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1. On Pilate's judgment and condemnation before the tribunal, they
took the Lord Jesus Christ, about the sixth hour, and led Him
away. "And He, bearing His cross, went forth into the place that
is called Calvary, but in Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified
Him." What else, then, is the meaning of the evangelist Mark
saying, "And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him," but
this, that the Lord was crucified at the third hour by the tongues of
the Jews, at the sixth hour by the hands of the soldiers? That we
may understand that the fifth hour was now completed, and there was
some beginning made of the sixth, when Pilate took his seat before the
tribunal, which is expressed by John as "about the sixth hour;" and
when He was led forth, and nailed to the tree with the two robbers,
and the events recorded were enacted beside His cross, the completion
of the sixth hour was fully reached, being the hour from which, on to
the ninth, the sun was obscured, and the darkness took place, we have
it jointly attested on the authority of the three evangelists,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But as the Jews attempted to transfer
the crime of slaying Christ from themselves to the Romans, that is to
say, to Pilate and his soldiers, therefore Mark suppresses the hour
at which Christ was crucified by the soldiers, and which then began to
enter upon the sixth, and remembers rather to give an express place to
the third hour, at which they are understood to have cried out before
Pilate, "Crucify, crucify him" (verse 6), that it not only may
be seen that the former crucified Jesus, namely, the soldiers who
hung Him on the tree at the sixth hour, but the Jews also, who at
the third hour cried out to have Him crucified.
2. There is also another solution of this question, that we should
not here understand the sixth hour of the day, because John says not,
And it was about the sixth hour of the day, or about the sixth hour,
but says, "And it was the parasceve of the passover, about the sixth
hour" (ver. 14). And parasceve is in Latin pr paratio
(preparation); but the Jews are fonder of using the Greek words in
observances of this sort, even those of them who speak Latin rather
than Greek. It was therefore the preparation of the passover. But
"our passover, Christ," as the apostle says, "has been
sacrificed;" and if we reckon the preparation of this passover from
the ninth hour of the night (for then the chief priests seem to have
given their verdict for the sacrifice of the Lord, when they said,
"He is guilty of death," and when the hearing of His case was still
proceeding in the high priest's house: whence there is a kind of
harmony in understanding that therewith began the preparation of the
true passover, whose shadow was the passover of the Jews, that is,
of the sacrificing of Christ, when the priests gave their sentence
that He was to be sacrificed), certainly from that hour of the
night, which is conjectured to have been then the ninth, on to the
third hour of the day, when the evangelist Mark testifies that Christ
was crucified, there are six hours, three of the night, and three of
the day. Hence in the case of this parasceve of the passover, that
is, the preparation of the sacrifice of Christ, which began with the
ninth hour of the night, it was about the sixth hour; that is to say,
the fifth hour was completed, and the sixth had already begun to run,
when Pilate ascended the tribunal: for that same preparation, which
had begun with the ninth hour of the night, still continued till the
sacrifice of Christ, which was the event in course of preparation,
was completed, which took place at the third hour, according to
Mark, not of the preparation, but of the day; while it was also the
sixth hour, not of the day, but of the preparation, by reckoning, of
course, six hours from the ninth hour of the night to the third of the
day. Of these two solutions of this difficult question let each choose
the one that pleases him. But one will judge better what to choose who
reads the very elaborate discussions on "The Harmony of the
Evangelists." And if other solutions of it can also be found, the
stability of gospel truth will have a more cumulative defense against
the calumnies of unbelieving and profane vanity. And now, after these
brief discussions, let us return to the narrative of the evangelist
John.
3. "And they took Jesus," he says, "and led Him away; and
He, bearing His cross, went forth unto the place that is called
Calvary, in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him."
Jesus, therefore, went to the place where He was to be crucified,
bearing His cross. A grand spectacle! but if it be impiety that is
the onlooker, a grand laughing-stock; if piety, a grand mystery: if
impiety be the onlooker, a grand demonstration of ignominy; if piety,
a grand bulwark of faith: if it is impiety that looketh on, it laughs
at the King bearing, in place of His kingly rod, the tree of His
punishment; if it is piety, it sees the King bearing the tree for
His own crucifixion, which He was yet to affix even on the foreheads
of kings, exposed to the contemptuous glances of the impious in
connection with that wherein the hearts of saints were thereafter to
glory. For to Paul, who was yet to say, "But God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," He was
commending that same cross of His by carrying it on His own
shoulders, and bearing the candelabrum of that light that was yet to
burn, and not to be placed under a bushel. "Bearing," therefore,
"His cross, He went forth into the place that is called Calvary,
in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him, and two others
with. Him on either side one, and Jesus in the midst." These
two, as we have learned in the narrative of the other evangelists,
were thieves with whom He was crucified, and between whom He was
fixed, whereof the prophecy sent before had declared, "And He was
numbered among the transgressors."
4. "And Pilate wrote a title also, 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,
Greek, and Latin, The King of the Jews." For these three
languages were conspicuous in that place beyond all others: the Hebrew
on account of the Jews, who gloried in the law of God; the Greek,
because of the wise men among the Gentiles; and the Latin, on
account of the Romans, who at that very time were exercising sovereign
power over many and almost all countries.
5. "Then said the chief priests of the Jews unto Pilate Write
not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the
Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written." Oh
the ineffable power of the working of God, even in the hearts of the
ignorant! Was there not some hidden voice that sounded through
Pilate's inner man with a kind, if one may so say, of loudtoned
silence, the words that had been prophesied so long before in the very
letter of the Psalms, "Corrupt not the inscription of the title"?
Here, then, you see, he corrupted it not; what he has written he
has written. But the high priests, who wished it to be corrupted,
what did they say? "Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he
said, I am King of the Jews." What is it, madmen, that you
say? Why do you oppose the doing of that which you are utterly unable
to alter? Will it by any such means become the less true that Jesus
said, "I am King of the Jews"? If that cannot be tampered with
which Pilate has written, can that be tampered with which the truth
has uttered? But is Christ king only of the Jews, or of the
Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. For when He said in
prophecy, "I am set king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion,
declaring the decree of the Lord," that no one might say, because of
the hill of Zion, that He was set king over the Jews alone, He
immediately added, "The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son; this
day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy
poossession." Whence He Himself, speaking now with His own lips
among the Jews, said, "Other sheep I have which are not of this
fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and
there shall be one flock and one Shepherd." Why then would we have
some great mystery to be understood in this superscription, wherein it
was written, "King of the Jews," if Christ is king also of the
Gentiles? For this reason, because it was the wild olive tree that
was made partaker of the fatness of the olive tree, and not the olive
tree that was made partaker of the bitterness of the wild olive tree.
For inasmuch as the title, "King of the Jews," was truthfully
written regarding Christ, who are they that are to be understood as
the Jews but the seed of Abraham, the children of the promise, who
are also the children of God? For "they," saith the apostle,
"who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of
God; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed." And
the Gentiles were those to whom he said, "But if ye be Christ's,
then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."
Christ therefore is king of the Jews, but of those who are Jews by
the circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter;
whose praise is not of men, but of God; who belong to the Jerusalem
that is free, our eternal mother in heaven, the spiritual Sarah, who
casteth out the bond maid and her children from the house of liberty.
And therefore what Pilate wrote he wrote, because what the Lord said
He said.
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