Matthew 27:32–34

Follow Him from Pilate's judgment hall. There they mocked Him, and His own nation rejected Him, crying out, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him"... So Jesus is given up to be the Sacrifice, and there the cross is laid on Him. Do you not envy the one who had the privilege of bearing that cross with Him? He goes outside the gate to Golgotha, "the place of a skull," the unclean place.

At the time of His death, and until Jerusalem fell, everyone there knew well where Golgotha or Calvary was. So the different Gospel writers who mention the place do not directly say it was outside the gate. To mention Golgotha was enough for readers then. John (19:17), if not Matthew also (27:32) and Mark (15:20), seems to indicate it was outside the city. But God had another purpose in the Lord's death at Golgotha: Christ suffered there so that His people might be sanctified, or set apart for God, by His blood.

Then they led Him away to be crucified. On the way they forced one Simon, a Cyrenian, a Greek-speaking Jew, to bear the cross behind Him. Was he a disciple? He had clearly taken no part with the crowd, for he was coming from the country. So he must have met the procession on its way to Golgotha. He was also, as Mark tells us, the father of Alexander and Rufus — very likely that Rufus mentioned by Paul in Romans 16:13.

The contrast between the two Simons has been pointed out: the one who promised the fullest obedience but denied his Lord in the hour of testing, and this man who bears the cross. It does not seem that he offered himself; the demands of the moment pressed him into service. Still, we are not told that he refused. The Spirit of God has recorded this incident, and it deserves our careful attention.

Notice how Luke's account brings together John's statement with that of Matthew and Mark. The Lord must have borne the cross alone until Simon relieved Him of part of it.

Part of the way He had borne His own cross (John 19:17), but Simon, a man of Cyrene, was then commandeered to do so. Some have imagined that Jesus fainted under the load. We must not trust that assumption: it is only imagination.

Nor had He forgotten Simon the Cyrenian, who was passing by. As he came from the field, a mob of soldiers and others forced him to carry the cross while they led Jesus out to His crucifixion. The Lord repaid with interest the burden of that day. Compare Mark 15:21. Rufus is here before us as "the elect in the Lord," along with his mother, who had been a mother to the apostle as well. Salvation came to that house.

God's goodness, I suppose, used this very circumstance, wicked as it was on man's part. He would not allow even His Son's humiliation to fail to turn to the blessing of man.

Simon carrying His cross does show that in a certain sense believers have the privilege of bearing the cross of the Lord Jesus. Certainly this does not involve His atoning sufferings, but a path of rejection by the world for His sake.

Every disciple of Christ bears a cross. It is his — the disciple's — cross. Without it he cannot be a disciple of Jesus (Luke 14:27). It is the reproach of Christ, that is, as reproached by man. The Lord Jesus did not say, "Whoever does not bear My cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." That would mean perfect reproach, and would imply a perfect walk. But every believer, in his measure, suffers reproach. It is the same in character as Christ's, and so it is called a cross. But it is his cross, not Christ's.

The Greek word is kranion, "a skull." The word "Calvary" comes from the Latin Calvaria, which means the same thing. It agrees with the Hebrew Golgotha, which also means the same. Matt. 27:33; Luke 23:33. This is the place where the Lord was crucified, and near it was the tomb in which He was buried. The traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre now lies well inside the city of Jerusalem. A much more likely place is the one the Jews point out on the north of the city, near the Grotto of Jeremiah. Visitors have said that this site has, from a distance, the natural contour of a human skull.

The place got its name from the peculiar shape of the rock, but it is significant all the same! A skull speaks of the humiliating end of all man's power and glory. In some living man it may once have held as brilliant and powerful a brain as ever existed; and it has come to this! The Son of God accepted the judgment of death as from man's hand. He went to bear it in a place that pictured the end of all man's glory.

Golgotha, that place of a skull, sets out the features of man's empty knowledge. No eyes to see God. No ears to hear anything about God. No tongue to speak for God. Nothing in the mind held for God. The skull is an empty thing, standing for all man's accumulated wisdom.

So Calvary was a witness to the moral condition of the whole world. It was also a witness to the love and grace that came down to the very place where the ugliness of sin was shown, to triumph over it there. From the skull of Calvary springs the beauty of resurrection. Death had no power at all over the Son of God, and could not disfigure Him, though it might hide His beauty from human eyes. But that resurrection beauty is for the whole family of the redeemed too, who are risen with Christ, forever beyond the power of death to mar or disfigure.

The priests of old could not have guessed what their act pictured. As they carried the body of the sin offering out to a clean place outside the camp, they were picturing the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ outside the gate. Here alone (Heb. 13:12) is this fact plainly stated. But God had another purpose in the Lord's death at Golgotha, little as the enemy could have guessed it. Christ suffered there so that His people might be sanctified, or set apart, for God by His blood.

So the place of a skull is reached, the destination which had been before the Lord all through. A scene of death was the attraction for the Lord of life; no one else could have found any attraction in it. But He comes into it, then, not merely as a visitor, but to "taste death" in its reality. So He refuses the numbing drink offered to those led out to execution. He gives Himself up to the full endurance of all that lies before Him.

In the other records we read that He was led out by His enemies. John tells us this too, for that was the height of their guilt. But He went out, and that was the triumph of His love. He went out; do we not see the majesty of that lonely Man, with thorns on His head and a cross on His shoulders? He was not driven out or dragged out, but in obedience to His Father's command He went out to lay down His life and to take it again.

Gall (rosh, chole) is some extremely bitter or poisonous plant, not identified for certain. This word is used as a symbol of "bitterness." … The Roman soldiers drank sour wine, or vinegar, and gall was mixed with it and given to those about to be crucified. The purpose, it is now thought, was to make them feel the torture less. It was offered to the Lord, but refused. Ps. 69:21; Matt. 27:34. In Mark 15:23 myrrh is read instead of gall; the meaning would be the same.

He tasted it first before refusing it. Of course He knew what it was before tasting it. But by tasting it He let His enemies see why He refused. He was not turning down a drink out of defiance. He refused it because of the stupefying gall added to it. He would bear His sufferings without this, and in full awareness of all that was involved. That means not only what men inflicted, but the far deeper sufferings of being made a curse of God.

The drink of vinegar mixed with gall reminds us of the bitterness of the "cup" our Lord drank at the hands of man. It also implies a rough try at easing the intensity of His physical sufferings, like an opiate. This seems to be the ground of our Lord's refusing to drink it. He would not allow anything to dull the sharpness of those sufferings. The physical ones were the least of them.

Sometimes people take steps to strengthen the body against the feeling of these trials and pains. Not so the Lord Jesus. No; He would take the vinegar, but He did not take the potion meant to deaden feeling — that He refused. There was a cup given, out of human mercy, to the ordinary criminal, to deaden pain, a kind of opiate, as we call it. But the Lord would not allow that. No, no; He allowed no anaesthetics for Himself.

We must not confuse this circumstance with the one mentioned in John, where the Lord says, "I thirst." In Matthew's account it was the stupefying drink given to prisoners before they suffered. This the Lord would not drink. Whereas in John, the Lord, while on the cross, fulfils a Scripture. … He was alive to the honour of Scripture, and to fulfil a word that had not yet come true, He says, "I thirst." … He did drink the vinegar then. But here in Matthew, on the contrary, when He had tasted it He would not drink — He wished for no relief from man.

This was doubtless because He would have nothing of any human device to lessen the physical suffering involved. Also, at that moment He felt no thirst. Divine predictions must be fulfilled with exactness and precision.

Or was it mercy that offered Him vinegar mingled with gall? Mercy, we believe it was not. It was a stimulant they offered Him. They did not know that the Life in their hands could not be overcome; no one could take that life from Him. He would not drink what was given to Him; He did not seek relief, He did not need it. His loving will was to endure all the suffering in perfect consciousness.