Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Death of Christ from Matthew 27:27–50
Male: You may not have heard of Dr. D.A. Carson, but if you are a reader of theology or involved in academic circles, you certainly have heard of him, as he is very well respected and known, and he is truly a theologian. He is the research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he has served as a pastor and as associate pastor. He has actually written over 45 books. The pastoral staff last year recently read Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church. We are so delighted that he is here and is going to open God’s Word for us this morning.
Don Carson: It’s my privilege to be with you this morning, and I would like to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 27, beginning at verse 27. Matthew 27:27–50. While you are looking this passage up, I want to come in from the side door, as it were. Then I’ll read the passage, and then we’ll pray.
I’m thinking of a king, a long time ago, whose reign was marked by organizational and administrative skill. On the whole, he was marked by justice. He united the tribes and secured the frontiers of his small nation. But in his middle years, he seduced a young woman next door while her husband was away. She became pregnant. Thinking he could still get away with it, he arranged to have her husband brought back. He was, in fact, at the front, fighting the king’s wars.
So he arranged through the military high command to have the young man brought back, ostensibly, to bring a message, the king thinking that undoubtedly, he would go home and sleep with his wife and a month or two later her condition would be known. In fact, this young man was so concerned for his mates at the front that he didn’t do the expected thing, and so the king knew he was caught.
So he arranged for a message to be sent back with this young man to the officers at the front. They arranged a little skirmish. Everybody else in the squad was given a signal to fall back at a certain moment. He was left at the exposed front, and he was killed. King David thought he got away with it. But God sees what the rest of us don’t see, and he confronted the king through the prophet Nathan.
But after all, David was an autocrat, so Nathan approached with a certain kind of care and began with a parable. “Your majesty,” he says, “Up country, there are two men. One is filthy rich. Cattle everywhere. The other is a dirt farmer. You know? One poor little lamb. Well, he had one poor little lamb until the rich man took it. Some people came by wanting to show typical Eastern hospitality. He knew a lamb had to be slaughtered, and instead of taking one from his vast fields, he swiped the one little lamb of his neighbor.”
King David is indignant. “How can this be? Who are these people? I’ll sort this one out immediately.” And he doesn’t hear the irony in his own words. God knows, Nathan knows, and the readers know that King David’s words are just dripping in irony. He’s condemning himself without yet understanding what he’s doing. In narrative, irony can be wickedly funny, but it can also show you exactly what is going on in the account.
When people speak better than they know and others understand what is really going on, you begin to see what an account is really all about. In the New Testament, the two writers most given to irony are Matthew and John, and in this passage I’m about to read, what we find are the ironies of the cross. Part of our problem is that we get to know the story so well from regular Bible reading that we don’t hear it the way the first century readers first heard it. Listen, then, to the Word of God. Matthew 27, beginning at 27:
“Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.
After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means ‘the place of the skull’). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.
When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 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!’
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. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, “I am the Son of God.” ’ In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of those standing there heard this, they said, ‘He’s calling Elijah.’ Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, ‘Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.’ And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.
And now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Through Jesus Christ, the Lord, amen.
Let me remind you of the setting. Jesus is about 33. He’s had about three years of ministry, years characterized in large part by popularity, but now he has fallen afoul of the religious and political authorities. They resent his popularity. They fear his power. They are suspicious of his motives and they think that the rising number of his followers could foment a rebellion against the reigning superpower (Rome), and this could only end in one way if the Romans send in their vast army.
So they provide a kangaroo court. They condemn Jesus. They manage to secure the sanction of the Roman governor to have Jesus executed by crucifixion. It was politically expedient. It was for the best. It would quell the tensions. Now here in the text, we pick up the story right after sentence has been passed. In those days, there was no long delay between passing of sentence and execution. There was no long appeals process, so that once sentence was passed you were taken out and executed. Now we find the four ironies.
1. The man who is mocked as king is King.
That’s what we find in verses 27 to 31. You see, in those days, as part of the interrogation technique, they beat you up pretty badly. Then after sentence was passed they beat you up again. Jesus has already faced that. But what you find in these verses is not standard procedure. This is barracks-room humor. It’s supposed to be funny, from the soldier’s point of view.
They take this prisoner who has been condemned as a traitor because he’s assumed the title King of the Jews. They drape his shoulders with some sort of robe. They put a stick in his hand as if it were a scepter. They take these vine thorns they have in the Middle East (the spikes are pretty long), wrap them up together, and crunch them down on his head. Then, they bash his face around a little, take the staff and hit him on the head and bow before him. “Hail King of the Jews! Ha, ha, ha.” Great humor.
But God knows, and Matthew knows, and the readers know that he is the King of the Jews. Because before you read 27, you’re supposed to read chapters 1 to 26. How does chapter 1 begin? The very first verse: “The origins of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then, the genealogy, carefully arranged so that the central fourteen cover the years of the reign of the Davidic dynasty.
Then, right through the book, many, many references to the dawning King. John the Baptist announces the dawning of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus announces the dawning of the kingdom of heaven. As Jesus goes on to give parables talking about the kingdom, very often within the parable it becomes pretty obvious that the King Jesus has in mind is himself. Indeed, at the trial, this very issue had been raised.
Chapter 27, verse 11. “Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied.” And yet, an odd King he was. No troops. No weapons. No soldiers. Pilate knew he wasn’t really a political threat, but he’s still the King. Indeed, strictly speaking, when you read the rest of the New Testament, you discover he’s not only the King of the Jews, he’s the King of Kings, and every knee shall bow to him and every tongue confess ‘Jesus is Lord,’ including the very people who are currently mocking him.
The man who is mocked as king is King, and every knee shall bow to him. But what kind of kingdom is this? It’s such an odd one, isn’t it? You see, today, when we think of kingdom, if we think about it at all, we’re likely to think of the British monarchy, which is largely constitutional. Queen Elizabeth II has no real power. But in the first century there was no constitutional monarchy. If you were king, you were supposed to rule, but what kind of rule is this?
In fact, this had already been talked about between Jesus and some of his own disciples. Chapter 20, verses 20 and following (a well-known passage): “The mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and kneeling down, asked a favor of him. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked. She said, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine might sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom.’
Expecting some political entity, she wants her two boys to be numbers one and two under Jesus, one secretary of defense, maybe, the other secretary of state, on the right hand, on the left hand. Jesus says “You don’t know what you are talking about. Can you drink my cup?” That is, “Can you experience what I experience?” and he’s thinking of his sufferings. They don’t have a clue that’s what Jesus is talking about. They haven’t figured it out yet that Jesus must suffer.
So they say, “Oh, yes we can.” Very confident they are. Jesus says, “In fact you will drink my cup,” that is, they will suffer. James would become the first apostolic martyr. The other brother would end up as an exile on Patmos, but they still don’t get it. When the other apostles hear about this, they’re indignant, we’re told (verse 24). They’re indignant with the two brothers, but only because they didn’t get their dibs in first.
Then Jesus says, “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 as a ransom for many.”
In other words, the cross of Jesus not only redeems us, it’s not only a ransom for us, it’s also to become some kind of model of what Christian leadership looks like. Which is why, for the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians often spoke with profound irony of Jesus reigning from the cross. Reigning? From this abysmal place of suffering and execution? What kind of kingdom is this? The man who was mocked as king is King.
2. The man who was utterly powerless is powerful.
Verses 32 to 40. Now each of these quick passing vignettes shows us how powerless Jesus is. Verse 32. In those days, the condemned prisoner was ordered to take the cross member of the cross, the horizontal piece, out to the place of execution. The uprights were already in the ground. He was supposed to take the cross member out.
That’s what was meant by “taking your cross.” You took the cross member out to the place of execution and then they either tied you or nailed you to the horizontal, it was put on the upright, and you hung there. But Jesus is so weak, he can’t even carry a hunk of wood on his shoulders, so they conscript Simon. The picture is meant to show you just how weak Jesus is. Then, when they get out there, they crucify him. In those days, the Romans crucified you naked.
All our little crucifixes and images and so on picture at least a decent loincloth on, but that’s not the way the Romans did it. Whether you were a man or a woman, they crucified you naked (it was part of the shame), so even his remaining clothes are gambled away. When you go and take your cross to the place of execution, there is no hope. There is no stay. That’s it. All you have is suffering and death. That’s what you have.
He hangs there, and they watch him, we’re told. Earlier on in the empire, the soldiers sometimes walked away, but there had been occasions when people came along and actually took the body down from the cross and the person survived. So at this point in imperial policy, the soldiers were always there to watch until he died, so that nobody could take him away. There was no hope. He’s completely weak.
Then, the mocking starts. Did you hear it? Verse 39: “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!’ ” Destroy a temple and build it in three days? Again, the language doesn’t sound shocking to us because well, if you do your stint at Habitat for Humanity you know you can put up a building in a day.
Somebody has to put in the foundation first. Some of it has to be pre-fab. Then, of course, if you have a couple of decent engineers and a 40-person crew and a lot of energy, yeah, you can put up a small house in a day. Even someone like myself who is scarcely gifted in this area, I can Gyprock a small house with a power driver and those long strips of screws.
The technology has changed since I was a young man. You can put those things up really fast! But in the first century, of course, there was no Habitat for Humanity. A building like this was made of stone. Did you know that all the great cathedrals of Europe, in no case did the original architect ever see the finished product? It took too long to build them. By the time any of those cathedrals were built, the original architect had died.
In Jerusalem, you weren’t even allowed to use a hammer in the vicinity. All the stone had to be cut elsewhere and brought in, without hydraulics. It took a long time to build one of these things. Now Jesus comes along and says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again.” He is speaking, it seems to them, of some fantastic feat of power. Now look at his powerless self, hanging on the cross. “You with your big promises, come on down and show us your power now.”
Once again, Matthew has prepared the way for this. It’s part of the trial. In chapter 26, verse 61, “Two false witnesses came forward and declared, ‘This fellow said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.” ’ ” The reason they brought this as a charge against him was because the Romans made it a capital offense to desecrate a temple.
There were so many different religions in the empire that the way they tried to preserve religious peace was by making it a capital offense to desecrate a temple … any temple. They remembered that, at some point, Jesus had said something about destroying a temple. “Ah, maybe we can get him on that charge.” Now if you recall, they couldn’t get their story straight. That’s not the charge they eventually got him on.
They got him on a treason charge instead, this business about being a king. But what was it that Jesus had actually said? That’s not reported in Matthew, it’s reported in John. In John chapter 2, early on in Jesus’ ministry, far enough back that the witnesses couldn’t get their story straight. They couldn’t remember. Jesus had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.”
What did he mean? At the time, the opponents didn’t know. John says that the disciples didn’t know. Undoubtedly they were stroking their chins and saying, “Deep. Deep. Another enigmatic utterance from the Master.” Then John comments, “But after he had been raised from the dead, then they remembered his words and believed the Scriptures.” They knew he wasn’t really talking about the masonry. He was talking about his body, which would be destroyed and raised again in three days.
Because, you see, before that time, the temple was the great meeting place between God and human beings. That was the great meeting place. It was the place of sacrifice, the place of the glory of God, but after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the great meeting place between God and human beings was Jesus himself. But when the mockers are mocking, they think they’re criticizing his utter powerlessness after his claims to be so powerful he can put up a whole temple in three days. “You who made this promise, come down now.”
But God knows, and Matthew knows, and the readers know that it’s precisely by hanging there in powerlessness that he will die and then rise the third day in utter power to become the Temple, the meeting place between God and human beings. The man who was utterly powerless is powerful.
3. The man who can’t save himself saves others.
Here, the mockery continues. Verse 41. “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.’ ”
What does the verb to save mean in our culture? What does it mean on the streets of New York? Well, if you’re in the financial district, to save is what you’d jolly well better do if you want to have a decent retirement. If you’re a computer geek, saving is what you’d better do unless you want to lose a lot of data. You need to back things up. If you’re a hunk, saving is what a decent goalie does so that the other side doesn’t score. But what does it mean in Matthew?
Once again, he’s told us in the very first chapter. Joseph is told, “You shall give this baby the name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus is simply the Greek form of Joshua, a Hebrew name. Jesus and Joshua are the same name, just a different language. Joshua means “Yahweh saves.” “You will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” “You will call him Yahweh Saves because he will save his people from their sins.” It’s why the very same chapter insists he will be called Immanuel, “God with us.”
This is placarded right in the beginning of Matthew’s gospel to remind us that the whole book is to be read under that rubric. “This is the gospel of Jesus who comes to save his people from their sins.” So that when you get to Matthew 5, 6, and 7, for example (the Sermon on the Mount), all of this ethical instruction ties what the kingdom looks like to the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets in the Old Testament.
Why does Jesus give all of this? Because he came to save his people from their sins. Then you read chapters 8 and 9, the accounts of miracles, in which Jesus overturns sickness and death, all of which directly or indirectly are the results of the curse, the fall, the rebellion, all the fruit of sinfulness. Why does Jesus do this? Is he just showing off? No, he comes to save his people from their sins.
In fact, Matthew 8:14–17 explicitly ties Jesus’ miracles of healing to Isaiah 53. “He was wounded for our transgressions.” He healed us by his own suffering. Then in chapter 10, there’s a trainee mission as Jesus begins to train others to reach out first to the villages around and ultimately to Gentile contexts. Why? Because he came to save his people from their sins.
All the way through here now to the passion narrative, the account of Jesus’ suffering and death, and then his resurrection, and then the way the book ends, with the Great Commission. Why? Because he came to save his people from their sins. But now the crowds are mocking. “Oh, he saved others. Yeah, he healed this one, fixed that one. He saved others. Himself he can’t save. Let him come down now and we’ll believe.”
When I was a boy and read a lot of stories, I had a very perverse imagination, even more perverse than it is now. I used to like to read stories and then, in my head, think through what would happen if we just changed a couple of details in the story. Where would the story go now? Isn’t that dumb? It’s what I did all the time. This was one of my favorites. I could picture Jesus hanging there and the crowd saying, “He saved others. Himself he can’t save. Let him come down now and we’ll believe.” So Jesus came down.
Now what happens? How does the story change? Do they believe? Well, in one sense they would. I mean, it would be pretty impressive. Wouldn’t it? They’d be backpedaling awfully fast. But in another sense, they wouldn’t be believing in him as the sin-bearing substitute. Would they? They’d be frightened of his power. Do you see? The crowd thinks that they’re laughing at him with a kind of irony. “He saved others. He can’t save himself. Isn’t that funny? So inconsistent. Ha, ha, ha.”
But God knows, and Matthew knows, and the readers know that the crowd, better than they know, is speaking the truth. He can’t save himself and others. If he saves himself, then the others perish. It’s precisely by not saving himself that he saves others. By not saving himself, he dies the just for the unjust in order to save people like me.
4. The man who cries out in despair trusts God.
We’re told in verse 43 that the crowd is still mocking. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him.” In other words, they’re mocking his ostensible trust, and then they hear him cry, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” So did Jesus really trust in God, or did he lose his trust at this last moment?
Now I’ve read a lot of recent commentaries on Matthew, and a lot of recent ones say that the lesson we’re supposed to learn here is that if you push anyone far enough, even Jesus himself, then ultimately, they crack. At this point, even though he’s the Son of God, pushed this far, Jesus cries out, in a kind of spiritual pity party, “Why are you picking on me? Why have you forsaken me?”
“The lesson to learn from this,” they say, “is if Jesus can crack, well don’t feel too badly if you crack too. We can all succumb if we are pushed hard enough.” But is that the message here? That’s only a very superficial reading. It doesn’t follow the irony all the way through. Again the crowd is speaking better than they know. The symbolism tells us all around. Do you see? As Jesus cries, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” is it because he really thinks that somehow God tricked him?
Jesus has known all along that he came for this purpose. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. In the garden of Gethsemane, he cries, “Not my will but yours be done.” He knows that before the foundation of the earth, he came to die as a sacrifice.
He knows what the Father’s will is, but that doesn’t make it easy, and all of the symbolism around this cry shows what’s really going on: darkness upon the face of the earth as the load of my guilt is put upon him and he bears my sin in his own body on the tree. What is the first word that is said after Jesus dies?
Verse 51: “Immediately, the veil of the temple was rent in twain,” and people have access into the most holy presence of God. Jesus understands what he’s doing. He understands that precisely by trusting his Father, all the way to the cross, he bears the curse from his Father, and in this agony of lonely sin-bearing, he cries, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?”
One of my favorite poets is Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She wrote a lot of love poems: Sonnets from the Portuguese, if you’re into love poems. She also wrote a three-page poem called “Cowper’s Grave.” That’s a reference to William Cowper. William Cowper was a friend of John Newton, the one who wrote “Amazing Grace” (perhaps you’ve seen the film), a converted slave trader whose life was completely turned around by the gospel.
William Cowper was one of his friends in the little town of Olney and together they put together the Olney Hymns. Cowper wrote a lot of the hymns. Cowper was a great scholar and essayist, wrote many learned pieces for students at Oxford and Cambridge. What is sometimes not known about him, however, was that he was a man who suffered enormous depressions.
Four times he had to be institutionalized for years at a time, at a time when insane asylums in Britain were not places you wanted to be. When he came out, there was a woman in the church who looked after him and nursed him back to health and some semblance of sanity, and he wrote more hymns, more essays, and so on. That was William Cowper.
A century later, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, reflecting on his life, writes this poem. In the poem, she describes his brilliance, his scintillating essays, his influence in academic circles and the like. Then she starts talking elusively about his Christian commitments, his bowing to God and seeing everything under God, some of his own depression, and so on. Then eventually, toward the very end of the poem, she writes:
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry this universe hath shaken,—
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up from the Holy’s lips amidst his lost creation.
That, of the lost, no son should use this cry of desolation,
Do you hear what she’s saying? Jesus cried, on the cross, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” so that for all eternity, William Cowper wouldn’t have to. For when you are in the pits of depression, that’s what it feels like, as if you’ve been abandoned by all, including God himself.
Jesus cries, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” so that for all eternity, Don Carson wouldn’t have to. “It went up single, echoless amidst his lost creation. That, of the lost, no son should use that cry of desolation.” Still, this same gospel of Jesus Christ comes to us today and demands we bow the knee and put our confidence in this sin-bearing savior. The man who trusts God cries out in despair for our redemption. Hear, then, the ironies of the cross:
On that wretched day the soldiers mocked him,
Raucous laughter in a barracks room,
“Hail the king!” they sneered, while spitting on him,
Brutal beatings on this day of gloom.
Though his crown was thorn, he was born a king—
Holy brilliance bathed in bleeding loss—
All the soldiers blind to this stunning theme:
Jesus reigning from a bloody cross.
Awful weakness marks the battered God-man,
Far too broken now to hoist the beam.
Soldiers strip him bare and pound the nails in,
Watch him hanging on the cruel tree.
God’s own temple’s down! He has been destroyed!
Death’s remains are laid in rock and sod.
But the temple rises in God’s wise ploy:
Our great temple is the Son of God.
“Here’s the One who says he cares for others,
One who said he came to save the lost.
How can we believe that he saves others
When he can’t get off that cruel cross?
Let him save himself! Let him come down now!”—
Savage jeering at the King’s disgrace.
But by hanging there is precisely how
Christ saves others as the King of grace.
Draped in darkness, utterly rejected,
Crying, “Why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus bears God’s wrath alone, dejected—
Weeps the bitt’rest tears instead of me.
All the mockers cry, “He has lost his trust!
He’s defeated by hypocrisy!”
But with faith’s resolve, Jesus knows he must
Do God’s will and swallow death for me.
Amen.
