What a picture is this! At a place near Jerusalem, called Golgotha, the Roman soldiery have reared three crosses. And on these crosses hang three figures. The sufferers have been doomed to die. With a criminal on either hand, the Son of man is enduring, not only anguish of body, but agony of mind unparalleled. The soldiers, with callous indifference, watch the tortured victims. The multitude gaze with vulgar curiosity upon the unwonted sight. The Jewish rulers look exultingly upon him whose death their malignant hate has compassed. Friendly disciples and tender-hearted women gaze with sympathy and tears upon the dying woe of their beloved One. No wonder that the scene should have riveted the imagination and have elicited the pathetic and pictorial powers of unnumbered painters. No wonder that every great picture-gallery in every Christian land contains some masterpiece of some famous painter, of one school or another, depicting the crucifixion of the Holy One and the Just. For us the scene has not only an artistic and affecting, but also and far more a spiritual, significance.

I. ONE CROSS IS THE SYMBOL OF DIVINE LOVE AND OF HUMAN SALVATION. The central figure of the three is that which draws to it every eye.

1. There is in this cross what every spectator can discern. A Being undoubtedly innocent, holy, benevolent, is suffering unjustly the recompense of the evildoer. Yet he endures all with patience and meekness, with no complaint, but with sincere words of forgiveness for his foes. We conceive Jesus saying, "All ye that pass by, behold, and see; was there ever sorrow like unto my sorrow?"

2. What did Christ's enemies see in his cross? The fruit of their malice, the success of their schemes, the fulfillment, as it seemed to them, of their selfish hopes.

3. A more practical and interesting question for us is - What do we behold in the cross of Christ? To all Christ's friends, their crucified Lord is the Revelation of the power and the wisdom of God, none the less so because his enemies see here only an exhibition of weakness, of folly, and of failure. The voice that reaches us from Calvary is the voice that speaks Divine love to all mankind. Here Christians recognize the provision of full and everlasting salvation; and here they come under the influence of the highest motive which appeals to the spiritual nature, and calls forth an affectionate and grateful devotion.

"From the cross uplifted high,
Where the Savior deigns to die:
What melodious sounds I hear,
Bursting on my ravished ear!
Love's redeeming work is done;
Come and welcome, sinner, come."

II. A SECOND CROSS IS THE SYMBOL OF IMPENITENCE AND REJECTION OF DIVINE MERCY. In the blaspheming robber who hung by the side of the Lord Jesus we have an awful example of human sin and crime; an awful witness to human justice and to the penalty with which transgressors are visited; and an awful illustration of the length to which sinners may carry their callous indifference to sin. An impenitent criminal reviles the one Being who has the power and the disposition to deliver him from his sin and from its worst results. Selfishness of the narrowest and meanest kind is left: "Save us!" i.e. from torture and the impending fate. A degraded life is followed by a hopeless death. Several terrible lessons are taught by this felon's character and fate.

1. How impossible it is for those to be saved who reject the means of salvation!

2. How possible it is to be close to Christ, in body, in communication, in privilege, and yet, because destitute of faith and love, to be without any benefit from such proximity!

3. How foolish it is to rely upon a late repentance, seeing that sinners are found to persevere in sin and unbelief even in the immediate prospect of death!

III. A THIRD CROSS IS THE SYMBOL OF PENITENCE AND OF PARDON. The story of the repentant malefactor shows us that, even when human justice does its work, Divine mercy may have its way.

1. The process of seeking God, even in mortal extremity. Conscience works; conviction of sin ensues, and creates a new disposition of the soul; this prompts a fearless rebuke of a neighbor's sin; faith - in the circumstances truly amazing - is exercised; true, simple, fervent prayer is offered.

2. The manifestation of compassion and mercy. The dying Lord imparts to the dying penitent an assurance of favor; free pardon is announced; bright hope is inspired; immortal happiness is secured.

3. Lessons of precious encouragement are impressed upon the spectators of this third cross. It is possible for the vilest to repent. It is certain that the sincere penitent will be regarded with favor. Even at the eleventh hour salvation is not to be despaired of. There is a prospect before those who are accepted and pardoned, of immediate joy and Divine fellowship after this life is over. - T.

Men often speak wiser than they know. During Christ's trial Pilate had made for himself a record of ineffaceable infamy. We, too, are making up a record irreversible, ineffaceable.

I. WE ARE WRITING UPON THE TABLETS OF OUR OWN SOULS. The fossiliferous rocks bear traces of rain-drops and foot-prints of birds made long ago, and destined to last to the end of time. More sensitive and susceptible is the human soul, upon which every thought, feeling, volition, action makes an impression, and the sum of these impressions makes character. The solemn thing about these impressions is that they are ineradicable. What we have written once we have written for ever. The impressions may have faded out in the long lapse of years, and yet little things — a name, a face, a strain of song — will bring up the buried past and make us live it over again. We never quite forget, and the severest torture of the damned will be that which comes from memory.

II. WE ARE WRITING, TOO, UPON THE TABLETS OF OTHER HUMAN SOULS. It may be on the tender susceptibility of a little child, every unkind act or reproach makes a wound which will leave an ugly scar that will be carried to the grave. The like is true of the tender tracery of love. An old preacher long ago had among his hearers a fair-haired boy whom he tenderly loved, and for whose salvation he longed. The preacher went to heaven; the boy found a home far away in this Western world. One day, with his hands on the plough, that boy, now a man of sixty years, paused in the furrow, and as he paused there came to him the echo of the voice of that preacher to whom he had listened in early youth. And so let the patient mother. whose love seems lost upon her wayward boy, take heart and hope.

III. AND SO WE ARE WRITING ON THE TABLETS OF ETERNITY AS WELL. Every man is an author, and the book he is writing is his autobiography. Authors commonly have a chance to revise what they write; but of this life record there shall be no revision. And this is the book that shall be opened, and out of this the dead shall be judged. We come to-day (last day in the year) to the close of another chapter of this book. We cannot revise it, but we may review it. In the review it would possibly appear that it resembles many a copy-book whose opening lines give evidences of painstaking, but whose later writing is sadly blurred. Let us humbly hope that some deeds of love have been recorded and some words of cheer for struggling souls set opposite our names. Yet how little the record shows, we fear, of holy endeavour and heroic sacrifice. But not a sentence can we efface, for what we have written we have written. And yet there is a ray of hope and a voice of comfort for those who mourn over their miserable record. A poor wretch, burdened with a sense-of sin, dreamed that the demon of darkness held up before him all the long, black catalogue of his crimes, The devil thought to drive him to despair, but while he looked and trembled, lo! One appeared who was like unto the Son of Man, and he looked and saw that His hands were pierced, and from those precious hands some drops of blood were trickling. The hands were laid upon the dreadful page, and with His blood He wiped it out. This is our consolation and our hope. And, again, there is another hope. It is the Book of Life, and in it are recorded all the names of God's saints. Let us humbly rejoice that our names are written there.

(P. S. Henson, D. D.)

I. MAN'S LIFE IS AN INSCRIPTION ON A CROSS.

1. It is evident that to Pilate the hour had come when he must reveal the spirit of his life by one great act of decision, and that decision was before the Cross. In that tremendous moment when Christ stood at his bar, the influences of two great worlds appealed to his soul — the everlasting world of Truth — Right — God; and the world of self-interest and wrong. He might crucify self or Christ; but whichever course he might adopt, he must announce his life-purpose for the world to read. By deciding for the worldly, he wrote the inscription, "I crucify Christ — truth — conscience; and enthrone self and the world in my soul,"

2. When a man chooses anything before Christ, he virtually crucifies Christ. To choose anything in preference to Christ's truth is to crucify that truth. Christ asks for the absolute surrender of man's heart in the name of eternal love; to refuse this surrender is to trample on that love, and to scorn its appeals. There is no middle ground. "He that is not with Me, is against Me." Therefore, whenever Christ is felt claiming man, and the claim is passed by, the man stands in the position of Pilate of old.(1) The man of the world has his hour when, at the door of his heart, stands the Christ summoning him once more to yield. At the same moment comes the hissing voice of the tempter, "Take thine ease a little longer; hear Christ to-morrow;" and the soul, like Pilate, leaves the judgment-throne, and yields to the lying voice. Now, go within that man's heart: Do you not see a cross standing there in the gloom, while a pale hand is writing over it, in letters of the spirit-world, this title, "This is Jesus — I crucify the King"?(2) There comes a day in the history of the young soul when he feels that he has left childhood behind, and is girding himself for the battle of life, then often the Man of Nazareth approaches that soul, saying, "For thee I died; I will give thee glory if thou wilt take up thy cross and follow Me:" and at the same moment come the three mocking spirits of the world — pleasure, wealth, fame — saying, "Follow me." The choice is made, the struggle ended! Enter that soul, and gaze on the newly-erected cross, and read the letters of fire, "I crucify Christ, the King of men; I will not crucify myself:" and the inscription of life has begun.

II. THAT INSCRIPTION IS WRITTEN IRREVOCABLY: "What I have written I have written." Pilate felt that the deed was done — Jesus crucified; his own struggle miserably ended, the past was beyond his recall. The inscription of man's life is written on two tablets.

1. The tablet of the eternal past.(1) Every deed done is done for ever. When a man has written his life-title on the cross, he may weep oceans of tears, but no human tears can wash it away.(2) The past, moreover, is a living power in the present, and it gradually forms the unchangeable character. Pilate found out that. It would have been immeasurably harder for him to change afterwards. You say the past has perished, but you forget that the present is filled with its living and active results. You see the snow covering the mountains; and you may feel that you are looking on the records of a dead past. There it lies cold — motionless. But the spring sun shines; and, in the form of a desolating avalanche, that dead past starts into a living power in the present. So in life, the sins of the past are not dead and gone; they have helped to make us what we are; and let the opportunity arise, let temptation come, and by our acts in the living present, they will terribly assert their power. Crucify self, and the cross becomes easier every day. Crucify truth, and every day you will find it harder to take the cross down.

2. The tablet of the immortal memory. We can forget nothing. Memory may sleep, but it cannot perish. Within the soul is the everlasting picture of all our life; and it only needs the light of conscience to waken it into awful brilliancy.

III. THAT INSCRIPTION IS READ BY GOD.

(E. L. Hull, B. A.)

Cleopas, Cleophas, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Nicodemus, PilateArimathea, Gabbatha, Golgotha, Jerusalem, Nazareth, The Place of the Skull, The Stone PavementChanged, Pilate, Pilate's, Writing, Written1. Jesus is scourged, crowned with thorns, and beaten.
4. Pilate is desirous to release him,
15. but being overcome with the outrage of the crowd, he delivers him to be crucified.
23. They cast lots for his garments.
25. He commends his mother to John.
28. He dies.
31. His side is pierced.
38. He is buried by Joseph and Nicodemus.

John 19:22

     5638   writing

John 19:16-24

     5879   humiliation

John 19:19-22

     2312   Christ, as king

February 20 Morning
He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.--ISA. 53:11. Jesus . . . said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.--To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

August 4 Morning
It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--JOHN 19:30. Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.--I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.--We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering an offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

October 18 Morning
One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.--JOHN 19:34. Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you.--The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.--It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Jesus said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.--By his own blood he entered in once into …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

February 17 Morning
The whole bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire.--LEV. 4:12. They took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him.--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 …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

The Title on the Cross
'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.' --JOHN xix. 19. This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that, meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should have written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for whom Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the fullest, as indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the most complete. He alone records …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Irrevocable Past
'What I have written I have written.'--JOHN xix. 22. This was a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ's Finished and Unfinished Work
'Jesus ... said, It is finished.'--JOHN xix. 30. 'He said unto me, It is done.'--REV. xxi. 6. One of these sayings was spoken from the Cross, the other from the Throne. The Speaker of both is the same. In the one, His voice 'then shook the earth,' as the rending rocks testified; in the other, His voice 'will shake not the earth only but also heaven'; for 'new heavens and a new earth' accompanied the proclamation. In the one, like some traveller ready to depart, who casts a final glance over his preparations, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ Our Passover
'These things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken.'--JOHN xix. 36. The Evangelist, in the words of this text, points to the great Feast of the Passover and to the Paschal Lamb, as finding their highest fulfilment, as he calls it, in Jesus Christ. For this purpose of bringing out the correspondence between the shadow and the substance he avails himself of a singular coincidence concerning a perfectly unimportant matter--viz., the abnormally rapid sinking …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Grave in a Garden
'In the garden a new tomb.'--JOHN xix. 41 (R.V.). This is possibly no more than a topographical note introduced merely for the sake of accuracy. But it is quite in John's manner to attach importance to these apparent trifles and to give no express statement that he is doing so. There are several other instances in the Gospel where similar details are given which appear to have had in his eyes a symbolical meaning--e.g. 'And it was night.' There may have been such a thought in his mind, for all men …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Jesus Sentenced
'Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him with their hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man! When the chief priests …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

An Eye-Witness's Account of the Crucifixion
'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. 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 …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Joseph and Nicodemus
'And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; ... And there came also Nicodemus which at the first came to Jesus by night.'--JOHN xix. 38, 39. While Christ lived, these two men had been unfaithful to their convictions; but His death, which terrified and paralysed and scattered His avowed disciples, seems to have shamed and stung them into courage. They came now, when they must have known …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Fifth Word
"I thirst."--JOHN XIX. 28. This is the only utterance of our Blessed Lord in which He gave expression to His physical sufferings. Not least of these was that intolerable thirst which is the invariable result of all serious wounds, as those know well who have ever visited patients in a hospital after they have undergone a surgical operation. In this case it must have been aggravated beyond endurance by exposure to the burning heat of an Eastern sun. This word, then, spoken under such circumstances, …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Sixth Word
"It is accomplished."--ST. JOHN XIX. 30. 1. What had been accomplished? In the first place, that work which Christ had come into the world to do. All that work may be resumed in a single word, "sacrifice." The Son of God had come for this one purpose, to offer a sacrifice. Here is room for serious misunderstanding. The blood, the pain, the death, were not the sacrifice. Nothing visible was the sacrifice, least of all the physical surroundings of its culminating act. There is only one thing …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Third Word
"Lady, behold thy son." "Behold thy mother." ST. JOHN XIX. 26, 27. In this Word we see the Son of God revealed as human son, and human friend, all the more truly and genuinely human in both relations, because in each and every relation of life, Divine. 1. The first lesson in the Divine Life for us to learn here is the simple, almost vulgarly commonplace one, yet so greatly needing to be learnt, that "charity," which is but a synonym of the Divine Life, "begins at home." Home life is the real test …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Last Look at Life,
(Passion Sermon.) TEXT: JOHN xix. 30. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished." THESE greatest and most glorious of the last words -*- of our Saviour on the cross come immediately after those which are apparently of the least significance and importance. The Lord said, "I thirst;" then the moistened sponge was handed to Him; and when He had received the soothing, though not pleasant draught, He cried, "It is finished." And we must not break the connection of these …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

The Shortest of the Seven Cries
As these seven sayings were so faithfully recorded, we do not wonder that they have frequently been the subject of devout meditation. Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell upon every syllable of these matchless cries. These solemn sentences have shone like the seven golden candlesticks or the seven stars of the Apocalypse, and have lighted multitudes of men to him who spake them. Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so doing have arranged …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 24: 1878

The Procession of Sorrow
I. After our Lord Jesus Christ had been formally condemned by Pilate, our text tells us he was led away. I invite your attention to CHRIST AS LED FORTH. Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. The lictors executed their cruel office upon his shoulders with their rods and scourges, until the stripes had reached the full number. Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 9: 1863

Death of Jesus.
Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy. Consistently with this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

The Third Word from the Cross
In the life of our Lord from first to last there is a strange blending of the majestic and the lowly. When a beam of His divine dignity is allowed to shine out and dazzle us, it is never long before there ensues some incident which reminds us that He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; and, contrariwise, when He does anything which impressively brings home to us His humanity, there always follows something to remind us that He was greater than the sons of men. Thus at His birth He was laid …
James Stalker—The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ

Objections to Genuineness.
THE most plausible objection to the genuineness of these writings is thus expressed by Dupin: "Eusebius and Jerome wrote an accurate catalogue of each author known to them--with a few obscure exceptions,--and yet never mention the writings of the Areopagite." Great is the rejoicing in the House of the Anti-Areopagites over this PROOF;--but what are the facts? Eusebius acknowledges that innumerable works have not come to him--Jerome disclaims either to know or to give an accurate catalogue either …
Dionysius—LETTERS OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

And at his Crucifixion, when He Asked a Drink...
And at His crucifixion, when He asked a drink, they gave Him to drink vinegar mingled with gall. (Cf. Joh. xix. 29) And this was declared through David. They gave gall to my meat, and in any thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. [262] …
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Inward Confirmation of the Veracity of the Scriptures
We are living in a day when confidence is lacking; when skepticism and agnosticism are becoming more and more prevalent; and when doubt and uncertainty are made the badges of culture and wisdom. Everywhere men are demanding proof. Hypotheses and speculations fail to satisfy: the heart cannot rest content until it is able to say, "I know." The demand of the human mind is for definite knowledge and positive assurance. And God has condescended to meet this need. One thing which distinguishes Christianity …
Arthur W. Pink—The Divine Inspiration of the Bible

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