Mark 15:29-32

Those who were passing by hurled their insults at him, wagging their heads at him. "Aha!" they said, "you who are going to pull down the Temple and build it in three days, come down from the Cross and save yourself!" Even so the chief priests jested with each other, with the experts in the law. "He saved others, they said, "He cannot save himself. Let this Anointed One of God, this King of Israel, come down from the Cross, so that we may see it and believe." And those who were crucified with him flung their taunts at him.

The Jewish leaders flung one last challenge at Jesus. "Come down from the Cross, they said, "and we will believe in you." It was precisely the wrong challenge. As General Booth said long ago, "It is because Jesus did not come down from the Cross that we believe in him." The death of Jesus was absolutely necessary and the reason was this. Jesus came to tell men of the love of God; more, he was himself the incarnate love of God. If he had refused the Cross or if in the end he had come down from the Cross, it would have meant that there was a limit to God's love, that there was something which that love was not prepared to suffer for men, that there was a line beyond which it would not go. But, Jesus went the whole way and died on the Cross and this means that there is literally no limit to God's love, that there is nothing in all the universe which that love is not prepared to suffer for men, that there is nothing, not even death on a cross, which it will refuse to bear for men.

When we look at the Cross, Jesus is saying to us, "God loves you like that, with a love that is limitless, a love that will bear every suffering earth has to offer."

TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH (Mark 15:33-41)