Commentary Critical and Explanatory
John 19:16
Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away.
Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified - against all justice, against his own conscience, against his solemnly and repeatedly pronounced judicial decision that He was innocent whom he now gave up.
And they took Jesus, and led him away. And so, amidst the conflict of human passions and the advancing tide of crime, the Scripture was fulfilled which said, "He is led as a lamb to the slaughter."
Remarks:
(1) If the complicated details of the ecclesiastical trial of our Lord bear such indubitable marks of truth as we have seen that they do (see the notes at Mark 14:53-41, Remark 9 at the close of that section, pages 210,
211), surely those of the political trial which followed are not less self-evidencing. Think first of the dark consistency with which His accusers held to their point of obtaining a condemnation from Pilate; the facility with which they oscillated between two kinds of charges-of treason against Caesar and treason against God-just as the chances of success by urging the one or the other of these charges seemed to preponderate for the moment; the ingenuity with which they set on the mob to shout for His crucifixion, and the fiendish violence with which, when Pilate wavered at the very last, they bore him down, and by insinuating the disloyalty of sparing the Prisoner, at length extorted compliance.
Think, next, of that extraordinary conflict of emotions which agitated the breast of Pilate-such as we may safely say no literary ingenuity could have invented, and so artlessly managed as we have it told in the Evangelical Narratives. Think, finally, of the placid dignity of the Sufferer, in all these scenes-the dignity with which He speaks, when alone with Pilate, and what is even more remarkable, the dignity of His silence before the multitude and in the presence of Herod. Whether we look at each of these features of the political trial by itself, or at all of them as composing one whole-their originality, their consistency, their wonderful verisimilitude, must strike every intelligent and impartial reader. Can we be surprised that such a History makes way for itself throughout the world without the need of laboured books of evidence, and is rejected or suspected only by perverted ingenuity? Similar remarks are applicable even to the minor details of this section, such as what is said of Barabbas; but the reader can follow this out for himself.
(2) As the subjects of Christ's Kingdom are at the same time under the Civil Government of the country in which they reside, and may be helped or hindered by it in their Christian duties according to the procedure of that government toward them, it is plainly both the right and the duty of Christians to procure such civil arrangements as shall be most for the advantage of religion in the land. What these ought to be is a question on which Christians are not agreed, and on which they may reasonably differ; and, indeed, the varying conditions of civil society may render the policy which would be proper or warrantable in one case neither right nor practicable in another. But since Civil Government never will nor can nor ought to be altogether indifferent to Religion, it is the duty of Christians to endeavour that at least nothing injurious to Religion be enacted and enforced. But the Christian world has grievously erred on this subject. Since the days of Constantine, when the Roman Empire became externally Christian, the desire to turn civil government to the advantage of Christianity has led to the incorporation of such a multitude of civil elements with the government of the Church, that the lines of essential distinction between the political and the religious have been obliterated, not only under Romanism, but even in the constitution of Church and State in the countries of the Reformation; insomuch that the explicit declaration of our Lord to Pilate - "My Kingdom is not of this world" - would scarcely have satisfied the Roman Governor that His master's interests were unaffected by such a kingdom, if explained according to some modern principles of ecclesiastical government. Let Christians but interpret our Lord's explanation of the nature of His kingdom honestly and in all its latitude, and their differences on this subject, if they do not melt away, will become small and unimportant.
(3) If in the suffering and death of Christ we have the substitution of the Innocent for the guilty, we have a kind of visible exhibition of this in the choice of Barabbas, which was the escape of the guilty in virtue of the condemnation of the Innocent.
(4) Often as we have had occasion to notice in this History the consistency of the divine determinations with the liberty of human actions, nowhere is it more conspicuous than in this section. Observe how our Lord meets the threat of Pilate, when he asked Him if He knew not that the power of life and death was in his hands. 'No, Pilate, it is not in thine hands, but in Hands which thine only obey; therefore is the guilty man who delivered Me unto thee, the more guilty.' But "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong."
No sooner do those envenomed enemies of the Lord Jesus get Him again into their hands, than they renew their mockeries, as we learn from the first two Gospels.
JESUS IS AGAIN SUBJECTED TO MOCKERY
"And after they had mocked Him, they took the (purple) robe off from Him, and put His own raiment on Him, and led Him away to be crucified."
The next two steps possess the deepest interest.
And he bearing his cross went forth - that is, without the city; a most significant circumstance in relation to a provision of the Levitical law. "For," says the apostle, "the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp: Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate" (Hebrews 13:11). None of the Evangelists but John mentions the important fact that Christ was made to bear His own cross; although we might have presumed as imposed upon criminals condemned to be crucified the burden of bearing their own cross, as Plutarch expressly states, and from our Lord's injunctions to his followers to bear their cross after Him (see the note at Matthew 10:38). But soon, it would appear, it became necessary to lay this burden upon some one else if He was not to sink under it. How this was done our Evangelist does not say, nor that it was done at all. But it had been related by all the three preceding Evangelists.
Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26: "And as they came out," says Matthew, "they found a man of Cyrene," in Libya, on the north coast of Africa, "Simon by name," "who passed (or 'was passing') by," says Mark. He was not, then, one of the crowd that had come out of the city to witness the execution; and Mark adds that he was "coming out of the country," probably into the city, all ignorant, perhaps, of what was going on; and was "the father of Alexander and Rufus." This stranger, then, "they compelled to bear His cross." Jesus, it would appear, was no longer able to bear it. And when we think of the Agony through which He passed during the previous night, not to speak of other causes of exhaustion, under which the three disciples were unable to keep awake in the garden; if we think of the night He passed with Annas, and the early morn before the Sanhedrim, with all its indignities; of the subsequent scenes before Pilate first, then Herod, and then Pilate again; of the scourging, the crown of thorns, and the other cruelties before He was led forth to execution-can we wonder that it soon appeared necessary, if He was not to sink under this burden, that they should find another to bear it? For we must remember that "He was crucified through weakness" [ ex (G1537) astheneias (G769)], 2 Corinthians 13:4. (See on the "loud voice" which He emitted on the cross as He expired, page 474.)
It will be observed that his Simon the Cyrenian is said to be "the father of Alexandere and Rufus" (Mark 15:21). From this we naturally conclude that when Mark wrote his Gospel these two persons-Alexander and Rufus-were only Christians, but well known as such among those by whom he expected his Gospel to be first read. Accordingly, when we turn to Romans 16:13, we find these words, "Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord-that is, 'the choice one' or 'precious one in the Lord', and his mother and mine." That this is the same Rufus as Mark supposes his readers would at once recognize, there can hardly be a doubt. And when the apostle calls Rufus' mother 'his own mother,' in grateful acknowledgment of her motherly attentions to himself for the love she bore to his Master, does it not seem that Simon the Cyrenian's conversion dated from that memorable day when, 'passing casually by as he came from the country,' they "compelled him to bear" the Saviour's cross Sweet compulsion, and noble pay for the enforced service to Jesus then rendered, if the spectacle which his eyes then beheld issued in his voluntarily taking up his own cross! Through him it is natural to suppose that his wife would be brought in, and that this believing couple, now "heirs together of the grace of life" (1 Peter 3:7), as they told their two sons, Alexander and Rufus, what honour had been put upon their father all unwittingly, at that hour of deepest and dearest interest to all Christians, might be blessed to the fetching in of both those sons. By the time that Paul wrote to the Romans, the older of the two may have gone to reside in some other place place, or departed to be with Christ, which was far better; and Rufus being left alone with his mother, they only were mentioned by the apostle.
THE SPECTACLE OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS DRAWS TEARS FROM THE WOMEN THAT FOLLOWED HIM-HIS REMARKABLE ADDRESS TO THEM
For this we are indebted exclusively to the third Gospel.
Luke 23:27: Luke 23:27. "And there followed Him a great company (or 'multitude') of people, and of women, which also" - that is, the women [ hai (G3588)] - "bewailed and lamented Him." These women are not to be confounded with those precious Galilean women afterward expressly mentioned. Our Lord's reply shows that they were merely a miscellaneous collection of females, whose sympathies for the Sufferer-of whom some would know more and some less-drew forth tears and lamentations. "But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children." Noble spirit of compassion, rising above His own dread endurances in tender commiseration of sufferings yet in the distance and far lighter, but without His supports and consolations! "For, behold the days (or 'days' ) are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us." These words, taken from Hosea 10:8, are a lively way of expressing the feelings of persons flying here and there despairingly for shelter. The more immediate reference of them is to the sufferings which awaited them during the approaching siege of Jerusalem; but they are a premonition of cries of another and more awful kind (Revelation 6:16; and compare, for the language, Isaiah 2:10; Isaiah 2:19; Isaiah 2:21). "For if they do these things in a green tree" - that naturally resists the fire - "what shall be done in the dry," that attracts the flames, being their proper fuel. The proverb plainly means: 'If such sufferings alight upon the innocent One, the very Lamb of God, what must be in store for those who are provoking the flames?'
Our Evangelist only brings us to Calvary. For the rest we are indebted to the first two Gospels.