Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Death of Christ from Matthew 27:27–42
King David was a good king … thoughtful, committed to public justice, and an able administrator. These were days long before constitutional monarchy; he was an autocrat. But for most of his reign, he was a very able and God-fearing autocrat. He unified the nation, brought the tribes together, and eventually moved the capital city to Jerusalem.
Then toward middle age, he became enchanted with the woman next door. While his own forces were out to the front, he seduced her, and she became pregnant. When he heard about it, he thought that this matter could be hidden if only her husband would come back from the front and have a night at home. So he arranged it. But it turned out that this husband was so honorable, so allied to his mates at the front, that he did not think, somehow, that he had the right to go home. So he spent the night in Jerusalem in the king’s gatehouse.
That meant King David was running out of options. So he wrote to the commander-in-chief and put this husband at the front of a little skirmish. Everyone else backed away very quickly, and the inevitable happened: the man was killed. The text says, “But the thing that he had done displeased the Lord.” In the next chapter, the prophet Nathan confronts King David. Prophet though he was, Nathan knew better than simply to go into an autocratic king without coming in tangentially. So he begins with a parable.
“Your Majesty, upcountry there are a couple of landowners who live side by side. One is filthy rich with flocks and herds everywhere. His neighbor is just a dirt farmer with one poor little lamb; that’s it. It so happened that some visitors came by to visit the first man, and, true to Middle Eastern hospitality, he knew that a banquet had to be set. But instead of taking one of the animals from his own flock, he swiped his neighbor’s one little lamb!”
David is indignant. “We’ll put that to right! This is not right; where is this taking place? Who is doing this?” The readers of the text know that every word that David is speaking is dripping in irony. David doesn’t know that, not yet. But the readers know it. In fact, most of us know what irony is.
It’s a literary device, but it’s a literary device that can sometimes be funny, sometimes vicious, but very often extraordinarily capable of getting at the heart of what is really going on. It exposes double meanings. It exposes the hypocrisy of an event. It can suddenly bring to light exactly what is going on. In the New Testament, the two writers most given to irony are Matthew and John.
Now I know we have just come through the Easter season. We have studied the passion narrative again, and the resurrection accounts, but tonight I would like to direct your attention back to Matthew 27, where we can think our way through the ironies of the cross. As Matthew relates the account, every paragraph is drenched in the most profound irony. Sometimes, our familiarity with the text enables us to skirt right over and not see how the irony that Matthew deploys enables us to see what the cross is about.
1. The man who is mocked as a king is King.
Matthew 27:27–31. It was part of standard procedure in those days to interrogate a person by beating them up first. Then after sentence of crucifixion was passed, the prisoner was beaten again. That was standard procedure. But here in Matthew 27, beginning at verse 27, we see something that was not regular practice: barrack-room humor.
A robe was put on Jesus. They took these Middle Eastern thorns, wrapped up the vine, and scrunched it down on his head. They put a stick in his hand as if it were a scepter and smashed it against his skull again and again. Everybody was laughing uproariously, spitting on Jesus, and mocking him: “Hail, Your Majesty, great king of the Jews!” Great fun.
But Matthew knows, and his readers know, that this is the King of the Jews. How does Matthew begin his book? “The origins of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David …” And then he gives the genealogy. It’s carefully structured into three parts so that the central 14 is the Davidic dynasty.
In the remaining names, although no Davidide returns to the throne, that is exactly what the people of God (those who retained covenantal loyalty) really wanted. After all, hadn’t Scripture promised again and again that one day, great David’s greater son would come? Then Jesus announced the coming of the kingdom, and in the parables that he told, not a few of those parables pictured himself as king.
In fact, in the trial, this matter of Jesus’ kingship had surfaced again. Matthew 27:11: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked him. Pilate was interested in knowing only whether or not Jesus was some sort of threat to the empire, to Caesar. Of course, in the merely political area, he’s no threat at all.
That’s not the nature of his kingdom. But Jesus answers truthfully, “Yes, it is as you say.” Yet Pilate detects that Jesus is not some immediate political threat. He’s ready to put Jesus aside. But he is executed on this ground: that he is a political threat, he is the king of the Jews, and “We have no king but Caesar.”
The charge returns in verse 37. It’s on the titulus, the written charge against him placed above his head on the cross: “This is Jesus, the king of the Jews.” They meant this with irony: “This is what happens to your so-called kings; they die the death of the most odious criminal. This is Jesus.” They meant it to be an ironic assertion. But Matthew means it to be an irony behind the irony: “This really is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”
Then again in verse 42, as we shall see: “He can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel!” More mockery, except he was the King of Israel. Indeed, in New Testament terms, he is not only the King of Israel, he’s the King of the Universe. Colossians reminds us that all things were made by him and for him.
John reminds us that he is not only with God in the beginning but he is God, that all things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that was made. These very soldiers who are nailing him to the cross: they are all subjects to this King. One day, every knee will bow. Matthew understands that.
In fact, he’s incorporated this truth into his report of Jesus’ teaching on elementary Christian ethics. Do you remember the passage back in Matthew 20:20 and following, when the mother of Zebedee’s sons (James and John), approaches Jesus with her sons? The three came to Jesus, knelt down, and asked a favor of him.
“ ‘What is it you want?’ he asked. She said, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.’ ” In other words, the expectation was of a political kingdom (perhaps of an extraordinary, even supernatural, political kingdom). She wanted that one would be the chancellor of the exchequer and the other would head the foreign office, or something similar.
“ ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said to them. ‘Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?’ ” The cup to which he was referring to was suffering. They think it means something like his destiny, and with supreme confidence, they say, “We can.” Jesus said to them (with more irony), “You will indeed drink from my cup …” That is, one of them will be the first apostolic martyr. They’re going to get more than they bargained for.
“ ‘… but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.’ When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers.” Well, of course, because they hadn’t thought of it first. It’s not because they were so upset by the morality involved. It’s simply because they didn’t want to be squeezed to the periphery.
“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life for ransom for many.’ ”
In other words, for all the glorious uniqueness of the cross in achieving atonement for our sins, it is also an ethical model. It teaches Christian leaders how to serve. That’s why, in the early church amongst the fathers of the first three centuries, it was not uncommon to speak of Jesus reigning from the cross. Isn’t that a lovely expression?
It was such a contradiction in terms. “Cross,” in those days, was bound up with shame, dishonor, and ignominy. To reign from the cross? But that’s what Jesus was doing. Those who follow him must rule in exactly the same way: coming not to be served, but to serve, and to give their lives for others. Here, then, is the first irony: the man who is mocked as king is the King.
2. The man who is utterly powerless is powerful.
Matthew 27:32–40. We may not have time to go through each line here, but notice how the theme of Jesus’ weakness recurs and recurs.
In those days, the upright of the cross was normally left in the place of execution, which was always in a public venue by a square or a main thoroughfare. Then once sentence was passed, there was no long delay. The victim had to carry the crossmember (the crossbar) on his shoulder out to the place of execution. There it was laid on the ground, he was laid on it, and he was either nailed or tied to it. Then the crossbar was hoisted up on the upright, and there he hung.
So once a person was carrying his cross out to the place of execution, it was a sign that he was beyond hope. No reprieve was possible. Sentence had been passed. There was only suffering and death left. In the most hopeless ignominy and shame people hung there naked, mocked by all who passed by. If you read the ancient literature on crucifixion, there was nothing noble about it.
There is a sense in which crucifixion aroused, in the ancient world, the kinds of repugnance that we have today when we say something like “Auschwitz.” Nobody smiles when you say “Auschwitz.” In the ancient world, the Romans had three different methods of execution, but crucifixion was associated with all that was barbaric. It was for the scum of society. Nobody smiled when you said “crucifixion.”
Today, of course, we have crosses in our buildings and hanging from our ears, in our lapels, and around our bishops’ necks. Nobody is shocked! But in the first century, the cross was full of shame and odium, quite apart from the suffering and the death itself. Jesus, now, is so weak, so powerless, and so exhausted that he doesn’t even have the strength to carry a piece of wood on his shoulder outside the city gates.
So the Roman soldiers have to impress a passerby, this chap Simon, and he carries the crossmember out to the place of the skull. Then once he’s crucified the quaternion of soldiers just sit there and watch him. They take his few remaining belongings, throw a few die, and as a result, they divvy up his few things left. They watched him.
The reason why they watched him was because, earlier on, it was not unknown for people to have been crucified and then, if there were no soldiers watching them, friends could come along and actually take them down from the cross, and they’d survive. So at this point, it was Roman practice to keep soldiers there to keep the friends away.
The agony could go on for days. They watched him. There is no picture, in all of the New Testament, of greater shame and weakness than that: someone just hanging on a cross. Then the mockery in verse 29. “Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!’ ”
Of course, today we can put up a building pretty fast. For certain kinds of structures, you can arrange prefabrication, bring in hydraulic lifts and trucks, and you can put up a pretty good size building in a few days. But in the ancient world, of course, it wasn’t like that. Everything was done by hand. In the case of the temple in Jerusalem, you weren’t allowed to hear the sound of a hammer on a stone in the temple precinct. As a result, everything had to be cut elsewhere: carefully measured, cut elsewhere, brought in by hand, and carefully fitted.
This temple had started out as a rather insignificant affair after the exile, but for almost 50 years, it had been the subject of a massive and expensive enlargement and beautification campaign. It was started 20 years before Jesus was born, and it would go on another 15 years or so before it was finished. When you started to build the great cathedrals of Europe, often it took a century and a half or two centuries. The architects never did see the final product! Now along comes Jesus and says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again.”
This, too, was a charge raised against him at his trial. Do you recall Matthew 26, verses 60b to 61? “Finally two people came forward and declared, ‘This fellow said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.” ’ ” The reason why they said this, of course, was because, under Roman law, desecration of a temple was a capital offense. The Romans passed this law to keep the various religions from getting at each other’s throats. So desecration of a temple, any temple, was a capital offense.
Some remembered that Jesus had said something that sounded something like a threat of the desecration of the temple. So this man … who had walked on water, who had healed the sick, who clearly had multiplied loaves, who had all of this power … was now talking about destroying a temple and building it again in three days. What kind of power was that?
But now how much power did he have? He barely had the power to pull with his arms and push with his legs to open up his chest cavity so he could breathe, then collapse again, then pull and push again to take his next gasping breath. He was utterly powerless. “You who are so strong, if you really are so powerful, come down from the cross, and we’ll believe.”
But when had Jesus said these words, and what did he mean? The report of his actually saying these things is found in John 2, toward the beginning of his ministry. In fact, the fact that he said them toward the beginning of his ministry is probably why the witnesses couldn’t get their stories quite straight, and as a result, that was not finally the charge on which he was executed.
But what did he mean? “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again.” As John the Evangelist recounts the event, he points out that the opponents didn’t have a clue what he was saying, and Jesus’ own disciples didn’t have a clue what he was saying. Rather, John comments, “After Jesus had risen from the dead, then they remembered Jesus’ words and understood the Scriptures and believed the Scriptures.” Jesus was talking not about this great structure in Jerusalem. He was talking about his own body.
The temple of Jerusalem was the great place where God and human beings came together. This was where the priestly service was offered. This was where the high priest went on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: into the Most Holy Place, beyond the veil, with the blood of bull and goat, both for his own sins and for the sins of his people. This was the place where the morning and evening offering took place. This was the place where the Passover lamb was sacrificed year after year after year, in its thousands.
It was the great meeting place between God and his people. But Jesus now says that’s changing: “Destroy this body, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again.” For by Jesus’ death and resurrection, he becomes the supreme temple, the supreme meeting place between God and human beings. He becomes the supreme sacrifice. He becomes the supreme priest.
How do men and women this side of the new covenant approach God? By the blood of a bull and a goat offered on top of a chest of drawers behind a curtain in a great stone building in Jerusalem? No, no. They come in Jesus’ name because he died: the just for the unjust. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He himself is the great temple, the great meeting place between God and human beings.
The irony here, of course, is that while people are sneering, “You, who will destroy the temple and build it again in three days, come down from the cross if you are so powerful,” it is precisely by his staying on the cross that the temple is destroyed and built again in three days so that he would be the very temple that reconciles human beings to God. This too is worked into the ethics of this gospel. Do you recall the great scene at Caesarea Philippi in Matthew 16? This is where Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
“Some say this, some say that.”
“Who do you say I am?”
Finally, Peter speaks up and says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Of course, what Peter meant by that wasn’t exactly what we mean by that. Peter had a vision of Christ, a Messiah, who would be a conquering king. At this point, Peter still did not understand that this King, this Messiah, had to go to the cross. Nevertheless, at least he is resolved that this truly is the promised Messiah. Jesus says, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”
Immediately, Jesus goes on to talk about what must, therefore, take place next (Matthew 16:21 and following). This Messiah must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Peter has no category for a crucified Messiah. None. Not at this stage. So he turns on Jesus and, having scored once theologically, thinks he will do it again.
He says, “This shall never happen to you. Never, Lord!” More irony. How do you say “Never, Lord”? You say, “Yes, sir, Lord” and you say, “Never, you stupid twit,” but how do you say, “Never, Lord”? Jesus wheels on him and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but the things of men.”
And then this: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Sometimes, in the Western world, we use this expression, “take up one’s cross,” to refer to some inconvenience of major or minor proportion in our lives, don’t we? “Well, we all have our crosses to bear,” we say. That can be anything from sort of an ingrown toenail to an awkward in-law to cancer. “We all have our crosses to bear.”
But that’s simply not the image that was evoked when Jesus said these words. In the first century, when you took up your cross, you were going to the place of death. There was no more hope for personal ambition or the like. You were going to death. The one who follows Jesus, Jesus says, must take up his cross, as Jesus took up his cross. Now most of us don’t actually die physically; most of us don’t die by crucifixion. Nevertheless, in genuine Christianity, there is a principled death to self that needs to be renewed again and again and again.
For, in the Christian way, it is the one who dies to self who finds himself or herself. It is those who die to self-interest who find that all of their interests are wonderfully fulfilled in subservience to Jesus. “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me,” Jesus says, “will find it.”
Here, then, is the second irony, and it works out in our lives. In the case of Jesus, the man who was so powerless was powerful. His power was worked out precisely in the context of the most incredibly miserable suffering and death. But is it not true in our case? Is it not true in the experience of the apostle Paul that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness? When we think we are so strong, again and again, God humbles us. When we come to the end of our own hoarded resources, God’s power is made perfect within us. It is the way of the cross.
3. The man who can’t save himself saves others.
Matthew 27:41–42. “In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders mocked him. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.’ ” Now once again, Matthew has prepared the way for this.
If you took a microphone out into the streets of London and asked people haphazardly, “What does the verb save conjure up for you?” what would they say? Well, if you’re anywhere near the city, it’s going to conjure up banks, stocks, portfolios, and building societies. If you’re anywhere near the computer industry, save is that which, if you fail to do it, means you lose a lot of data. If you come across a sports fan, save is the thing that the goalie didn’t do when David Beckham kicked that wonderful goal.
What does it mean here? Matthew, again, has already told us. He’s prepared the way for this verse. In the very first chapter, he started off, “Joseph, you are to name this baby Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” That’s what he will do. Jesus means “Yahweh saves.” He will save his people from their sins.
I have a son (my youngest, Nicholas) who is a strapping six-two and broad-shouldered. He also loves slightly outrageous tee shirts. We let him get away with most of them, but every once in a while we draw a line on it and say, “Nicholas, I don’t think so.” He’s off to university in the fall. He has one that says, on his broad back, “Woke up late. Flunked my math exam. Girlfriend ditched me. Missed an assignment. Played soccer. Not a bad day.” Now there is a kid with his priorities straight, wouldn’t you say?
But there is one where we have to say, “That one is just a bit over the top, Nicholas.” It’s a picture of a soccer net, and the ball has clearly come in. The goalie has made a diving save, the ball has just bounced off the tops of the tips of his fingers, and it’s clearly going above the net. The goalie, judging by what he’s wearing, is actually Jesus. Underneath are the words, “Jesus saves.” That one, I don’t want.
For Matthew tells us what “Jesus saves” means. He starts it off at the very beginning of his book, as if to say, “Everything that Jesus is doing in this book is actually in fulfillment of this description of his ministry.” What does he come to do? He comes to save his people from their sins.
So that when he is healing someone, he is saving his people from their sins, for sickness and death are part of this fallen order that stand under the curse. Directly or indirectly, they are a mark of all that is wrong. Death and sickness are, in a profound theological sense, outrageous, and Jesus came to save his people from their sins.
When he raises someone from the dead, what is he doing? He comes to save his people from their sins. When the paralytic is let down through the roof in Matthew 8, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven you.” Well, yes! He came to save his people from their sins.
When Matthew 24 and 25 (the great Olivet Discourse) look forward to the final consummation, the dawn of the new heaven and the new earth, and the home of righteousness (a theme expanded upon greatly throughout the Bible), what is this that Jesus is doing? Well, he is coming to save his people from their sins.
Where is the whole narrative in this gospel going? It is going to the cross and to the empty tomb. Why? Because Jesus came to save his people from their sins. A theme so fundamental you do not play around with in a sports metaphor. But, of course, that’s not what these critics understand. The verb to save was a generic one that could mean, “he helped others,” “he transformed others,” or “he healed others.”
When they say, “He saved others; himself he can’t save,” they mean, of course, that he’s too weak to do that. He was strong enough to do those miracles, but he’s too weak to do this. He can’t save himself. But there are two layers of irony here, too, aren’t there? At one level, he could save himself.
This is the Jesus who insists, in the midst of the passion narrative, “Do you not know that even now I could call twelve legions of angels?” He had the power, even now, to save himself. In that sense, they were profoundly mistaken. But the deep irony is that, in a way they did not understand, they were right. He could not save himself and others. If he had saved himself, he would not have saved others.
When I was a boy, I had a remarkably perverse imagination. I liked to follow stories so far and then give them a twist and, in my mind’s eye, track out where they would go. So this was one of my favorites when I was really very young. You have all of these people taunting Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, come down now from the cross, and we will believe.” So in my mind’s eye, Jesus steps down. Now what? Where does the story go? Do they believe?
Well, in one sense, it would be pretty impressive, wouldn’t it? In one sense, it would shut a lot of mouths, and it would compel some kind of belief immediately, wouldn’t it? But not the kind of belief he wanted. “For he came to save his people from their sins.” He wanted the kind of faith that trusted him as the supreme God-given sacrifice on their behalf, and he wouldn’t have been that if he had stepped down from the cross.
He could not save himself and others. Not because he was physically unable to, but because of internal moral constraint. He came to do his Father’s will, and the will of his Father was that he should go to the cross and bear my sin in his own body on the tree. Part of the reason why that does not strike us immediately, I suspect, is because our culture thinks less and less of internal moral constraint.
Did you see the film Titanic when it came out a few years ago? In it, as the great ship is sinking and people are rushing for the lifeboats, pistol-packing sailors start firing shots off into the air to keep away the rich men so that the women and children can get into the boats first. But do you know what really happened? All the survivors are at one on this point; there is not a dissenting voice in the historical record.
That great ship had 400 of the world’s wealthiest men on board, and not one of them scrambled for a boat. Not one. John Jacob Astor was there: the Bill Gates of a century ago, the richest man on earth. He pushed to the boat with his wife in tow, got her on board, stepped back, and drowned. Guggenheim was there. He was separated from his wife but got a message to her saying, “Let no one say Ben Guggenheim does not know his duty.” Not one rich fat cat tried to make his way to the boat. All who were saved were women and children.
When the reviewer of this film in the New York Times related the discrepancy, he asked the question, “Why did the producers and directors feel it necessary to distort history at this point?” Then he answered his own question, “Because if they had told the truth, no one today would have believed it.” Now that’s a damning indictment. That was still part of a culture where there were more internal moral constraints. We have moved more and more to a “me first, everyone for himself or herself” sort of culture, where there are fewer and fewer moral constraints.
But Jesus, supremely, was motivated by his commitment to do the Father’s will, which is why we find him in Gethsemane agonizing, “Not my will, but yours be done.” In that sense, he could not save himself and save us. Likewise, the gospel comes to men and women today and does not merely supply a packet of rules and regulations. It comes with transforming grace to give us different hearts and different ways of looking at things.
It comes to renew us, regenerate us, and empower us so that, in some small way … full of inconsistencies, no doubt, and full of failures of which we are ashamed, but nevertheless profoundly, from within … it is changing our orientation so that the things we formerly despised we come to cherish, and the sins we formerly cherished we come to fear and loathe.
4. The man who cries out in despair trusts God.
Matthew 27:43–47. The sneering continues in verse 43: “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” Then a couple of verses on, this lamentable cry: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
So did Jesus trust God? Or at the crucial moment, did he slump down in such despair that all his confidence in God dissolved? That’s the way this text is regularly read today, you know. Jesus becomes a kind of psychological encouragement: if even Jesus can slump into profound despair when the going really gets tough, it shouldn’t be too surprising if we do, too. So don’t feel too badly about it. That entirely misses the point.
No doubt Jesus, here, is in an agony of pain, but not for a moment is his resolve weakened. He himself has told, again and again and again throughout the narrative, that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer. When others, including his own disciples, try to dissuade him, he knows that he must go. He also knows why he is going: to give his life as a ransom for many.
At the words of institution, he takes the bread and says, “This is my body, which is broken for you.” He takes the cup, and he says, “This is the blood of the new covenant.” In the garden, he cries, “Not my will, but yours be done.” He knows, from beginning to end, where he is going, why he is going, and what he has come to do.
So now when the pain is turned up a bit, are we to think that he now thinks, “Oops, I’ve made a big mistake. I can’t take this after all”? Is that what is going on with all the irony that runs all through this passage? What an incredibly shallow reading. You see, the crowds think, “He who trusts in God, look where it got him.” Then they hear him crying, and because he speaks in Aramaic or Hebrew, they don’t even understand some of his words. “Maybe he’s calling for Elijah.” They see nothing of what is going on.
Oh no, the truth is that it is precisely because he trusts in God that he cries this prayer. That’s the point. This is the Father’s will. It is the Father’s will that he should perish. It is the Father’s will that he should be bruised. It is the Father’s will that he should be rejected by the Father. It is precisely because he trusts this all-wise plan of his Father, because he is committed to carrying out that plan, that he endures the agony of separation, almost unimaginable, in the Godhead itself, to bear my sin in his own body on the tree.
Perhaps the poetical piece that puts this most clearly is something that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Cowper’s Grave.” It’s a three-page poem. She’s referring to William Cowper: scholar, literary critic, and hymn writer. He was a friend of John Newton (former slave trader, then pastor in Olney). John Newton and William Cowper put together the Olney Hymns, and we still sing some of William Cowper’s hymns today.
At the same time, he was a great literary critic, and his reviews and writings were known up and down the land. He was revered in intellectual circles in Oxbridge, but he was also a man who spent much of his adult life in an insane asylum. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, “Cowper’s Grave,” she relates some of his great triumphs and pays tribute to him in an ode-like fashion. Then toward the very end of the poem, she relates more of his Christian faith and his confidence in Christ. She writes,
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry his universe hath shaken—
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up from the Holy’s lips amid his lost creation,
That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!
Do you see what she’s saying? William Cowper may have spent years of his life in an asylum to combat his profound depressions, but for all eternity, he will never cry this cry of abandonment and depression again because someone cried it for him. “That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!” He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, and he cried out in abandonment, according to the will of God, so that we would not have to.
One of the most moving hymns written in the last 10 years on this theme is by an Englishman by the name of Stuart Townend:
How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That he should give his only Son
To make a wretch his treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss—
The Father turns his face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.
Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon his shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life—
I know that it is finished.
I will not boast in anything,
No gifts, no power, no wisdom;
But I will boast in Jesus Christ,
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from his reward?
I cannot give an answer;
But this I know with all my heart—
His wounds have paid my ransom.
Let us pray.
Draw us, merciful God, close to the cross, again and again and again, where no boasting is possible, where every tongue is silenced, and where your people gather in hushed adoration and praise for him who loved us even to the death of the cross, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Oh Lord God, where sin lurks in us tonight, where unbelief is still stirring, where all of the saints seem simultaneously very strange and wonderfully attractive, work in our hearts by your Spirit so that we call out from the very depths of our being, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” For Jesus’ sake, amen.
