in the council chambers of heaven. Before the leaders of Israel the despised King stood robed in mock ery with purple and crowned with piercing thorns. Weary, after the long night’s infamy, bruised by the weight of the cruel scourge, He lis tened to the derision of His own nation. He heard the apostate cry, “We have no king but Caesar!” What brokenness of heart this must have caused. The chief priests, driv en on by bitter hatred, abandoned all of their ancient longings for the Messiah. They proclaimed the hated Gentile as their own king. No won der the Lord had cried earlier, “0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together . . . and ye would not” (Luke 13:34). Far from being de meaned by the humiliation heaped upon him, Christ wore the purple and the thorns with regal dignity. His journey was ended without the city gate at the place of the skull. There the Son of God was uplifted between two malefactors where He would taste of the utmost shame, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. His glory was not dimin ished in any manner. Listen to Him, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children” (Luke 23:28). Never had such words been known on the lips of a crucified man as were heard that morning when earth had offered its most dire and awful in sight to the majesty of Heaven: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34). Not even in the midst of intensest woe was there ever a single note of resentment on the part of Jesus. The cry of the Crucified rose from an anguish which deity alone could com prehend. The trust of that pure Heart faltered not. Christ’s “Why hast thou forsaken me?” searches all of the dimensions of that most profound and eternal question.
It is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that we can learn the character of God. We clearly see His grace to a rebel creation. In the darkness of the tomb, Christ was still Lord. When He entered Gethse- mane, Jesus knelt at a distance from the disciples. There, bowed in an guish, bearing silent witness, we see the place where He would know death. He gazed upon that which was to be His experience on the morrow. The Saviour knew that He would be the only man to keep the law of God in its entirety. The prayer of agony was so dreadful in its intensity that His sweat became great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). This reveals both His holiness and loneliness as a result of such great obedience. The Lord would drain the cup of judg ment on the cross. It was a cup from which His redeemed people should never drink. In the sight of that which He would experience in the darkness of Calvary, there came that heart-rending cry, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done!” There wasn’t even the semblance of variance between the will of the Father and the will of the perfect Man Jesus Christ. We, as finite human beings, cannot under stand what it meant for Christ to be “made sin.” God couldn’t have re ceived such tremendous obedience from any other. Christ walked in constant obedience to the heavenly Father. He declared, “Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God.” So precious to God was the fra grance rising from the heart and lips of His own beloved Son that the token of His pleasure is signified in His words of approbation. The force of those who had taken Christ captive fell to the ground when in meekness He surrendered to the traitorous kiss of Judas. You see, Christ went to Golgotha, not by compulsion of men, but in the calm dignity of the plan pre-determined 20
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