The One Jesus DIDN’T Save Was Himself

Mark 15:21-41

In September 1999 Pastor Tuy Seng (not his real name) traveled to Kampong Thom Province in northern Cambodia. Throughout that isolated area, most villagers had cast their lot with Buddhism or spiritism. Christianity was virtually unheard of.

But much to Seng’s surprise, when he arrived in one small, rural village the people warmly embraced him and his message about Jesus. When he asked the villagers about their openness to the gospel, an old woman shuffled forward, bowed, and grasped his hands as she said, “We have been waiting for you for twenty years.” And then she told him the story of the mysterious God who had hung on the cross.

In the 1970s the Khmer Rouge, the brutal, Communist-led regime, took over Cambodia, destroying everything in its path. When the soldiers finally descended on this rural, northern village in 1979, they immediately rounded up the villagers and forced them to start digging their own graves. After the villagers had finished digging, they prepared themselves to die. Some screamed to Buddha, others screamed to demon spirits or to their ancestors.

One of the women started to cry for help based on a childhood memory – a story her mother told her about a God who had hung on a cross. The woman prayed to that unknown God on a cross. Surely, if this God had known suffering, he would have compassion on their plight.

Suddenly, her solitary cry became one great wail as the entire village started praying to the God who had suffered and hung on a cross. As they continued facing their own graves, the wailing slowly turned to a quiet crying. There was an eerie silence in the muggy jungle air. Slowly, as they turned around to face their captors, they discovered that the soldiers were gone.

As the old woman finished telling this story, she told Pastor Seng that ever since that humid day 20 years ago the villagers had been waiting, waiting for someone to come and share the rest of the story about the God who had hung on a cross.[i]

The God who had hung on a cross. The God who suffers with us. The God who suffered for us. Turn with me to Mark 14:21-41. We’ll start with Vv. 21-32.

Crucifixion was one of the cruelest, most degrading forms of execution ever devised by humanity. The Jewish historian Josephus called it “the most wretched of all ways of dying.” The root of our word “excruciating,” “excruciatus” means “out of the cross.” The goal of crucifixion was to keep the poor soul alive as long as possible to extend and deepen the suffering.

Death by crucifixion was basically death by exhaustion as the muscles, which had to heave upward to allow the crucified person to breathe, slowly gave out. Men who were crucified were usually crucified naked to add to their humiliation. They hung on that cross, either tied or nailed to it (tying them to the cross actually allowed them to hang on longer, increasing their suffering), usually alongside a well-traveled road, bloodied, naked, and completely helpless. They couldn’t even hasten their own death. All they could do was hang there in agony and suffer. It was made a public spectacle to discourage others from committing the crimes committed by the crucified ones.

In June 1968, Israeli scholars discovered a Jewish tomb which held the first authenticated evidence of an ancient Roman crucifixion. Among the things they found were lower calf bones that had been broken, with the heel bones fixed with a single, 17-18 cm long nail.

“The feet were joined almost parallel, both transfixed by the same nail at the heels, with the legs adjacent; the knees were doubled, the right one overlapping the left; the trunk was contorted; the upper limbs were stretched out, each stabbed by a nail in the forearm.”

Some crosses were low to the ground, just high enough to keep the person’s feet from touching the ground. But when they wanted to make sure the person was visible from farther away to increase their humiliation, they put them on a taller cross. The fact that, as Jesus neared death, the person who offered Jesus a sponge with sour wine had to put the sponge on the end of a reed to reach him means that Jesus was on one of these taller crosses.

Most criminals sentenced to die by crucifixion were forced to carry the cross piece of their cross. The upright piece was already in the ground. They would be tied or nailed to the horizontal place and lifted into position. Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus wasn’t able to carry his cross, but we can guess. He was too weak, the loss of blood too great after the severe flogging he had just undergone.

So a man named Simon, from Cyrene, is conscripted to carry it for him. He had two sons with him – Alexander and Rufus. The way in which Mark mentions the names of Simon and his sons indicates that they were likely well-known to his readers in Rome. Regardless, Jesus’ body was completely and utterly spent before he was even nailed to the cross.

And when he was finally on the cross, he hung there between two others. Mark calls them “robbers,” but the word he used, which was reserved for violent robberies that included assault, was also used to describe violent insurrectionists. Violent insurrectionists like Barabbas. Jesus had taken the place of Barabbas, and was hanging there with two of his fellow conspirators.

And then, hanging there in agony, he was ridiculed. The one who said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days was hanging on a cross. So much for his threats. He wanted to save others, he can’t even save himself. There was no room in their worldview for a messiah on a cross. Deuteronomy 21:23 says, “a hanged man is cursed by God.” Another translation says, “anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.” And Jews didn’t differentiate between someone who was hanged from a noose and someone who was nailed to a cross. To them, this was the ultimate evidence that Jesus wasn’t the messiah, for what messiah could possibly come under the curse of God?

And the wine mixed with myrrh that they offered him? It was a narcotic. Myrrh was well-known for its narcotic properties, just as it was for its pleasing aroma. But this was no offer of mercy. Why would they suddenly care that Jesus felt less pain? Crucifixion was designed to create intense suffering and then prolong it as long as possible. It was offered to give the person a jolt of energy so that they would suffer longer. But Jesus refuses it. It did have a pain-reducing effect, and he wasn’t going for that. He would experience everything the worst of humanity would throw at him with no relief.

Now, look at Vv. 33-39. Darkness envelops Jesus. Jesus was crucified at the time of the Passover. It was a meal that looked back to God’s salvation at work in Israel’s past, trusting that it would again be there in the future. That God would act again to save. The Passover harkened back to the last night the Israelites spent in captivity in Egypt before Moses led them out. Because Pharoah refused to let the Israelites go, God sent a series of plagues on Egypt.

The second to last plague was a plague of darkness. Darkness descended over the land at the time of the first Passover, just as it did during this Passover, as Jesus hung on the cross. It was a curse of darkness, a sign that the curse of God rested upon the land. In the past, it had been a sign of God’s judgment of Egypt. Now, it was a sign of the judgment of God over … Jesus.

The sky may be dark, but there is no silence. Crucifixions were loud. The taunts of the onlookers and passersby mixed with the screams of rage and pain, the wild curses and shouts of indescribable despair pouring from the mouths of the crucified ones.

The words of Jesus are the natural sequel to his words in the Garden. There he’d prayed, “Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” The prayer of surrender. Now he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” They are the words of one tasting, for the first time, that which all sin works toward – alienation from God. Separation from God.

They are agonizing words, but they are not random words. They’re the opening words to Psalm 22. A Psalm that Jesus is both living and praying.

Listen to the words of the Psalm. “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” (Vv. 1-2).

“All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (Vv. 7-9). If you’re really God’s anointed one, what are you doing on a cross? Get yourself down from there. Then we’ll believe.”

“my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet” (Vv. 15-16).

“they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (V. 18). Jesus lived by Scripture and was now fulfilling it. The time that Jesus spoke these words … “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was the hour of prayer for Jews. And he was intentionally praying Psalm 22, the words of a righteous sufferer.

He cried out one more time, but this time it wasn’t words. It was just a loud, anguished cry, and then he died. There was a centurion standing there. He would have been the one in charge, overseeing the crucifixion of Jesus and the men on either side of him. He watched Jesus die, the way in which he died. He heard the words Jesus spoke from the cross. Saw the darkness envelop the land. And as Jesus took his final breath, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It wasn’t the scribes or the priests, learned men who knew the Hebrew scriptures who made this declaration. It was a pagan, a Roman centurion. He saw what no one else could see, or even imagine – the glory of God was no longer associated with the splendor and military might of a victorious emperor. It lay where there was no apparent splendor or might at all.[ii] It lay on what appeared to be, to all present, just another failed messiah, a pretender, now crucified for high treason.

This centurion was the least likely of all to come to this realization. But through the cross, God reaches the unreachable. The ones we think will never, ever see or taste the goodness of God. The ones whose hearts are hardened. Who never give God a second thought. They probably don’t give God a first thought. NEVER write someone off as unreachable. Keep praying. Keep living the Christ life, the cross-shaped life. And see what God does. True power lies not in coercion, or the ability to exploit someone for your purposes, or manipulate someone. True power gives itself for others and transforms death into life.

This week, as I waded into this passage of Scripture, I was most struck by the words of those who mocked him. “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” He saved others, he cannot save himself. They couldn’t see why anyone would want to save anyone other than themselves.

But here’s the reality – if he is to save others, he cannot save himself. If he saved himself, he would not have been able to save others. It was in dying that he brought life, because it was in dying, with the sins of all placed on him, covering him, enveloping him, that he brought about the just punishment for all sin, and allowed us to experience forgiveness and life.

Evil engulfed Jesus on the cross. Justice and love collided on the cross, and both emerged victorious. The King of kings dies an outlaw’s death. The Messiah rejected by those he came to save. The all-powerful one was powerless as he died. Weakness is a sign of power. Death is the path to life. His being forsaken by God leads to our being reconciled with God. That is the power of the cross. And in his suffering, Jesus joins us in our suffering. When the innocent suffer in this life, the cross is all the evidence that we need that God suffered for us, and God suffers with us. Where is Christ when my world is falling apart? When I am hurting and helpless and hopeless? He’s hanging on the cross. And he’s rising in victory over it all.

So how does the cross of Jesus speak to a world of pain, poverty, and injustice? In his book,, The Cross of Christ, John Stott describes the miserable conditions of millions of people who live in shanty towns of Africa and Asia, the barriadas of Latin American and the favelas of Brazil.

Then he tells a story about an imaginary poor man from the slums of Brazil who climbs 2,310 feet up the mountain to the colossal statue of Christ that towers above Rio de Janeiro – “The Christ of Corcovado.” After the difficult climb, the poor man finally reaches Jesus and says,

I have climbed up to meet you, Christ, from the filthy, confined quarters down there … to put before you, most respectfully, these considerations: there are 900,000 of us down there in the slums of that splendid city … And you … do you remain here at Corcovado surrounded by divine glory? Go down there to the favelas … Don’t stay away from us; live among us and give us new faith in you and in the Father. Amen.

Stott asks, “What would Christ say in response to such an entreaty? Would he not say ‘[in the suffering of the cross] I did come down to live among you, and I live among you still’”?

Then Stott adds,

We have to learn to climb the hill called Calvary, and from that vantage-ground survey all life’s tragedies. The cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it supplies the essential perspective from which to look at it … . Sometimes we picture [God] lounging, perhaps dozing, in some celestial deck-chair, while the hungry millions starve to death … . It is this terrible caricature of God which the cross smashes to smithereens.[iii]

To save us, he couldn’t save himself. And so he didn’t. The only one he didn’t save, was himself. Let’s pray.

[i] Doris I. Rosser & Ellen Vaughn, The God Who Hung on the Cross (Zondervan, 2003), pp. 35-37

[ii] Adapted from Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark, pg. 58.

[iii] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2006), pp. 320, 333