27 A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' 30 Then
" 'they will say to the mountains, "Fall on us!"
and to the hills, "Cover us!" ' [a]
31 For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?"
32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." [b] And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is God's Messiah, the Chosen One."
36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself."
38 There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"
40 But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."
42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. [c]"
43 Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."
Dig Deeper
This morning as we were busying around the house doing things, I reminded my youngest son that he needed to get his chores done for the day before he went outside to play. Some days he does a great job with getting right on his chores and getting them done while on other days it seems more like pulling teeth to get him to do them. This morning was one of those days where he didn’t necessarily feel like getting his chores done and he hadn’t yet done them by mid-morning. So I sternly reminded him that he needed to start right then with feeding the dog. He walked over to the dog’s dish, moped for a second about the fact that he didn’t necessarily embrace the idea of doing a chore right then and there and then he started to walk the other way towards the kitchen. I watched him a bit incredulously as he moved his stepping stool over to the cabinet with the cups, making all the telltale moves of a little boy who was going to get himself a drink first. I waited until he got himself up on the counter and started to grab a cup, thus completely incriminating himself, and then told him that he had a spank coming for not obeying me and feeding the dog first. We marched into the bedroom and I calmly explained to him how important it was for him to obey on the first time and then doled out a very minor and quick spanking. Only then did he say “Dad, can I tell you something?” I told him that he could and he proceeded to explain that he was getting a cup so that he could fill the dog’s water up and then was going to fill his food dish. I apologized to him for misreading the situation and he handled it rather well. I then joked with him that if that’s what he got when he was obeying, he’d better really think about that before he thought of disobeying. He laughed a little and we went on and finished the morning.
What is so amazing to me as I read Luke’s account of Jesus’ death is how constantly and consistently Jesus acted with others in mind. Here he was being led to his own death but we see him worrying about the condition and repentance of those very people who were putting him to death. I cannot even imagine what it takes to think about and put the interests of others ahead of my own all the while those very same people are trying to kill me. They were putting to death the most innocent man who had ever lived. And yet Jesus showed no bitterness or anger but only remorse for the people of Jerusalem. If only they would repent. In fact, that is one thing that he really wanted them to deeply consider. He had tried to warn them about going the way of national rebellion against Rome and the idea that God’s Messiah, when he came, would lead them in a glorious victory over Israel’s enemies. He had urged the nation to go the way of peace and embrace God’s kingdom, his new family that was being formed around the Messiah. They were instead bent on rejecting Jesus and turning him over to those very Romans to do his bidding. But this is where Jesus wanted them to stop and think. If this crucifixion was the sort of things that Romans would do to someone they knew quite well was innocent (Pilate had declared Jesus to be innocent twice and Herod once), then the people that were rejecting Jesus and heading into an eventual conflict with Rome had better think long and hard about what Rome might do to those who actually were guilty of trying to bring violence and rebellion to the doorstep of the Roman Empire.
As Jesus is led off to his death Luke doesn’t tell us whether the large number of mourning women were followers and sympathizers or professional mourners who were a common sight in Jerusalem. It may have been a combination of both but the important detail is that rather than focusing on his own situation, Jesus takes one last chance to think of and plead with the people of Jerusalem through a warning. “Daughters of Jerusalem” was a common generic phrase that simply referred to the people of Jerusalem, so Jesus’ emotional request is that they not think of or weep for him. No one is taking his life from him; he has laid it down. Jesus will march off to his own death willingly but they need not cry for him. He is doing God’s will. They needed to stop and consider their own situation and the ramifications of their disastrous decisions.
Normally, having children was considered to be a sign of God’s blessing, but the times that were ahead for the people of Jerusalem that continued to march down the path of rejection of God’s Messiah were so bleak and horrendous that when the time of God’s judgment came (a judgment that would come through the fierce armies of Rome in 70 AD) everything would be turned on its head. The people of Jerusalem would be so terrorized that they would declare a blessing on those that had never had children. In other words, things would be so terrible that it would be better to have never been born. Jewish historian Josephus’ account of the plundering of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD certainly bear that out. Things got so bad inside Jerusalem during the siege by the Roman army that there were accounts of Jewish people robbing and killing one another for food scraps, eating leather shoes for lack of food, and even mothers cooking their own infants. Certainly the way of rejecting God’s path of peace and his new family centered around the Messiah would be catastrophic for the people of Jerusalem.
To make his point clear, Jesus quoted from Hosea 10:8 in verse 30. The Hosea passage comes from a warning of the trouble that will come on God’s people for rejecting him and turning to the worship of idols. They would be so devastated that they would cry out for the quick death of having mountains and hills falling on them and covering over them. This is what it will be like, Jesus said, for the people of Jerusalem if they didn’t turn away from their current path. The proverb in verse 31 drives his tragic point home. He was being marched to a cruel and shameful death. If this is how Rome was treating the Messiah, the green tree, who repeatedly renounced the way of violence, then it was terrible to even imagine what they would do when the violent zealots had their way and actually tried to oppose Rome.
As Jesus arrives at the spot of his crucifixion, we are told that the place was called the Skull, which was Golgotha in Aramaic and Calvaria in Latin. But everywhere we look in this scene we find evidence of those who had rejected Jesus engaging in the act of mocking him. They mocked him by calling on him to save himself. If he could supposedly save the whole world and invite them into the Father’s family then why couldn’t he save himself from a cruel Roman death? They mocked him by giving him the drink of insult (see Ps. 69:21). They even mocked him by writing a notice above the cross that he was the king of the Jews. But at every turn, they failed to realize the deeper truth behind each one of their cruel acts of mockery. They mocked him for his lack of being able to save himself, but missed the fact that he was bringing salvation to the world precisely by not saving himself. They mocked him with the drink of insult but failed to see that he was willingly drinking from the cup of the Father’s wrath so that they did not have to. They mocked him with the placard that he was king of the Jews, but completely missed the truth that he was far more than that. He was the noble king and creator of the world, hanging on a cross to take a punishment that rightfully belongs to all of us. Yet, all the while they mocked him, he prayed to the Father for forgiveness for them. He was still more concerned with their interests than his own. It was too late for the nation of Israel as a whole, but there was still the offer of forgiveness for those that would repent and come to trust in the Messiah.
As Jesus was finally nailed through his hands (likely just under the bend of the wrist) and hoisted up on the vertical beam of the cross, he had found his final place among the unrighteous transgressors (Lk. 22:37). He was placed in the midst of men who really were sinners and really did deserve the kind of violent death that Jesus was receiving. Luke gives us the detail that one of the rebels (they likely were involved in some type of insurrection against Roman authority) joined in with everyone else who was mocking Jesus. To his side, one of the rebels rejected and mocked Jesus and called on him to save them as well as himself. But Luke here pictures Jesus as the perfect bridge between the unrighteous and the righteous, for on his other side was another criminal, that apparently initially mocked him but had come to accept Jesus’ claims as king. What changed his mind or why he accepted Jesus as such we simply don’t know. But he was an answer to Jesus’ prayer. He had repented and the Father would forgive him.
In fact, not only did this man repent, he rebuked the other rebel on three accounts. First, he had failed to fear God and mocked his very instrument of salvation. Second, he made the assumption that Jesus was guilty of the things that he was charged with, even though he was infinitely innocent. Finally, He failed to see that Jesus would be delivered through death not from it. This is how he would come into his kingdom. The faith of the man hanging on the cross next to Jesus is remarkable in the sense that he somehow came to recognize that Jesus was the true Messianic king all the while hanging on a Roman cross. This man perceptively knew that Jesus would come into his kingdom through his death. Jesus’ promise to the man who had faith was no minor promise. He would be with Jesus in paradise, the pre-resurrection-of-Christ abode where the righteous went to await the great day of resurrection and the age to come. This man had found salvation as the last person described in the Bible to do so under the Old Covenant. Jesus would soon walk into death but walk out through the other side making it possible for all who would have faith in his life to be baptized (Acts 2:38) into his death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:1-10) for salvation.
There is one other important element that runs throughout this narrative that we should not miss. Luke repeatedly reports Jesus’ connections with the Psalms. Jesus clearly identified himself with the righteous sufferer described throughout the Psalms, particularly Psalm 22. The soldiers at the foot of the cross divided up Jesus’ belongings by casting lots is a fulfillment of and allusion to Psalm 22, an entire chapter that details the plight of the righteous sufferer. Meanwhile as Jesus suffered, the people watched and the leaders sneered (v. 35), says Luke, using the same verbs from Psalm 22:7. Luke was not the only Gospel writer to tie together words of Jesus on the cross with the Psalm of the righteous sufferer (see Matt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34 and compare with Ps. 22:1). The picture is complete, though, Jesus was was the fulfillment of the righteous sufferer who would sacrifice himself for the benefit of others.
Devotional Thought
Are you willing to sacrifice for others? Before you answer that, consider that we are called to be like Jesus the righteous sufferer who sacrificed his own life not just for those that loved him but for those who were his enemies. Are you willing to lay down your life and sacrifice for those who don’t love you, for those that mistreat you, for those that have never done anything for you? This is the true test of whether or not we are truly people who will lay down their lives for others. This is what we have been called to be.
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