The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his clothes, and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and the body-coat; but the body-coat was seamless, woven through the whole from the top.
Jesus hung on the cross. The soldiers got on with business as usual: dividing up the clothes of the man they had just nailed there. John alone records that one item defeated them: a tunic with no seam. In that small detail he shows two things: how poor the Son of God became, and how exact God's word is.
The men at the cross were collecting what executioners always collected.
The soldiers were busy with His garments. This was the usual perk of executioners. They did not know that they were fulfilling the prophetic word written ten centuries earlier. The cross and everything connected with it had been under God's eye all along. David wrote by the Spirit about the events surrounding it, the way a historian writes past history. Four soldiers, it seems, were on duty at the cross, and the garments were divided into five lots. But who would get the fifth? That was a coat woven without a seam throughout. To divide it would ruin it. So they cast lots for it.
One writer sets the soldiers' small profit beside God's care for His Son.
The soldiers in charge of the execution thought of nothing beyond their small perks. But God's eye was on His Son now as always, and He had taken care in His word to mark it. One of the clearest psalms about the Messiah (Psalm 22:18) predicted, a thousand years beforehand, that the soldiers would take the Saviour's garments — in words that fit no one but Him. He is the object of Scripture, though unbelief does not see it and has a will against it... See with what interest the Holy Spirit watched every detail of His suffering, and of how men behaved in that hour. We should watch it too. God did not count Him less worthy because men made Him the object of such insults. The very smallness of these details bears witness to how accurate and real the prophecy is.
These clothes were not spare property. They were everything He owned.
A man's coat was his own. Even if he handed it over as a pledge during the day, the law of Moses said it must come back to him at night. These clothes the soldiers gambled for were the Lord's only possessions. Even these they took from Him. How poor He became for our sakes!
Why does John mention the seam at all? One writer reads the coat as a symbol, and sets it against the first clothing man ever made for himself.
We cannot help thinking that this detail is here because it carries a symbolic value. Everything about our Lord, both in His Person and in His work, was of one piece, woven throughout without a seam. With man in his fallen condition it is otherwise. The fitting symbol for man and his work is the fig-leaf apron Adam and his wife turned to after they sinned. They sewed fig leaves together. Anyone who knows the shape of a fig leaf will realise how many seams there must have been. Theirs was the patchwork apron; His was the seamless coat.
The words "from top to bottom" turn up again in the other Gospels — in a scene John leaves out.
In that coat Jesus appeared before men — the symbol of His perfection — and it was not to be torn. It is striking that only John speaks of this coat. He tells us it was "woven in one piece from top to bottom." Unlike the other Gospels, he leaves out any mention of the temple curtain that was "torn in two, from top to bottom." Everything about the Lord testified that He came from above and was above all. And the blow that set aside the old order of things at the hour of His death came from above too.
Another writer notes what the Lord's own hands never did to a garment.
The German writer Bengel points out that our Lord never "tore" His garments in sorrow. Job, Jacob, Joshua, Caleb, Jephthah, Hezekiah, Mordecai, Ezra, Paul and Barnabas all did. The seamless robe pictures His perfect righteousness. Human hands now stripped it from Him, so He took the place of a criminal.
What one soldier won by lot, others have seen as a picture of what God gives away.
It is one perfect, consistent whole — not to be torn. The one to whom God assigns it must have it whole or not at all. In sovereign grace, God provides this robe of a perfect righteousness for everyone who will receive it. This robe is Christ Himself.
- Unaware — The soldiers were only claiming an executioner's perk. By doing it they completed a prophecy written a thousand years before.
- Unwatched, yet watched — Nobody at the cross was tracking these details. God had tracked them since David wrote them down.
- Unowned — His clothes were His only possessions, and men took even those; this is how poor He became for us.
- Untorn — The coat had no seam, so dividing it would ruin it. His Person and work are one piece, unlike man's patchwork.
- Undivided gift — You cannot take a righteousness like that in pieces. You receive it whole or not at all, because the robe is Christ Himself.
They said therefore to one another, Let us not rend it, but let us cast lots for it, whose it shall be; that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, They parted my garments among themselves, and on my vesture they cast lots. The soldiers therefore did these things.
The soldiers at the foot of the cross were doing what executioners always did. They split the clothes of the man they had just crucified. One coat could not be cut up, so they gambled for it instead. Only John pauses here to say that Scripture had recorded this small scene a thousand years earlier.
The men dividing the clothing had no interest in Jesus beyond their pay. Yet their action is what proves who He is.
As the soldiers divide His garments among themselves, they become unknowing witnesses to the glory of His Person. For He is the One about whom this was foretold a thousand years before: "they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots" (Psalm 22:18). "So the soldiers did these things" — and fulfilled the word of God.
The prediction reads like a report of something already over.
The soldiers were busy with His garments, the usual perk of executioners. They had no idea that they were fulfilling the prophetic word written ten centuries earlier. The cross and everything connected with it had been under the eye of God even then. David wrote by the Spirit of the events surrounding it, as a historian writing up past history might have done.
A quarrel over clothing looks like the smallest thing happening on that hill. Its smallness is the point.
The soldiers in charge of the execution thought of little beyond their meagre perks. But God's eye was now, as always, on His Son, and He had taken care in His word to mark it... He is the object of Scripture, though unbelief does not see it... See with what interest the Holy Spirit watched every detail of His suffering, and of man's behaviour at that hour! We should watch it in the same way. God counted Him no less worthy for being made the object of such insults. To make these things known beforehand mattered more than anything. The smallness of the details named bears witness to the accurate reality of the prophecy. He is the proved Messiah as well as the rejected one.
For the soldiers, casting lots simply settled who got what. In Israel the lot carried a very different meaning.
They divide among themselves the garments they have stripped from Him. They cast the lot — which in Israel was sacred to the Lord (Proverbs 16:33) — to decide who owns that seamless priestly robe. That robe marks Him out as what He is, "the Mediator between God and men," the One on whom all blessing for man depends.
John alone tells us how the coat was made. Commentators read the garment as standing for the man who wore it.
This seamless robe reminds us of many things. It seems first of all to suggest the perfection of the Lord in His humanity. It was the garment most closely associated with the person... His perfect character, like His robe, was woven throughout and seamless. It was the product, may we say, of a life that had only one motive. In this way His robe stands for Himself, for the perfection of His Person.
Set that beside the first covering human beings ever made for themselves:
Everything about our Lord, both in His Person and in His work, was of one piece, woven throughout without a seam. With man in his fallen condition it is otherwise. The fitting symbol for man and his work is the fig leaf apron that Adam and his wife turned to after their sin. They sewed fig leaves together. Anyone who knows the shape of a fig leaf will realise how many seams there must have been. It was elaborate patchwork. Theirs was the patchwork apron; His was the seamless coat.
The law of Moses protected even a poor man's coat. Jesus kept nothing.
A man's coat was his own. Under the law of Moses, even if he handed it over as a pledge during the day, the lender had to give it back at night. These clothes the soldiers gambled for were the Lord's only possessions, and even these they took from Him. How poor He became for our sakes!
The men who nailed Him down walked away wearing what He had worn. The exchange did not end there.
His enemies, the men who nailed Him to the cross, received His clothes. And so for His naked creature He has provided the robe of righteousness by His death on the cross.
- Woven beforehand. Scripture recorded this scene ten centuries early. Men out only for their own gain proved who Jesus is without knowing it.
- Woven in detail. The tiny scale of the detail is the evidence. God's eye was on every insult, and He counted His Son no less worthy for it.
- Woven by God's hand. Men throw a lot to leave things to chance. In Israel the lot was sacred to the Lord, so He held the one thing the soldiers thought was random.
- Woven without a seam. The coat they could not divide answers to a life with one motive. Fallen man's own covering is seams and patchwork.
- Woven for us. They stripped Him of His last possession. By His death He gives the naked creature the robe of righteousness.