CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 15:16. See R.V.
Mark 15:17. Render: And they invest Him with “a purple”—the official robe of gs and rulers, no matter what its colour.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 15:16-20
(PARALLEL: Matthew 27:27-31.)
The Son of God mocked and wounded.—Solar eclipses are not miraculous appearances. Men acquainted with the situations and revolutions of the celestial orbs foretell these appearances. The humiliation of the Son of God is the eclipse of the Sun of Righteousness. Infamy and reproach covered Him in the days of His flesh, and toward the end of these days intercepted His rays, hiding, like a dark body, the brightness of His glory from the eyes of the world. Foreseeing this, a prophet says, “His visage was so marred more than any man,” etc.; and relating this, an apostle says, “Who being in the form of God,” etc. The obscuration of the Sun of Righteousness in His humiliation was not, however, a total eclipse. A prophet foretells one day that shall be “not day nor night,” the light being not clear nor dark, but a mixture of both qualities. So is the light of the Sun of Righteousness in His humiliation; and in looking down to Him at this period, we behold an unparalleled mixture of light and shade, of glory and infamy, of honour and dishonour, and of beauty, meanness, and shame.
I. Concerning the Sufferer.—
1. The Sufferer is the Son of the Highest. “The Highest” is one of the lofty titles which distinguish and exalt the living and true God; and “the Son of the Highest” is a glorious title, with which, according to the prediction of Gabriel, the Saviour of the world is honoured. The real import of it is given by the apostle when he affirms Him to be “the brightness of glory, and the express image of the Father.” Every perfection essential to the Father dwells bodily and essentially in the Son; and the singular titles, “Own Son,” “Dear Son,” “Beloved Son” “Only Begotten Son,” exalt Him above creatures, and equal Him to the Highest.
2. The Sufferer is the Kinsman of the human race. To a part of our race the Lord Jesus bears a special relation, but He dwells in the nature common to the whole. Partaking of flesh and blood, of which all, as well as the children, are partakers, every man under heaven, upon the revelation of Him, is warranted to call Him kinsman.
3. The Sufferer is the Undertaker for the elect. All that the precept of the law of works required to be done by them He undertook to perform, and what its penalty denounced He engaged Himself to bear. Nor hath He failed in either. The satisfaction which by suffering and dying He made is the shield that protects them from its vengeance.
4. The Sufferer is the Horn of Salvation which God raised up in the house of David. The horn of an animal is its weapon, both for defence and vengeance. With this it defends itself, and with this it pushes down the enemy. In some prophecies horn is an emblem of the power of a king and the strength of his kingdom, and with the highest propriety is transferred to the Lamb of God, in whose office the powers of salvation and destruction are vested, and in whose administration these powers are exerted. The horns of the bulls of Bashan were not able to break the horn of the Lamb,
5. The Sufferer is the Author and Finisher of faith. In His own exercise He is the Prince and Leader who goes before believers, and who, in trusting and hoping Himself, leaves them a finished and perfect pattern of trust and hope.
6. The Sufferer is the Sun of Righteousness, or Light of the World. In His birth He was deeply obscured. From His agony and seizure in the garden to His death and resurrection this glorious Sun was thought to be totally eclipsed. His visage was marred, His face discoloured with spittle, His head crowned with thorns, His back furrowed with cords, and His hands and feet pierced with nails. But under this darkness the title Sun of Righteousness existed, and through it light beams upon the world.
II. Concerning the indignities which our lord suffered.—These are related in the text without colouring and without reflexions. The holy writer neither praises the fortitude and glory of the Sufferer, nor reprobates the baseness and inhumanity of the wicked by whom He was abused. Facts are truly stated in the relation, and simplicity is rigidly observed.
1. When made under the law, our Lord subjected Himself to the suffering of these indignities.
2. In suffering the insolences of the ungodly our Lord was not ashamed and confounded. Behold the Sufferer, not a desponding and cowardly but a bold and mighty Sufferer, whose back, furrowed by the lash, and covered with the scarlet robe, upheld the universe—whose countenance, marred with shame and spitting, was harder than flint and bolder than Lebanon—and whose faith, assailed and affronted by every indignity, stood firmer than the pillars of heaven and earth! Trusting in God, and beholding the joy set before Him, He despised the shame, endured the pain, and triumphed over the diversion and wantonness of wickedness and inhumanity.
3. The Lord Jesus suffered these indignities for and instead of the elect. Indignation at the rudeness and brutality of the soldiers is not the only passion which the record of these abuses should kindle in our breasts. Rather it should kindle indignation against ourselves, for whose iniquities He submitted to abuse.
4. The suffering of these indignities was a part of the ransom which our Kinsman gave for the redemption of the elect. Redemption is an expensive undertaking; none but Himself was equal to it, and it cost Him dear.
5. In suffering these indignities our Lord Jesus left us an example that we should follow His steps.
III. Concerning the glory of Christ in suffering these indignities—The sacred writer relates His sufferings without revealing His glory. But by the light of other parts of Scripture we behold it; and without a display of it the knowledge of the fellowship of His sufferings could not be attained.
1. In suffering these indignities the glory of His faith and trust appears bright and resplendent. Unmoved, undismayed, unashamed, He stood firm, and without fainting held fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
2. In the common hall, where the Lord Jesus suffered the indignities, the glory of His love appears in splendour and dignity. Observe the scarlet robe, the reed, and the crown of thorns; behold the vilest ruffians bowing the knee, striking, reviling, and spitting upon the Blessed and Only Potentate, and say, “Behold how He loved us!”
3. In suffering the reproaches and indignities of the ungodly glory appears in the zeal of our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. In suffering the indignities and insolences of the wicked the humility of the Lord Jesus is glorious. Found in fashion as a man, they treated Him not as a man, but trampled on Him as a worm. Astonishing humiliation! Astonishing, indeed, when we consider that He humbled Himself so low to declare the righteousness of God, in “raising up the poor out of the dust, and lifting up the beggar” and the criminal “from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory.”
5. In suffering the insolences of brutish men the meekness of Jesus Christ is glorious. The testimony of the false witnesses He heard in silence. The rudeness of the wicked, who spit in His face, and buffeted Him, and smote Him with the palms of their hands, He endured with composure. The derision and pain in the common hall He suffered with boldness and mildness. Nothing defective appeared in His temper, His language, nor in His behaviour.
6. In suffering the insolences and abuses of men the patience of Jesus Christ is glorious. “He suffered, but threatened not with stoical apathy and sullen and philosophical pride, but with bold tranquillity and reverential and humble and holy composure.
7. In suffering the resignation of the Lord Jesus is glorious. As the hour of suffering approached a conflict was felt—a conflict not between sin and grace, but between the weakness of His human nature and the strength and glory of His grace; while at the same time resignation triumphed (John 12:27). Another conflict was in His agony, when resignation also triumphed (Mark 14:36). The palm, the scourge, the reed, the thorn, the purple, the spittle, the cross, and the nails were bitter and painful infusions; yet these, all these dregs, He submitted to wring out and drink.
Lessons.—
1. The harmony between the predictions of prophets and the relations of evangelists concerning the sufferings of Christ is obvious and striking.
2. In His person and office the Lord Jesus is inconceivably glorious. “Brightness of Glory” is one of His distinguishing titles.
3. The grand design of revelation is to manifest the glory of Christ in His person—God-man.
4. The various representations which have been made of the person, sufferings, and glory of Christ are suitable means of working in believers a lively frame of heart for shewing His death at His table.
5. The various representations exhibited of the person, sufferings, and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ lead to the satisfactory answer of a question of the highest importance to the unbelieving, the ungodly, and the unholy. “What must we do to be saved?” Behold, O perishing and helpless creatures! behold the Doer and the Sufferer! To the Doer and Sufferer thou must be united, betrothed, and joined, and married. Obey His voice, and receive His grace; believe in His name, and rejoice in His salvation.—A. Shanks.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 15:17-19. Lessons from the mockery of the soldiers.—
1. Notice in the conduct of the tormentors of Jesus the abuse of one of the gifts of God. Laughter is a kind of spice which the Creator has given to be taken along with the somewhat unpalatable food of ordinary life. But when directed against sacred things and holy persons, when used to belittle and degrade what is great and reverend, when employed as a weapon with which to torture weakness and cover innocence with ridicule, then, instead of being the foam on the cup of the banquet of life, it becomes a deadly poison. Laughter guided these soldiers in their inhuman acts; it concealed from them the true nature of what they were doing; and it wounded Christ more deeply than even the scourge of Pilate.
2. It was against the kingly office of the Redeemer that the opposition of men was directed on this occasion. The soldiers considered it an absurdity and a joke that one apparently so mean, friendless, and powerless should make any such pretensions. Many a time since then has the same derision been awakened by this claim of Christ. He is the King of nations. But earthly kings and statesmen have ridiculed the idea that His will and His law should control them in their schemes and ambitions. Even where His authority is nominally acknowledged, both aristocracies and democracies are slow to recognise that their legislation and customs should be regulated by His words. Most vital of all is the acknowledgment of Christ’s kingship in the realm of the individual life; but it is here that His will is most resisted.
3. In what Jesus bore on this occasion. He was suffering for us. Thorns were the sign of the curse. And does not the thorn, staring from the naked bough of winter in threatening ugliness, lurking beneath the leaves or flowers of summer to wound the approaching hand, tearing the clothes or the flesh of the traveller who tries to make his way through the thicket, burning in the flesh where it has sunk, fitly stand for that side of life which we associate with sin—the side of care, fret, pain, disappointment, disease, and death? In a word, it symbolises the curse. But it was the mission of Christ to bear the curse; and as He lifted it on His own head, He took it off the world.
4. Christ’s sufferings are a rebuke to our softness and self-pleasing. It is not, indeed, wrong to enjoy the comforts and the pleasures of life. God sends these, and if we receive them with gratitude they may lift us nearer to Himself. But we are too terrified to be parted from them, and too afraid of pain and poverty. Many would like to be Christians, but are kept back from decision by dread of the laughter of profane companions or by the prospect of some worldly loss. But we cannot look at the suffering Saviour without being ashamed of such cowardly fears.—J. Stalker, D.D.
Christ was intended for the whole world.—Let us see the Divine intention in the Crucifixion. In that are mingling lines of glory and of humiliation. The King of humanity appears with a scarlet camp-mantle flung contemptuously over His shoulders; but to the eye of faith it is the purple of empire. He is crowned with the acanthus wreath; but the wreath of mockery is the royalty of our race. He is crucified between two thieves; but His Cross is a judgment-throne, and at His right hand and His left are the two separated worlds of belief and unbelief. All the Evangelists tell us that a superscription, a title of accusation, was written over His Cross; two of them add that it was written over Him “in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew” (or in Hebrew, Greek, Latin). In Hebrew,—the sacred tongue of patriarchs and seers, of the nation all whose members were in idea and destination those of whom God said, “My prophets.” In Greek,—the “musical and golden tongue which gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy”; the language of a people whose mission it was to give a principle of fermentation to all races of mankind, susceptible of those subtle and largely indefinable influences which are called collectively Progress. In Latin,—the dialect of a people originally the strongest of all the sons of men. The three languages represent the three races and their ideas,—revelation, art, literature; progress, war, and jurisprudence. Wherever these three tendencies of the human race exist, wherever annunciation can be made in human language, wherever there is a heart to sin, a tongue to speak, and eye to read, the Cross has a message.—Bishop Wm. Alexander.
Mark 15:17. The crown of thorns.—The imposition of the mock crown was only one among many indignities. It was not only a mock crown, but a circlet of torture.
I. To wear this crown Christ had laid aside that of Divine majesty.—We can pity the fallen and weep for the great who are degraded, or who are made to feel the hardship of reversed fortune—we can measure the depth of the descent because they are human; but we have no power to gauge the height from which He came when He “humbled Himself and became obedient unto death.”
II. By wearing this crown of mockery Christ added a glory to that He wears eternally.—He conquered suffering, sorrow, death, for us, and now every branch and spike of the mock crown is a jewel inwrought with that of His Divine majesty. Thus the very scorn of man Christ transforms into the sign of Divine regal power.
III. By wearing the mock crown Christ gained the further right to bestow a crown of life on all the faithful.
IV. Consider the power Christ gained over human souls by wearing that mock crown.—
1. Men are led to mourn the guilt that brought Him such pain.
2. He gains such intense affection as He could have obtained in no other way. We should not have loved mere majesty or power, however great; but Jesus we can love as God manifest in the flesh. “The love of Christ constraineth.”—Anon.
The crown of thorns.—In the thorns composing the Redeemer’s crown we see reflected—
1. The true character of sin as the deadly curse in the life and history of man.
2. The triumphant conquest and carrying away of sin.
3. The glorious transformation of the consequences of sin.
4. A symbol of Christ’s work. Crowned with thorns! Oh the deep disgrace to those who did it! Yet what so pathetically appropriate, what so beautifully significant, that at the close and climax of such a life as His, full of travail of soul and agony of spirit, bitterness and reproach of men and devils and sin’s burden, there should be placed on His head a crown such as should be the expression and picture of it all! Jesus Christ, the ideal King of humanity, who shall yet be historic King, found His kingdom “lying in the beast” of prejudice and passion, and ever since with kingly courage He has been engaged in lifting it into the “beauty of the Lord”—bitter, heart-breaking, thorny work.—W. B. Melville.
The crown of thorns.—
I. Jesus Christ claimed the highest dignity: “King.”—Proved by—
1. His own words and deeds.
2. The service of angels.
3. The dread of demons.
4. The phenomena of nature.
5. The appearance of the departed.
6. The acknowledgment of God.
II. The claim of Christ to the highest dignity was treated with contempt.—“Crown of thorns.”
1. Its reason.
(1) Its ordinary human appearance.
(2) The spirituality of His kingdom.
(3) The preconceived notions of men.
2. Its form. Mockery and pain. This arose from—
(1) A cruel occupation: “soldiers.”
(2) Servile obedience.
(3) Heathenish cruelty.
(4) Example of superiors.
(5) Sinful excitement.
III. Contempt for the claim of Christ to the highest dignity was overruled to the advantage of Christ.—
1. Suffering revealed His greatness. Love, patience, forgiveness.
2. Greatness gave value to His sufferings. Sufferings of the God-man, dignity of Godhead, and sufferings of manhood-atonement. The “curse” represented by the “thorns” becomes a blessing represented by the “crown of thorns.—B. D. Johns.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 15
Mark 15:20. Christ mocked.—A strange illustration of the scene is afforded by what happened only a few years afterwards at Alexandria, when the people, in derision of King Agrippa I., arrayed a well-known maniac in a common door-mat, put a papyrus crown on his head, and a reed in his hand, and saluted him as “maris” (lord).—A. Edersheim, D.D.