To most bystanders, the crucifixion of Jesus was just another criminal’s execution. But after the centurion witnessed Christ’s death, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). In this sermon, R.C. Sproul brings us to the foot of the cross as he continues his series in the gospel of Mark.

This morning, as we turn our attention to the text of the gospel according to Saint Mark, we will read the biblical record of the crucifixion of Jesus. It is somewhat lengthy. I will begin at Mark 15:16–41, and I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

Then the soldiers led Him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole garrison. And they clothed Him with purple; and they twisted a crown of thorns, put it on His head, and began to salute Him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him; and bowing the knee, they worshiped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.

Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross. And they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull. Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it. And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take.

Now it was the third hour, and they crucified Him. And the inscription of His accusation was written above:

THE KING OF THE JEWS.

With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left. So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And He was numbered with the transgressors.”

And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!”

Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”

Even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him.

Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.”

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.

Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!”

There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.

This is the inspired record of the execution of our Lord. May God give us a deeper understanding of its significance for our lives. Please be seated. Let us pray.

O Lord, when we stand before this record, we tremble. We tremble at its horror. We tremble at our culpability for it. We tremble at the weakness of our minds to understand the fullness of it. O Lord, through the same Spirit who inspired this text, may our souls be pierced even as the side of our Savior was pierced on the cross. For we ask it in His name. Amen.

The Most Momentous Cosmic Event

I struggled with how to approach preaching the text I have just read. I am convinced that the eyewitnesses of the Jesus’ execution by the Romans on the hill outside the city gates of Jerusalem could not possibly understand what was going on unless they had an uncanny grasp of Messianic prophecy from the Old Testament, along with the illumination of the Holy Spirit. I do not believe it was immediately transparent to any of the bystanders that what was taking place in front of their very eyes was anything more than a matter of local geographical interest. They were watching the execution of a human being in the style of the Romans. When the Romans used the execution form of crucifixion, they did not do it for Roman citizens but only for slaves, for the vilest of criminals, and for captured prisoners of war.

Yet what was going on in that place at that time was nothing less than the most momentous cosmic event imaginable. It would not have been immediately apparent to the people who were there that they were witnessing an atonement by which the wrath and justice of God were satisfied by a substitute. We had to wait for the instruction of the New Testament Epistles, which by divine revelation gave to us the theological significance and interpretation of this event.

In light of this, I have decided to wait until next Sabbath morning to preach on the theological significance of the cross, and I will examine the idea of atonement as it is set forth in the Epistles. This morning, however, I will restrict my comments simply to the narrative we have heard. So, let us look at the story as Mark gives it to us.

Jesus Scourged and Mocked

We remember that last week, at the end of Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, verse 15 recorded that Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them, and he delivered Jesus to be crucified after he had scourged Him.

When I preached through the gospel of John and looked at the passion narratives of that gospel, I spent some time talking about the significance of scourging, which was the routine aspect of execution by crucifixion. Those who were scourged were tied to an upright post, their backs were bared, and a guard used a leather-braided thong containing pieces of bone and metal to lash the prisoner until his skin came off his body and his bones and entrails were exposed. Many prisoners of Rome who were sentenced to execution by a cross never made it past scourging. One of the reasons for the scourging was simply to humiliate the prisoner, but it also had the purpose of ensuring the crucifixion itself would not last too long.

Jesus was subjected to scourging and then led away to the Praetorium hall, which was probably a portion of the palace of Herod. We are told that they called together the whole garrison, which would be one-tenth of a Roman legion, or to be specific, six hundred soldiers. The mockery that follows was not done by one or two people but an entire cohort of Roman soldiers. Six hundred of them had their fun with Jesus.

We are told that the soldiers clothed Jesus with purple, which was the especially valuable dye that was reserved for royalty. In their mockery, they dressed Him up like a king, and they made a makeshift crown of thorns from a plant with exceedingly sharp spikes and put that on His head as a tiara.

The soldiers began to salute Jesus in a mocking way. Even as Caesar would be greeted by the words, “Hail, Caesar, august one,” the soldiers saluted Jesus saying, “Hail, King of the Jews.” They struck Him on the head with a reed, and they spat upon Him. Then they got down on their knees and feigned obeisance, again a mock worshipping of Him. Once they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.

Simon of Cyrene

Mark tells us in verse 21, “Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross.” The language of compulsion in this text evokes imagery of the way prisoners were compelled to be brought to their cells and animals were coerced to go to their slaughter. Simon of Cyrene just happened to be passing by, and he was enlisted by the soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus.

Normally, the custom was that the prisoner to be executed was compelled to carry his own cross to the place of execution. It was not the full cross as some artists imagine, but it was simply the horizontal crossbeam that, after they got to the site of crucifixion, would be affixed to the vertical post that was already there. The point is that Jesus had been so weakened by the scourging He endured that He was unable to carry the crosspiece Himself, so they enlisted the aid of Simon of Cyrene.

Mark gives an interesting detail in a departure from his terse style when he identifies Simon as the father of Alexander and Rufus. We have no other mention of Alexander in the New Testament, but there is a mention of Rufus in the church of Rome in the middle of the fifties. Scholars are mostly convinced that the reason Mark mentioned him in this text is that when Mark wrote his gospel, he wrote it to the Christians at Rome, and they would know about Rufus, Alexander, and their father, Simon of Cyrene.

The irony is that Jesus told His disciples that if they were to be His disciples, they were going to have to take up His cross and follow Him. The first person in human history to do just that was Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross of Jesus for Him.

The Public, Priests, and Criminals Mock Christ

“And they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull. Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink.” Wine mingled with myrrh was a narcotic given to executed prisoners to dull their senses to the pain they endured, one of the very few humane elements accorded to those executed by Rome. But Jesus did not take it. He suffered the full measure of the crucifixion without any painkillers.

“And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take,” exactly as was prophesied in the Old Testament in Psalm 22. Then we read that it was the third hour, which has Mark indicating that the crucifixion began at nine o’clock in the morning because the time began at 6 a.m. The third hour would be nine o’clock. The sixth hour would be noon. If your math is fine, you know that the ninth hour would be three o’clock in the afternoon. Jesus’ crucifixion started at nine in the morning.

“And the inscription of His accusation was written above.” It was the custom of the Romans when they subjected someone to a public execution by crucifixion to tack up on the vertical beam of the cross the charges for which the prisoner was executed. In this case, the simple message was, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Mark continues: “With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left. So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’” This happened according to the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12.

The public passing by and watching this spectacle wagged their heads at Him and mocked Him, saying: “Aha! You are the one who was going to destroy the temple and build it up in three days. Let’s see You save Yourself. Save Yourself and come down from the cross!” But dear friends, Jesus was not about saving Himself. Jesus did not need a Savior. He was about saving us, which, God willing, we will explore more directly next week.

Even the chief priests continued the mockery: “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” They saw the Christ, and they saw the King of Israel. They saw the Savior. But as long as He was attached to that cross, they had no exercise of faith whatsoever. They essentially said: “Come on down, Jesus. Step down now and then maybe we’ll begin to believe the claims that You have made.”

“Even those who were crucified with Jesus reviled Him.” We know according to the other gospel accounts that one of them changed that reviling into faith before he died that day, but initially, both were mocking Jesus.

The Father Forsakes the Son

“Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.” It’s amazing—from noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, the light of the sun was blotted out and darkness came upon the land.

That darkness must have terrified the people there. It would have been the same kind of reaction that people of antiquity might have had when a solar eclipse came for fifteen or twenty minutes. It would frighten them because they did not know why it was happening. But here it was much more than a solar eclipse. God Himself plunged the world into darkness, and there is significance to that.

I have indicated before and will try to develop more next week that in Christ’s atoning death, the light of the countenance of God was turned off, and the Father turned His back on His Son. What was hanging on the cross was the most grotesque, obscene thing in human history because it contained the fullness of the pollution of our wickedness, and God is too holy to even behold sin. So, the Father turned the lights out on the sun, which was part of the curse for sin.

When that happened, Jesus screamed not at the agony of the thorns, spears, nails, or the cross, but at the forsakenness of God. God’s own Son, who was with Him from eternity, willingly gave up His glory to become incarnate, and enjoyed the closest possible intimacy with the Father throughout His entire lifetime, drank the cup of the Father’s wrath and experienced forsakenness. When it happened, He screamed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

The eyewitnesses were not only watching, but they were listening, and when they heard this anguished cry from Jesus, some said, “He’s calling for Elijah.” Mark continues: “Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.” Elijah did not come. Nobody took Him down until it was over.

Truly, the Son of God

The spot on which this occurred traditionally was the place of Old Testament Mount Moriah, where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac on the altar, which we read about in Genesis 22. When Abraham bound his son and raised the knife to plunge it into his son’s heart, at the last second God called to him, “Abraham, Abraham, lay not thy hand upon thy son, for now I know that you trust Me.” Behold, Abraham looked and off to the side there was a lamb caught by the horns in the thicket, and God, Jehovah-Jireh, provided a substitute for Isaac. So, the son of Abraham was spared.

But two thousand years later, on that same hill on a different altar, it was not Abraham’s son; it was God’s Son. This time, beloved, nobody yelled, “Stop.” So, Mark records for us, “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.”

At that instant, the veil of the temple—the veil that separated fallen humanity from the sacred Holy of Holies in the temple, the veil of many strands of woven materials that could not be penetrated—was suddenly torn from top to bottom. That wall of separation was ended. That should have been a clue as to the more than local significance of what was happening on this occasion.

The custom of the Romans was to have four soldiers guarding the prisoner during the execution, headed by a fifth who was a centurion, a leader over one hundred soldiers. Mark says that when the centurion who stood opposite Him saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, the centurion was maybe the first to recognize something going on here beyond a local execution, for he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.