Matthew 27:32

Matthew 27:32

I. We could not spare this incident; it would leave a gap in the evangelical histories, which it would be quite beyond our power to fill. We have indeed evidence that Christ could hunger and thirst and be weary and all such evidence is precious, as testifying to the real humanity of the Saviour. But, nevertheless, the evidence is far from being considerable; and if you set it against the account of a crucifixion, in which there is not the least proof that any pain was felt, you might find it hard to furnish a convincing demonstration that Christ suffered in the body like one of ourselves. But the text gives evidence enough to assure the most doubtful that He is verily a man, with all a man's susceptibilities, His consciousness of pain, His capacity of being tortured. For as He came out from the city, bearing His cross, so worn down was He by His sufferings, so faint with loss of blood, so exhausted by fatigue, that even His remorseless enemies either pitied Him or feared that He would die before He was crucified; the soldiers "found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, and him they compelled to bear His cross."

II. We can hardly doubt that an event, which has apparently so much significance, was designed to be received by us as a parable, and interpreted as a lesson to the Church. What the Saviour had spoken of, and what He had enjoined, was simply the bearing of the cross the performing duties and the submitting to endurances, from which nature might be adverse, but which were appointed unto those who would gain eternal life. He had not spoken of His own cross as that which His disciples were to carry; but now, before He departs from the world, He would teach them that they must not only bear some cross or other, if they would follow Him to glory, but that very cross which He carried Himself. Many a cross is of our own manufacture, our troubles are often but the consequences of our sins, and we may not dignify these by supposing them the cross which is to distinguish the Christian. Crosses they may be, but they are not the cross which was laid upon Simon, and which had first been on Christ. He alone bears Christ's cross who suffers in His cause, who has troubles to endure simply because he is a Christian.

H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts,vol. ii., p. 208.