The Seven Statements on the Cross; John 19:25-30

Luke 23:35 ^NASB “And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One’.”

Mark 15:29 ^NASB “Those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads, and saying, ‘Ha! You who {are} {going to} destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, [30] save Yourself, and come down from the cross!’”

Prior to this Jesus utters His first statement on the cross. As soon as they put Him up on the cross He says a prayer: Luke 23:33, 34 ^NASB “When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’...” Why was it that the initial statement that came out of Jesus’ lips on the cross was a prayer? Not only is it a prayer but it is a prayer for forgiveness. It was a prayer for those who were causing His physical suffering. So the principle is that when we become self-absorbed with our problems rather than occupied with grace and with our Lord Jesus Christ we have already succumbed to arrogance. In such a state we cannot fulfil the royal law of love which is to love others as Christ has loved us. We are unable to love our neighbour as ourself and we are unable to love our enemies. But because Jesus Christ was sinless, impeccable, and totally occupied with the plan of God for His life, because He was grace oriented, he was able in the midst of incredible attack, assault, insult, personal pain and misery, to not focus at all on what he was going through but to focus exclusively on the plan of God and the spiritual need of those who were causing His agony and suffering. So He demonstrates to us the supreme example of what it means to have impersonal love for all mankind. He is not giving in to any mental attitude sins of anger or despair, resentment, vindictiveness or frustration. He is totally occupied with God and therefore He is able to put their interests and what is best for them first, above His own personal situation. That is what impersonal love for all mankind is, it is not merely a passive attitude that is the absence of mental attitude sins. Jesus doesn’t just hang there on the cross avoiding mental attitude sins, He is praying for what is best for His enemies, which is for God the Father to forgive them.

Why is He praying for God to forgive them? Is tuis a prayer for their salvation, or is there something more going on here? We have to understand the dynamics of the situation. Here is the creature getting ready to crucify the creator. Here is fallen man who has aligned himself completely against Jesus Christ who is the eternal second person of the Trinity. It is a personal assault and attack on the creator of the universe. God in His justice would be totally fair and within His prerogative to at that moment cause lightning to come out of heaven and absolutely wipe out every inhabitant of Judea and leave one person standing, the Lord Jesus Christ. But Jesus is praying a prayer that is directed at the fulfilment of the plan of God: “It is now time to judge me for the sins of the world, let’s go on with the plan.” This is a prayer to God the Father to continue with the plan of salvation so that the sins of mankind could be paid for. We need to notice that because what we will see is that in about the third saying on the cross Jesus will not address God the Father as Father, He will address Him as “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” That is because in that period of time He will be paying the penalty for our sins as our spiritual substitute and the focus there is on His humanity. Then, before He finally dies physically He says: “Father I commit my spirit into your hands.” Once again He returns to calling God the Father, Father, and that intimacy of relationship is restored. So this emphasises for us that something dramatic and something so profound takes place between twelve noon and 3 pm that we cannot fathom it. How can the eternal second person of the Trinity who is eternally one with the Father be separated from the Father.

We have seen that at this point the physical abuse continues. The first group that abused Him was the people. They stood by, looking on and hurling abuse at Him. And there was not on the people but a second group, the religious leaders. Matthew 27:41, 42 ^NASB “In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking [blasfemew] {Him} and saying, ‘He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him’.” They religious leaders are saying: If you are really who you say you are, demonstrate it. They are putting out a false scale of values to truth. They have already rejected who he is and they are just using this to mock Him. Mark 15:32a ^NASB “Let {this} Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe!” In other words, do one more thing. It is always “one more thing.” For the person who is negative there is never enough evidence; for the person who is positive there is more than sufficient evidence. Matthew 27:43 was another taunt: ^NASB “HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE {Him} now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” The third group of mockers at the cross was the soldiers. Luke 23:36, 37 ^NASB “The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine, and saying, ‘If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!’” Throughout all of these groups it is the same kind of reasoning. Rebellious man sets up an autonomous, independent criterion for truth and than demands that God meets his criterion for truth. That is arrogance. It is saying God’s evidence is not enough it has to meet my distorted value system. It is just a way of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, Romans 1:18-20. In Matthew 27:44 we are told that the fourth group was the robbers, the thieves who were crucified alongside of Him. ^NASB “The robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same words.”

At the beginning both of the thieves were insulting and ridiculing Him. And then something takes place. One of the thieves begins to focus on Jesus and seeing that he did not respond like everybody else. Maybe there is something different here. This introduces the second saying of Christ on the cross. Luke 23:39 ^NASB “One of the criminals who were hanged {there} was hurling abuse at Him, saying, ‘Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!’ [40] But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?’” So all of a sudden an argument breaks out around Jesus. [41] “And we indeed {are suffering} justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” With that he says that this man has not committed any sin, that He is righteous, dikaios [dikaioj], and indicates he recognises at this point that Jesus is perfect righteousness, He has done nothing wrong at all. Then he turns to Jesus, and this is his expression of positive volition. He obviously understands what Jesus has taught, he has heard the message before, and now he turns to Jesus and says, [42] ^NASB “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” It is at this instant that the thief on the cross is saved. There were no works from the thief on the cross. He just turns to Jesus and expresses simple faith alone. To make this statement he would have already had to trust Christ and accept who he was and that He was who He claimed to be. Then Jesus responds to him, validating his expression of faith. [43] ^NASB “And He said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise’.”

This gives us an interesting insight into what happens to our Lord after He dies physically, because He announces to this thief that together they would be in a place called Paradise. We know that when Jesus died physically the immaterial part, the human soul and human spirit were separated from His physical body. His physical body went into the grave but His immaterial part went to Paradise, specifically His soul. What is Paradise? We know from Luke 16:19-25 that until Jesus Christ died on the cross that Old Testament believers did not go directly to heaven. They went to a place called Abraham’s bosom, also called Paradise. This was like a holding place until salvation was actually secured. Up to this point salvation is provisional, the penalty of sin had not been paid for. As the epistle to the Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin. All of the Old Testament sacrifices were anticipating the payment of sin by Jesus Christ on then cross. After the cross Abraham’s bosom was taken to heaven, according to 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 ^NASB “Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.” So when Jesus died on the cross, after He had paid the penalty for sin, He went to Hades. That doesn’t mean that He endured any punishment down there, He goes down to announce to the believers that salvation has been secured and the way is now open for them to go to heaven, and He takes Paradise to heaven. He then announces to the unbeliever from the Old Testament that their judgment is secured, and he announces to the demons that their judgment is secured. From that point on there is no more Abraham’s bosom, there is simply Torments and Tartarus.

Then we have the third saying of Jesus. John 19:25 ^NASB “Therefore the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the {wife} of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. [26] When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’” Jesus demonstrates here that even in the midst of all His pain He is fulfilling His responsibility towards His mother. He does not ever call His mother, Mother. In His omniscience he knew that people would screw that up in the church age and want to worship Mary. Mary was not the mother of God or the mother of Christ, she was the mother of the humanity of Jesus Christ. She was the vehicle through whom He was incarnate as true humanity. So He calls her woman to try to cut off and show that there is no need for a mother’s cult in Christianity as there is in almost every other pagan religion. That goes all the way back to ancient Babylon where there was the worship of the various goddesses who would give birth to a son, etc. It was a very ancient attempt by Satan to counterfeit the gospel. Jesus gives His mother to John to take care of, and church tradition suggests that Mary lived in John’s house for many, many years. But Jesus is emphasising here that despite His sufferings He maintains a focus on His responsibility under the Mosaic law.

Luke tells us that is was about the sixth hour. Darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. This is the time when Jesus is paying the penalty for our sins. No one was to be able to look upon the features of our Lord Jesus Christ during the time that he was paying the penalty for our sins. This is when we come to the fourth saying of Jesus on the cross. Mark 15:34 ^NASB “At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?’ which is translated, ‘MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?’” This is a judicial separation from the Father, not a separation of essence or of being, because the perfect righteousness of God could no longer have fellowship with Jesus Christ because he was being made sin. Jesus cried out, and this is a quotation from Psalm 22:1. The interesting thing is that the word “you” here is the original Hebrew of Psalm 22 is a second person masculine singular, which means that He is only speaking to God the Father. He is not speaking to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit still indwells Him, fills Him and sustains Him on the cross during all of His agony, but it is God the Father who is the supreme judge of all creation who is judicially separated from Him at this point.

Mark 15:35 ^NASB “When some of the bystanders heard it, they {began} saying, ‘Behold, He is calling for Elijah’.” They did not know their Old Testament, they did not understand the allusion to Psalm 22. [36] “Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink, saying, ‘Let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down’.”

John 19:28 ^NASB “After this, Jesus…” Then we have an anarthrous present participle of ginosko [ginwskw], which is adverbial, and this would be an adverbial participle of cause—because Jesus knew. “… knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty’.” The important thing to notice here is the translation, “all things had already been accomplished.” It is the Greek word tetelestai [tetelestai] which is the aorist active infinitive of teleioo [teleiow] which means to bring to completion. It means paid in full. So before Jesus dies physically, before He even comes to the statement “It is finished,” the Scriptures makes it clear in John 19:28 that Jesus knew that because it was completed already he said, “I thirst” in order to fulfil Old Testament prophecy. This shows us that in the chronology of the cross that at 3 pm when Jesus said he was thirsty He knew that He had already finished paying the penalty for sin. It was accomplished. It was not His physical death therefore that accomplished it, it was accomplished before He died physically. Luke adds at that point, “and the veil of the temple was torn in two.” When we put this together we see that the tearing of the temple veil in two is the opening of the way, the access, the entrance into the holy of holies. Because Christ had now paid the penalty that access was open, there was nothing to hinder man direct access to God. And this occurred before He died physically. So it is not, therefore, the physical death of Christ on the cross that pays the penalty for our sins but His spiritual death on the cross.

Then we come to the sixth saying of Jesus Christ on the cross. John 19:30 ^NASB “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’…” tetelestai, paid in full. Nothing more can be added. That means that you cannot accept Christ as saviour and add anything to it. Jesus Christ paid the penalty in full. All we have to do is accept it freely because the work has been completed on the cross. Then John says, “And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” He voluntarily departed His physical body. He did not die simply as a result of the crucifixion. When the Roman soldiers came to break His legs to be sure that he died they were astounded that He was dead already. It shows that once he had paid the penalty for sin there was no longer any reason for the suffering to continue, so He gave up His [human] spirit. So we have the seventh saying of Jesus on the cross. Luke 23:46 ^NASB “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT.’ Having said this, He breathed His last.”

There are about fifteen Old Testament prophecies that are all fulfilled specifically by Jesus Christ during this time period from 9am until 3 pm. The chances of that happening are far less than us ever winning any lottery. It is almost impossible mathematically for all of these prophecies related to Christ to have been fulfilled and we know from Scripture that over 200 Old Testament prophecies were literally fulfilled by Jesus Christ during the incarnation.