Matthew 27:37–38

They write His accusation over the cross. It was the truth about who He was: "The King of the Jews." What charge could there be against the One who was perfect in every way? They put Him between two thieves, in the place of the murderer Barabbas. He stood there as a Substitute for him. Yet "this man has done nothing wrong" (Luke 23:41). Yes, this is "Jesus, the King of the Jews."

This confession that He was the Son of God meant nothing to the Roman judge. He needed something more if he was to condemn Him too. So came the charge that He made Himself a king. When Pilate asked Him about this, He confessed the truth again. For this cause He had come into the world. So the accusation that Pilate wrote and placed over His head on the cross was not, This is the Son of God, but "This is Jesus, THE KING OF THE JEWS."

Usually a board naming the crime of a condemned man went ahead of him. They led him through the crowded streets to the place of execution. This custom was most likely followed with our Lord. Pilate himself had the inscription drawn up... Pilate could not help himself. He had to write what he wrote, though he may have meant it as revenge on the Jews and as mockery. Despite their hatred, He received His true title, and from a Gentile at that. There it stood written and could not be changed; so it is still.

We are told by John that the title was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Here again we see God's almighty hand, for God would bring in the whole world guilty of this foul crime. The religious world (Hebrew), the heathen world (Greek) and the political world (Latin) all had a part in rejecting and crucifying the Holy Son of God. The Jews were stung by the form of the sentence... and would gladly have had it changed, but Pilate is unmovable.

The accusation set over His cross is what Pilate had pronounced as his sentence of condemnation. It was the technical charge on which He had been declared guilty. It meant, of course, the end of all Jewish kingship, and much else besides. Here we see, in this Gospel of the kingdom, the final rejection of their King by the Jews.

They reviled Him, wagging their heads, and saying, "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross"... They did not understand the meaning of His Name. Because He was Jesus, He could not come down from the cross. If He had come down, He must have given up His Name. He must have denied Himself, for He could not have been Jesus any more. How blind these foes of His were! Their hatred had so darkened their minds that they missed one thing. The very Name He bore was the reason He could not save Himself.

He was born King of the Jews (Matt. 2:2). He died as King of the Jews (Matt. 27:37). He shall reign as King of the Jews (Zech. 9:9).

They had to add one more insult, so that the words of Isaiah might be fulfilled: "and was numbered with the transgressors" (Isa. 53:12). "Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him." What a sight! He who was God, walking with two thieves to that place. There the great work of the preparation day had to be done — the work that would bring lost sinners into the sabbath, the rest of God.

That morning they searched the prison cells of Jerusalem for the worst of all the criminals that city held. They led them out to die along with Jesus. These men had been guilty of appalling crimes. That is why they picked them to hang one on His right hand and the other on His left, and why they put Him on the centre and highest cross. They meant to proclaim by their well-considered and malicious plan that He was the worst of the three.

Mark, like Matthew, mentions the robbers — in fact all the Gospel writers do. It is a testimony to the complete humiliation of God's Servant and Son on the cross. Men would not even give Him that place by Himself. He was indeed alone in the grace and moral glory of the cross. But to increase the shame of it they crucified these two robbers with Him, one on His right hand, and the other on His left.

It proves, beyond all question, that there was no difference between the two thieves. They were both condemned criminals. And more than that: when they were on the very edge of the eternal world, both were busy with the awful sin of reviling the blessed Son of God.

The cross is the only perfect measure of man — of the world — of sin. If we really want to know what the world is, we must remember this. It preferred a robber to Christ. It crucified between two thieves the only perfect man who ever lived.

God's sovereign power and grace was over this. He used it to bring one of these men to genuine repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. He used it, too, to show the solemn fact that Christ crucified is the great Divider between the lost and the saved.

The two thieves represent the two great classes into which mankind has been divided. God's Christ is the one great and all-deciding test in every case. Every shade of moral character, every level of social life, every caste, class, sect and party into which the human family has been, is, or ever will be divided — all are absorbed in this one momentous point: "In or out of Christ."

The work of grace for us and the work of grace in us are not the same thing. Take the thief. The death of Christ for him, and the change inside him that made him stop blaspheming and own Jesus, were not one and the same thing either. The first is outside of us, and was in and by CHRIST. The second is in ourselves, though worked there by grace.