The life & killing of Jesus Christ

from the Gospel of Matthew

(Matthew 27:45-50)

The Killing of Jesus

Questions to be answered in this study

1. Jesus dies on the day of the Passover; in what way did He fulfill the Passover?
2. In what way is Jesus now our High Priest?
3. Why did darkness fall upon the earth during the crucifixion of Jesus and what did it mean?
4. What did Jesus mean in the Garden of Gethsemane when He asked the Heavenly Father to let this cup pass from Him?
5. Throughout Scripture, Light symbolizes something; what does it symbolize?
6. Finally, Jesus spoke some of His last words: “te-telestai;” “It is finished;” what was He talking about that was finished?
7. Why did Jesus spend three hours separated from God when a lost sinner will spend eternity separated from God?
8. Jesus’ physical death served a different and fundamental purpose; what was the purpose?
9. What is Sheol?

Introduction

Today we continue our study of the killing of Jesus as He hangs on the cross. At the same hour that Israel’s high priest is sacrificing a lamb in the temple, Jesus, the high priest of believers, is giving Himself as a sacrifice on the cross, fulfilling all that the Passover lamb represented for hundreds of years. Each year at Passover, a lamb without blemish was brought to the temple at 9;00 AM, its throat cut and the blood drained, and the body was then burned on the altar as a sacrifice for Israel. At that same time on this Passover, Jesus, represented by the Passover lamb, was being nailed to the cross as a sacrifice for all who would trust in Him for the forgiveness of their sins.

Few of those who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover understood the significance of what was taking place as the final sacrificial lamb, the Lord, died on the cross for man’s sins fulfilling hundreds of years of the celebration of Passover. Jesus, who knew no sin, suffered the pain and agony of crucifixion, that was due sinners, dying in their place, so they could be forgiven. The author of Hebrews describes our response to our High Priest’s death: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need,” Hebrews 4:15-16.

           Jesus was tempted as we are but never yielded, therefore, becoming our High Priest and our advocate before the Heavenly Father. The high priest of Israel was the advocate for Israel when he went before God at the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. The high priest only went into the Holy of Holies once a year and that was only on the Day of Atonement. Now Jesus takes his place as our High Priest.

Jesus taking our place in death is the focus of today’s study. Jesus became our substitute, suffering and dying in our place so that we might be forgiven and receive eternal life. The death of a sinner includes both physical and spiritual death, which Jesus experienced on the cross, becoming our Passover sacrifice.

           Sinners experiences physical death, then a spiritual death, and Jesus experiences the same except in reverse order. We will see today why Jesus, to serve the purpose of the Heavenly Father, experienced these in a different order. We start with the spiritual death of Jesus:

Matthew 27:45, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.”

Darkness falls upon the earth at the sixth hour; according to Jewish time, this would be high noon, a time of day when the sun is at its zenith. According to Matthew, darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour, or 3:00 PM. The meaning of the Greek word “yee” for our English word land is that darkness fell upon the entire earth. According to extant history, scholars from Grease, Egypt, and Turkey, reported this phenomenon. Why did this darkness happen? It happened because the Heavenly Father withdrew His presence from His Son Jesus; this is the first and last time in eternity that God the Father and the Son are not in fellowship, and it was for the sole purpose of completing God’s plan of redemption; this we see in the following verse:

Matthew 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

We see a foreshadowing of the question Jesus asks the Heavenly Father in Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” Matthew records it in the original Aramaic before translating it into Greek, and now we read it in English; this happens near the end of three hours of darkness and Jesus’ separation from the Holy God. Interestingly, this is the only instance in all the gospels where Jesus addresses the Heavenly Father as “My God.” Jesus was feeling the separation and God’s distancing Himself from Him. In this instance, there is a difference in the way Jesus relates to God. Jesus calls out, “My God, why have you forsaken Me?” For three hours, Jesus was spiritually separated from God; this must have been a devastating time for Jesus as He felt the absence of the intimacy that He always had with God the Father.

During these three hours, Jesus experienced spiritual death, the ultimate consequence of sin, not His but your sin and mine; this means that the Father left Jesus behind; it was the most tremendous suffering Jesus could ever know, which is beyond our understanding.

           I don’t think this is the cup that Jesus asked God the Father to take away in the Garden of Gethsemane, as some interpret it. Jesus knew from the beginning that His purpose in coming to earth was to die for man’s sins. I believe back in the Garden, Jesus is asking God not to let Satan take His life prematurely by the sword of the Roman soldiers before He could go to the cross; had this happened, it would have destroyed God’s plan of redemption.

               Throughout Scripture, Light symbolizes God’s presence; now, the sun’s Light is taken away to indicate God’s absence. John records the significance of Light that represents God’s presence: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: ₇But if we walk in the Light, as he is in the Light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and to forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:5-9.

           Again, John writes, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. ₈He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. ₁₀He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” John 1:6-13.

           It is clear to see from the Scriptures above that God’s presence is pictured by Light, and darkness pictures the opposite, His absence. After the return of Christ, this world will be replaced with a new creation with no sun, but the presence of God will be the Light of the world. That explains what happened during the first three hours Jesus hung on the cross when darkness fell across the earth. When God turned His back on Jesus, there was darkness representing His absence. We can’t understand that even though Jesus was God, He was separated from God for some time. That is not the only thing in God’s word we don’t understand; for example, who can fully understand the Trinity?

The fact of the matter is we have never experienced the complete absence of God even when we were yet in our sins because God has always been present to some degree, so says the Bible: “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,” Matthew 5:45. Even unrepentant sinners still receive the blessings of God’s presence through His goodness and His provisions. Jesus experienced the complete absence of God for three hours. It is hard to imagine the grief that it must have brought Him. Yet, it is still harder to imagine the suffering of those who will spend an eternity separated from God’s presence. Thank God that we who have believed have been delivered from such a fate: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death,” Revelation 2:11.

Matthew gives us another reason for the Aramaic words Jesus used in v.46: 

Matthew 27:47, “When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.” 48Immediately, one of them ran and got a sponge, and he filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him; this brought confusion to the crowd, who interpreted what Jesus said falsely. They assumed Jesus was calling on the Old Testament prophet Elijah to come to His rescue because Jesus used the Aramaic word Eli, Eli, which means “My God, My God.” So, thinking Jesus was delusional, they rushed to give Him vinegar to drink and then waited to see if Elijah did Come to rescue Jesus. They did not show pity by their actions; they were just curious to know the outcome.

For three hours, Jesus suffered spiritual death for us, and when the darkness ended at the ninth hour and fellowship with God was restored, the Bible says that Jesus gave up the spirit and died: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost,” John 19:30.

Finally, Jesus spoke some of His last words: “te-telestai;” “It is finished.” Jesus said it is paid in full, meaning the price for our atonement was paid. What Jesus had done on our behalf had appeased the wrath of God against sin and set us free who trust in Jesus. Jesus said this before He died, indicating God was pleased with what Jesus had done up to that point, but death was still necessary for our redemption because death must first come before there could be a resurrection and the promise of eternal life.

Why did Jesus spend three hours separated from God when a lost sinner will spend eternity separated from God? The answer is that sin separates sinful man from God when he dies a sinner; he will always be in that unforgiven state, forever separated from God. Unlike us, Jesus had no sin; He became sin on our behalf. Therefore, He did not need to spend eternity separated from God.

With our sin debt paid in full, suffering now comes to an end for Jesus:

Matthew 27:50, “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”

Luke fills in where Matthew leaves off and tells us what Jesus’ last words were: “Father into Your Hands I commit My Spirit.” Jesus was God, so He certainly had control over the precise moment He died, and His death was not the result of the wounds He received during the crucifixion; He died voluntarily. Even though certain physical conditions are credited to our death, sin is the ultimate cause, physically and spiritually; that is the penalty God decreed. Jesus was without sin, but He took that penalty on Himself, that is spiritually, on our behalf before he died physically. Our sin debt was paid in full when Jesus suffered the separation from God during those three hours of darkness; that counted as the spiritual death of Jesus. Spiritual death for an unbeliever comes after physical death and results in eternal separation from the love of God.

So, the question remains as to why Jesus suffered spiritual death before He died physically, and what was the significance of His physical death? The physical death of Jesus is what often comes to mind as the principal payment for sin, but that is not want the Bible teaches because Jesus declared, as mentioned before, that before He died physically, the sin debt had been paid in full. However, His physical death was an essential part of God’s plan of redemption, but it in itself did not pay the sin debt.

Another erroneous assumption is that Jesus died and went to hell to suffer in our place. According to Paul, in the book of Romans, the wrath of God against sin was satisfied by Jesus’ death: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life,” Romans 5:9-10. Jesus never experienced the torments of hell or the decaying of the body in the tomb: “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. 10For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption,” Psalm 16:9-10. Hell in this instance speaks of the grave.

Jesus’ physical death served a different and fundamental purpose. It happened to prepare Jesus for the resurrection, without which there could be no redemption. It also served as proof that Jesus did die and was a fulfillment of Scripture. Paul and Peter add another aspect of the death of Jesus. During His time in the tomb, the spirit of Jesus descended into the inner parts of the earth to meet those Old Testament saints held in Sheol; Sheol has two parts; one part is called paradise; that is where Abraham was when Lazarus the beggar died and came there. The rich man that died went to the other part of Sheol, the place of torment. The rich man begged Abrahan to send Lazarus with water to cool his tongue, but Abraham said a great gulf separated the two areas that could not be crossed. Paradise, in our minds, would be a beautiful place, which it is bound to be. It was where Old Testament saints and early New Testament saints went to wait until the Messiah came to complete the plan of redemption. It was after Jesus died and paid for the sin debt that they could go into the presence of God, so Jesus went to them to proclaim that their sin debt had been paid. After three days, according to Paul, these captive spirits were escorted to heaven, where they remain. Also, Peter tells us Jesus announced to those unbelieving spirits who suffered torment on the other side of Sheol not to give them a second chance of salvation but to inform them that the price of sin had been paid regardless of their unbelief.

Endnote

It would require a separate study on the subject of Sheol to understand its full meaning, but that isn’t a part of our study of Matthew. Listed below are references that I used to support the above that you might want to consider:

1 Peter 3:18-20, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20because they formerly did not obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah. At the same time, the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”

Ephesians 4:8–10, “Therefore it says, When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” ₉(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. 10He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)”

Psalm 68:18, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.”

Little is said in the Scriptures regarding Jesus’ activities in the three days between His death and resurrection, but there are a few references. Paul quoted Psalm 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8. He said, “When Jesus ascended on high, he took many captives” The ESV says that Christ “led a host of captives.” After securing their salvation on the cross, Jesus gathered all the redeemed saints from the Old Testament and early New Testament, including the thief on the cross who were in paradise, and took them to their permanent dwelling in heaven; this included Abraham, David, Joshua, Daniel, the beggar Lazarus, the thief on the cross, and everyone else who had previously been justified by faith. He also went to the other side of Sheol to inform the unrepentant that the sin debt had been paid even though they did not accept it when they were alive.

I hope that each person reading this today has accepted Jesus as their savior while you still have the opportunity. If you haven’t, please go to www.jimmieburroughs.com and you will find a place on the first page to click in order to find a guide on how to accept Jesus as your savior.