Death of Jesus

“ CONSIDER how Jesus, after three hours’ agony on the Cross, consumed with anguish, abandoned himself to the weight of his body, bowed his sacred head, and died.
O my dying Jesus, I kiss devoutly the Cross on which thou didst die for the love of me. I have merited by my sins to die a miserable death, but thy death is my hope. Ah! by the merits of thy death, give me grace to die embracing thy feet, and burning with love for thee. I commit my soul to thy hands. I love thee, O Jesus, above all things. ”

“ The death of Jesus Christ is represented as the cause whence his fruitfulness, as the author of eternal salvation to mankind is derived; and genuine believers in him are represented as being planted in his death, and growing out of it; deriving their growth, vigor, firmness, beauty, and fruitfulness from it. In a word, it is by his death that Jesus Christ redeems a lost world; and it is from that vicarious death that believers derive that pardon and holiness which makes them so happy in themselves, and so useful to others. ”

“ His head is bent to kiss you; His arms are extended to embrace you; His Heart is open to receive you. O superabundance of love! Jesus, the Son of God dies that man may live and be delivered from everlasting death.
Prayer
O MOST amiable Jesus! Who will grant me that I may die for love of Thee? I will at least endeavor to die to the world. How must I regard the world and its vanities, when I behold Thee hanging on the cross, covered with wounds? O Jesus, receive me into Thy wounded Heart; I belong entirely to Thee; for Thee alone do I desire to live and to die. ”

“ There is, perhaps, nothing about the death of Jesus which is in more striking contrast with death as men generally know it than is revealed in this one saying. We are so accustomed to regrets, to confessions that this and that are, alas! unfinished; to those sad recitals which so often conclude with the dirge-like refrain, "it might have been," that death stands forth in a new light when it is viewed as the end of a completed journey, and the conclusion of a finished task. ”

“ The Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shews us Death vanquished, and the Grave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our door. It is the dark event in this our earth,—the deepest of the many deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation—a cold, cheerless avalanche lying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of joyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power, never could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. ”

“ Jesus wept! Yes, my child, he who had power over earth and heaven, the eternal Son of God, shed tears of sorrow for the death of his friend. He knew that that death would soon be chased away; he knew that at his word the dead would rise and all our grief would be swallowed up in joy, but yet he wept at the sight of human misery and woe. At length we reached the sepulchre; a large stone was placed before that cave which contained the body of Lazarus, and Jesus commanded us to remove it. ”

“ If we have nothing more to say about Jesus than that He lived upon earth and did works of goodness and of beauty for a few short years, and then died, and there an end, it seems to me that the story of the Death of Christ is the most despairing page in the whole history of humanity, and that it accentuates and makes still more dreadful the dreadful old puzzle of how it comes that, in a world with a God in it, evil seems to be so riotously preponderant and good seems to be ever trodden under foot. ”

“ The fact that Jesus Christ has died changes the whole aspect of death to His servant, inasmuch as in that great solitude he has a companion, and in the valley of the shadow of death sees footsteps that tell him of One that went before. ”

“ The simple fact of the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, reaching the mind through various creeds, and passing out again, goes through as many phases as there are creeds, ranging through a scale which at one extreme presents a God dying to redeem the lost millions of a world, and, at the other, a benevolent, sweet-tempered man, yielding his life in testimony of the honesty of his teachings. ”

“ But even His Tongue was not left without its torments; for when He was athirst it was steeped in gall and vinegar. From the soles of His Feet therefore to the top of His Head, Jesus is overwhelmed in the sea of His Passion; and about the ninth hour He cries out with a loud voice, and dies.
What and how great must He have been Who with this cry draws His last breath; at Whose passing away both Heaven and Earth mourn; at the sight of Whom death takes to flight; at Whose call the dead return to life; at seeing Whom the gates of death are broken down; Whose presence the devil cannot endure ”

“ JESUS CONDEMNED TO DEATH.
Leaving the house of Caiphas, where he had been blasphemed, and the house of Herod, where he had been mocked, Jesus is dragged before Pilate, his back torn with scourges, his head crowned with thorns; and he, who on the last day will judge the living and the dead, is himself condemned to a disgraceful death.
It was for us that thou didst suffer, O blessed Jesus; it was for our sins that thou wast condemned to die. O, grant that we may detest them from the bottom of our hearts, and by this repentance obtain thy mercy and pardon. ”

“ He stood still, and made a gesture that they should keep silence; and then in a clear voice he spake to the multitude and said, “The council hath pronounced that Jesus of Nazareth is a man of death.” Hereupon there was a general shout, for all knew that to be “a man of death” meant to be condemned to die: and straightway a cry arose, “Stone him, stone him; bring him out that we may stone him.” ”

“ Either the sinner must die, or some one in his stead: but there was none whose death could have been an equivalent for the transgressions of the world but Jesus Christ. Jesus therefore died for man; and it is through his blood, the merit of his passion and death, that we have redemption; and not by his obedience to the moral law in our stead. ”

“ It is extraordinary that Jesus, who is said to have wrought so many miracles, was afterwards put to death in the very place where they were wrought, and by the very persons who had been eye witnesses of such divine and supernatural power. "If the Jews demanded the death of Jesus, his miracles are at once annihilated in the mind of every rational man." ”

“ For ever as Jesus drew nearer to Jerusalem, the sins of the people seemed to weigh heavier upon his soul, and death and destruction seemed to grow larger in his eyes; insomuch that now he desired to exhort the people not so much to enter into the Kingdom, as rather to flee from death unto life. Yea, so exceedingly did he fear the power of Satan to slay the souls of men, that about this time, when a certain disciple desired to have left him for a season to bury his father, Jesus would have the young man still continue with him, saying that the dead should bury their own dead. ”

“ So, brethren, let us remember that, without all three of them, the death of Jesus Christ is nothing to us, any more than the death of thousands of sweet and saintly men in the past has been, who may have seen a little more of the supreme goodness and greatness than their fellows, and tried in vain to make purblind eyes participate in their vision. ”

“ There are things that tie us to the earth, to the flesh-life, and to the self-life; but to-day the message comes: "If thou wouldst die with Jesus, let go." Thou needst not understand all. It may not be perfectly clear; the heart may appear dull, but never mind; Jesus carried that penitent thief through death to life. The thief did not know where he was going, he did not know what was to happen, but Jesus, the mighty conqueror, took him in His arms, and landed him, in his ignorance, in Paradise. ”

“ Certainly Jesus could not have spoken of death in this way if he regarded it as the awful and solemn thing which most believers consider it. If it is the moment that decides our eternal destiny, which shuts the gate of probation, which terminates for the sinner all opportunity of repentance and conversion, for the saint all danger of relapse and fall,—then death is surely something, and something of the most immense importance. ”

“ For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.—I. Thessalonians, iv. 13, 14.
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.—Hebrews, ii. 14, 15.
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ”

“ Many a British soldier has died as brave a death as Jesus, but none have ever lived the life of Jesus. The life and death together were a perfect self-offering, the offering of the unit to the whole, the individual to the race, the Son to the Father, and therefore the greatest manifestation of the innermost of God that has ever been made to the world. ”

“ In the light of this teaching let us look at Jesus on the cross. After a brief, but rather peaceful career, Jesus is arrested, tried and convicted as a blasphemer, and sentenced to be put to death. It is said that he died on a cross. How did he die? It is said by Christians “like a God.”
There have been brave deaths on the gallows and at the stake. Men have died sublimely whom society has condemned as criminals. In our day there has been as lofty heroism evinced in the face of the most terrible of deaths as ever martyr of old manifested when dying for his faith. ”

“ The sinless Son of God took upon Himself the likeness of sinful humanity, was born into this world, lived here for a few years, suffered a violent death, and then reascended to His Father to make unceasing intercession for mankind. It was the dying of the death that was the all-important thing. It was in consideration of this death that God agreed to pardon sin. Jesus was put to death because God had arranged that He should be put to death, and because Jesus was willing to be put to death, in order that a satisfactory offering might be made to divine justice for the sins of the world. ”

“ We note how emphatically verse 14 brings out the thought that Jesus died, since He suffered all the bitterness of death, not only in physical torments, but in that awful sense of separation from God which is the true death in death, and that, because He did, the [188] ugly thing wears a softened aspect to believers, and is but sleep. He died that we might never know what the worst sting of death is. ”

“ We have been told that in this dreadful hour the sorrow of Jesus bore no relation to his physical death, but was caused by His mysterious self-identification with all the sins of mankind, past, present, and to come. To add to the horror God the Father turned His face away from Him, treating Him as though He were indeed the embodiment of all the guilt of mankind, the scapegoat driven into the wilderness. ”

“ Who hast for our salvation died!
On this for ever dwelling,
May we each hour Thy Death regard,
Thy Grief, all grief excelling!
Osterlied.
Der Christum von den Todten auferwecket hat,
Der wird auch eure sterblichen Leiber lebendig machen.
Jesus lebt, mit Ihm auch ich:
Tod, wo sind nun deine Schrecken?
Er, Er lebt und wird auch mich
Von den Todten auferwecken:
Er verklärt mich in sein Licht;
Diess ist meine Zuversicht.
Jesus lebt, Ihm ist das Reich
Ueber alle Welt gegeben;
Mit Ihm werd auch ich zugleich
Ewig herrschen, ewig leben:
Gott erfüllt was Er verspricht;
Diess ist meine Zuversicht. ”

“ But when we hear ‘Christ died according to the Scriptures,’ the whole symbolism of the ancient ritual and all the glowing anticipations of the prophets rise up before us, and that death assumes an altogether different aspect. If we stop with ‘Jesus died,’ then that death may be a beautiful example of heroism, a sweet, pathetic instance of innocent suffering, a conspicuous example of the world's wages to the world's teachers, but it is little more. If, however, we take Paul's words upon our lips, ‘Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached ... ”

“ But there is another paradox here. It was strange that death should be able to invade that Life, but it is no less strange that men should be able to inflict it. But we must not forget that Jesus died, not because men slew Him, but because He willed to die. The whole of the narratives of the Crucifixion in the Gospels avoid using the word 'death.' Such expressions as He 'gave up the ghost,' or the like, are used, implying what is elsewhere distinctly asserted, that His death was His offering of Himself, the result of His own volition, not of exhaustion or of torture. ”

“ Jesus, according to the general declaration of Christian divines, came to die, and what does he teach by his death? The Rev. F.D. Maurice well said, “That he who kills for a faith must be weak, that he who dies for a faith must be strong.” How did Jesus die? Giordano Bruno and Julius Cæsar Vanini were burned, charged with heresy. They died calm, heroic, defiant of wrong. Jesus, who could not die courted death, that he, as God, might accept his own atonement, and might pardon man for a sin which the pardoned man had not committed, and in which he had no share. ”

“ But when the stone was rolled away, Jesus cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" At the call of the Life-giver, he that had been dead came to the door of the sepulcher. And Jesus said, "Loose him, and let him go." These miracles show that Jesus can break the power of death. When He shall again come to this earth He will bring the final reward to His people. See Revelation 22:12.
Paul based his future hope on the resurrection. "For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. ”