‘And it was now about the sixth hour, and a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun's light failing.'
How remarkable it is that these three last hours of Jesus' final agony are passed over in total silence in all the Gospels. Was there nothing that could have been said? It is as though they recognise that no one on earth could comment on these moments so that every comment had to be left to God. A veil of darkness is drawn over His last hours. But all make clear that God did comment. ‘A darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun's light failing.' (No eclipse could take place at the time of the full moon, but it may well have been caused by a sirocco wind sweeping the sand in from the desert, or by the arrival of unusual cloud formations, or even by some phenomenon in space. Unusual darkenings of the sun have been witnessed to in the past). That was God's comment, and all the evangelists clearly felt that they could not add to it, except to express His final words. Such thoughts were rather left to the hymnwriters to express. ‘But none of the ransomed ever knew, how deep were the waters crossed, or how dark was the night which the Lord passed through, e'er He found the sheep that was lost.'
And no wonder that they could not understand, for as another hymnwriter declares, ‘Tis mystery all, the immortal dies, who can explore His strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries, to sound the depths of grace divine. Tis mystery all, immense and free, but, O my God, it found out me.'
‘A darkness came over the whole land -- the sun's light failing.' The significance of such an experience is described in Jeremiah 15:9, ‘her sun went down while it was yet day'. And what did it indicate? It indicated that anguish and terror had fallen on her. It indicated that she was shamed and disgraced. And so did Jesus enter into the terror and anguish of sin and death, and bear shame and disgrace for us. ‘He Who knew no sin, was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).' The significance of darkness is made clear in Luke in three ways:
· The One Who was coming, was said to be coming to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death (Luke 1:79), to those sat in helplessness and hopelessness, and here therefore He may be seen as entering into that darkness and death on their behalf so that He might deliver them from that helplessness and hopelessness that gripped them.
· To be in darkness was the result of being out of the light (Luke 11:34-35), and thus we may see here that Jesus had for a while chosen to forfeit the light of God and had willingly taken on Himself the darkness that resulted, with the result that for a while the light of God had ceased to shine into His heart. This so that He might not only be reckoned among the transgressors, but might take our experience on Himself, in order to save us from it.
· Those who came to arrest Him had been said to be operating in ‘the power of darkness' (Luke 22:53). Thus here we may see Jesus as experiencing that ‘power of darkness' in Himself. Compare how in Acts 26:18 being turned from darkness to light parallels being turned from the power of Satan to God. But here the opposite was the case. Jesus was being turned from light to darkness in order that He might face up to Satan and deliver ‘many' from his darkness, and bring them to the light.
So this was a darkness that indicated a state of death and hopelessness. It was a darkness that indicated that He was for a while forsaken by the light of God for our sakes. It was a darkness that indicated His being brought into the sphere of the tyranny of Satan, from which in the end He would emerge victorious having triumphed over him in the cross (Colossians 2:15). It is the darkness that is in mind in Isaiah 53:11 LXX (and in the same verse in a Hebrew text at Qumran which otherwise on the whole parallels MT) where it is said, ‘from the travail of His soul He will see light and will be satisfied'. And that was what He was undergoing, for us. He was enduring the travail and darkness of sin, and death, and Satan, in order that He might achieve light for all Who are His. No wonder it drew from Him that terrible cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?' He was forsaken that we might never be forsaken.
‘The sun's light failing.' In Luke 21:25 the sign in the sun was to be the indication of terrible judgments coming on the world. Here then were those same terrible judgments being met on Jesus Christ. It was an indication that He was suffering in Himself the eschatological judgments of the world. All mankind's sin and suffering, past, present and future, was meeting on Him. It would be foolish of us to seek to add more. The expression of such things can only be left to God.