Luke 23:21

The Cross the expression of man's unbelief. Crucifixion was the death of the outcast only,—the Gentile outcast. "Crucify Him," then, meant, "Let Him die the worst of deaths, the Gentile death, the death that is so specially connected with the curse; the death that proclaims Him to be not merely an outcast from Israel, an outcast from Jerusalem, but an outcast from the Gentiles, an outcast from the race."

I. It was thus that man rejected Christ—civilised man, educated man, religious man! It was thus that the natural heart spoke out, and showed the depths of its enmity and atheism—the extent of its desperate unbelief. All unbelief is rejection of the Son of God. Whatever be its evasions and subterfuges, and excuses, and fair pretences, this is its essence—rejection of the Christ of God.

II. And why this desperate rejection; this feeling of man towards the Christ? For many reasons; but chiefly for this, that God's religion, of which Christ is the beginning and the ending is so thoroughly opposed to man's religion, or man's ideas of religion, that to accept Jesus of Nazareth would be a total surrender of self, a confession of the utter absence of all goodness, an overturning of every religious idea or principle which the flesh had cherished and rested on. Man's alternative is—the denial of self, or the denial of Christ; the rejection of his own claims to be his own Saviour, or the rejection of the claims of Christ; the crucifixion of the flesh, or the crucifixion of Christ. Allow unbelief to take its own way and, run its course, and it will end in the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. It will prefer self, the flesh, the devil, the worst of criminals to Christ. "Not this man, but Barabbas!"

H. Bonar, Short Sermons, p. 157.

Luke 23:25I. What was this will? What was the moving spring of their fierce resolution that Jesus of Nazareth should die? (1) It was their will that this stern censor of their manners and morals should die. This was, perhaps, the first and broadest reason of their hate. They writhed under His vehement denunciation of their sins—the bold hand which rent off the cloak of their sanctity, and revealed the foul sink of corruption that was beneath. (2) They willed that the witness to the truth should die. The Lord belonged to another world which they did not care to enter; a world which troubled their selfish, sensual lives. Men hate the witness of truth when they are bent on transgression. They cannot bear it, they will hot. (3) They willed that the teacher of the people, the friend of publicans and sinners, should die. They were a ruling class, almost a caste. And such rulers hate none so bitterly as those who speak loving, quickening, emancipating words to the poor. "The common people heard Him gladly." As society was then constituted in Judæa, that meant that He or the rulers must fall. (4) There was something deeper and more malignant than this. It was their will that their Saviour should die. One cannot shake off the impression, reading the Gospel narrative, that the rulers knew Him. Nicodemus was not without vision of the truth. Others must have shared his ideas. They felt that He had come to save them, and they would not be saved. This was the will of the Jews.

II. But what, meanwhile, was the will of God? St. Peter explains it (Acts 2:23): "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." How is this? It was God's will as well as their own; as far as the act was concerned, the Father delivered the well-beloved Son into the hands of the Jews. To understand this, we must consider (1) that it was not possible that the God-Man should be holden of death. The Jews willed that He should die, but what He was, what they hated, could not die. (2) Through death the power of Christ, His witness to the truth, His witness against sin, His redemptive work for mankind, became living, nay, all-pervading and almighty realities in the world.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 159.

References: Luke 23:26.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 15th series, p. 149; A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country, p. 99; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 96. Luke 23:27.—Ibid., p. 100. Luke 23:27-31.—Ibid., vol. xxii., No. 1,320. Luke 23:28.—W. Morrison, Church of England Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 203.

Luke 23:28-31Lessons of the Passion.

We have in this passage two lessons before us.

I. The first is the right and wrong view of Christ's Passion: "Weep not over Me, weep for yourselves." These women were indulging the emotion, the sentiment, the luxury of weeping. They wept as all that is human in us does weep at the sight of pain, at the spectacle of sorrow, at the march of death. But their weeping was misapplied. As a merely natural expression of sorrow it was out of place. There was something in that spectacle above, beyond, and beside the mark of pity; there was something in that death which was in danger of being obscured and being lost sight of if it was wept over. If they could not see that death in a higher light than pity, they had better turn their weeping another way; they had better anticipate a terrific future which would claim a monopoly of tears for themselves and for their children. Now these things are our ensamples, they were written for our admonition. The Passion of our Lord is not in itself a thing for tears. He Himself, long centuries ago, went back into the heaven of His holiness and of His glory. To weep over Him, year after year, as these daughters of Jerusalem wept is too much or too little. He needs not, asks not, accepts not our compassion.

II. If these things are done in the green tree, what must happen to the dry? If He who knew no sin thus suffers, how much more the wicked and the sinner? The sufferings of Jesus Christ say to us, See what sin is, by seeing the Sinless suffer for it. If the green tree burned as it burned on Calvary, in misery, in anguish, in a hiding of God's countenance, and a very dying under that cloud—if these things were done in the green tree—how must it be in the dry? How shall he escape the conflagration who is as fuel ripe for it? How shall he escape the everlasting burnings who has here despised the riches of God's goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, and treasured up for himself wrath in a day of wrath?

C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 225.

References: Luke 23:29.—J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 29. Luke 23:31.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 99; D. Fraser, Metaphors of the Gospels, p. 370; Homilist, vol. vi., p. 415. Luke 23:33,—Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 189; Ibid., vol. xiv., p. 158; Ibid., vol. xxiv. p. 300; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 108; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 266; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 101; F. W. Robertson, The Human Race and Other Sermons, p. 152; F. Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 298.

Luke 23:34I. Jesus prays. It is something to be capable of prayer in acute anguish of body. He prays, not for Himself. That is more. A cry for pity, for relief, for mitigation, for death—a cry for patience, for faith, for grace, for heaven—this might be. But to forget self altogether in suffering, to think of others, to use that breath of life, each gasp of which is torture, in prayer for another life or another soul—this is not the manner of men, but it is the prayer of Christ. Yet once again, to think, even then of some loving and beloved one, some life next our own, and to pray for its welfare, and its salvation—this too might be—might just be. Jesus prays for His enemies, for His murderers, for His crucifiers. He prays, and He inspires the prayer; the first martyr, Stephen, prayed it after Him: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

II. Inventive love, it has been written, makes ignorance a plea for mercy. These rude executioners, the direct objects of the intercession, might not the Sufferer have arraigned them for that ignorance which was doing despite to God Himself in the display of every hateful characteristic of the fallen and sinful nature. Evidently the ignorance is no innocence. Else why the prayer, Forgive them? St. Paul's ignorance was no innocence, for he speaks of himself, in the same breath, as needing mercy, and mercy is, by definition, kindness to the sinful.

III. We see in all this the exceeding great love, the self-forgetfulness, of Jesus Christ: His considerateness, stronger than death, yea, prevalent because of death, towards men who pierce Him; His unprovokableness by slight or insult; His far-seeing hope for the unthankful and the evil. He looks to the end, the eventual state, the eternity to be lived through. Let Him see of the travail of His soul, in that one case over which alone you have control—your own. It has been written, "Wander whither thou wilt, thou must come at last to the place of a skull." Let it be to that Golgotha where Christ gave Himself to be life from the dead.

C. J. Vaughan, Words from the Cross, p. 1.

I. The first thing that strikes me in this passage, is that it is one of our Saviour's dying sayings. His death must ever be the most public event in time—the central fact of history. All the children are sent for—all are called to look and listen while He is dying. Every dying word of His is set down with most exact minuteness, and set down for the purpose of perfect and eternal publication. No preacher like the dying Christ; no pulpit like the Cross; no congregation like that which was and ever is around it; no sermon like the seven sentences used there.

II. Observe, secondly, that this saying is one of seven. What is the deep thought that underlies this mystic seven? Looking intently on the surface, we recognise that, at least, here is the sign of "order, heaven's first law," and have an evidence that the work finished by Jesus on the Cross has a Divinely symmetrical completeness. Looking below the surface, we gradually find that here, as in other Scripture passages, the number seven on any series of words or actions marks that series as conveying some revelation of God to us, which is distinguished even above His other revelations by its great glory and its importance.

III. We are struck with the fact that the first of these seven sayings of Christ crucified is a prayer for His crucifiers. As chance had nothing to do with making the sayings seven, so chance had nothing to do with the place of each in the order of succession. To our mind, this order shows development of a revelation and not mere sequence in time. It shows what so filled the Saviour's heart when He was dying as to make this speech its first overflow.

IV. This prayer of love was effectual. When the Holy Spirit lighted up the meaning of the Cross, brought out its force, showed the crucifiers what they had been doing, made a judgment day in their souls, and pricked them to the heart; then they cried out, and looking to Him whom they had pierced, were forgiven.

C. Stanford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 232.

References: Luke 23:34.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 86; H. Wace, Expositor, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 196; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 3rd series, p. 24; Ibid., 4th series, p. 28; J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week, p. 247; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts, p. 112; Ibid., Sermons, vol. xv., No. 897. Luke 23:35-37.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 206; Preacher's Monthly, vol. v., p. 160. Luke 23:39.—S. Minton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 198. Luke 23:39-43.—J. C. Ryle, Church Sermons, vol. i., p. 57; Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 193. Luke 23:39-45.—Ibid., vol. xii., p. 142; Ibid., vol. xiv., p. 236; Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 333; Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 217; R. C. Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 297. Luke 23:40-42.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1881. Luke 23:41.—J. Keble, Sermons from Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 31.

Luke 23:42Faith's Language.

Note:—

I. The circumstances of this prayer. They were surely as unpropitious as any in which a heavy-laden sinner ever sought the Lord. How terribly short is the time he has left to devote to the business of eternity! Then think how hard it must have been to fix his thoughts and raise them upward at such a time. In no case is a deathbed scene the fittest place for serious thoughts and prayer, and his was no ordinary deathbed. Yet even then his mind was clear, and his spirit strong. The urgent demands of his suffering body hindered not the upward aspirings of his soul. Let no one, then, throw on his circumstances the blame of that neglect of his soul's concerns which is all his own. The spirit that is all in earnest will press through all these obstacles.

II. The occasion of the prayer. Not only did hell lie all about him, but close at his side, vexing his soul with impious blasphemies, and almost shrouding from view the blessed Form on which he is striving to fix his eye, in a cloud of contumely and scorn. Yet even these adverse circumstances were turned, through the mighty power of grace, into an instrument of good. He is not satisfied with merely rebuking his companion's blasphemies, he hastens to cast himself at the Saviour's feet whom he blasphemed. This brings us to our third head, viz.—

III. The nature of the prayer itself. We notice (1) its brevity. Such prayers are the soul's swift arrows, glowing sparks thrown off from the burning heat, gleaming for a moment, then vanishing out of sight. (2) Its comprehensiveness. If the words are few, how pregnant and how vast is the sense. (3) It was an act of worship, "Lord, remember me." It was an act of supplication, and as such, how all embracing! "Lord, remember me." What needed blessing, what conceivable work and gift of Divine grace is not included in it!

IV. The success of this prayer, How prompt, how immediate was the Saviour's reply to the cry of the penitent. No sooner is the prayer offered than it is answered. While he is yet speaking, the Redeemer hears. He is in haste to meet the returning prodigal, and present him with the blessings of His goodness, the seals of His pardoning love.

I. Burns, Select Remains, p. 59.

Luke 23:42-43I. We see here an illustration of the Cross in its power of drawing men to itself,

II. We have here the Cross as pointing to and foretelling the kingdom.

III. Here is the Cross as revealing and opening the true Paradise.

A. Maclaren, Sermons preached in Manchester, p. 153.

I. It is no over-wrought or exaggerated statement that the dying thief exhibited all the tokens which can ever be demanded of a genuine conversion. There was confession of sin, there was spirituality of mind, there was anxiety for others, there was the fullest recognition of Christ's power to deliver; and there was a mighty faith which, nothing daunted by all the circumstances of apparent helplessness and defeat, was sufficient to confound and overcome distance, sprang beyond the line of death and shame, and seemed to gaze on the palace and the crown. The thief was perhaps the only individual who believed on Jesus when Jesus died; and certainly it was an amazing thing, that he who was hanging beside Christ should believe, while he who had lain in His bosom had doubted.

II. We may all be aware that what is called deathbed repentance has been identified with the repentance of this malefactor—that men have encouraged themselves from it, in deferring to the end of life the providing for eternity. So men forget (1) that two thieves were crucified with Christ, and although the one was saved, the other perished. He must be singularly unconcerned about his soul who can be satisfied in pursuing a plan which, on the best calculation, leaves exactly equal the chances of being condemned and of being saved. (2) There is not one amongst us who can possibly, when his deathbed draws nigh, stand morally in the same position as the thief on the cross. We cannot drive away the baptismal waters from our foreheads; we may make ourselves apostates—we cannot make ourselves heathens. (3) He who of set purpose defers repentance to a deathbed should be able to prove that the thief of set purpose deferred repentance to a deathbed, else the cases are so distinct that there is no excuse for believing that the final penitence of the one renders at all probable the final penitence of the other.

III. The history of the dying thief offers no encouragement to those who would defer repentance, but it does offer encouragement the fullest and the richest, to all who are sincerely desirous of being saved. Who can despair of finding mercy, when he sees a thief transported in a moment, from the Cross to Paradise? One thief, indeed, perished, though within reach of the Saviour, and therefore we are bound to guard against presumption; the other was saved, though in the jaws of destruction, and therefore we are bidden never to despair.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2,071.

References: Luke 23:42.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 323; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 159; F. O. Morris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 409. Luke 23:42, Luke 23:43.—S. Minton, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 233; A. Scott, Ibid., vol. xxii., p. 76; T. T. Carter, Sermons, p. 47.

Luke 23:43I. There was something of prophecy even in the word today. For crucifixion ended not, commonly, with the twelve hours, or the twenty-four; it was protracted often, in its horrors and its anguish, till the second day, the third, the fourth. There was a sound of mercy in the very today, promising a speedier end to those sufferings. In Paradise. That name of rest and felicity, appropriated in the Greek Bible to the original home of man's innocence, is thus transferred by our Lord Himself to a state or region immediately beyond death, into which He Himself would enter that very day; so soon, therefore, as the warfare was accomplished, and the burden of the flesh laid aside. The today so powerfully emphasised leaves no doubt whatever upon this interpretation. Like other figures of Holy Scripture, Paradise is capable of more than one application; here to the intermediate, there to the final, home of the blessed dead; here to that presence of Christ which is instant upon dissolution, of which St. Paul says that he has a desire to depart and to be with Christ, elsewhere to that presence of Christ which waits for resurrection, for the glorious adoption and manifestation of the sons of God.

II. "Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Wheresoever the Christian soul is while the body sleeps in dust, thither journeyed the Lord, brightening our Hades, as He also consecrated the grave. Whatsoever be the unseen home for us, between death and glory, such was it for Him. One mysterious passage seems to tell us that in that intermediate state the Spirit of Christ was not inactive; that the putting to death of the body was the quickening of the soul, and that in some errand of love and power He journeyed in that interval, carrying hope and salvation to some inmates of a less than perfect world. The text is a word of blessed hope for such as are mourning the blessed dead; for such, also, as feel that natural, that inevitable, human shrinking from a journey in the dark into an undiscovered country and an unrealised world. Christ is there in a sense in which He is not here; there are they, and there shalt thou be in thy season, with Him in Paradise.

C. J. Vaughan, Words from the Cross, p. 15.

References: Luke 23:43.—J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week, p. 258; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 3rd series, p. 26. Luke 23:44-46.—J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 421. Luke 23:45.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 267.

Luke 23:46These words have two aspects, and the first of these is towards our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

I. In the one week of the year in which we commemorate His Cross and Passion, it ought to be the foremost thought of each of us how we can honour Him in the appreciation of what He did and suffered in working out our salvation. When we hear Him say at last, "It is finished," the warfare is accomplished, the victory won, atonement made, heaven opened for all who believe; when, finally, turning His latest thought of all to God, known, loved, and trusted in, we hear Him cry, amidst all the horror and darkness and anguish, "Father, into Thy hands 1 commend My spirit;" we shall feel that here, in the utterance of the mind that was in Christ, we have indeed the rightful Owner of our lives and of our hearts; we shall cry out to Him, with the energy of all that is in us, no longer faithless, but believing, "My Lord and my God."

II. The words before us have an aspect also towards ourselves. We know not the time nor the manner, but the fact of our own death is the one certain thing for all of us. The wise man, the tolerably sensible man, feels that a necessity is laid upon him of making provision for that end. There is only one thought, one utterance, which can be a satisfactory aid to ourselves, then, and it is here to-night in our view. In this one thing, we must not only learn from, but actually make our own, the Master's word. The very words of Christ Himself have been the dying words of thousands of His saints. "Blessed are they," wrote the great reformer, "who die not only for the Lord as martyrs, not only in the Lord as all believers, but likewise with the Lord, as breathing forth their lives in these words, 'Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.'" These were his last words, and of many of his fellow-reformers and fellow-witnesses in all lands. That they may be ours, in form and substance, they must be the meditation of the life.

C. J. Vaughan, Words from the Cross, p. 85.

I. Observe that this verse represents to us one of the two main aspects of the Passion of our Lord—one, and one only. There is in a city in France a curiously wrought crucifix, which conveys to the spectator a totally different impression according as he looks at it. On one side it expresses anguish and grief; on the other, profound calm and submission. What is there represented to the sight is represented to the mind in the different speeches from the Cross. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" is one; "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," is the other. Both belong to our Saviour's humanity, both are needed to convey to the world the full import of our Saviour's mission.

II. "Father." That is the word which our Saviour adds to the prayer of the Psalmist. In Him He confided, and we with Him may safely confide also. It is this which gives to our resignation the rational understanding and affectionate character which alone befit the religion of reasonable human beings. We are subject, we submit ourselves—not to a blind fate which crushes us, not to an angry demon which needs to be appeased, not to an abstract doctrine which we cannot understand; but to One who rules us, guides us, chastises us for our good.

III. Take the next phrase: "Into Thy hands." This is doubtless a figure of speech, to speak of the hands of God; yet a figure now very expressive. The everlasting arms are beneath and around us. These are the hands into which we surrender ourselves: these are the hands at whose call we move.

IV. "I commend." That is, not only in a general sense, not only as giving back my trust, but, "I trust, I make over as a deposit, to Him the gift which He will keep for me." In that great act of self-sacrifice, Christ our Lord of His own free will laid down His life; He was not merely waiting for God's call, He went forth to meet Him.

V. And what is it that we give? It is "my spirit;" not mere life only, not mere soul only, but the best part of our life, the best part of our soul, our spirit. The present life may be dark and stormy. There are many trials of the spirit of man, yet there is one sure remedy, and that is to trust the Father of spirits with the spirits that He has made.

A. P. Stanley, Penny Pulpit, new series, No. 449.

I. The confidence here expressed by Jesus in reference to the Father was not a confidence at all grounded on His consciousness of the Father's love and favour. There was no appeal made to that. It was grounded on the Infinite perfections of the Father's righteousness and justice, and on the merits of the question. Christ claimed this of the Father. He rested upon the merit of His own work. He had done the work, and now He claimed the firstfruits in the way of recompense.

II. Was this confidence justified? What followed in the case of Christ? We know what became of His spirit, for He said Himself to the thief on the Cross, "Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." It is clear then, at all events, Christ being true, that His spirit went to Paradise. His body rested in peace until the third day. Then the Father commanded the angels to roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre; the angels rolled it away and the prisoner came forth. All power was given to Him. He was made Head over all things to the Church.

III. Look next at the parallel with regard to our own experience. Christ's confidence is to be ours. The perfect work of Jesus Christ, on which He stood before His Father, is the work on which we stand before our Father. If at this moment we were dying, we have the same reason for saying, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," as Jesus Christ Himself had. It is not robbery of Christ to say that. Stand upon that truth in life and death, and you will stand upon it in eternity.

C. Molyneux, Penny Pulpit, new series, Nos. 395-6.

References: Luke 23:46.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. v., p. 163; G. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons, p. 180; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 3rd series, p. 36; Ibid., 4th series, p. 40; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 207. Luke 23:46-49.—D. Davies, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 342. Luke 23:48.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 860. Luke 23:49.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 211; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 13th series, p. 117. Luke 23:50.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 459. Luke 23:51.—E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 11. Luke 23:55.—J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week, pp. 205, 215. Luke 23:56.—G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons, p. 258; G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospels, p. 275; R. S. Candlish, Scripture Characters and Miscellanies, p. 75. Luke 23—F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 343. Luke 24:1-8.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. i., p. 302. Luke 24:2.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 208.