The Death of God’s Son

Matthew 27:45-46 & 50-54

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” . . . And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Part of the whole point of the cross is that there the weight of the world’s evil really did converge upon Jesus, blotting out the sunlight of God’s love as surely as the light of day was blotted out for three hours. . . . Jesus is “giving his life as a ransom for many” (20.28), and the sin of the “many,” which he is bearing, has for the first and only time in his experience caused a cloud to come between him and the father he loved and obeyed, the one who had been delighted in him. . . .

Of course, Psalm 22 [which Jesus is quoting, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”] goes on, after a long catalogue of suffering, to speak of God’s vindication of the sufferer, and of the establishment of God’s kingdom (Psalm 22.22-31). But that isn’t what Matthew wants us to think here. . . .

Jesus’ death—described by Matthew as “breathing his last” or “giving up his spirit”—is the point towards which the gospel has been moving all along. . . . [Jesus] takes with him, into the darkness of death, the sin of the world: my sin, your sin, the sin of countless millions, the weight that has hung around the world’s neck and dragged it down to destruction. . . .

The disciples, including the women watching from a distance, see only darkness, gloom and death. But Matthew’s reader already knows what they will discover three days later: that this death was not the failure of Jesus to show himself as the son of God, but the way in which his identity, vocation and mission were confirmed and accomplished. As we join our voice with the centurion and others, in declaring that Jesus was indeed God’s son, so we commit ourselves to living by that faith, and to learning every day, by looking at the son, more about the love of the father (190-3).