WHEN THE DEVIL, says Luke, (4:13) had ended all the temptation, and had not found anything in Jesus, he departed from Him for a season.
Hence he did come back, and Scripture clearly gives us to understand, that this return of Satan took place, when Jesus was about to drink “the cup”.
You observe this first, at Jesus’ first announcement of “that cup”, when vehemently and full of fire Peter answers: “Lord, this shall not be unto thee”, and Jesus turns him back with the: “Get thee behind me, Satan”. You feel it in the touching word of Jesus: “Satan hath greatly desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:32). You observe it, when it says: “then Satan entered into the heart of Judas”. Jesus Himself expresses it directly when He says: “The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). It gleams through in all the soul-afflicting struggle in Gethsemane. It was foretold in the paradise-word, that Satan should bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. It was tangible in many a demoniac feature which needlessly aggravated the suffering of the Man of sorrows. But it was most strongly, most brutally evident, when Jesus impotently hung upon the cross, and immediately a flood of poisonous reviling rose up against Him, and demoniac lust made itself master of the bystanders, wilfully to grieve, to harass, and to insult the dying Savior.
One Evangelist calls it “reviling”, another “railing”, a third “deriding”, but the word matters little; with abject, ironic laughter they taunted, mocked and vexed the dying Jesus, that before He died, they might still hurl more darts into His heart.
Not that they used invective. This with these wanton multitudes might have been kept within the bounds of the human. No, but they did what Satan had already done in the wilderness.
If, counting upon Jesus’ hunger, Satan had said to Him in a cutting and defiant way: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread”, and satisfy thy hunger—here at the cross priest and people cry: “If thou be the Son of God, save thyself and come down from the cross.”
Thus said they that passed by. Thus spake the high priests and the scribes. Thus spake one of the fellow-crosslings. And the Roman soldiers, who naturally knew nothing of a Messiah, forsaking their military honor, took part in the wild cry.
Here you should have in mind the passionate manner of the East. Jews that live among us, have become like western people, and yet, if you have ever seen Jews altercate one against the other and rave and rage, you must have been struck by the vehemence of their gesticulations, the sharp and cutting tone of their voices and the rending expression of their drawn facial features.
And on Golgotha this was still more terrible. There this was unfalsified and unweakened eastern. The flaring passion, the excited face, the body swaying to the rhythm of vehemently stirred emotion, the voice with its deep-throated sound seething and hissing. Hellish, demoniacal!
And dying, Jesus had to hear this; He had to see this; this broke loose against Him, that, if possible, with poisonous arrow it might pierce His soul.
You can imagine the flush of repugnance which showed itself at this upon the already paling face of your Savior.
That was the answer from human lips to His prayer for His enemies, His executioners.
Do you not feel what it must have been to Jesus, to die for men, and so in person to see that humanity before Him?
OUR human nature is vulnerable from two sides.
One can rage against us by injuring us in the body; and one can rage against us by hurting us in our soul, in our character, in our inner personality.
As to the body they had spared Jesus nothing. They had jostled and cuffed Him, had spit their venom upon Him, had struck Him on the head, had scourged Him till the blood trickled down His back, had pressed a crown of thorns upon His temples, had made Him drag along His own cross from Gabbatha. And then the terrible crucifixion, that hammering of the nails through His hands, that continuous, weakening loss of blood, till finally strength failed Him, and dying was evidently near.
But bloodthirstiness is not stopped by the sight of blood. Bloodthirstiness itself has its deeper origin in the heart. And at length it is the soul of evil, that aims directly at the soul of its victim, and can not rest until from some bitter rejoinder it becomes aware, that inwardly and poisonously it has hit its victim, and has mortally wounded him.
Then no arrow and no rod and no sabre, no scourge nor crossbeam are of use. No, that bitterest anger cools itself by the word.
Then the tormentor hits upon the most cutting word, that can enter in most deeply, and can wound most painfully. And that word is then uttered in a tone of voice, in which the hatred of contempt gives rein to its cruelty. And eye, and facial feature, and gesticulation accompany the poisonous word, so as to bring it home to the heart of the sufferer, and to revel in the wound which it inflicts upon that heart.
This is what lies in the tragic communication of the Evangelist, that they who passed by reviled Jesus.
A last outpouring of malice. A last effort to wound Jesus, before He died, still more deeply than with scourge-cord or thorn-crown, at the most sensitive point of His heart.
That wounding with the word has here an entirely unique significance.
Man that has become poisoned can wound with the word, because, altogether uniquely, to him, above all other creatures, God has imparted the gift of the word.
The storm howls, the lion roars, the serpent hisses, and these audible utterances have power to make you tremble with mortal anxiety, but this is not the word. To wound with the word, man alone can do, he, who is created after the image of God.
He does not merely utter sounds, but thoughts; and in those thoughts he can mix poison; and then he can put an edge to that cutting thought; and put a grappling-iron into it, till it wounds, poisons and remains lodged.
Christ is the Word, the Word that in the beginning was with God, and was God. And from Him the word has come to us, the thought and the utterance of the thought.
Our honor, our Divine privilege, if that word and that thought flowed from our mouth according to the Divine appointment. But also our deepest self-desecration, when we direct that gift of the word against the holy, and produce not honor and praise, but railing and reviling, reviling to wound and to kill, where the word should breathe love and quicken life.
And here this word lapsed into reviling turns itself against the Word. It is the Giver of the word, Who is outraged by means of His own gift.
It is Jesus, as the Word, as the Son of God, Whose Divine heart, in His dying woes, is still trampled under foot. “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
So Satan prompted them. So Jesus felt it. Such was the intention in the wound, that was inflicted upon Jesus.
But they that passed by, knew not what they did.
They did not believe, that Jesus was the Son of God, the eternal Word, and Israel’s Messiah. To them Jesus was a fanatic, one who misled himself and had misled the people.
Their sin was, that they did not believe on Jesus. But in this unbelief they became the instruments of Satan, and by them Satan has bitterly vexed Jesus even in His dying.
In calm, holy majesty Jesus endured also that bitterest assault, and here also was the word fulfilled: “The Prince of this world cometh, but hath nothing in me.”
Not Jesus, but the fellow crossling entered a protest against this barbed reviling: Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And then Jesus spake of Paradise. No thought of revenge, only heavenly thoughts filled His soul.
But upon us Satan continues his evil handiwork. We glory in childship. We confess to belong to Jesus. We claim to know, that we have passed from death into life. And now Satan comes, sometimes himself in a temptation, but mostly by people, and says to us: If ye are children of God, why do you not resist me, why can sin every time take you by surprise, why do you every time again fall short in your faith, in your love, in your holy walk?
In substance the selfsame reviling of our state. To Jesus: If thou be the Son of God, show the power of the Son of God. To us: If thou be a child of God, show the moral power of a child of God.
For us this is the harder, because we know that we are guilty. Because the reproach in our soul gives an echo to Satan’s reviling. And yet we struggle against it. Guilty children, but still children of our God. Humbling ourselves before God; but as against Satan spiritually courageous, defending ourselves: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” (Rom. 8:33).
And this you may, this you must, this you can do.
But consider well: This you can, this you may do, not for anything you are in yourself, but alone because your Savior has drunk for you the cup of reviling, and, because by no Satan even will He let you be snatched from His hand.
And therefore to Him, Who dying on the cross for your sake bore reviling, give the tribute of your worship, of your love, of your never ending thanks.