CHAPTER 26
Now, having finished that which He had to say when He had quitted or rather abandoned Jerusalem, the Lord recalls the attention and the thoughts of His disciples to His suffering and His cross. Two days later came the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man was to be betrayed in order to be crucified. This was not the mind of the sages of the world, of the great men and the authorities, who found that the moment was hardly opportune at the time when there would be such a gathering together of people. For these, having enjoyed in vast numbers the effects of His power and His goodness, might stir up a tumult if the authorities attempted to get rid of Him in a violent and unjust manner. But in the counsels of God that was to be accomplished at this time.
True Lamb of God, He was to suffer for us in realising the type of the deliverance out of Egypt by means of a redemption excellent in a very different way. Also the Lord, in the value of His perfection, announces to His disciples that which was going to happen, making use of the very plots of the guides of the nation to accomplish the counsels of God, whilst all their precautions were reduced to nothing. Now man was sufficiently wicked, and the enemy sufficiently powerful, when God permitted it, that there should be no tumult. The world shews itself completely under the power of its prince, and the enemy of God. As far as tumult was concerned, there were only those cries, Crucify Him, crucify Him.
[p. 302] All that which follows is the solemn testimony that, at this supreme moment, the Saviour, the Victim of atonement, the Lamb destined for the slaughter, the Sheep dumb in the hands of him that shears it, was to find no succour, no refuge, no support for His heart, not one to have compassion on Him though He sought for it. At the same time His perfection, His grace, are displayed so much the more that He is put to the proof.
We are going a little in detail to run over the account of this grace and of this patience. One learns in it the perfection of the Saviour, where it is presented in the most touching and at the same time the most admirable manner. The close of the life of the Lord is distinguished in this respect that it is regarded at a different point of view in each Gospel, as also all the rest of His history, whilst Mark and Matthew present the same portrait with but little differences. But the Gospel of John shews us the person of the Lord God, the Word made flesh, eternal life in the world. Also in Gethsemane and on the cross, we find there neither suffering nor humiliation, but a divine Person who passes through them in His power. In Luke, it is the Man who in Gethsemane feels more the trial as man, but who is victorious in it, so that on the cross the expression of suffering is not found. In Matthew, as the victim of propitiation, He answers nothing if it is not to make a good confession and render testimony to the truth, the sole motive of His condemnation. The Spirit of God shews here in a positive manner the forsaking of men and even of His disciples, in which the Lord found Himself without any consolation for His heart; then finally the forsaking of God on the cross when He cries to Him, praying that God should not be far from Him, when bulls and dogs compassed Him. In a word we have, in John, the Son of God always man; in Luke, the man; in Matthew, the victim of atonement; but the circumstances are of profound interest, and we wish to touch on them.