this Himself and for His
people. Now He had gone on to fulfill the shadow; never had He forcibly rebelled
against the shadow-service. But hardly had He breathed His last, before God
proclaims that Christ is Melchizedek’s antitype, and that He may justly open the
temple wide. He carries the key in His dead hand. Heaven opens, a whirlwind so
overwhelming that it cannot be heard, blows toward the temple, and sweeps all
the priests aside. A hand seizes on the curtain, tears it to pieces, and God
testifies that the work of the Son was perfect, that admittance is open to all
who ask for God.

Thus Good Friday becomes the day of prophecy. The Prophet has died, but prophecy
immediately goes on. No wonder; His death also was a fulfillment of the
prophecy. And now when the Prophet is mute in death, God shows a sign. This is a
sign designed not to accompany the prophecy of Christ, but to seal it, and also
to prepare for the prophesying of the Christ which will take place in the future
by the Spirit of Pentecost. God Himself accordingly is witnessing that this
Nazarene has made the temple a place of fellowship and communion not by
revolution but by reformation. Moreover, God is not only prophesying, but He is
also beginning the new dispensation. The exclusive caste of the priesthood is
deprived of all its privileges. Hereafter all those who believe and through
their faith approach God, will be called priests. That which Pentecost will
realize to the full has its beginning here. The temple is placed in an
intermediate position between Good Friday and Pentecost. Woe to that house of
God which does not regard such an intermediate condition as being very terrible
(see page 500). The moratorium has been declared, and all the priests know that
they must hasten to repent. They have not yet been annihilated. They simply have
this one thing to learn: they must be able to bear an approach to God
characterized by the same righteousness as is the approach of the least of His
people. On this Great Day of Atonement our High Priest did not step behind the
curtain with the symbolical blood, for a higher reality is here now. This
reality is not a curtain, but one who rends the curtain in order that He may
enter into the Most Holy Place with His own blood. In this we see that Christ is
a Priest after the order of Melchizedek. For Melchizedek is the man who
ministered the office of the priest, not because he had inherited the
prerogative, because the office was traditionally handed down to him, but
because a wonder which entered into and clung to him, enabled him to do the work
spontaneously, self-sufficiently[1]. All this was fulfilled in Christ. The
temple had never acknowledged Him. The plot of Levi against Melchizedek had been
set in motion behind that curtain. Now that the fulfilled Melchizedek has not
gone to the trouble of laying His hand on that curtain, but has calmly awaited
what the God of Abraham should do for Him, now God Himself places the crown on
Melchizedek’s blood-stained head. Hardly has our great Melchizedek been robbed
of all the treasures, of all the “tenths,” and of all the “hundredths” which the
earth had left Him, before God announces to the children of the house of Levi
that they must pay Him their tenths ten times.

[1] Naturally this is meant in a relative sense. Will they refuse? Let us hope
the best for them; for when we read later that a great group of priests became
obedient to the faith, we may suppose that it is possible and probable that
their repentance had its first preparation in the form of the tearing of the
veil. Be that as it may, the children of Levi cannot blame this Melchizedek for
enriching himself at their expense. In principle, after all, Melchizedek’s
usurpation of the temple is an act of sheer service. He did not come storming
into the temple from without, but wanted to take God from inside the temple and
to place Him outside. Moreover, Melchizedek Himself was consumed in this work of
religious service. The zeal of the veils had eaten Him up, for the Bible points
out — read Hebrews 10:20 — that this temple opening on the part of the Antitype
of the old Melchizedek was done at the cost of His own life. We know that He
Himself was the temple of God in perfection. In Him God dwelt; God Himself was
hidden behind His humiliated and broken body. God dwelt in the Nazarene; but men
did not see that. Accordingly, the body of Christ is a thing which keeps God
concealed. As long as the flesh of Christ, behind which God is hidden, remains
unbroken, God could not reveal Himself to the world, nor share Himself with the
world. Thereupon the body of Christ, which served as the veil that concealed
God, was torn asunder, in order that the way from God to the people might be
cleared. On Golgotha the veil of the supreme temple was rent in the form of the
body of Christ. Hence the veil of the lesser temple was broken simultaneously.
What could that lesser temple possibly do if the tension is at its greatest in
that highest temple? The veil behind which the priests concealed themselves had
merely a symbolical, a liturgical significance. But in the temple of the body of
Christ the service of the reality was perfected.

It is true, is it not, priests of Levi, that you can blame Him for nothing? He
supported you with His wings but was broken in the same hour. He took your
tithes, but immediately gave them to God, and keeps nothing for Himself except a
pitiable death.

Thus the feast of Pentecost already entered the world in its incipiency.
Captivity was taken captive, God Himself stepped out into the freedom which He
had gained for Himself by means of this Son. A royal people and a royal
priesthood is being born on the same day. Today it is being conceived, and on
the feast of Pentecost the whole host will be born. The moment of Christ’s death
is made actual and is sharply accentuated by God.

We know that God has made very plain to all those who are willing to hear that
He is the breaker of the old curtain. We know that the curtain was rent from the
top to the bottom. This means not only that the rent was a radical one, but also
that this was a wonder. No human hand rent the veil; the hand came from above.
It was just as anonymous as the moving hand which once frightened Belshazzar
when it wrote the characters of heaven upon his palace wall. God does the
writing and God does the erasing. God recalls His former statement: See that ye
do it according to the pattern, according to the type, which was shown you on
the mount. For the veil which was shown Moses upon the mount was conceived in
heaven indeed, and thereupon revealed on an earthly mountain, on Sinai, but now
that it “waxeth aged it is nigh unto vanishing away.”

Thus Christ remains a living offense. This is His destiny, for He comes to His
Word. The Jews hated Him first because of His cleansing of the temple when He
made the profane holy once more. He found that holiness knows no aging, and can
never disappear. But now the Jews will hate Him because as they see it He has
defiled the temple. They blame Him from this time forth as one who has made the
sacred profane. They do not know that He has made everything which was profane
holy, for they do not acknowledge His priestly work.

We, therefore, would obediently follow Him to God, would approach God without an
intermediary link, without a priest, without any person or any force standing in
our way. Thus we would fulfill the law of the veil that was rent.[1] [1] The
original includes a poem of Joachin Oudaen which has defied translation.


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  CHAPTER 28: 23. CHAPTER 23: CHRIST PROCLAIMED BY THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT
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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E Christ Proclaimed by the Church of the
Advent And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the tombs were opened;
and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming
forth out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city
and appeared unto many. —Matthew 27:51-53. THE sign of the rent veil had not
only illuminated the temple, but had also illuminated everything which lay
outside of it, and had prophesied concerning it. Nor had it merely affected the
living, but it had also prophesied concerning the dead. It had prophesied about
the relationship existing between the shadow-service of the past, and the future
of the church. Is it any wonder, then, that this sign of the rent veil is
accompanied by movements of nature, and by a prophecy which arises from the
church of the advent coming up from the past, in order to establish a
relationship between the past and the future, and in order to point out the
Christ as the One in whom this relationship is established. A sign is performed
in nature; and a voice arises from the church of the advent. Come, see it, and
hear it. When Christ died the earth quaked. As a result of that the rocks were
rent. Naturally, this last sign was limited to the vicinity of Jerusalem. For
that reason we also believe that the quake was restricted to this neighborhood.
We noted on a previous occasion that the Greek word which is translated “earth”
here can also mean “country” or “area.” Hence we accept for the reasons
previously given (see page 387). that the earthquake was also limited to this
environment. By this we do not mean to deny that for the people living here the
quake spoke a language of a general character.

After all, every earthquake is regional. But wherever the atmosphere was tense
because of expectations for the future, such a regional earthquake always was
regarded as a sign of universal significance. The same holds true now. Hence the
whole significance of the earthquake is not contained in the thought that it was
a “gesture of mourning” on the part of nature because of the death of Christ.
That does not explain the phenomenon entirely any more than the three hours of
darkness sometime before can be explained completely as such a “gesture of
mourning.” No, again we must think of a proclamation of God, a proclamation
which God is giving the people of revelation. Especially when we relate this
earthquake to the destruction of the temple (to which our preceding chapter was
devoted) does it take on a prophetic significance in the minds of an expectant
people. God addresses the Jews in their own language. The earthquake served as a
woe which heralded an advent, as a sign of the coming day of judgment, as a sign
of the coming of God with eschatological intent. God took this means to say to
Israel that Golgotha was not a forgotten little place in which a certain case of
a certain Nazarene had been executed; but that His death is a sharply
accentuated moment in the day of the Lord, and a beginning of the last judgment.
An earthquake always serves as a catastrophe of the last day in all
advent-prophecy. This goes to prove once more that Golgotha is indeed a place of
judgment, and that it was not an exaggeration but a declaration of the truth
when we chose in this book to relate the events to catastrophes of judgment.
This catastrophe points out the attitude we must take. We must look here for an
extreme act of judgment. The second sign is connected with the earthquake. This
second sign is a cry rising from the coming church of the dead. The graves were
opened, and many bodies buried in them were laid bare. If we choose, we may
regard this as a natural result of the earthquake. However, we may not take this
attitude inasmuch as we are told that many of the dead were aroused to life,
that they stepped out of the grave, and appeared to many in the holy city. We
cannot doubt that the reference is to a definite resurrection from the dead of
these people, inasmuch as the earthquake is not a “natural” phenomenon of nature
but must be regarded as a sign, we can say that this whole complex of events is
to be characterized as a miracle.

Yes we see people rising from their graves. Hades opens itself and makes a
statement. Christ enters into Hades. He enters into the realm of the dead, but
in the same moment the mouth of Hades opens and the dead make their appearance
and begin to speak.

They arise for the sake of Christ. We understand that at once. That in itself is
a glorious message. Irrespective of what they wish to say or not to say, what
they wish to do or not to do, the fact that human beings come for the sake of
Christ at this time is already a happy message. We know that the angels do very
little in the history of the passion of Christ. The angel who did come to
Gethsemane was the last one. Recall the host of angels who came on Christmas eve
and it strikes you as worth remarking that the angels had a very little share in
the passion of Christ. But now, although the angels do not appear, men rise up
to prophesy, and to point to the Christ. Plainly, this is progress. For it is
good when angels speak to men, but it is better when men themselves point their
finger in the direction of Christ. We know that salvation is not for the angels,
but for men. A servant is much, but a son is more. The angel is the servant, but
man is the son in the house of God. Yes, indeed, God has made progress. True, He
has not yet reached the point He wants to reach, for the messengers of the day
are but the people of Hades. And God prefers preachers who are the stalwart
fishers of flesh and blood, He prefers the workaday people of Corinth to the
people of Hades; for no one preaching in the busy market-place of life, can
constitute a more effective proof of His power than these. Be that as it may,
these are people, these sons of Hades. Inasmuch as they rise from the dead, they
are the first fruits of the power of Christ. Is not this glorious? Now men
refuse to be pushed off the stage. That much Christ has achieved. The angels can
come later on the feast of the Passover. Our text tells us already that the
announcement of the Passover by the angels presently will be accompanied by an
announcement from men. We read that after His resurrection they appeared unto
many.

Many questions can be asked in this connection which are difficult to answer.
The first question probably will concern just who are meant by those who were
raised from the dead. Without resorting to guesswork, or without immediately
looking for “striking names,” as those do who immediately think at least of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses and Job and others, we certainly may take it
as a fact that these are people who died comparatively recently. They were still
in the grave; and those graves were not very old. If they had been graves
containing historical personages, these would very likely have been indicated by
name. More over, the fact that they are designated as saints points to the truth
that when they made their appearance they were immediately recognized. To this
we must add the indication that they made their appearance in the holy city of
Jerusalem. That also suggests that they have been dead hut a comparatively short
time. For this would give their appearance a more convincing character. Men must
have been struck by the fact that many dead were exposed, but that only saints,
generally acknowledged saints, were raised to life. God Himself had made the
decision. The Nazarene was given a good witness by the church of the advent, a
cloud of witnesses taken from the “remnant” after the election of grace, from
the “remains,” the best of the people. Hence it was not without reason that we
spoke of the church of the advent. And if we may be allowed a guess for a moment
we would ask: Were these perhaps not those members of the church of the advent
who in these last trying times were looking for “the consolation of Israel”? For
these had placed their own fellowship of faith overagainst the ideals of the
political anticipators of the Messiah. Simeon and Anna. Zacharias and Elizabeth,
are typical representatives of this “remnant of election,” and the name “saints”
points in the same direction. And the question concerns the problem of whether
these dead, having returned to life, looked over the situation and knew what had
happened to Christ We refuse to guess, but we do want to ask: What can be said
against the supposition. Even though, according to the text, their appearance[1]
is to be taken as an appearance to the eye rather than as an address to the ear,
the mere fact of their “appearance” indicates that, they had a message. And is
it conceivable that they themselves were ignorant of the content of this
message? Surely they were saints whose hearts burned within them because of the
messianic problem. Can it be that the spiritual world had not felt the shock
caused by the death of Christ? Was their return to the life of earth not a
result of a command of God, and can we, then, believe that they were silent
about what He wanted? Samuel knew of Saul, and Moses and Elias knew of Christ
when they had to return to the earth for a time bearing a special message. Hence
it is quite possible that these delegates from Hades were also familiar with the
situation. It is possible, and it is probable. The fact that they, even though
it was Friday evening when they were recalled to life, made their appearance in
the city on Sunday morning after Christ had arisen,[2] also suggests this
conclusion.

[1] Emphanizoo means: to make apparent. This in itself, therefore, does not
constitute evidence of the fact that this was an appearance of people
resurrected from the dead. But the connection of this verb with the subject
“bodies,”not persons who had entered the holy city before, proves definitely
that we must think of a public manifestation of people who have been raised from
the dead.

[2] The words “after His resurrection” must not be related to the words “came
out of the graves,” but to the “went into the holy city.” See ZahnEv. Matthew ,
3rd edition, p. 715.

Even though there are questions which we cannot answer, what we know suffices to
build up our faith. The first message which God makes known by the fact of their
arising and appearing spells the word: judgment. The murderers of the Christ are
being condemned in unmistakable language by the representatives of Hades. A
sinister miracle had taken place. In general all the graves had indiscriminately
been opened. But only certain graves proved after a while to be empty. When the
time came to make a report it was noticeable that the graves of those who had
been noted for their piety were the empty ones. That was worth some attention;
that gave the sextons, and also governors of Jerusalem something to think about.
And this restlessness on the part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been
advisedly planned by God. It seemed as though God Himself was permitting Himself
an unnecessary circumlocution such as Christ had once allowed Himself in order
to preach His right as king.[3] Certainly the miracle was being withheld
terribly long. Arisen on Friday but not appearing until Sunday — surely that is
rather circumlocutive. First the city is held in suspense for a day because it
cannot solve the riddle, cannot tell why the graves of the pious are the ones
that are empty. And then, thereafter, as a second fact, these pious persons
appear in the city by way of answering their question. Thus restlessness hovered
over the city; the “atmosphere” of Endor was created. God is no longer answering
His people: not by dreams because the Spirit has fled; not by visions, because
the prophets were dumb, and the seers blind.[4] Restlessness feverishly perturbs
the heart of all; the crowd had left Golgotha and gone home beating upon its
breast. Just what is the meaning of all this? God has made a selection among the
dead. The one was left lying, the other was called to life. And the one recalled
to life was a typical example of the messianic expectation of redemption. It was
a brother of that quiet congregation which had stood aloof from the program of
violence sponsored by the Judases and the Barabbases. Only such pious people
does God raise from the grave in the moment of Christ’s death. God’s selective
voice is unmistakable. He has the Nazarene, that Messiah who never resorted to
force, and the one who himself had also opposed Judas and Barabbas, — he has Him
greeted by the covenant group of the former day. O grievous selection! God has
the people who murder the Messiah contradicted by the group who expected the
Messiah. This is a suggestive anticipation of the weighty chorale of Revelation
20 : “Which had not worshipped the beast lived . . . and the rest of the dead
lived not again.”

[3] SeeChrist in His Suffering, chapter 7 [4] SeeIsaiah 29:10, andChrist on
Trial, chapter 2, pp. 40-44.

Heaven is contending with the ostentatious pretensions of Abraham’s decadent
people, and Hades is becoming involved in it. The saints of the last days speak
for Jesus. The spirit of Samuel rises in threat above Endor-Jerusalem.

Yes, the judgment of this day is a proleptic judgment. By this selective voice
of God a protest arises from the graves against the spirit which later hit upon
the plan of Akeldama. Akeldama is a cemetery for “strangers.” It is an
insistence upon the old Jewish pride, which holds that the nation of Israel is
God’s only elect people.[5] Overagainst this God is pointing out that upon the
cemetery of Jerusalem itself two groups are distinguishable, the sons and the
strangers. There are two groups: the children of the home, who may go out to
meet the Bridegroom because they have the faith of Abraham, and the others, who
do not have that faith, and are therefore in the last analysis barbarians and
aliens to God.[6] [5] SeeChrist on Trial, chapter 13, p. 265 b.

[6] We must remember, of course, that this does not mean that the persons have
already been judged (think of the massacre of the children at Bethlehem).

Yes, this wonder was a judgment. It was the last judgment performed on the
public stage of Israel’s own life in the Old Covenant. For this reason alone we
find it strange that Christians often give so little attention to it. Peculiar
to this last wonder is the fact that it took place without any human
intermediary. The Prophet of Nazareth had done so many wonders “with” His hands,
eyes, and voice. Now the Prophet is gone, but the wonders continue. Surely this
represents a judgment. The week of the Passion began with a persecution of the
Nazarene who had raised Lazarus to life. Hardly has the Nazarene died, however,
before the miracle which they had attempted to stifle becomes manifest on all
sides. The sign performed on Lazarus becomes multiplied. A while ago they
mocked: He saved others, but now His pretensions to a miracle-working power are
gone. But that miracle-working power, to all appearance has immediately returned
and takes its effect this time without a human instrument. This too is
prophetic. Presently this same Christ will return from the other world, through
his Spirit, Himself remaining invisible the while, and thus He will effect His
former influences. Herod will have a depressing week. We observed before that he
very much feared those dead who still wandered about on the earth. These he
regarded as a threat to himself.[1] But the fear of Herod will become very
general today. Judgment is abroad. When those dead make their appearance in the
city presently,[2] they will judge all the rulers of the city. These have said:
Surely the Messiah has not made His appearance in Jesus, for Jesus breaks down
the law of Moses. But a voice is heard issuing from Hades which says: He did not
come to break down the law of Moses, but to fulfill it.

[1]Christ on Trial, chapter 21, p. 389 b.

[2] The words “after His resurrection” must not be related to the words “came
out of the graves,” but to the “went into the holy city.” See ZahnEv. Matthew ,
3rd edition, p. 715.

These dead stand on the border-line between the old and the new covenant, and
they testify in the holy city— for that is after all the first address — of the
Nazarene. They testify that He is the link between the two covenants. May
Endor-Jerusalem tremble now, for it has allowed itself to be infected by the
insanity of Saul, and it has bitterly fought against the fulfilled David and
against Jahweh. They see gods, “supernatural beings,” arising out of the earth.
What do they look like? They wear the garments of prophets; the cloak of Samuel
can be seen upon their shoulders. God addressed the city this last time by means
of a sign which the city itself desired. Learn to tremble, thou that dost murder
the kings: the destiny of the darkling, called Saul, he who has become your
patron, hangs suspended over your luxurious homes and over your emptied temple.
Tremble, ye brothers of “the rich man.” The rich man of the parable asked for a
messenger from the dead to send to his brethren. Perhaps such a one could
succeed in converting the eager heirs of his estate. Now those messengers from
the dead are here. Will the late brethren of the Israel which boasts that it is
rich and self-sufficient repent? Tremble, ye keepers of the Sabbath, who are
spotted with blood. The last shadow-Sabbath is coming: the calm Saturday.
Throughout this quiet Saturday these returned dead of the church of the advent
will be silent, and pass by your city. But hardly will the Sunday have dawned,
before the message of the Nazarene will receive the most real of testimonies
from the world of the dead.

Thus it happens that the first Sunday of the Christian church, the first Sabbath
of the New Testament, is acknowledged and kept by the dead before it is
discovered and celebrated by the living, The church of the Future sent the
deputation which God appointed from Hades, and the Christian Sunday-sabbath,
which had already been fixed by Christ’s sixth utterance from the cross (see
page 458-459), is proclaimed from heaven by means of Hades. Thus we can say that
the coming of the dead is an extension of the sign which preceded it: namely,
the rending of the veil in the temple. In this miracle also, however, grace goes
paired with judgment. Surely it was an instance of great grace that God still
preached the Messiah to the Jews in their own language. The Jewish rabbis had
taught that in the messianic era many righteous should arise from the grave;
these teachers had in fact asserted that the names of certain patriarchs could
be given. Now these righteous people are here. Will the Jews believe now that
they are in the messianic era?

We do not wish to underestimate the power of this grace. Who can say what this
sign achieved by way of preparing for the feast of Pentecost? Who knows how many
among those who embraced the word then had already felt their spirits restless
in them at this time because of these wonderful things? Even though the spirit
of Saul may harden itself while watching the signs, God ever preserves His
“remnant” his “remnant of election.” David wins broken hearts for his great Son.
This was an instance of grace, for these dead who have returned to life, are the
first fruits of the power of Christ, the prince of the Passover. That is why
they were not allowed to appear until after His resurrection. Amazed, they
escort the prince of life at a distance. Thus one of Christ’s utterances takes
on a newer and higher form of fulfillment, the word which He once spoke about
Abraham (and his communion of faith), who “rejoiced to see His (messianic) day,
and who saw it, and was glad!” In the persons of these who have been rescued
from the grave at the cost of struggle, the power of grace comes to expression
which is greater than that which Lazarus and those who formerly returned to life
were ever able to show the world. All those others had been raised, we can say,
as witnesses to the Passover in the confusion. Their arising was sporadic. In
their case the rising was merely proleptic. It represented an anticipation of
Christ’s coming victory over death. But that victory itself was not in them.
They who are here, however, arise from the dead when Christ dies, and may remain
here until after His glad passover day. Thus they establish a relationship
between Christ’s death and resurrection, preaching the unity which exists
between His state of humiliation and His state of glorification. This they do
not simply as individuals, as scattered bearers of the torchlight of the
Passover, but this they do as a community. They represent many saints an
anthology of the church of the future.

Thus they declare that the vengeance of God is always sweet. Their resurrection
from the grave is the form God’s wrath takes against the bruised heel of the
seed of the woman; but this execution of wrath is more than judgment; it is
sweet, because grace is in it. They came out of the grave. And the Greek word
for grave really means: memorial tablet, or monument. Their graves cried aloud:
Remember that the church of the advent is sinking away in the dead. But today
another voice issues from their monuments: remember that Christ Jesus on whom we
hope is risen from the dead. Thus they become an honorable bodyguard for Christ
Jesus. By means of their dumb gesture they manifest the lovely form of the
defenseless priest-king of Zechariah 6, 9, whose image the murderers had
forgotten entirely through the whole trial.[1] This Christ is not making a
triumphal entry in which He as the prince of the Passover rides on ahead and
they pompously follow Him. No, every adornment is strange to Him. These people
were never once seen in His company. It is true, of course, that overagainst
‘‘the Holy City” He glories in the fact that in Him the word of Isaiah spoken
about the Messiah is fulfilled: The dead are raised. And in this glorying He
repeats this message which He once gave to the Baptist (Luke 7:22). But now the
situation is as it was then. Extending far beyond the claim that the dead are
raised, His praise issues from the fact that the Gospel is preached to the poor
(Luke 7:22; Matthew 11:5). For this reason Christ paid no attention to the
bodyguard which had been sent to Him, and did not trouble Himself for a moment
about them after His resurrection. He has His trophies, but He does not put them
on display. His Passover heralds do enter the holy city, but without Him. As for
Himself, listen, O Jerusalem. Presently He will precede the poor into Galilee,
that “backwoods” province, where the poor are weaving about in a dark land. For
it is those poor who are being evangelized. That is His greatest Messianic
glory: through their word others will believe in Him.

[1] SeeChrist on Trial,chapter 23, p. 429 f;Christ in His Suffering,chapters
8-9, pp. 121, 127, 128, and 137, 138. The Priest-King manifests Himself here in
His gentleness. The pagans conceive of mythological constructions, of heroes who
die and carry others with them into their death. In pagan mythology the circle
of death grows wider, ever wider. But this great Dead calls other dead out of
the grave. In Him the area belonging to death grows smaller, ever smaller. The
way of the souls maintains a living and alterable contact between “above and
below.” No angels are seen ascending and descending the ladder of Jacob, but the
pious souls of men are crowding out the angels of God, and pointing out the
place where Jacob’s great son has laid His head. Presently they departed from
the earthly life again. How? God alone knows. So much is certain: when they
re-entered heaven everything there had changed. It was far more glorious than it
had ever been. Up to this time the greatest glory of being there had been to lie
in Abraham’s bosom. Now the greatest honor is to lie in Jesus’ bosom as a
beloved disciple and to sit at His holy supper as a trusted guest.

Nevertheless this glorious miracle can achieve nothing without the Word. The old
law asserts itself again: a sign cannot communicate to unbelievers, but only to
believers. Do not forget that even in this astonishing miracle the offense of
the cross persists, and Christ remains in concealment. We said a moment ago that
God multiplied the miracle of Lazarus. Then we called it very glorious, but now
we must call it very grievous. Just imagine. After that Sunday people could ask:
Just who of all the resurrected ones is the one great person? When the miracle
becomes multiplied it becomes common. God embarrasses the disciples when He asks
them to preach Christ as the resurrected one. For everyone could say: Yes, we
know, but the whole city was full of such children of wonder in those days. Why
should anyone ponder further about the temple-maschil? Temples that had been
broken down and restored again could be found in more than one place. Are they
not all Lazaruses? Are they not all Christs?

You see that this sign also requires the Word to be appropriated in faith. It
represents the beginning of the Passover; it is the overture to the cantata of
the Passover, but without the Word of revelation it proves nothing. The
representatives of Hades cannot convert men. Yes, a large number of dead arose
in order to admonish the “brothers” of the “rich man,” but Abraham is right
again. They have Moses and the prophets, and those must suffice for them. The
representatives of Hades cannot convert people, but shall we lament that fact?
No, not that. On the mountain of transfiguration the last word was not addressed
to the great of Sheol, or Hades, that is, Moses and Elias; that which
transcended the miracles, and went far beyond the mystery of Hades was the clear
call: Hear Him! More important than the wonder is the word! This is God’s final
command. And he who has heard Him through the Word, has sincerely heard Him,
will not look for the dead to come back, but will hear Christ prophesying in the
Word, and thus by means of the power of His word will come to the confession:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and sufferings, becoming
conformed unto His death. Thus he will experience a greater grace than these
first fruits of the Passover feast, for in the conformity to Christ’s death,
herein his every-day life, which is speeding on and away from him without a
single miracle, he will experience the power of Christ’s resurrection. And as a
regenerated creature he will himself be the evidence of it. And having entered
into the graves of the church of the advent, of the Maranatha-brethren, he will
make his appearance in the church of the first born. And, after his own
resurrection in the great and holy city he will take up his position on the
pinnacles of the pearly gates and sing the passover cantata.


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  CHAPTER 29: 24. CHAPTER 24: CHRIST APPARENTLY MOTIONLESS
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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F O U R Christ Apparently Motionless

Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly
this was a righteous man. And all the people that came together to that sight,
beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned. And all
his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee,
stoodafaroff,beholding these things. —Luke 23:47-49. THE death of Christ, we
said, was at the same time a revelation and a concealment. All of His signs were
that: also His last sign. Hence we can never understand the Christ or His signs
without the Word. The fact simply is that He did not come to us without the
Word. This also became apparent in the moment in which God rent the veil, opened
the graves, gave voice to Hades, disturbed hell, and had the heavens receive
Christ. That certainly was movement enough, tumult enough. But Jesus was silent;
He said nothing: He did nothing. All was stationary. Every one felt embarrassed.
No one could go either ahead or backwards. All of them stood hopelessly
embarrassed. Here was one who had reflected upon the Christ, but his reflection
could not progress because it was not based on faith. There was a person who
felt perturbed in his emotions; but his emotion did him no good, because it was
not based on faith. A third sensed a certain amount of devotion; but the
devotion did him no good; it was not based on faith. The Nazarene was quiet now;
all was at dead center.

Just look at Golgotha. Here was a man capable of reflection;[1] the centurion.
Here was a crowd who felt strong emotions, and beat upon their breasts. And here
was a group of devoted people. “Jesus’ acquaintances,” these were, and His
ministering Marthas and Marys. But these stand afar off and look on, and cannot
place the experience any better than can those who were on the way to Emmaus.
The whole constitutes a pathetic spectacle, and this time it has no dramatic
power. Nevertheless, we want to step nearer and observe it.

There was, first of all, the centurion, the captain of a hundred: Who is he? We
do not know. His Name? Some call him Longinus. His descent? Some look upon him
as a German, others as a Roman, and still others as a Syrian. The course of his
life? Many count him among the converted.

[1] Reflection in the sense of pondering, of combining various phenomena and of
drawing a conclusion from the comparison. But we do not know, and we may not
leap to conclusions. We do not know the man, we do not know his thoughts, we do
not know the kind of education he had. We know only that he was in the military
service of Rome, that he had a first-hand acquaintance with the Roman world, and
that on this day he was in command of those in charge of the execution. But the
man said something, and the Bible has preserved what he said. He said two things
about Jesus: He called Him righteous, and he called Him a son of a god (Matthew
27:54; Mark 15:39).

Now we may not permit him to say more than we can actually read from the text.
Much as we would like to read a confession of faith in his words stating that
Jesus was the Son of the living god, we may not, for the confession is not
written here. We do not deny the possibility, but we may not create the fact In
the original both the word god (the Greek language of the manuscripts has not
capital letters) and the word son is used without the definite article. A son of
a god,[2] that is what is written. This is a very different statement from the
one Simon Peter makes to Jesus. Thou art the Son of the (our) God, the living
One. (Matthew 16). There the definite article is included before the word “Son”
as well as before the word “God.” Hence, if we read the text carefully, and do
not assume more about this pagan man than we actually know, we can say nothing
about him except that he said: Truly, this was a son of a god. Even the paganism
of that day had not completely lost the faith of former days which acknowledged
the possibility of supernatural beings, children of the gods, special bearers of
special qualifications. And when the old faith waned, the worship of Caesar
presented the old gods in a new garb. We have only to put ourselves in the
intellectual climate of the Orient, especially of the Romans, to know that these
gave the same title to a Caesar, to Alexander, to Augustus, to Nero, which this
centurion gave to the Saviour.[3] We have simply to recall the case of Simon
Magus, Simon the “Magician,” who was called the “power of God,” and the whole
spiritual atmosphere of the time, in order to reduce the statement of the
centurion to its proper proportions. We can infer no more from the utterance of
the man than that he regarded Jesus as the bearer of supernatural
qualifications. It was plain that a spark of divine life had undoubtedly fallen
upon the Nazarene; the man hanging on the cross was certainly a friend, if not a
messenger, of the other world; and his other remark to the effect that Jesus was
righteous is in harmony with this view. The man was not playing any tricks.
Jesus did not deserve to die among scoundrels. He represented more than men had
guessed.

[3] In general, and also in respect to this particular text, see
Robertson-Grosheide,Bekn.Gramm.op hetGr.N.T., Kampen, J. H. Kok, 1912, p. 136.

[4] Deissman, “Lich vom Osten,” 1923, p. 294-295. Dr. Zwaan, “Jesus, Paulus en
Rome,” 1927, p. 167 f.

Therefore we may not see a conscious confession of faith in this utterance of
the centurion. Perhaps someone would still like to point out, however, that he
glorified God (verse 47), but the same expression is used to characterize the
reaction of a whole crowd very often. The same designation is used to indicate
the response of the masses to the wonderful things which they have seen (Mark
2:12; Luke 5:26; Luke 7:16; Matthew 15:31). And certainly no one would say that
the crowd at such time is making confession of faith.

Just what was it motivated this Roman military official to make this statement?
If we read the text carefully, we will discover that he reflected upon the
situation. His statement is the product of reflection, and not of emotion, even
though we are told that the military representatives present there as a group
feared greatly (Matthew 27:54). Especially the manner in which Jesus had died
captivated his attention. According to the account which Mark gives of it we
learn that he was amazed by the death of Jesus. He had taken special note of
“this case.” There was something about the man hanging in the center of the
three which fascinated him. Standing directly overagainst Jesus, he saw that He
had died “so.” The great calm, the mastery, the absence of all that was bitter
and ugly, the triumphant trust in God, all this had caused him to reflect. Luke
says that he had seen what was done. The Greek uses the singular here. In other
words he had seen the thing which had been done. In the case of the crowd the
plural is used. In other words, the masses had received an impression of all the
miraculous signs taken together, of the earthquake, of the darkness, of Christ’s
calling aloud. All these things together had astonished the masses. But the
centurion had been especially attracted by one thing: namely, the manner in
which Jesus had died.[1] We might say that he had studied Jesus and that he
could not rid himself of the impression that Jesus had not lost His life, but
that He had surrendered it by an act of His will.

[1] It is true that according to Matthew the centurion as well as the soldiers,
were amazed by the signs—and all that was connected with them; in Matthew’s
account in this respect the military section of the crowd is regarded as a unit,
and no further discrimination is made. The total impression of the “soldiers”
was just as confused as was that of the crowd. But the centurion, perhaps a
peculiarly sensitive mind, had given his attention to just that one point.

Now this intellectually accomplished conclusion about “Jesus” does not prove
that the centurion was “in Christ.” We cannot even say that it is evidence of an
“historical faith.” We know that an historical faith has a knowledge of the
content of preaching, and unless the man goes beyond that point, he has not left
the basis of an unforsaken heathendom.

Nevertheless this utterance coming from the centurion has its significance.
Before the night had passed out, the sentence which Pilate imposed on the Christ
was critically condemned even within the circles of the Roman soldiery. Next to
the dream of Claudia we must now place this calm, reflectively attained, and
sane utterance of the centurion. Both of these censure Pilate’s yielding to the
jealousy of the Jews. Christ is given a good testimony, not only by the realm of
dreams, but also by the mind of an honest and reasonable man.

However, that is not the only thing. From the incident of this captain of a
hundred, we may learn that God’s lightnings are now reaching out further than
they did formerly. This centurion is a representative of the pagan world. At
this point we recall those oriental magi, who came to the Christmas celebration
to greet the newborn King of the Jews. Just as those pagans from the Orient put
Herod, his court, and the whole world of the scribes, in other words, the
secular and the spiritual authorities, to shame, so these are now again put to
shame by a heathen of the Occident, a man who neither through dreams nor through
stars has reached his conclusion. Jerusalem no longer influences the East nor
the West but is contradicted by both. The source of light is hidden from both.
The pagans must do their own seeking, and they get farther than the blind of a
forsaken Zion. Is it not true that God has made great progress in these
thirty-three years which intervened between the two milestones? Is it not true
that the history of revelation has moved apace to a higher level of the
dissemination of power? Those magi first came to seek the king when a sign had
appeared in heaven and only after many generations in which their learned
colleges had arrived at a specific doctrine about a “king of the West.” This
Roman centurion, on the contrary, had not studied the stars, nor pursued the
message of a Messianic preaching. He suddenly encounters this brutal spectacle
of practical soldiery. Nevertheless He gives God the honor. True, the magi of
the East also had to enter a very ordinary house in order to find their king,
but even there they simply could not forget the dazzling sign which had
conducted them to the place. The house in which they found the child was very
lowly, but nevertheless heaven had been perturbed because of it. This centurion,
on the other hand, has seen nothing but sheer misery. Heaven had withdrawn its
light and he sees hanging before him a person whom the people call a scoundrel.
Nevertheless he praises God, and believes that in this broken man powers of the
world to come are at work. Thus this centurion joins the company of those Greeks
who, but a short time ago, had come to see Jesus (John 12). The majesty of the
man Christ captivated him so entirely that he gives the same title of honor to
this tattered and abused “Jew” which his people reserve for living Caesars. “Son
of a god,” he calls Him.

Accordingly we can say that this is the moment of revelation in these affairs.
Yes, the world of paganism reserves the title “son of god” for rulers even
though they are unrighteous, are ridiculous,[1] even though they are “beasts.”
But now the first of these Romans comes and thinks it possible that a son of God
can manifest himself in the form of a person who is robbed of all power, but who
is righteous, holy, and full of spiritual majesty. Why should we say beautiful
things about, the magi of the East, and nothing about this centurion? Is he not
a messenger of other times? Is he not a messenger of the Christian era in which
there will he room among the pagans also for the preaching that the powers of
God are revealed in the broken Nazarene?

If we give our attention to the centurion alone, we gain nothing. He remains an
open question to us. His reflection about the Christ is nothing without the
power of the Word of revelation. He wants to explain Jesus’ life and nature and
background on the basis of His dying, and it is necessary that he begin on the
other side. Jesus’ dying can only be understood by the person who has allowed
himself to be instructed about His essence and His origin. Besides, the
reflection of the centurion does not touch upon the issue of guilt. He did not
see the conflict of sin and of the devil. He does not beat himself upon his
breast. He tries to place Jesus in reference to the ius and the fas, that is, in
reference to the justice of men and the justice of God; but he cannot determine
his own position overagainst these two. At best only a little of the truth that
Jesus’ heels have been bruised will dawn on him; but the other truth that the
old serpent’s head has been bruised can never dawn on him. Yes, if we look upon
the man as he is in himself alone, there is little that is constructive and
edifying in the account, But if we place him on the broad highways of the
history of revelation, we see that he has his unique significance as an index of
the progress of revelation and of the world-vanquishing power of the crucified
Christ.

[1] De Zwaan,op. cit.,p. 168.

Even on these two highways of the history of the revelation of God he has a
prophetic power only as a symbol. We know nothing about him as a person. As such
we need to know nothing about him any more than we need to know anything about
the children of Bethlehem, in order to hear Rachel weeping in her fashion, and
to appreciate the symbolism of that. Just so we need not know the centurion as a
person in order to hear prophecy speaking in him. To us he is a sign of the
change in the thinking of paganism. Everything has been put aside, his doctrine,
his faith, his superstition. These can give him no satisfaction. He is in a
condition of despairing confusion. The dead man hanging in the center of the
crucified persons puts him in the position of dead center. Where in God’s name
must he go now? The same holds true of the crowd. As compared with the
centurion’s reflection, they are moved by emotion. The crowd leaves the hill of
Golgotha beating upon its breast. This is a sign of emotional disturbance and
confusion. God’s signs had confused the crowd, and conscience did the rest. They
have lost their equilibrium. No longer is there any room for their haughty
mockery. The depressing question simply forces itself out: Can it be that
something has happened here whose significance we do not appreciate? The emotion
of the crowd goes a little farther than the reflection of the centurion. The
centurion does not participate in the action, but the crowd does. And their
beating upon their breasts can be explained as an expression of self-accusation,
or of regret, even though the cause of this may simply be the sense that they
have dispatched this Nazarene too quickly.

Again, however, if you take the expression of the crowd “in itself,” you will
find nothing edifying in it. The faults of the centurion are repeated here.
These perturbed folk also pass from the particular to the general. The
circumstances of Jesus’ dying make every general utterance about His life, His
nature, and His origin disputable to their minds. They also want to determine
the nature of Jesus’ life on the basis of his death. Accordingly, their emotions
can in no sense be regarded as an expression of repentance. We can even give
their faith the name of “temporal faith.” At best it is an acknowledgment
possibly of a specific sin committed against the Nazarene and His God, but it
has no room for real sorrow because of sin, because of the state of sin which
keeps life under the curse of death. The crowd, too, does not do the crucified
Christ justice. After all, to witness many terrors does not suffice to convert.
If this were true, hell would be the most infallible means of conversion.

Nevertheless, this emotionally perturbed crowd has its significance. We look at
it from the viewpoint of the history of redemption. When, a few hours ago, Jesus
had been led to the knoll of the cross, only the women shed tears for Him. Now
the whole crowd is disturbed. Recall for a moment the celebration of Christmas
eve. How God has progressed! On Christmas the problems of the King of the Jews
were dispatched and decided in private conference with the magi; the crowd had
no part in the discussion. Here, however, the crowd is in principle divided
against itself in its attitude towards the government. The lofty words of the
exalted gentlemen mean nothing to these people any more. Thus God is preparing
for the day of Pentecost, when a great crowd will ignore the seats of the judges
of the Nazarene, pause before the pulpit of Galilean fishermen, and will ask in
“ecstasy”: What is the meaning of this? Or: What are we to do? No, the ecstasy
and the emotion are not in themselves expressions of religion. It is sometimes
said that great disturbances of the emotions of a crowd tend to unify the
parties included in it, and to remove the differences. For confirmation, simply
look at the masses gathered on a national feast day or day of mourning. But the
statement is too pretty. True, such a crowd may remove the semblance of
difference for a moment, but it cannot positively unite the differing parties by
the power of a new community life. However, on the day of Pentecost God the Holy
Spirit will unite those who are opposed to each other by the new life which is
in Christ. As a preparation for that event it is good that the crowd no longer
feels the differences inherent in it. Thus the spirit of Pentecost can presently
give the fellowship of life to those who believe. Now the crowd is still beating
upon its breast, the great and the humble, the men and the women, the people who
must thank Jesus for a miracle of healing in their own family, and the others
who were no more than passing acquaintances of Him. No, the seed is not being
planted here, for the seed is the Word. But the ground is being cultivated for
receiving the seed, which is to appear on the day of Pentecost.

Thus the crowd also reaches dead center in its despairing confusion. They are no
longer in harmony with the government and are not positively opposed to the
government. They simply cannot go ahead or retreat. They do not know what they
do.

Then there were the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee: and besides these
there were His “acquaintances.” What must we say of them?

No, do not ask any further questions, and we do better to stop classifying all
these people. We do not know what we are supposed to think of them. Yes, there
were those among them in whom the new life had issued in works of love; but
under the caption “acquaintances” there may certainly have been those who had no
knowledge of Christ at all, no knowledge which comes by faith. These all are
standing afar off trembling. The centurion places himself directly overagainst
Jesus, but these remain at a distance. Yes, if we look at these people as they
are in “themselves” everything becomes most comfortless again. Then the story
ends with a question mark. There were those who loved Him, but what did they
understand of the works of God? True, their love made them go farther than the
reflection of the centurion and the emotion of the crowd had done. They had
already to a certain extent performed works of love for Christ. And they also
felt themselves involved in the problem of the day. These had caught a glimpse
of the conflict being carried on by God and Satan. Theirs had not been a flighty
and momentary perturbance, nor a cool and calculating “study” of the Saviour; a
continuous acquaintance with Jesus had united them to Him. And yet we cannot
even say of them as a group that they deserve the phrase which the church has
called “true saving faith.” “All His acquaintance” is too general a
classification to permit us to allow them that caption.

Again, however, if we put these people in their right position, if we put them
on the highway of the history of redemption, we know that God tells us something
by means of them. Their standing afar off is a sign of helplessness. The family,
the circle of friends, can do nothing. After all, the blood relationship of the
Nazarene can do nothing against that surging stream of the spirit from below. A
feeling of friendliness towards the man Jesus cannot turn the helm of the world
from Christ. Now this is a sign of helplessness. This helplessness to a certain
extent contains a beautiful preaching of the Spirit of God. Recall Christmas eve
again. There the people, the acquaintances, have still so much to do, and the
child in the manger is not yet qualified for the task. But today God’s strong
wind blows over the heads of the people, over the heads of “all his
acquaintance,” and these have nothing to do. Christ fastens His ropes to the
throne of God. That had been free grace and sovereign plan which had induced
Jesus to send Mary and John on their way. He could do the great deed alone. This
same free grace now makes “all his acquaintance” inactive, inasmuch as not one
jot or one tittle of that psalm of the cross in which the law of free grace
sings, “It is finished,” is removed. Again we say that God has made great
progress in thirty-three years. Nevertheless, there is great sorrow in this
spectacle of people who are standing “afar off.” They are strayed sheep,
unwitting ones, defeated ones; the travelers to Emmaus betray all their
poverty-stricken misery to us after a while. They do not know where to go. Shall
they work or preach, fish or evangelize, protest or acquiesce. Where to, Lord?
The Sabbath is dawning, but what a Sabbath! Lord, Thy friends are at dead
center. The “remnant” of Israel is at dead center. “All his acquaintance” are at
dead center, and that is also the center of history.

Yes, we know it had to be this way. Thus He who is called the second Adam could
achieve His effects in this same moment of time in order thus to conduct not all
His acquaintances but all those whom He knew on the path of His Lordship. Yes,
we can be of good courage, God is making progress; the history of redemption is
going straight on. But at the time it was very grievous. Lord, where to?

Thus they all came to dead center; the company of Pilate, the crowd of
Jerusalem, the circle of Jesus’ acquaintances. No one feels confident any more.
All that the best can do is to grope vaguely and uncertainly towards a word,
towards a deed. But this was the great glory of Christ Jesus. Up to this time He
had been in constant movement. He had spoken, had pleaded, had protested. He had
worked, had blessed, had condemned. He had always done something new, had kept
the people busy, had incited them, provoked them to reaction, had mastered them.
But hardly has He grown silent, hardly has His head nodded in death, and hardly
have they supposed that now they are done with Him, before the old
self-assurance is gone and all the feasts are turned into mourning. This, we
said, is His glory. It proves that Christ cannot be explained and cannot be
accursed without His own deed and without His own word. He apparently stood
still now. This was not actually the case of course, for, as we observed, His
departure spelled His progress. He was hastening Himself to the next word and
the next act. But to men at least it seemed as though His action had now been
thwarted. And now the psalm and the curse both were immediately stifled. People
reached dead center. Reverence Him now, and learn of Him. Learn to expect Him,
for He will return in order to capture psalm and curse from the world, and bring
these to perfection. A Christ standing still is a pathetic manifestation, and
cannot make history progress. He who deals unjustly no longer deals unjustly,
but not by dealing justly. He that is filthy shamefacedly covers the filthy
spots on his garment with his hand, but is not yet washed in His blood. He that
is righteous stands afar off helplessly, and is not publicly justified. He that
is holy takes refuge in his nocturnal haunt, and simply does not find his public
manifestation among the church of the first fruits. Lord God, help us, we cannot
exist and cannot even perish if Thou art so quiet. Do not lament, O man, for
this is His glory. As He stands still He drives the whole world into a blind
alley; this He does by doing nothing. But be of good comfort, He is not going to
stand still. He has already progressed to the next stage of God’s sublime
program. He has died, but He has not been put to rest. He is inactive only
according to appearances. If Christ had not made His departure a progress, yes,
then we would have perished. But be patient, for He is already busy with the
angels and has already placed his credentials with the Father. He is hurrying
Himself greatly over there behind the clouds, is finding His way to the day of
Passover and to the day of Pentecost. And He is already writing the first words
of the great theme of His continued program there, the words which are to be the
last words of His completed Scriptures:

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: And he that is filthy, let him be
filthy still: And he that is righteous, let him be righteous still And he that
is holy, let him be holy still.

God be praised. There was no such thing as a dead center in the activity of God:
that was to be found only in the reaction of man. Christ merely seemed to be
exhausted, but He was living as positively as He had lived throughout His days
and as He lives throughout eternity. We thank Thee, Lord, for the death of
Jesus; we thank Thee for the fact that it is nonsense to say to Him: Rest on
now. We thank Thee that we could only frighten ourselves about a blind alley,
that He at the same moment was busy preparing the great mobilization in heaven,
the mobilization designed to incite the whole created world to move out of the
alleys and byways, and to join in the one great struggle of Revelation 12. The
centurion must give a further account of himself; he has not done with the
problem yet. A further division must be made of the crowd; the differing parties
have not stepped aside nor those who agree been united. The acquaintances must
make their public appearance. Only those whom God has known will He give a place
in His house. All those whom He has known may stand afar off, but they are
irresistibly drawn to Him. But all of these will succeed in getting off dead
center. O Lord, how very hot the temperature, here, on Golgotha.


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  CHAPTER 30: 25. CHAPTER 25: CHRIST BURIED
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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F I V E

Christ Buried The Jews,therefore, because it was the preparation, that thebodies
should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (forthat sabbath day was an
high day), be-sought Pilate that their legs might be broken, andthat they might
be taken away.Then came thesoldiers and brake the legs of the first, and of the
other which was crucified with him.But when they came to Jesus and saw that he
was dead already,they brake not his legs; but one of the soldiers with a spear
pierced his side and forthwith came thereout blood and water. And he that saw it
bare record,and the record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true,that ye
might believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be
fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith,
They shall look on him whom they pierced.And after this Joseph of Arimathaea,
being a disciple of Jesus,but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate
that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came
therefore and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus,which at the
first came to Jesus by night,and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an
hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus,and wound it in linen
clothes with the spices,as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place
where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new
sepulchre,wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore
because of the Jews’ preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand. —John
19:31-42.

NOW we come to the last stage in the state of Christ’ humiliation. We believe in
Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, our Lord, who suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

Now the episode which is related in John 19:31-37, first of all, belongs to the
introduction of this burial.

We are told that the Jews, that is, the leaders of the Jews, had asked Pilate to
take account of the fact that according to the Jewish law it was not legitimate
to leave the body of a crucified person hanging upon the cross and exposed naked
on the sabbath day. We cannot ascertain definitely from the Greek text whether
the Jews had asked Pilate about this beforehand, or whether they by means of a
deputation had presented this request to Pilate at the last moment. In any case
their meaning is plain. The law included this prescription: “And if a man have
committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a
tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any
wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God) that thy land
be not defiled, which the Lord Thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” Now this
restriction served more or less to put the Jewish authorities in conflict with
Roman custom. Among the Romans it was the custom to let the body hang on the
cross until it underwent disintegration of its own accord. To this, however, the
Jews were opposed. To them a person hanged on the tree was an “abomination,” to
them a corpse was a piece of filth, a repulsive thing. A corpse might not even
be allowed to hang on the tree overnight, to say nothing of a Sabbath — a whole
day, a feast day. For this reason they expressly asked Pilate to make a
stipulation which will permit them to circumvent this difficulty. Especially so,
inasmuch as the Sabbath to follow was a feast day, was to be a Passover-Sabbath.
The Jews feel free to present their request. They ask Pilate to apply the
so-called crurifragium. This in a few exceptional cases was the method applied
in order to put someone to death quickly or in order to punish him very
brutally. By means of heavy instruments the bones of the victims were then
broken, probably by means of heavy hammers. Sometimes this crurifragium was
applied after a crucifixion in order to put a sudden end to the suffering. At
other times it served as the sole and direct means of punishment itself. The
crurifragium did not always follow the crucifixion. In connection with this some
suppose that the Jews by asking that this particular action be applied to the
Saviour were intentionally asking the government to inflict every imaginable
form of penalty upon the Nazarene. But we may not infer more than is warranted.
Even though an evil passion was at work here, we know that it really was of
importance to them that the crucified person should be buried before sunset even
though this desire was prompted by nothing more than the outer forms of religion
and the fear of a people whose temper could never be accurately guessed. The
quicker everything was done the better. Now if it were historically accurate
that in those days two official methods were employed for the purpose they have
in mind, namely, the crurifragium, or the thrust of a lance or spear, we should
indeed in brutality. But that historical accuracy is not ours in this respect,
have to interpret their request for the former as a special delight Pilate is
willing to grant the request. The servants who are to carry out the brutality
are quickly named. The two murderers still manifest some signs of life, and it
does not take long before these are put to death by means of the brutality
inflicted upon them. But when they approach Jesus, they immediately see that He
has already died. In His case the brutal instrument was no longer necessary.
However, they had to have official evidence to show that He actually was dead;
after all, it was just possible that a breath of life still stirred in Him.
Hence, in order to put an end to all uncertainty, one of the soldiers takes a
spear, and thrusts it into Jesus’ side.

John tells us that immediately blood and water flowed out of the wound. A great
deal has been written about this particular. Without being prompted to it by any
exegetical necessity men have deduced from the text that the blood and water
flowed from the wound successively, not simultaneously. And having established
that, men spun out their favorite allegories and analogies. In any case they
wanted to see the incident recognized as a miracle; it certainly would not do to
explain the flowing of the blood and water in an “ordinary way.” Why not, you
wonder? Well, then the allegory would be impossible — the allegory, you
understand that old game of masquerading in which an essential ignorance of the
ideas of God contained in the redemptive events might camouflage itself.
According to this allegorical interpretation the water designated baptism (water
purifies), and the blood designated The Lord’s Supper (blood atones); and, going
on in this way, men concluded that “just as Eve had been formed from the side of
the sleeping Adam, so from the side of Christ in His sleep of death the bride of
the church was formed, that bride whose existence, strength, and significance is
derived from the grace earned by the suffering of Christ on the cross, and from
the ministration of the sacraments.”[1] To this exegetical misunderstanding[2]
we must add another according to which the coming of Christ “by blood and water”
is taken to be a reference to the effects of this lance-thrust.

[1] P. G. Groenen,op. cit., p. 545; Zahn,Komm. op Joh.,1912, p. 663.

[2] A misunderstanding, for the coming “by water” represents baptism, and the
coming “by blood” represents the suffering on the cross. “The article” (in what
follows of the text) “is a reference to the water of the Jordan, in which the
Lord was baptized, and to the blood which He shed. It is possible that in this
connection we should also refer toJohn 19:34, but in general the Lord’s baptism
and His suffering on the cross and His death are indicated by these passages.”
Dr. S. GreijdanusDe Brieven Van de Apostelen Petrus en Johannes en de Brief Van
Judas, Amsterdam, 1929, p. 515 f. As we see it, however, this is not the
direction we ought to take. True it is, of course, that John puts a special
emphasis upon the flowing of the blood and water. He tells us that he himself
saw it[3] and that his testimony is true, and that he is emphatically stating
this in order that his readers might believe. However we can ascribe the
intentional emphasis[4] on the truth of the report to the fact that John, to the
greatest possible extent that he can, wants to assure his readers, overagainst
the heresies arising in his day, that Jesus Christ really died, that His death
was not an apparent death.

[3] This is the interpretation of most of the commentators. According to this,
John remained with Mary until the end, or if the “from that hour” (John 19:27).
must be taken to mean that he left Golgotha immediately after the third
utterance from the cross—by no means a necessary interpretation—he could have
returned.

[4] According to Th. Zahn,Inleiding tot het N.T. tr. by Hugenholz, Utrecht,
volume 2, p. 550, the flowing out of the water and blood is a by product.

Precisely for this reason the flowing of the blood and water cannot be called a
miracle. If it had been something unusual, it could not have served as proof of
the genuineness of Jesus’ death. We know that the word “water,” means a watery
substance,[5] and medical men tell us that the flowing out of a fluid which is
at once bloody and watery is not at all unusual if the spleen has been
lacerated, and the body has not been violently shaken. The first of these
conditions is likely in this case, the last one certain. For the rest then, the
question how to explain the issue of blood and water is a purely medical and
scientific question, with which we need not be concerned.[6] John wants to point
out the fact that because ofthe thrust of the lance we can be sure that life has
completely ebbed from the body.

[5] Zahn,Komm.Evangelie Johannes, 1912, p. 664.

[6] Various attitudes towards the possibilities which may be considered here can
be observed in Groenen,op.cit.,p. 542. This was to serve the world and the
church as legitimate proof of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth had really died.
Moses had been vindicated because everything had been done before the Sabbath,
and Caesar had also been vindicated because the actual death could be recorded
in the registers. Now every heart could be at rest. But God supervised the
course of prophecy. He kept the highways open for the prophetic spirit. An old
prophecy was being fulfilled; and a literal fulfillment of another was being
made possible.

John tells us that an old prophecy is being fulfilled; namely, that of the Old
Testament according to which not a bone of . . . yes, of whom? . . . should be
broken. There are two possibilities. According to Exodus 12:46 the lamb of the
Passover had to be whole and unblemished, and not a bone of it should be broken.
Integrity was a condition of the sacrifice (see Numbers 9:12). Now some think
that John saw in the fact that Christ was spared the crurifragium the evidence
to prove that God wants to point Him out as the true lamb of the Passover.
Personally, we believe that the reference is not to this text, but to Psalms 34.
In Psalms 34 we read:

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: But the Lord delivered him out of
them all. He keepeth all his bones: Not one of them is broken.[1]

[1] We choose this interpretation for various reasons. The words of John
correspond more exactly to the text of Psalms 34 in the Septuagint than with
those of Exodus 12, or of Numbers 9. Besides, Exodus 16 treats of what the
people must do by way of preparing the lamb of the Passover. But John is here
talking about that which accrues to Jesus by means of the providence of God;
there is no reference to the act of the people; in fact, the passage is
emphatically in conflict with the intention and the expectation of the people.
Moreover, the refusal to break the bones of the lamb of the Passover had to
render it appropriate for the sacrifice; was a condition of its acceptability as
an offering; but this is fully informed by the thought that Christ has already
been sacrificed, that the worth of the sacrifice inheres in himself, in His
wholeness and sinlessness. Now some take it as an objection to our
interpretation that Psalms 34 speaks of the living favorites of God, those for
whom God’s providence is ever alert, so that without His will not one of their
bones shall be broken, nor a single hair disturbed. But this condition supports
our view of the matter. God’s providence (the one element) demands our attention
here (the result is different from the one we should fear) and the fact that
Christ had died does not prevent Providence from giving the same anxious care to
Him that it gives to God’s living servants. We have observed already, for
instance, that the seventh utterance from the cross was a statement of life. The
whole stress of John’s text points in our direction (the contrast, the conflict
between the righteous and the unrighteous and God’s decision in the matter)
rather than in the direction of symbolism or allegory. The offer had been
finished. And the fact that the bones were not broken, although it does document
the reality of death, does not prove the genuineness of the sacrifice. The
integrity of the lamb in the final analysis corresponds to Christ’s sinlessness.
In this psalm, in other words, the contrast is ushered in between the righteous
and the wicked. The righteous shares in God’s special favor. He enjoys the
providentia specialissima, and therefore he is spared such brutality as would
make him the puppet of an insane violence which could not possibly make sense.
Not a bone of him shall be broken; accident, arbitrary brutality, is not to make
a puppet of him. In this sense the psalm was fulfilled by the Saviour. In the
first place, He is the great Righteous One. “The righteous,” that favorite type
of the psalms, has its realest essence, its antitype, its reality, its
justification in God’s one great Righteous Man, Jesus Christ. Fulfillment! — and
to go on: for Christ is no longer an exlex. He is in the justification (“the
Righteous One”). God has again accepted the exlex (see page 431, 460). And hence
nothing more may accrue to Him now than is strictly necessary. In this the logic
of Psalms 34 finds its unsought acknowledgment. Just as Christ in His burial is
spared every manifestation of shame which would have no significance for the
Suretyship, and just as He, therefore, is not cast among the bandits in a
general grave, but in “a grave” as the Son of man (see page 559), so no other
form of affliction is placed upon Him here save that which God regards as
absolutely necessary for Him. The dying has been enough. According to His body,
also, Jesus walked under the protection of special providence. After His
resurrection, too, that body — and in this we already touch upon the quotation
from the Old Testament — should by a special act of God’s power have to retain
the stigmata of His wounds. And if our theme now were the event of the Passover,
we should have to say much about that. Now, however, we let the matter rest. It
suffices us to notice that a special providence of God is anxiously watchful of
the body of Christ. And hence God also prevented the bones of His Righteous One
from being broken. His body had a future; it had a purpose, even in its wounds,
in its stigmata, for the church of the Passover. God spared the holy lamb of the
sacrifice arbitrariness and accident, all meaningless suffering, all alogical
humiliation. In this way a new prophetic fulfillment in a literal sense was made
possible. The text tells us that the thrust of the lance by the soldier was also
an act of the special providence of God. It made possible a literal fulfillment
of the prophecy of Zechariah 12:10. In this prophecy God presents Himself[1] as
the gentle King of Israel, who has however been pierced in the heart as the Good
Shepherd, who has been put to death and denied by His own sheep. They took the
life of the servant of God, and impaled His messenger. The shepherd-king, who
was pierced by the sword of Israel represents of course an anthropomorphic
picture, but it was given the possibility of literal fulfillment in the
incarnation of the Word, that most perfect of anthropomorphic expressions of
God. Now the hatred of those in Israel who rejected God and the Good Shepherd —
who was so humanly depicted in Zechariah — is given its bitterest expression in
the lance thrust of the soldiers. This thrust of the lance is the last act of
the murder of Christ, the last profanation of God’s Good Shepherd. There was not
a person who saw that this was the relationship of things, but John tells us
that sometime men will understand them. The Lord announces even by means of
Zechariah that men shall see Him whom they have pierced. The world shall see
that, but especially the Church, after it by means of the Spirit has learned to
bewail its sins. For a “remnant” who lament their evil works will arise out of
the unfaithful covenant relationship (it is that which has really wounded the
Shepherd). Thus prophecy becomes literally fulfilled in Christ. In Pentecost
first, for there Israel’s “remnant” will be gathered, then on the last day,
counter-day to Pentecost.

[1] The text revision ofZechariah 12:10need not be discussed here; it makes no
difference to the discussion.

Thus we can say that the evangelical comfort merged with a sinister threat. Not
a bone will be broken . . . that is the comfort. Golgotha is surcharged with
God’s redeeming providence. But they shall see what was done here — that is the
threat. There is no escape from this place save by lamenting their own sin. In
the fact that Christ after His resurrection still bears the tokens of the wounds
in His body (think of Thomas) we cannot see the natural result of Jesus’ being
wounded (for the body of the resurrection has its own law of existence), but an
effect of Jesus’ will. God wanted this preservation of the stigmata — of the
wounds — in Christ’s body. They represented an intentional prolongation of the
signs of the hatred of sin against God and against His Anointed. They were a
confirmation of the terrible occurrence which took place at noon of the Day of
the Lord, preserved in order that everyone might see the sin, that unbelief had
thus pierced His heart. In my hour of the “jom Jahwe” I pierced the heart of
God. Thus both enemy and friend must presently acknowledge Christ as the Good
Shepherd who was put to death, yes, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, but
who nevertheless is the Priest-King of Prophecy, and the perfectly Righteous
One. He it is who in all His afflictions was spared the brutality which is
accidental and arbitrary. History is being made here. The last act of the
murderers of Christ is accentuated by the Spirit which prompts John to write,
and is beset on every side with prophecies. To what end? In order that the last
act by means of which the confusion of Golgotha is concluded might indeed be the
culmination of the eschatological events of this day. The spikes and the hammers
and the lance are all instruments of judgment, and all these instruments are
driven by an electric current which is generated by the activity of all worlds
and all times.

Yes, this is a world-disturbing hour. Prophecy is being fulfilled. The prophetic
Spirit filled nails and hammers and lances with the energy of the day of days.
And with their eyes fixed on that, a small group of dazed, orphaned, and blinded
children crept towards Him whom they had loved, “to pay Him their last
respects.” That is the way it is often put, and that is exactly the way it was
meant here. To pay respect — the last respect. The friends came together in
God’s name for the burial. The scene was opened by a certain Joseph of
Arimathea. It was a certain Joseph, for the Gospel is not a novel. The story of
Christ is not a family tale. Hence there are no such things as fictive
characters here. It is a part of the Gospel that figures held in reserve all of
a sudden make their appearance. When this happens, people say: Well, a
certainJoseph, a new actor in the drama. God says: I reserved him a long time
for this hour; and the subordinate actors must remain in the dark a long time,
for Christ alone is the dramatis persona. This burial is not a family matter,
but a church matter. A certain Joseph, but be careful; this is not the last
chapter of a novel. Hence the character of this certain Joseph does not affect
the issue. Christ is at the center of the stage. He is buried in the cemetery of
the church, and hence the family does not take the leading part in it. Woman,
see thy Son. A certain Joseph, then. This unknown friend went to Pilate before
the sun’s setting in order to get permission to bury Jesus. Very likely he
applied to Pilate immediately, or at least very soon, after the Saviour had
died. For we read that Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus had died
already. Hence the official request of the Jews to the effect that the victims
be hurried to death by means of the crurifragium had not yet been entered, or
had been so recently granted that Pilate could not yet expect that it had been
carried out. Or, if the request for the crurifragium had already been entered,
we can be sure that the report had not yet come in. A certain Joseph of
Arimathea. He was eminent; accordingly, a member of the Sanhedrin. He had had a
grave hollowed out for himself in the vicinity of the city; this grave he is
willing to give for the accursed Nazarene. And Pilate, glad, very likely, that
he can help choose a grave for the man for whom he does not wish every last evil
thing, and glad that he can annoy the Jews by means of one of them, grants the
request Moreover, it was often the custom to allow the family or acquaintances
of a condemned person to have the body for burial.

Thereupon the small group, the remnant of Abraham, performed their sad duty. It
did not take long, for everything had to be done before the Sabbath. Moses had
to be satisfied, everything was done in a preliminary fashion. After the Sabbath
day they could finish the work which was now done in haste. Thus the body of the
second Adam was laid in a human grave on Friday night.

Undoubtedly this burial represented humiliation, and as such was a part of the
work of the Messianic Suretyship.[1] Christ also assumed the humiliation of the
grave. By this, we do not mean to say that the grave is an essential part of the
penalty for sin.[2] But in that day the humiliation of the grave was a part of
the shame of death, and of the preaching of death. The withdrawal of the body
from this world, a withdrawal which because of sin has assumed the form of
devastation,[3] has its confirmation in the grave. The grave is an amen which
the human being knows he must utter when death comes. The grave is a
concealment; it takes away the unclean, the filthy; it is a public confession of
the repulsiveness of what once in the creation of God was an adornment to us.
And since the Mediator had been appointed to suffer humiliation publicly, the
grave must necessarily be a part of this complex of shame and disgrace. We
pointed out at several times that the crucifixion is called an exaltation,
inasmuch as it indicates the public character of Christ’s death.[4] In a similar
sense, the burial may be regarded as an exaltation of the Christ. It is a public
demonstration[5] of the fact that the Son of man is dead, is really dead. That
which the thrust of the lance ascertained as a fact, the burial colored and
characterized, and thus made public.

[1] The reader will have noticed that chapters 22-25 dealing with matters which
happened after the death of Christ have been treated much more briefly than
those which went before. This is in harmony with the purpose of the book which
wishes to put the emphasis upon the suffering and must therefore regard
everything which comes after the death as a kind of appendix. Partly for this
reason we are touching on the significance of the burial but briefly. Questions
related to it, which dogmatics must necessarily consider, are not even touched
upon. We are saying nothing about the connection between the burial and “the
descent into hell.” That which was said about “the descent into hell” in the
foregoing chapters, or really throughout this volume, was in accordance with the
familiar interpretation of the Heidelberg catechism, willingly took over the
phrase which had gained a tradition, in order to qualify the content of the
Christian confession as given above by means of it, inasmuch as the term lent
itself appropriately to that. But this view as outlined in the book, as well as
this point, is not one subject to a strictly historical inquiry. We did not, for
instance, touch upon what was originally meant by the designation “descent into
hell.”

[2] We refer to chapter 21.

[3]Christ on Trial, chapter 17, pp. 297-300, this volume, chapter 4: p. 81,
chapter 21: 498.

[4] More, therefore, than a notarized evidence of death.

[5] We must distinguish this, both in the case of Christ and in our own case,
from the grave, from the disruption; and that, in turn, is to be distinguished
from the “departure” of2 Timothy 4:6. Not that the burial is completely
exhausted in meaning when we say that it proves the death of Christ. This new
shame, this burial of what the earth can no longer bear, of what makes life
harmful, joy impossible, and taste disgusting is a separate disgrace and it was
that for Christ. It was a penalty which came to Him because of our sin; because
of sin the transfiguration of man from glory to glory which had once been
promised had been denied Him. Devastation took the place of transfiguration. And
the grave punctuated the destruction. Yes, the grave was a penalty for Christ.
It is a part of His humiliation. What holds true of Jesus’ departure from the
world holds true also of His grave; it must not be taken as carrying a penalty
in itself, it must be placed in the entire context, and then it immediately
takes on a significance and content of its own. Out of that context it may never
be lifted.

We know that it is not only the being buried which constituted Christ’s
humiliation at this time. He is also being humiliated as effective Mediator. His
own funeral-guests did not understand Him. There was none there to give a
funeral oration. Every funeral is a beginning of that process by which our
glamour fades, the impression which we have made upon others wanes, and our
personality loses its power of self-explanation and self-revelation. We become a
name, we are given the exegesis of others. We become a figure, a symbol. The
burial begins with this inevitable relinquishment; it is a stripping of our
power overagainst the world, a confirmation of our having departed out of time,
or having lost our hold on time. Now this is more grievous in the case of
Christ’s burial so long at least as we look upon that burial from the outside,
as indeed we should. For that is the way God is manifesting Him. Yes, they loved
Him. Those who bury Jesus, the man who reached the age of thirty-three, love Him
very much. But do they know Him? Do they know Jesus Christ the King-Priest of
all ages? Have they the right exposition? Ah no, they do not understand Him as
He wants to be understood. Their unbelief, their “little faith,” their ignorance
cannot grieve Him any more, but it can humiliate Him. And it did humiliate Him
greatly. They buried Him not in the last analysis as the Son of man, but as a
noble son of man. He was a man among men. His burial was an acknowledgment of
His death, a confirmation of His death after the usual manner of the day. Their
burying Him was not a linking of His death with the whole history of the
Messianic redemption. By burying Him they simply linked His dying with the
concatenation of everyday events. Never had Christ been so concealed as now,
never had divinity receded so far as now, never had He become so completely
unknown to the sons of His mother as now. The discrepancy between the majesty of
God and the body of the man Jesus was never as great as now. This was all a part
of His humiliation, but those who buried Him did not understand that. His paean
of praise about the stone which should be made the “head of the corner” was a
song they could not understand. Had they understood it, they either would not
have buried Him, or they would have buried Him differently. This is a pathetic
spectacle. The Jews, the enemies, are much perturbed about a possible
resurrection. They even raise the subject to Pilate, and reckon in terms of it
when they ask Pilate to appoint a guard. But Jesus’ own disciples did not think
about that. There is room here for a chapter on “Christ’s burial and His
forgotten chapter.” That forgotten chapter is the priesthood.[1] And those who
are forgetting it at the moment are His own. Those who are busy here are the
remnant of Israel, the temple of the living God, and all the prophets have said
beautiful things about it. This remnant was the great comfort of the prophets.
But . . . what is this remnant worth without Him? Is that all He left behind in
the world? Is this the whole of the seed of the woman? Terrible, is it not. And
humiliation? Name one spiritual leader or one spiritual rebel, who was so poor
as this in terms of people, of disciples, who understood. You cannot name one.

[1]Christ on Trial,chapter 23, p. 428 f.

Still, the fault lay not in the instruction they had received, but in the mutual
fellowship they had with each other. Think of the fact that Nicodemus suddenly
puts in his appearance, and fetches his expensive accessories for the burial
when Joseph summons the faithful ones to perform the last act. Obviously they
must have deliberated on the matter beforehand. They knew what was going to
happen. Now they are here, the two Scribes, two friends of the Nazarene, two
honest lovers. And with them the small congregation. But the burial is such as
can be arranged for anyone on any day. A pitiable spectacle, yes. We read of
Joseph that he looked for the coming of the kingdom of God, but that, in the
final analysis, means no more than that he belonged to those who looked forward
to the messianic redemption. The Baptist was the greatest among them, but in
spite of it all he once anxiously asked himself whether this historical Jesus
was the true Messiah or probably a forerunner. Perhaps the same question has
troubled all those who are today busy placing the Saviour in the grave.
Remember, for instance, the confession of the two men on the way to Emmaus. And
in the case of Joseph we have even more reason to suppose that this is true,
inasmuch as he had not been instructed by Jesus Himself, but by one of the
disciples. He had caught a faint glimpse of something and this was true of the
whole group.

Indeed the burial of Christ, the embalming of His dead body, the arrangement for
Sunday morning, all represented a total denial of the coming resurrection.
Spiritually they have all forsaken Him. It may be that Nicodemus has heard
weighty words in his nocturnal conversation with Jesus, weighty words coming
from Jesus’ own mouth about the kingdom of heaven, and about the power of
regeneration operative in it, but the great legal question as to the basis of
the coming of that kingdom, and the grounds upon which the Spirit can bear
fruits in it, remains an open question to him. That the death of Christ is of
central significance for the “regeneration” of all things in the great legal
program of God is a truth which is not clear to him.

But, someone may care to ask at this point, surely, the burial was an act of
confession. Yes, it was that. But it was a confession of love rather than of
faith. And it happens to be true of Christ that we cannot really love Him
without a true faith, that “love” for “Jesus” without faith in “Jesus Christ” is
not accepted as a good work by God. We do not deny that the seeds of
regeneration have been sown here, but the fruits are still being kept from
fruition because the “eyes of understanding” have not yet been “opened.” This,
too, represents a humiliation for Christ. From a human point of view He has not
yet achieved much. We must not exaggerate the confession of these friends. It
was not such an extraordinary thing, this request which Joseph presented to
Pilate for the body of Jesus. In making this request, he was not becoming a
martyr. After all, Pilate himself has some “sympathy” for Jesus. This act on his
part did not necessarily spell an open breach with the Sanhedrin. Sympathy for
Jesus as a “philanthropist” was not yet a public protest against the counsel of
the Jews. It may be that any number of members of the Sanhedrin this same
evening exhausted themselves in giving expression to similar manifestations of
sympathy. Besides, this Joseph doubtless has a great deal for which he must make
amends. In the matter of the condemnation of Christ he did not agree with the
Sanhedrin.

Nevertheless all the members of the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus. We must not
forget that. We must conclude, therefore, that he was absent at the conclusive
session. Surely, this was a kind of denial of Christ. Joseph is another Simon
Peter. Can it be, then, that the zeal of this certain Joseph manifested here at
the burial was a kind of compensatory reaction? Be that as it may, Joseph must
make amends to the little congregation. He does his best. He even takes charge
of the preparations. But people who first spoiled matters have been known to do
that before. Not that we want to degrade Joseph: by no means. Our only purpose
is to indicate how greatly the Saviour was humiliated. Humiliated also as a
worker in the kingdom of the Spirit. Humiliation in spite of, no, because of,
this expensive “distinctive” burial. On the other hand, however, the burial of
Christ represents the beginning of His glorification. Just as in the term “being
lifted up on the cross” God Himself is “playing with words” and just as He by
that one phrase expresses both the shame of Jesus Christ as well as His
honor,[1] so a whole host of angels is here playing with Jesus’ crepe of
mourning, even though that heavenly host remains hidden from the sight of men.
The death shroud is humiliating, but the wind which blows it up descends from
the heights of God.

[1] SeeChrist on Trial, chapter 15, p. 299 f. The burial was “expensive,” was it
not? Joseph was an eminent man; the grave had not yet been used; it was a grave
designed for himself; the grave had been made according to prescription, and had
not simply been appointed as a natural spot for burial. The grave had been
prepared by means of intentional and well paid labor (it had been hewed out). It
had cost a great deal of money. God did not care about that money, for it was
God Himself who buried Jesus, assisted by the angels. God wanted to insist upon
His rights to gold and wealth. Christ’s right to requisition had been denied; it
had been basically taken away from Him. But hardly has He suffered what He had
to suffer according to justice, before God again lays claim to the very best
that can be obtained for the Son of man. Say nothing bad about these
funeral-guests; they have done a good work, we can always bury the poor, but Him
we can bury but once.

God makes His claims. No, he does not care for the luxurious linen which they
are cutting to strips and wrapping around the limbs which they have first
bathed. No, He does not care for the myrrh and aloes of Nicodemus, for these
luxurious perfumes, imported from abroad, even though “appropriate” psalms can
be sung about them. God wants justice done. God insists upon the justice which
compels the Surety to endure no more than is necessary for the Great Payment.
That is why Christ was among the bandits, and why His lifeless physical remains
were not among those of the bandits. He does not need to undergo the disgrace of
a general grave into which the “class” of condemned is carelessly thrown. He
does not belong to a “class.” He is the Son of man, the one, the general. God
does let the general disgrace of “the” grave accrue to Him; but there is no
special stigma in the disgrace. God shows us that the grave is but an
intermediary state, and that heaven is busy preparing for the time when this
“intermediary” condition will no longer be necessary (see page 500). Christ
receives, He accepts, the new grave in which never yet man lay. We know that in
old times an altar was placed on new stones, that holy things were set on a new
vehicle, that beasts which had not yet been used were employed for holy work,
and that holy salt was placed in a new container. No, God was not interested in
making an aristocratic display. That word is inappropriate here, but God wants
such an “exaltation” of Christ as points beforehand to the feast of the
Passover. Heaven is in great haste, those who listen can already hear the sound
of joy in the court. He who enters the grave here is none other than the Kurios,
the Lord. On the one “Day of the Lord” the transitions from the one thing to the
other can never be so sharply delineated that the first suggestions of the one
are not traceable in the other. Just so the real glorification of the Saviour is
already being realized. The Kurios is the Chief Claimant now. He is entering
into Hades, to the extent that He is “among the dead,” but He is not gathered
unto the fathers. This is true because of the great haste which characterized
the bashful congregation. And it is also due to the fact that they did not know
His forebears, and did not dare point to David as His Father. But this was due
especially to the fact that God wanted to do so. He could not really be gathered
unto His fathers. His congregation was too fearful. His death is but an
intermediate condition. God is in great haste. The kingdom of David does not
know Him. Why not? Well — He knows only the kingdom of David. And because He has
borne the disgrace of father David, the disgrace of all the fathers, to the very
end He does not need to enter their grave. His grave is not the grave of a given
dynasty, but it is fresh and new and unused. As a matter of fact, it was not
even hewn out for Him. This happened by accident; and yet it was an instance of
the clearest possible prophecy of necessity. In his grave, too, He is a Prince
after the order of Melchizedek. If only He enters “the” grave, the human grave,
tout court, which makes Him share the disgrace of death together with all men as
the Son of man, He may for the rest allow the luxury of what people call
“aristocratic” to be selected for Him. This, in order that afterwards men may
marvel that they appointed His grave with the wicked in His death, but He was
nevertheless buried with the rich.[1]

[1] We shall not enter into the question here about whetherIsaiah 53:9is to be
regarded as a prophecy which has its fulfillment now. The fact is that the New
Testament does not refer to the text. Hence there is not in the New Testament a
convincing explanation of this Old Testament statement. Accordingly we can
freely open debate on the issue about whether the Hebrew parallelism inIsaiah
53:9permits of a contrast such as is written in the masoretical text as it is
usually interpreted, or whether the text is corrupt. Until this debate has
ceased, we cannot decide.

We can say, then, that the line of Christ’s humiliation does indeed descend to
the grave, but that it there effects the strength which will exalt Him again. He
was buried by people who did not understand Him. But the seeds of the Spirit had
nevertheless been planted in these hearts. That which blossoms over His grave
was the flower of the Old Testament. Can it be that Joseph of Arimathea kneeled
next to Peter, can it be that he had to bury Jesus, because he had to go outside
and weep bitterly? If so, his self-accusation has in it the essence of
repentance. In this way all were converted by Him; just so the old man in them
was buried with Him. And he who is buried with Him has already been glorified
with Him, arisen with Him, and been placed in heaven. I asked you a moment ago
to name one sage of the world who had been understood so badly as He. You will
find none, I said. Name one of the world’s sages, who, having been buried,
buried all his own with him, and raised these from the dead. You cannot name
one. In Jerusalem they were eating the lamb of the Passover. They thought of
Egypt, and they thought of Rome, but no one had seen Satan at the feast. It is
not possible to see Satan among a crowd of seething human beings, unless a
person has seen the Word of God made flesh. Thus he who bruised the heel of the
Son remained hidden, because the Son was hidden. But the day will come in which
Satan shall be released, because the Son is preparing for the last Parousia. And
every eye shall see Him, also the eye of those who pierced Him; and every spirit
shall know Him, also the spirit of those who reviled Him by their words in His
glory, but who mourned for Him through the Spirit of grace and of prayers after
they had loved Him. He will not reject them because of their dazed and groping
search for words, and He will teach them all His secrets with His own gentle
voice. But the mysteries of His altar He will announce at the joy of the
mysteries of the table, for the altar of atonement will have become the table of
communion. After every conversation He will say: This was spoken by Jesus
Christ, but it was really God who spoke it.

O God, Thou didst never yet weep, and Thou didst not weep then. Thou shalt call
Him blessed, Lord, who is not offended by such a God. At least He can endure
having angels as His brothers. For they grow used to God, who daily storms in
His rage, and laughs. And they were much amazed by the incarnate Word, who came
to paradise on Good Friday. God Himself had become oppressed, perturbed, and
moved to tears in that incarnate Word, and He had worked by faith and not by
sight. But God the Lord had not changed. In Him there is no change, nor shadow
of turning. So the angels testified with fear and trembling. Blessed is he who
sees the right relationships at the right place, for he will not be offended by
such an immutable God. And the right place is here, on Golgotha — on Golgotha,
near the carefully guarded tomb. The End.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/schilder-klaas-vol-3-christ-crucified/
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