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‘Truly this man was the Son of God.’
Mar_15:39
I. They were a first confession of faith, made by the centurion, or captain of a company numbering a hundred soldiers, into whose custody our Lord had been given, and who superintended the Crucifixion. Later in the afternoon it became his duty to pierce the Lord’s side with his spear for the purpose of making sure that death had actually taken place before the holy Body was removed from the Cross; and thus he was chosen by Divine Providence to be the agent in bringing from the heart of Christ the miraculous stream of blood and water. Tradition of early date speaks of this centurion by the name of Longinus, and St. Chrysostom knew of him as one of the martyrs who bore their testimony to the Faith even unto death. He had heard the mocking Jews take up the words of the Tempter, and say ‘If thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross.… He trusted in God: let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him: for He said, I am the Son of God,’ and in a very different spirit, that of an awe-struck faith, he had begun his testimony to his Master by saying ‘Truly this man was the Son of God.’ Thus ‘out of the mouth of’ one who was as yet but among the ‘babes and sucklings’ of Christ, the Lord again ‘perfected praise.’
II. By this testimony of a heathen officer, uttered by the side of the Cross in the supreme crisis of our Lord’s Passion, God was pleased to place on record the great truth that He Who then and there suffered and died was He of Whom the Father had twice said from heaven, ‘This is My beloved Son.’ The ‘Lord Jesus Christ,’ Who was from all eternity ‘the only-begotten Son of God … God, of God … Very God, of very God … Being of one substance with the Father,’ was the same Who ‘was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate,’ Who ‘suffered and was buried.’ He Who died upon the Cross was therefore a Divine Sufferer, and His Passion is to be viewed in that aspect in which we behold it associated with His Deity, as well as in that more familiar one in which we see it as the suffering of His human nature.
THE UNION OF THE DIVINE WITH THE HUMAN
I. Intensified all the pangs which fell upon the body and soul.—The Divine Sufferer might have wrought a miracle and lessened those pangs, but He would no more do so than He would stay the pangs of hunger by causing the stones to become bread during the time of His Temptation. Rather would He cause every strained nerve to bear a tenfold throbbing, that no degree of pain which can come upon the human body should be beyond His experience and sympathy.
II. Gave an omnipotent virtue to the Passion of the Divine Sufferer.—Thus when the victory of the Cross was won, it was won for all ages and for all peoples, becoming an eternal victory by which the power of His sufferings is still being, and ever will be, exercised. As multitudes of those who came to the Cross ‘to see that sight’ of the Crucified, ‘beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned,’ so it has been ever since, that the sight of the Divine Sufferer has converted sinners, and has made them, as they gazed, bow down before Him, asking for His intercession, His love, and His grace.
As we look upon the Cross, and see the Divine Sufferer ‘evidently set forth, crucified among,’ us, we should be able to take up the words of the centurion in their fullest sense, and say ‘Truly this man was the Son of God.’
Illustration
‘The Passion of our Lord stands out clearly beyond all comparison with other human sufferings. Men have felt the torture of the scourge, the sorrow of desertion, the pangs of crucifixion, but they felt them not as He did Who was God and Man. Holy men in their zeal might desire even to die, if by dying they could convert sinners, but no martyr’s death could convert a world as the death of Him Who was God and Man did. They might desire even to bear the punishment of sin if they could gain pardon for sinners, but He alone Who was God and Man could “deliver his brother,” or “make agreement unto God for Him.” ’