WE come now to the most solemn, awesome but blessed time in the life of Jesus Christ on this earth. Here Mark records for us the time when Jesus bore our sins in his body and suffered all that the justice of God required in satisfaction for our sins. Jesus drank the bitter dregs of the wrath of God against our sins. We need to remember that all this dreadful suffering was suffered voluntarily by Jesus. From the day he was born he knew this was his destiny and why he came into the world. Being God and one with the Father he knew all the depth and dreadful extent of the suffering our sin deserves, and yet he bore that suffering voluntarily and completely. The blessedness is in the truth that by his suffering we are healed. We are not only saved from these awful consequences of our sin, but we are healed and restored to new life through Christ's suffering for us. We have recorded for us the historical fact of the death of Christ. His suffering was no fiction. He was nailed to a cross of wood. He suffered the most degrading death which man could devise. He was numbered with the transgressors, for he was crucified with two criminals whose crosses were on either side of him. All this shame Jesus accepted for our sake, because it was the will of the Father that he should make atonement for our sin. He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be the righteousness of God in him. All our sins, past, present and future, were accounted to him and placed on him, so that his righteousness, perfect and complete, may be accounted to us for our acceptance before God.
Though Jesus could have come down from the cross at any time, and stopped his suffering, yet in spite of the taunts of the crowd and the Jewish leaders, he endured all for our sakes. We are saved because he would not be saved.
How dreadful is the sin and corruption in human nature seen in the way, not only the Jewish leaders, but the crowds standing around the cross, mocked Jesus and taunted him. He who is the judge of all the earth, before whom one day all human beings will stand for judgement, accepted willingly this hate and reviling for the sake of us sinners, so that all who believe on him might be saved. How evil can human beings get when they taunt Jesus to come down from the cross with the spurious promises to believe on him.
Two great events marked the last hours of Jesus on the cross. One was the darkness that covered the earth, and the other was the rending of the curtain in the Temple. Both have deep significance. The darkness was calculated to arrest the attention of the Gentiles, and the rending of the veil in the Temple was calculated to impress all the Jews with fear.
The real significance of the darkness we are not told, but there are thoughts which I am sure contain something of the significance of this darkness.
First of all, darkness symbolised the awfulness of the sin of mankind, and particularly of the sin of the Jews in crucifying their Messiah.
Secondly, the darkness hid the suffering of Jesus from the prying eyes, and so hid the shame Jesus was undergoing from the sight of sinners.
Thirdly, the darkness separated Jesus from all around him, and brought out the fact that Jesus suffered for our sins entirely alone, without any companion or any support. He was the only one who could pay the price of sin.
The rending of the curtain in the temple also was a message from God. It was a message of the ending of all the O.T. order. It marked the ending of all need for altars, sacrifices and priesthood. It signalled that final and complete sacrifice for sin had been made, and that no further sacrifice was needed, and that through Christ the way into the holiest presence of God was now open to all who believe on him. When Christ rose from the dead he continued to be the one and only priest that we need, who ascended to the glory, into the presence of God, there to present on our behalf his perfect sacrifice for our acceptance and pardon.
This action was an awful and solemn declaration to the Jews that their time as chosen had ended, and that unless they came as sinners to Jesus, like everyone else, there was no salvation for them.
For us the rending of the veil tells us that in Christ heaven is open to us, and we are able to come to God as our loving Father, and know the sure and certain hope of eternal life.
The last thing we may meditate on is the saying Jesus cried just before he died. It is called the cry of dereliction. Jesus cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." We can never plum the depth of the suffering and hell Jesus is expressing in these words, but what they do tell us is that the suffering of Jesus was much more than physical pain. No doubt the physical pain was as dreadful as any man can know, but this physical pain must have been almost forgotten in the searing heat of the pain of being rejected by the Father, and being separated from him. Here is the essence of Hell multiplied a million times. For Jesus to experience God hiding his face from him, and casting him into outer darkness, must have been dreadful beyond words and imagining. What is so touching and wonderful is the fact that he endured all this for our sake, that we might be saved from hell, and know the eternal presence of God in love.