Matthew 27:33-44
32 As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. 33 And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. 35 And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. 36 Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. 37 And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” 38 Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. 39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. [1]
When you think of power, you might tend to think of comic book characters and movie superheroes – the strength of Superman, the bulletproof bracelets of Wonder Woman, the underwater adaptability of Aquaman, the supernatural speed of the Flash. You might think of someone very wealthy who exercises a great deal of economic and social clout. You might picture the winner of a bodybuilder competition. I’m willing to wager that very few of us think of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ when we hear the word “power.”
In 1 Corinthians 1:17–31 Paul summarizes a similar worldly perspective on power. After he writes about the potential of emptying “the cross of Christ . . . of its power” (v. 17), he says, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (v. 18). He continues a few verses later:
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (vv. 22–24)
We see the theology of the cross played out here in Matthew’s narrative. Already in Matthew 27, at the end of the two kangaroo court trials, we have seen both the Jews and the Gentiles separately mock Jesus. Here in 27:33–44, as Jesus hangs on the cross, those two voices join together in their summary mockeries of the Messiah. To the Gentiles— the Roman soldiers— this king on a cross is a joke. This is the height of foolishness. To the Jews— the common folk, the religious leaders, and the criminals— this Son of God on a cross is inconceivable. It’s the height of weakness, not power. But to those who are being saved— Jews and Gentiles, Matthew’s church and ours— Christ crucified is where “God made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Corinthians 1:20c). The cross is where Jesus magnified “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).
As he has been doing in our past few passages, Matthew employees the literary device of irony to help us apply the mockery. We learn about this silent sufferer, Jesus (note again that Jesus doesn’t say a word, and the only action he does is to taste but not drink the wine in v. 34), through the voices of those who think he’s the world’s biggest failure and fool. Put differently, Jesus’ enemies unwittingly teach us about the meaning of the cross. Their putting Jesus to open shame— by crucifying, mocking, and disregarding him— shows us how, in allowing his Son to be nailed to the cross, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).
REIGNING FROM THE CROSS (27:33-38)
Our first irony in this passage is that Jesus reigns as king on the cross. We learn this lesson in verses 33–38 where the focus falls on the Roman soldiers’ obvious-but-evil actions toward Jesus.
33 And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. 35 And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. 36 Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. 37 And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” 38 Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.
A sentence has verbs in it, the most necessary component of a sentence. If we simply find and follow the verbs in verses 33–38, six or perhaps seven ironic mockeries come to light. The “perhaps” relates to the soldiers taking Jesus to “a place called Golgotha” (v. 33). I don’t think they are intentionally mocking him. They are just doing their job— taking a convicted criminal to the place outside the city (cf. 21:39; Hebrews 13:12) for capital punishment. We call Death Row “Death Row” because that’s where inmates who are to receive the death penalty are housed. “Golgotha” (which became Calvarium in Latin, thus Calvary in English) got the nickname “Place of a Skull” (v. 33) likely because the hill resembled a human skull but also because it was the hill where men went to die. Anyway, the irony might be (if the church fathers are to be believed; I believe them 40 percent of the time) that the mention of “a skull” refers to Adam’s skull. This is the place where Adam was buried. You will see this often in medieval paintings of the crucifixion— Adam’s skull is beneath the cross. Now that’s fairly cool: the second Adam through his death would bring physical and spiritual life to the first Adam and the sons of Adam. It’s cool but not correct. What is correct is that in Jesus’ death, ironically, the curse of the place of the skull in the life of humanity is buried forever.
We will take the remaining 6 ironic mockeries mostly in groups. But we will start with the next one on its own. After the soldiers took Jesus to Calvary, “they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall” (v. 34a). Once Jesus tasted what it was, he refused to drink it (v. 34b). That reaction tells us that the drink was either a cruel joke (like someone offering you lemonade but intentionally giving you lemon juice) or a drug to deaden the pain (an ancient anesthetic) or to assist death (a suicide concoction). If it’s the latter, then Jesus’ refusal is all the more admirable.
He refused to give up control of his conscious choice of death by crucifixion. He was determined to accept death at its bitterest and grimmest. Either way, our Lord’s refusal to drink from that cup shows us that he is still willing to drink the cup of God’s wrath for us. He will neither take a shortcut to death, nor will he allow their malicious mockery to drift him off course. John 19:28-30 tells us that Jesus did drain a sponge of sour wine in order to fulfill scripture just before he died. It was his prophetic fulfillment of draining the cup of the wine of God’s wrath.
Next we read in verse 34 that the soldiers crucified him and divvied up his garments by gambling for them. This verse is an odd verse. It’s odd in that Matthew describes the chief event of the Christian faith with a single Greek participle. The language is as humble as the death. In verses 51–53 (part of our next text) we will see the supernatural fireworks that Jesus’ crucifixion sets off. But here there is a seemingly greater emphasis placed on what happens to Jesus’ garments than on what is happening to his dying body. The main truth of Christianity is “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2), but the main verb of this sentence is “they divided his garments” (v. 35).
Matthew gives us none of the gory details. He doesn’t mention that the cross was seven feet tall, just long enough to make sure that no man could touch the ground to hold himself up. He doesn’t mention the hammer and the nails. He doesn’t even mention blood, which Matthew has mentioned five times earlier in chapter 27 (vv. 4, 6, 8, 24, 25). Instead he highlights the mockeries— the soldiers’ ironic insensitivity not only to human suffering but to the one human whose sufferings brings salvation to the world. While Jesus suffers without clothing (he is either naked or has a loincloth on), at the foot of the cross there’s a casino— four soldiers gambling for Jesus’ garments.
In verses 36–38 the soldiers’ mockery intensifies. There is this contrast of control. While Jesus helplessly hangs, they are sitting. While he is above them dying, they are said to be watching over him. While the innocent Christ is being crucified, they add to his indignity by placing him in between two insurrectionists and placing above his head, “This is Jesus, the king of the Jews” (27:37). They watch him give his wordless State of the Universe speech between two sinners – one on his right, the other on his left (27:38; Isa. 53:12).
What a picture of powerlessness! How can the power of God be displayed in this way? How does King Jesus reign crucified on a cross? This is impossible for us to understand unless we see it through the lens of scripture. Psalm 22, which Jesus will soon recite in verse 46, is already mixed into the ink of Matthew’s pen. Soon we will hear the allusion to Psalm 22:7, the wagging of their heads (v. 39). Here we have the fulfillment of Psalm 22:18, the dividing of and gambling over the garments. While the world sees failure, we are to see fulfillment. This must be the powerless Son of David, who through sufferings gains power, as the Psalm reads in verses 27 and 28:
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. 28 For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. [2]
The title the Romans mockingly hang above Jesus as his crime, Matthew sees as a coronation. He turns their accusation into the church’s proclamation. They might be sitting and laughing at the foot of the cross, but it is God who sits in the heavens that laughs in derision. He has set up his King of Zion on his holy hill (Psalm 2:4, 6).
DEATH OF THE TEMPLE (27:39,40)
The second irony is that Jesus’ death destroys the temple. We find such temple talk versus 39, 40:
39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
In verses 33 through 38 the gentiles mock Jesus. Here in verses 39 and 40, as well as in verses 41 through 44, the Jews mock Jesus. As there will be three groups of confessors right after Christ’s death (the soldiers, the women, and Joseph of Arimathea) here there are three groups of Jewish scoffers right before Jesus’ death (the passersby, the religious leaders, and the crucified).
First are the passersby. Those who recently shouted for his crucifixion have come to see the scandalous spectacle. They have come for the entertainment value. Will this Jesus fly off the cross, kill the Roman soldiers, tear down pilots palace, and set up David’s eternal Kingdom? But when they walk by Jesus they shake their heads and jeer.
In 26:61-65, in the trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus was accused of being anti-God (blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God and the Son of Man) and anti-temple (for his prediction of the temple’s doom). In light of his claim to destroy and rebuild the temple in parentheses a claim of incomprehensible power) the sight of him on the cross was pathetic to them. The temple still stood in all its majestic beauty. And Jesus still hung in abject powerlessness, with no majestic beauty whatsoever.
They add to their mockery a devilish temptation, “If you are the son of God, come down from the cross” (27:40). He claimed to have come down all the way from heaven, why not come down just one foot off that cross. The last time Matthew wrote the phrase “if you are the son of God” it came from the lips of Satan when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness (4:3, 6). How will Jesus use his power? Will he turn this stone into bread? Will he grasp for the Kingdom of the world? Will he worship Satan? Will he fly from the cross or stay on it?
Jesus willingly played the role of the true superhero by being the suffering servant. In the temple of his body (John 2:19-22), through his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection and ascension and enthronement, he destroyed the need for a man-made temple. Matthew 27:51 demonstrates the point: “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn into, from top to bottom.” Hebrews 9:24-26 explains:
24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.[3]
Christ, our Passover lamb, has sacrificed himself for us! What obedience to the Father’s will that held him there! What love for us that held him there! It’s hard to study the crucifixion sensitively and sympathetically and not break down in tears. It is difficult to imagine that believers who frequently meditate on the atonement could exalt themselves or quarrel with each other (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5). The ground is level at the foot of the cross. No one but Jesus is elevated there. That God should send his Unique Son to die for us was the scandal of the Christian message in the 1st century and remains so for many today.
To claim that God himself accepted death in the form of a crucified Jewish day laborer from Galilee in order to break the powers of sin and death and bring salvation to all men seems like madness to most people. To claim that Jesus destroyed the need of a glorious man-made temple through his death turns all ideas of power upside down. That awe-inspiring building which took decades to build and shines brilliantly in the sun has to be what God uses to save people from sin, not some suffering, dying, convicted criminal on a cursed tree. Do you see the irony? In the temple of Christ’s suffering, dying, dead body God’s presence and salvation came to us (1:21-23).
The world thinks the cross is ridiculous. It always has. It always will. But to those of us who believe, it is our only hope for true sanity. It was a great miracle that Jesus fed the 5000. It was a great miracle that Jesus opened the eyes of the blind. It was a great miracle that Jesus raised the dead. It was a great miracle that Jesus himself rose from the dead. But perhaps the greatest miracle of all was his miraculous non-miracle: staying on the cross for our salvation! He did not call out for 12 legions of angels to rescue him. Instead, he took in all our billions of sins and crushed death with his bloody heel.
The Jews demanded a sign (come down from the cross). But no sign would be given except the sign of Jonah (12:39), that is, his death and resurrection. No other sign will be given to us except the sign of his death and resurrection. The cross and the empty tomb are the two sure signs of our salvation. Those are the two signs that Jesus is now the heavenly temple to which we go in order to enter God’s presence and stay in relationship with him (1 Timothy 2:5).
LIFE OUT OF DEATH (27:41-44)
This section draws our attention to the power of a participle: “and when they had crucified him…” (v. 35a). Perhaps to put it more plainly, we are looking at the power of a person – the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. We have looked at how Jesus reigns as king from the cross and how his sufficient sacrificial, blood shedding death destroys the need for a man-made temple. Finally, we will look at how his death saves believers. We learned this lesson from the second and third set of Jewish mockers. In verses 41-44 Jesus again is challenged to avoid crucifixion.
41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
Luke, in Luke 23:40-43, tells us that one of the insurrectionists had a change of heart. He repented and responded to Jesus. Matthew leaves out that detail. Likely because he wants to stress the loneliness of the Lamb of God. Soon Jesus will cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here he is forsaken by the Twelve. Here he is forsaken by the Jews (from their highest leaders to their lowest criminals). No one from all Israel and no one from the whole Church of Christ wanted to attend this worship service. Christ suffers and dies alone. In Matthew’s text, his only companions are his enemies, who mock and revile him.
These people cannot comprehend how God’s anointed could be annihilated, the mighty Messiah murdered, the conquering Christ crucified. They stumbled over this stumbling stone. They fail to see that by losing his life, Jesus saves ours. But we should not fail to see this. He is the king of Israel. He is the son of God. He does trust in God, and God will vindicate him. He is now saving others. Every jest they say is true. The greatest truths of the gospel come from the mouths of these mockers!
It is not that Jesus cannot save himself. But he won’t save himself. We have seen him save many others in this gospel account. He certainly has the power to save himself. But he understands that real power is the control of power, the rejection of power, the willingness to express power in weak ways. And if we did not learn that lesson from the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps now we will learn it from the Sermon on the Cross.
Jesus death saves sinners who trust into him. His death does not save all sinners. Both Jews and Romans reviled Jesus “in the same way” (v. 44). Both sets claimed that if Jesus came down from the cross, then they would believe in him (v. 42). That’s understandable. Their perception of power is worldly. People say similar things today. “I will believe in Jesus if he cures me of cancer… if he writes his name in the clouds… if he makes his face appear in my tortilla… if he agrees to be my personal genie and grant my every wish.” But you who trust into him believe precisely because he did not come down. We believe in Jesus as savior because he stayed up on the cross to die, came down only to be buried, and rose up again three days later. His death saves those who trust into him.
Jesus will come again in power to judge the living and the dead, and his judgment will be based on what you thought of this scene in Matthew. Is Christ crucified a stumbling block for you, or is Christ crucified your only hope of salvation? Let’s let the apostle Paul sum it up for us this morning:
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. [4]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 27:32–44.
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 22:27–28.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 9:24–26.
[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 1:20–25.
