Mark 15:33-47 | The Cross of Christ

Jun 20

Jun 20 Mark 15:33-47 | The Cross of Christ

The Death of Jesus

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Jesus Is Buried

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. 46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Introduction

John Calvin said, “In the cross of Christ, as in a splendid theatre, the incomparable goodness of God is set before the whole world.” In his classic book The Cross of Christ, John Stott said, “If we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.”

The ultimate expression of both God’s glory and God’s love is found in the cross of Christ. On the cross, God glorified himself. His justice became manifest. His wrath was satisfied. His grace and mercy exploded. On the cross, Jesus atoned for our sin, paid for our failures, bled for our transgressions, and died for our iniquities. He reconciled us to himself, cleansed us of our filth, redeemed us from slavery, rescued us from hell, reinstated us into communion, and restored us to life. On the cross, Jesus substituted his life for ours, taking our sin and giving his righteousness. As the church father, Irenaeus, said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” On the cross, Jesus died to make us fully alive.

Today, let’s marvel at this collision of God’s glory and God’s love for us revealed at the cross of Christ. Let’s see the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18).

Jesus is not a part-time lover. John 13:1 says Jesus loved us to the end. I need a love, and you need a love, that doesn’t stop halfway. We’ve all had enough halfway love in our lives. We need a love that goes all the way to the end. A kind of love that reaches all the way down into the darkest corners of our hearts and brings the light in where we didn’t even know we needed it. A halfway love brings a halfway salvation, but an all-the-way love, as we find in Christ, brings an all-the-way salvation. Jesus loved us to the end: to death.

God didn’t do this begrudgingly, like a parent helping their child out of frustration do something the child could easily do themselves. We couldn’t do it ourselves. He’s not angry that it took this drastic measure. He’s not regretting the cost to himself. It was for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the cross (Heb. 12:2). In fact, as our intercessor now in heaven, he’s still saving us. The way the author of Hebrews says it, he loves to the “uttermost” (Hebrews 7:25). Jesus loves us to the uttermost of our need, to the uttermost of our sin, to the uttermost of his divine capabilities. Jesus is the only one who can perfectly say, “I love you to death.”

That is not to say that the death of Jesus isn’t something to look at soberly. Before the light of the resurrection, there is the darkness of the cross. We see three things in this passage.

The Darkness On the Earth
The Darkness Over the Son
The Darkness In the Grave

The Darkness on the Earth

It’s not hard to see that something is deeply wrong with the world. But it wasn’t always this way. When God created the world, he said it was good. So what happened to God’s good creation? The tragedy started in a garden. Adam and Eve listened to the lies of Satan and rebelled. From there, sin went viral, passed down from generation to generation. We’ve all contracted this sickness unto death. It darkens all we do, even the good things we take part in. The Puritan William Beveridge put it this way.

I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give an alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears need still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.

Sin is pervasive in us, and therefore in the world. We are not good people who occasionally do bad things. We are evil people proving it all the time. Sin separates us from God. Sin separates us from other people. Sin separates us from creation. Sin separates us from ourselves. The shadow of sin stands over this world because we have rejected God. As a result, here is Jesus on the cross.

By this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been on the cross for three hours. At noon, the sixth hour, the very heart of the day, darkness covered the whole land until 3PM, the ninth hour. Some scholars try to write this off as just a solar eclipse—nothing special. But solar eclipses don’t last three hours. They last about seven minutes. This was an act of God. He was showing us the darkness of sin that placed Christ on the cross. The physical darkness represented our spiritual darkness.

The Old Testament prophets talked about the darkness of the “Day of the Lord,” which was like biblical-code language for Judgment Day. For example, Jeremiah said, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jeremiah 4:23). The Old Testament tells repeatedly of how God’s people broke God’s covenant, dimming the light and ushering in the darkness. Our sin prevents us from seeing the true depth and tragedy of our real plight, our real condition, of what we truly deserve, of the judgment it requires. The prophet Isaiah said, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men” (Isaiah 59:10). God tells Isaiah that no one can lead themselves out of their own darkness, so God will strap on the armor himself and save them. The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem (Isaiah 59:15-20). Here is the fulfillment of that prophecy: their Redeemer, hanging on a cross, going under the darkness for his people.

Amid the darkness all around, the spotlight is on the cross. There, our savior hangs, mangled and marred. It’s messy and it’s bloody because it must be. This is the only way of forgiveness. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22) and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Nothing less than Christ’s cross can save us. The only hope of any light at all is by the Light himself going under the darkness for us, dying in the darkness for our darkness, letting the darkness engulf him and take him down, which is our second point.

The Darkness Over the Son

Jesus felt the darkness that day. Verse 34 says Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark includes both the Aramaic version Jesus actually spoke and the Greek translation for his readers. According to verse 35, some thought he was calling for Elijah. The Aramaic words misheard certainly could sound like it, and in Jewish thought, Elijah, who had not died but had been lifted into heaven, would come back to help God’s people. In verse 36, they took sour wine to him, fulfilling the prophecy of Psalm 69:21, “for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” This isn’t the wine with myrrh offered to Jesus on the way to the cross. This wasn’t meant dull his pain but to prolong his life, to see if Elijah would come. But Elijah wasn’t coming. He wasn’t crying out for Elijah anyway. He was crying out for another reason—not for someone to save him but to show the kind of salvation he’s securing.

His cry was the first verse of Psalm 22. Why that Psalm? Because there the Psalmist David laments the feeling of forsakenness. The first two verses say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” Do you know that feeling? Have you felt forsaken? Have you felt abandoned? On the cross, that’s how Jesus felt as the darkness came over him. He wants us to know he identifies with us. His cry is our cry because our cry is his cry. Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly, says this.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham notes that while Psalm 22:1 was originally written in Hebrew, Jesus spoke it in Aramaic and thus was personally appropriating it. Jesus wasn’t simply repeating David’s experience of a thousand years earlier as a convenient parallel expression. Rather, every anguished Psalm 22:1 cry across the millenia was being recapitulated and fulfilled and deepened in Jesus. His was the true Psalm 22:1 of which ours are the shadows. As the people of God, all our feelings of forsakenness funneled through an actual human heart in a single moment of anguished horror on Calvary, an actual forsakenness…The world’s Light was going out.

As the Bible says, he who knew no sin was becoming sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). All our darkness was placed on him. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6). On the cross, all the iniquity of all God’s people throughout all history past, present, and future was laid upon his Son and God’s wrath was poured out on him. And it killed him. Jesus did not die a normal death of mere physical expiration; Jesus died the extraordinary death of spiritual expiation. He made amends for our guilt. He atoned for our sins. By his death, Jesus set us right with God. He went into God’s courtroom of Divine Justice as our substitute and received a guilty verdict. He was led to the place of slaughter and executed for our sins. Jesus hung there, covered in darkness, physically and spiritually, experiencing the very Hell we deserve to give us the very heaven we long for.

So when Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” it means there is therefore now no condemnation for any who receive this offer of salvation from Jesus! Right now, you are free from the eternal punishment of sin. Right now, you are free from condemnation. You might condemn yourself, but God won’t condemn you because he condemned Jesus instead. Right now, God fully approves of you because Jesus paid it all—not some: all. There is therefore now no condemnation. You are utterly and eternally free forever. This is the grace of God. Grace is like looking behind you and realizing God isn’t chasing you down with a hammer to condemn; grace is looking ahead and seeing the nail-pierced hands of Jesus welcoming you.

All you need to do to receive this gift of grace is accept it with the empty hands of faith. I love what Gerhard Forde said.

We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, “What shall I do to be saved?” the confessional answer is shocking: “Nothing! Just be still: shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!”

We see something of this in the Centurion’s reaction to Jesus’s death. Verse 39 says when Jesus made a loud cry and gave up his spirit, the Centurion said, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” This is the first time in Mark’s gospel a human voice refers to Jesus as the Son of God. The centurion saw the struggle of Jesus on the cross. He saw the darkness descend. He heard the words uttered. This professional executioner noticed something different was happening.

On the cross, Jesus represented his people. The Greek used for “loud cry” is what the author of Hebrews used when he said, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). The context there is Jesus’s learning obedience through what he suffered. So then the cry on the cross was a cry of obedient suffering. Why was he obeying? Because we needed him to. His cry was our cry. His obedience was our obedience. His suffering was our suffering. His forsakenness was our forsakenness. Like Isaac taken up the mountain by his father, Jesus is there as a sacrifice, but this time the Father will not relent. The knife is plunged. The Son dies.

When he died, verse 38 says the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. That’s important because it tells us another result of the cross. Where there was once separation between man and God in the very heart of God’s temple, there is now open access. The Great High Priest has gone behind the curtain and offered himself as the final sacrifice. When his flesh was torn, the temple curtain came down with it. No more separation. No other mediator between God and man is needed. By his blood, we now have all the access to God we will ever need (Hebrews 10:19-22). We can come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). God will hear us now because on the cross Jesus wasn’t heard. We will never be forsaken because on the cross he was.

Psalm 22 starts with lament, but it ends in praise for God’s deliverance. Jesus cried verse 1 to give us the rest of the Psalm. He asked for our deliverance through him, and we received it! Satan can’t condemn us. The world can’t destroy us. We can’t even ruin ourselves anymore. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice conquered it all!

Jesus endured the darkness of our sin on our behalf. Then, he entered the darkness of the grave. Let’s look at that now.

The Darkness in the Grave

Why does Mark record the burial of Jesus? Throughout history, this has been a contested point of the story. Some say Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Maybe he passed out, was taken down, and recovered somewhere. Muslims say he was taken to heaven before he died on the cross. Others say dogs ate his body. But from the earliest of days, the burial of Jesus was an important and well-recorded point. All four gospels record his burial, and the earliest Christian creed, the Apostles’ Creed, includes it.

But why does his burial matter so much? Because only a dead Jesus saves. Only a dead and buried Jesus experienced the full wrath of God against our sin. Only a dead and buried Jesus can resurrect. If he wasn’t really dead and truly buried, the resurrection couldn’t have happened, it was only for show, and if the resurrection didn’t happen then, as Paul said, “our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain.”

The details Mark includes lead us to the conclusion that Jesus really did die, and he really was buried. Verses 42-43 tell us that by evening, because it was the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin council, took courage and went to Pilate to ask for the body. Those details matter because of what comes next. Verse 44 says Pilate was surprised to hear Jesus was already dead. Crucifixion could take days. Jesus was dead in a few hours. So he called the centurion who oversaw the death. After confirming, Pilate gave Joseph his body. This wasn’t normal practice. Usually, to complete the humiliation of crucifixion, the body was thrown in the trash heap. So why did Pilate give the body to Joseph? Mark doesn’t say. All he says is that he did, and that’s important because it’s different from the normal way of things. It’s the kind of thing that is only written down if it’s true.

But it’s important for other reasons too. It’s a fulfillment of prophecy. The Old Testament prophesied this kind of burial for the Messiah. Joseph was a rich man—only a rich man had a tomb like this prepared. Isaiah said the Messiah would have his grave made with a rich man in his death (Isaiah 53:9) and that the tomb would be cut out of a rock (Isaiah 22:16). Even more amazing, John says in his account that this tomb was in a garden (John 19:41). Remember, that’s where the tragedy of this world’s darkness began. The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry puts it this way, “In the garden of Eden death and the grave first received their power, and now in a garden they are conquered, disarmed, and triumphed over. In a garden Christ began his passion, and from a garden he would rise, and begin his exaltation.” In his death, Jesus is undoing the terrible events of the Garden of Eden. In his burial, he is planted to become the first fruits of the resurrection. If you’re in Christ, his burial represents your burial. As Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.” That’s important because of what he says next. “In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). In other words, when that stone was rolled over Jesus’ grave, he took your sin in there with him. He buried it away in his death, which means you don’t have to bear the punishment anymore. Yes, you still have some darkness in you, but there is also now a new light. His death purchased it and his burial sealed it. Your sins are there in that grave, dead and gone in the sight of God, never to be resurrected.

But on the third day, Jesus was resurrected. His body came back to life, and he became for us the first fruits of what we will one day be in him. Paul says in Romans 4:25, “[Jesus] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Though the wages of our sin is death, the wages of Jesus’s death is our resurrection. God accepts Jesus’s payment, and in him promises us newness of life. As dark as this world is, as dark as your heart is, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Conclusion

This is the good news of the gospel. It is available to all who will accept it. You might think you’re not worthy, but the cross says you can’t be too low for Jesus. In fact, the cross was the lowest form of death, the most humiliating kind of execution ever invented. Jesus came all the way down to be visible to those at the very bottom.

Did you notice Mark’s inclusion of the women in verses 40-41? Why mention them? Because women were the lowest of all in those days. They were watching from afar because Jewish convention demanded it. Their witness didn’t even matter in court, but they were witnesses to God’s salvation. When almost nothing else was, God was available to them. His salvation was for them. They saw Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. God was using them—the lowest—to tell his story. He always does.

Even if you watch from afar, the cross is God’s action that draws you near. You might think, “Okay, but what if I mess up? I mean really mess up. Isn’t there some point at which this salvation can’t be true for me anymore?” John Bunyan was a man who knew this feeling well, and he spoke the gospel to himself to assure his heart. He wrote a book called Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ. It was devoted to one verse in John 6:37 which, in the KJV Jesus, says, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

But I am a great sinner, you say.