Matthew 27:45–46

The sixth hour of which Matthew speaks would correspond to our midday, and the ninth hour in that verse to our three o'clock in the afternoon.

John states that Christ stood before Pilate's court "about the sixth hour" (John 19:14), while Matthew, Mark and Luke record that He was on the cross at the sixth hour. There is no real discrepancy here, for John counted hours the Roman way, and the other three counted the Jewish way. So the sixth hour was 6 a.m. for John; for them it was noon.

It was certainly supernatural. The moon was full, so no eclipse of the sun could account for it. But it fit perfectly with what was taking place. At the fall of the king of Egypt God declared, "I will cover the heavens, and make their stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light" (Ezek. 32:7). How much more might that actually happen when the Creator, who upholds everything by the word of His power, was dying on the cross! That mysterious darkness lasted three hours. It was the first sign since the Lord's arrest that God was not indifferent to all that was going on.

Now comes the moment when His position, His relation with God, must pass before our eyes… Even by outward circumstances, God separated His Son from insults and outrages that were purely human, in order that He should be alone with Him and entirely for His solemn work. He was alone with God, made sin; nothing to turn aside the cup of justice; nothing to deaden it.

How fitting that it should be so! God and Christ were alone there. This scene had been pictured long before in these words: "No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place" (Lev. 16:17)… God intended to withdraw His Son in that hour, so that no eye should see what passed between Him and Christ when the Blessed One bore the judgment of God against sin.

Scripture would have us know that a change took place at the sixth hour, when there was darkness over all the land to the ninth hour. His cry then shows what that change was. Up to it He had through the eternal Spirit offered Himself up to be the victim. Then sins were laid on Him. He who knew no sin was made sin, and so God's face was hidden — He was forsaken by God. All that He had suffered up to this point from man's hand — and Psalm 22 shows how He felt it — is left immeasurably far behind by what He suffered from God's hand.

Did the darkness cover the entire earth? Hardly — in part of the world it was night already. No doubt it covered the whole land, and perhaps the whole Roman world. It hid the cross and the great sufferer from the guards and the onlookers… His cry explains the meaning of the darkness, and the darkness gives us the meaning of His bitter cry. God had turned from Him, left Him, who had taken the sinner's place.

The three hours of darkness were to Him the measure of what to anyone else would have been an infinite, hopeless distance… The veil torn from top to bottom proclaimed that it had been crossed and removed.

For those saved by it, the darkness of distance from God who is light has passed away with the darkness on the cross… The veil meant darkness — the darkness in which God dwelt, as far as man was concerned. Its tearing means that "God is in the light" (1 John 1:7).