Mark 15 - James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary

PILATE’S SIN

‘And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to be crucified.’

Mark 15:15

The story of Pilate and his yielding to the clamour of the chief priests, and delivering up Jesus to be crucified, though he knew quite well that He was innocent, is one of the most strange and sad that history records. No doubt he was a weak man set in difficult circumstances. But he ought not to have yielded to those circumstances. ‘Hard positions and difficult circumstances are posts of honour … The hours of difficulty are great men’s opportunity: the times of danger call with trumpet-voice to the heart of the brave.… These are the times when men show of what stuff they are made.’ We may note three particulars.

I. He was false to his own convictions.—He was convinced that Jesus was innocent. Why, then, did he not act at once upon his conviction and release Him? Why did he begin to parley with the Jews, as if there was room for doubt on the question?

II. He tried to satisfy his own conscience, and at the same time to satisfy the people, by evasion and compromise. If he was convinced of the innocence of Jesus, why send Him to Herod, as Luke tells us he did? And why offer to chastise Him and then release Him? If he was innocent He ought not to be chastisedn!

III. He allowed worldly interest to predominate over the sense of duty.—That at last became the plain issue. Should he do what he knew was right and take the risk? Or should he do what he knew was wrong and escape danger? And he chose the latter course, showing himself thereby to be weak and unprincipled.

IV. Had I been in his position, with only his lights to guide me, what should I have done?—How often when conscience and duty point in one direction and passion and self-interest in another, have we not acted over again the part of Pilate? We have hesitated, wavered, argued, and surrendered. How soon the conscience may become hardened! How difficult it is at once to take and keep the straight course! The great surrender has often been made over again since Pilate’s day, and Jesus Christ been given over into unfriendly hands.

This is the great lesson from this scene.—Be decided for Christ, and for right. ‘Them that honour Me,’ says Christ, ‘I will honour.’

—Rev. Prebendary Eardley-Wilmot.

Illustration

‘Mark the revenges of history. Before the dread sacrifice was consummated, Judas died in the horrors of a loathsome suicide. Caiaphas was deposed the year following. Herod died in infamy and exile. Stripped of his Procuratorship shortly afterwards, on the very charges he had tried by a wicked concession to avoid, Pilate, wearied out with misfortunes, died in suicide and banishment, leaving behind him an execrated name. The house of Annas was destroyed a generation later by an infuriated mob, and his son was dragged through the streets, and scourged and beaten to his place of murder. Some of those who shared in and witnessed the scenes of that day—and thousands of their children—also shared in and witnessed the long horrors of that siege of Jerusalem which stands unparalleled in history for its unutterable fearfulness.’

CHRIST’S HUMILIATION

‘Pilate … delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to be crucified. And the soldiers … did spit upon Him.’

Mark 15:15-19

The prophecy, ‘I gave my back to the smiters … and I hid not my face from shame and spitting’ (Isaiah 1:6) was literally fulfilled. From this most dreadful portion of the narrative we learn:—

I. The malignant cruelty of Christ’s enemies.—Pilate unjustly delivered Christ over to be scourged. The Roman scourging was horribly severe. Drops of lead and small sharp-pointed bones were often plaited on the scourges. The rough Roman soldiers smote the Saviour. In the ages of cruelty a prisoner was delivered over to the mockery of the guards, and the mockery with which the duty was fulfilled shows that they spared Christ no infliction. The cruelty of the heart, untouched with the softening influences of Christianity, is indeed unfathomable.

II. The wonderful patience of Christ.—The hands they bound had healed the sick and raised the dead; the lips they smote had calmed the winds and waves. One word and His smiters might have been laid low in death. But as He had begun, and continued, He would end … as self-restrained in the use of His awful powers on His own behalf as if He had been the most helpless of men.… Divine patience and infinite love knew no wearying.

III. His deep humiliation.—Spitting was an expression of the most thorough contempt (Numbers 12:14; Deuteronomy 25:9). Those who were excommunicated were especially open to this expression of contempt. Christ was spit upon by Jews and Gentiles.

IV. Who was He?—Think once more (as we need again and again to be reminded in considering such scenes), who was He? Your God and Lord. And think, too, again of why He endured this smiting and spitting. It was for our salvation.

Illustration

‘In our own day deeds of cruelty are wrought sufficient to make the blood curdle in the veins; but these deeds were once common, and excited but little comment or reprobation. From this scourging of the Son of God we learn what the influence of Christ has been in the world. Such a scene is impossible in Christian England. Why? Because it is permeated with the softening ideas of Christianity. Not civilisation alone, but the doctrines of Christ, have transformed the moral aspect of mankind.’

THE MORTIFICATION OF BODILY DESIRES

‘And they bring Him unto the place Golgotha.… And they gave Him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but He received it not.’

Mark 15:22-23

The first great law of Christian life as revealed in the Passion is obedience; the second finds expression in this incident. It is that great law of the mortification and of the disciplining of our bodily passions and desires, which is only possible through abstinence. Obedience is not within our powers, except it be through our yielding ourselves submissively to this great law of mortification, for we can only walk with quick footsteps along the path of holy obedience as we acquire Christian liberty through self-discipline and self-control.

I. The Christian life is essentially a mortified life. Why? Because mortification is the condition under which we can alone yield obedience to the will of God. In a measure this is true, even of man in his sinless condition during the time that he was in a state of probation in this world. Nothing could have been of any avail in the fierceness of man’s temptation but the self-control which, alas! was lacking in that crucial hour; and so with ourselves, we can only be safe as long as our passions and desires are held within the limits of a wise restraint, only safe as long as we have that power of self-mastery, which can keep the gratification of passion within the limits of revealed law.

II. But if mortification of desire is an essential feature of man’s life as man, it is an essential feature because man is sin-stricken.—We have inherited, alas! a turbulence of passions. When Adam sinned that great sin, the controlling power of the indwelling Spirit was withdrawn from him; and immediately the glory of the Divine presence was withdrawn. St. Paul, in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, describes what the carnal state is. He who is in it has known what converting grace is. The mind, and heart, and will are turned towards God; but, alas! when he tries to respond to the conviction, and the aspiration, and the resolve of the heart acted upon by the Spirit of God, he finds himself so hindered by the flesh within him, stirred into activity by the temptation without him, that ‘the good that he would he does not, and the evil which he would not, that he does.’ The position is not one of death, but it is at least a position of awful peril; and the question is, Which of the two natures will triumph? Will the lower nature triumph, until he becomes captive to sin? or will the higher nature triumph, until he becomes spiritual? The answer to this perplexing question depends on the answer to another question: Will the man live a mortified life? Will he obey the leading of the Spirit? Or will he give himself up to a life of luxury? Will he be a slave to his passions, or will he beat these passions into subjection until he leads about his lower nature as the slave of his higher self? No mere desires will win this great victory. No penitent confessions of themselves will avail to secure it, no diligent attention to means of grace in the closet and in the sanctuary will of necessity save you from peril and lead you into the life of obedience. All these are helps, I grant. High desire, generous repentance, continual seeking of the grace of God, all are necessary; but in vain the desire, in vain the penance, in vain the diligent using of means of grace, unless all these be crowned by mortification, by grappling with the lower nature, by imitation of the mortified life and death of Jesus Christ.

III. Lack of mortification is a too common feature of Christian life to-day.

(a) In the world. Of necessity we live in the world more or less under the conditions in which human life is lived around. We cannot, if we would, isolate ourselves from its influences. We are living in an age which is characterised by this self-indulgence more than by anything else, by the unlimited gratification of every craving and every desire. And we in the world, breathing its atmosphere and acted on by its spirit, are hindered in our inner spiritual character by the luxurious atmosphere in which we live.

(b) In the spiritual life. In another way we see in the spiritual life of to-day a sad result of the lack of mortification. The religion of to-day is so emotional. In the Christianity of to-day there seems to me to be an over-emotional sensitiveness, wedded to intense weakness of will. You stand in the pulpit before crowded congregations. As you speak, the emotions are quickened, hearts are softened. In one the tear trickles down the cheek: you hope it is the tear of real contrition; in another joy shines in the upturned face: you wish it were the joy of pardon realised. But it is nothing of the kind. All this emotion is simply psychical; and we have the strange phenomenon before us at the present time of men and women crowding God’s church and crowding God’s altars, and going out into the world and talking as the world talks, and sinning as the world sins. The vast distance that there is in many a character between religious emotionalism and moral state, is a scandal and a weakness to the Church. God is calling us at the present time with clear voice to recognise this truth, and to correspond with it.

Rev. Canon Body.

Illustration

‘Crucifixion, as we know, of all forms of death was the most painful, and the thought of it appealed with the strongest force to the pitying mind of the women in Jerusalem; and so of their charity they were wont to provide a stupefying draught to those who were about to endure that great pain, and by permission of the Roman authorities this cup of pity was lifted to the lips of those condemned to die by crucifixion before they were finally nailed to the cross. In accordance with this charitable practice, when Jesus Christ is about to be fastened to the wood of the Tree of Life, some one comes near to Him, and offers Him that draught, the purpose of which is to alleviate His pain. But He was not willing to drink of that cup which would give Him relief; we are expressly told “He received it not”; He put away from Him that which would soften the keenness of the pain that He was enduring. Not that He did not shrink back from the pain, as well as from the shame, of the Cross. We know that He did shrink from it with all the shrinking of a highly strung and sensitive nature; but though He felt that pain and that shame, and shrank from it in anticipation with intensest shrinking, yet His will so triumphed over the shrinking of His flesh and of His soul that He refused to drink of that which would mitigate the greatness of His suffering. So He teaches us through all time this great truth, that if we would walk along the path of obedience and tread in His sacred footsteps, we must be content not to encumber ourselves with all that makes life luxurious and pleasing.’

THE LESSONS OF FAILURE

‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save.’

Mark 15:31

I. This is the great lesson of failure.—It is God’s will. What a world of meaning there is in those few words! If you believe in Him, if you believe that He has made you, and that He loves you and desires your good, why should you be so impatient and impetuous? God does not blame you for not having the gifts He denies. The man who had one talent in the parable was not punished for having only one talent, but for not making a good use of the talent he had. No doubt in using your own poor talent you will be disappointed; but what matters it? You shall have done your duty, and the issue of your duty rests with God.

II. We form far too ready judgments of success and failure.—We set our hearts upon a certain object, and if we do not attain it, we say at once, ‘There; I have failed’; or if we do attain it, we say, ‘There is a success,’ as if there could be no degree of doubt about it. But is not experience always teaching in some strange way that we do not really know what is best for us, or, in other words, that our successes are often failures, and our failures, which we deplore, are often successes? It is clear that we are taught to improve our work by failing in it. There is a wonderful uniting power in defeat. Defeat and even disaster evoke a wealth of generous sentiments in noble minds. There is no more splendid example than the faith of those who, when all seemed to be lost, have yet disdained to despair.

Human life, regarded in its religious aspect, is nothing else than an education of the soul. Christ teaches these two lessons which are so precious, that failure is an instrument—nay, a better instrument than success—in disciplining the soul; and that in this mysterious world of which we are the denizens it is only in failing ourselves, as men count failure, that we can hope to render the highest blessings to others.

—Bishop Welldon.

Illustration

‘An accomplished lady once wrote that she had lived long enough to thank God for not having granted her prayers; she meant for not having granted them in the way which she would have chosen. Believe me, as you proceed in life, as you look backward upon the ever-lengthening vista of past years, you will see more and more clearly that it would not have been good for you to have your own way, that you have learnt more from your trials than from your triumphs, and that God has been dealing with you lovingly and wisely, like a Father, in denying you the desire of your hearts, and in teaching you, by however hard a discipline, that you must give up what has seemed to you so good, for the sake of winning some day something which is much better.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE MISTAKE OF THOSE THAT PASSED BY

The men who saw our Saviour dying—

I. Thought exclusively of the present.—On this side of death they had clear, if narrow and illogical, views. They did not, as a body, think of the future as the balance and rectification of the present. Everything beyond death was shadowy and intangible. Only here, in the world of sense, was the real. The man of this world has a very limited horizon, and there is no completeness in his earthly day, no certainty in the passage of its hours. Man himself, according to his instinctive precautions and the maxims of his experience, is ruined when he dies. What if eternity lie all around us, and beyond be the true life?

II. Were more concerned for pain and physical deprivation than for sin.—Not that they pitied the Sufferer: at any rate their pity had no chastening or restraining force. It was only as regarding the pain, etc., as an evil from which men should shrink at any cost, and as judging Him Who, in their ideas, had brought it upon Himself, that they spoke. They did not conceive of themselves as in a worse position than He Whom they beheld. They revelled in iniquity. A time would come when they would say of themselves, ‘It were better we had never been born.’

III. Argued from self-love to the salvation of others.—It is in this aspect that their illogicalness is most evident. To talk thus showed a want of deep thought. Who is it to whom the world looks for its blessings and benefactions? To the timorous, the calculating, the self-seeking, the selfish? Is it not just the absence of these qualities that inspires our confidence and awakens our expectation? Woe to us, if in our utter loss of all things and our last agony, we have to turn for help and comfort to those whose first thought is for themselves! It is self-contradiction, it is indictment of themselves, when they say, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save.’

Illustration

‘The great question with us all now should be, not “Could He save Himself?” or “Could He save others?” but “Has He saved us?” Only in that consciousness can we be saved from the sin and folly of those who taunted and crucified Him. And the evidence of it is not far to seek,—“Has He enfranchised us from self?” Then shall we seek the good of others and the glory of God, and not till then. Let this be our plea with God, and our pattern amongst men, “He saved others; Himself He could not save.” ’

THE WORD FROM THE CROSS

‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’

Mark 15:34

The tragedy of the Crucifixion reached its climax at the sixth hour. The Blessed Master had passed through the outer circle of sorrow, and now the pale, bruised Form is lost in the thick darkness which surrounds Him. During the first hours our Blessed Lord reigns as a king—interceding, absolving, and commending His loved ones. Now a change passes over Him; His soul enters into a great loneliness. This cry shows that there was something deeper, something more awful, than the fear of death.

I. Do we ever feel forsaken?—Such days come to even the best of us—days of darkness, days of depression. But here is our comfort. When all seems lost in life, when there is no light to gladden our eyes, then it is for us to realise that because of that One’s bitter cry which rang out in the darkness, Jesus is always with us because He knew what it was to be forsaken even by God Himself. Let us cling to the Cross for this our comfort in our time of darkness!

II. The guilt of sin.—And yet surely it must mean more than this, something deeper than this, for it reveals to us the guilt of sin. We cannot think little of sin when you and I realise that it cost the best, the noblest, the purest blood, when we realise that it has cost the Blood of God Himself to take away that sin; that for one great atonement it needed God to come down and live our life, it needed God to be surrounded by the darkness on the Cross, to live out His life, as it were, just for a few hours making that atonement, forsaken by God Himself. When we are tempted to call some sins little and some great, let us realise what it meant when our Lord cried from the cross, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’

III. The punishment of sin.—I think we have here not only the revelation of the guilt of sin, but we have more—we have a revelation of the punishment of sin. This one hour had loomed before Christ all His life. Our Blessed Master could endure all else but this. The thought of His Father hiding His face, and the thought of entering that darkness, was something which he could not contemplate unmoved. We are inclined—are we not?—to guess at the future condition of the soul; but after we have stood beneath the Cross, after we have heard this cry, we need not have any further speculation, for sin always means here and there separation from God. Separation from God—does not the sinner know it now? Ah, but the sinner always has a feeling that he can turn to God when he likes; but to realise that sin will bring this separation, entire and complete, from God is the most awful thing that man could contemplate. To-day Jesus calls to us, ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?’ nothing to us who stand by the Cross? Was there ever such sorrow, ever such love?

THE RENT VEIL

‘And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.’

Mark 15:37-38

As the rent rocks and open graves proclaimed Christ victorious in death, so may the rent veil have declared that He had won for Himself an access into heavenly places, there to perpetuate the work which had been wrought out on Calvary. It is possible also that the abolition of the Mosaic economy was hereby figuratively taught. Christ had come to destroy the law, but only that He might substitute for it a better covenant.

I. The rent veil signifies that through Christ alone we have access to the Father, and that supplies of heavenly things may be expected to descend. The privilege of prayer, the privilege of intercourse with our heavenly Father, has been procured for us exclusively by Christ.

II. The rent veil gives a title to a heavenly inheritance.—It is like an opening in the firmament through which the eye of faith may gaze on the diadem and the palm which are in store for the faithful. What was to occur after death and the resurrection? The rent veil gives the answer. As the opened graves published the great truth of the abolition of death, so did the rent veil publish that of our being begotten again to an ‘inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.’

Rev. Canon Melvill.

Illustration

‘That some great catastrophe betokening the impending destruction of the Temple had occurred in the Sanctuary about this very time, is confirmed by not less than four mutually independent testimonies; those of Tacitus, of Josephus, of the Talmud, and of earliest Christian tradition. The most important of these are, of course, the Talmud and Josephus. The latter speaks of the mysterious extinction of the middle and chief light in the golden candlestick forty years before the destruction of the Temple; and both he and the Talmud refer to a supernatural opening by themselves of the great Temple gates that had been previously closed, which was regarded as a portent of the coming destruction of the Temple. We can scarcely doubt that some historical fact must underlie so peculiar and widespread a tradition, and we cannot help feeling that it may be a distorted version of the occurrence of the rending of the Temple veil (or of its report) at the crucifixion of Christ.’

A CONFESSION OF FAITH

‘Truly this man was the Son of God.’

Mark 15:39

These also are words of unconscious prophecy, spoken by an officer of the Roman army, as the words, ‘Never man spake like this Man’ were spoken by officers of the Temple guard.

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.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE UNION OF THE DIVINE WITH THE HUMAN

The Deity of our Saviour being thus associated with His Passion, a character is given to His sufferings which clearly distinguishes them from the sufferings of men under similar external circumstances. The union of the Divine with the human nature:—

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.” ’