What is the significance of the centurion saying, "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matthew 27:54)?

(5) The Centurion (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39). Here the reasons for the centurion's confession are plainly stated. In Matthew it was due to the severe earthquake, the rending of the rocks and the opening of the tombs. In Mark it is specifically stated that it was due to the Lord's shouting with a loud voice just before He gave up His spirit. This was remarkable to the centurion who had no doubt seen large numbers of such executions. A man crucified gets weaker and weaker until he cannot speak above a whisper. Here was One who could shout with a loud voice just before He died, showing supernatural strength. It was, therefore, not His moral glory that convinced the centurion, but His Divine glory, as was the case in all the foregoing cases.

The Roman officer who was on guard, consequently on the sentence pronounced on the prisoners, as well as the soldiers who were then with him, seeing the earthquake and all that had happened, are seized with fear, and acknowledge that Jesus is indeed "the Son of God." This was the cause of His condemnation by the priests and scribes. They had involuntarily borne testimony to Pilate that He called Himself so, which had alarmed the latter, whom a bad conscience was already making afraid - so that, with all that had been noised abroad in Palestine through the deeds of power He had wrought there, this thought ran throughout the world; it was known of all. These extraordinary facts which accompanied His death, the cry full of strength with which without apparent motive He drew His last breath, all the circumstances which surrounded His departure from this world, bore witness that His death was more than a human death. The hearts of those who were taking part, overpowered by such events, might (even in their natural state) declare that this was the Son of God. As to the result in themselves, no one can know anything of it. Here it is the testimony which these poor pagan hearts, under the influence of the events which were passing under their eyes, could not refuse, while the hardened hearts of the Jews - "his own" - of those to whom He had come, were rejoicing in His death. Nothing hardens like religion when the heart is not changed. The natural heart is evil, not hardened, and facts in which God manifests Himself can act upon such a heart.

Nor was this all. There was a testimony, not only in nature as opposed to the scorn of men and the revilings of the crucified ones that were with Him — not only was there this darkness of nature and rending of the veil for Judaism, but a Gentile was brought forward compelled of God to acknowledge the wonder that was there and then being enacted. "Truly this Man was Son of God." In all likelihood he was a heathen, and did not mean more than to own that Christ was not a mere man, that He was somehow or other what the Chaldean monarch heard and spoke of in Dan. 2, 4. Now, the centurion went farther than they of Babylon. He felt that, though His dwelling was in flesh, yet He was a Divine being, and not the Son of man merely. I do not think that when Nebuchadnezzar says that he saw one like the Son of God, he meant the full truth that we know; for the doctrine of the eternal Sonship was not then revealed, and it could not be supposed that Nebuchadnezzar entered into it, for he was an idolater at that very time. But it was a testimony of his full confidence that it was a supernatural being of some kind, "the Son of God." At the same time, the Spirit of God could well give the centurion's or the king's words a shape beyond what either knew. "Truly this Man was Son of God."

There is yet another especial testimony to the mighty power of His death, to the import of that word, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me." The centurion who was on guard at the crucifixion of the Lord, seeing the earthquake and those things that were done, trembling, confesses the glory of His Person; and, stranger as he is to Israel, renders the first testimony of faith among Gentiles: "Truly this was the Son of God."

(d) The fruit of it is seen also in another way. The Gentile centurion and those that are with him, convinced by all that they have seen and heard, confess Him to be, not the King of the Jews merely, but the Son of God. Thus the Roman soldier takes his place with Peter the apostle in proclaiming that which Israel has denied. The dispensational intimation here, according to the character of Matthew's Gospel, seems to be shown in this, that what in Mark and Luke is given as the individual faith of the centurion is here testified as shared by "those that were with him." It is the general faith of a Gentile company.

The Roman centurion could not be charged with any bias in favour of the One whose crucifixion he controlled; but as the triumphant cry broke from the Lord's lips and He bowed His head in death, light broke into the pagan's soul and he bowed his heart before the Crucified and exclaimed, "Truly this man was the Son of God." Faith found expression, when ten thousand voices might have shown the folly of it in men's eyes. Reason might have said, "These leaders of the Jews should know, and they have challenged Him to prove that He is the Son of God, the Christ, the King of Israel, by coming down from the cross. They have said that if they could SEE such a miracle as that they would BELIEVE. And surely if He could do that it would be a proof of His power." But if the centurion had listened to such reasoning, which it must be owned was quite logical, he would have gone to his home when his day's work was done still a pagan. But faith, not reason, moved him, and where the devil thought he had blinded every eye that might have discerned the glory of the Lord, and silenced every tongue that might have spoken for Him, the chief man on the spot that day speaks out, and the death of the Lord, which to priests and Pharisees was a proof that He was not what He claimed to be, was to the centurion the revelation of the truth. And it is here that all true faith finds its birth. We must begin with Christ crucified; there is no faith according to God's reckoning apart from this. The Jew stumbles at it, and the Greek scoffs at it. Blind reason will not have it, but faith confesses that Jesus who died is the Son of God, that the cross is the revelation of God's love to men and the one way by which they can be brought back to God. The centurion carried from that scene, in which he had participated, a light that nothing could quench, for he carried away faith in the Son of God.

Without attempting, at this time, to enter into the meaning and character of this wondrous scene, we desire simply to call attention to the threefold testimony which is here given to Christ and His Work. The moment He had cried with a loud voice, and yielded up the ghost, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. This was a divine action, God's own interposition, the significance of which may be gathered from Hebrews 9 and 10. It proclaimed that God was now free in righteousness as well as in grace, on the ground of what had been accomplished on the cross, to go out after the sinner, and that the sinner was also free, on receiving the testimony concerning that finished work, to go into the holiest of all, into the immediate presence of God. The rending of the veil was God's own testimony to the efficacy of the blood of Christ. We also read that "the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection." There was therefore a three days' interval between the rending of the veil and the resurrection of the saints, but the Holy Spirit has connected the two because both alike are the fruits of the death of Christ. If the rending of the veil speaks of the efficacy of His precious blood, the raising of these saints tells no less clearly of Him who is the resurrection and the life, and it was thus a testimony to the power of life in Him as risen from the dead. (John 11:25; 2 Cor. 5) In the last place the centurion, and those who were with him, convinced by what they had seen, "feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God." This was a testimony, whether rendered intelligently or otherwise, to the truth as to His person. If therefore Christ stood alone, no one raising his voice on His behalf before His persecutors, if He were forsaken by God in His death, as He must have been as made sin, no sooner has His mighty work been accomplished than God steps in and raises a powerful and glorious threefold testimony to the efficacy of the atonement, to the power of His resurrection, and to the fact that He who had died on that shameful tree was no less than the Son of God. E. D.

And the third event, the confession of the Saviour as Son of God by the centurion and the company of soldiers under him. In Luke and Mark we find the centurion mentioned alone, but here it is the entire company. They were Gentiles, heathen. The earthquake, the darkness, the loud voice which had spoken from the cross, all had filled these poor pagans with fear and from their lips, gazing up to the cross where He had bowed His adorable head, came the confession "Son of God." No such word came from Jewish lips. What a prophetic foreshadowing again. The Gentiles were to believe on Him. That for which they had condemned them and delivered Him into the hands of the Gentiles is confessed by those who had put Him to death.

(V. 39). The great work of the cross being finished, the first voice to be lifted up as a witness to the glory of the Person of Christ, is a Gentile, the harbinger of the new day, when a great host from the Gentiles will confess the Saviour as the Son of God. Doubtless, this centurion had seen many a death on fields of battle, but never a death like that of Christ. He recognises that the One who can, with a loud cry, yield up His spirit, must be more than man. Thus, he can say, "Truly this Man was the Son of God."

It is this victory-shout which, according to Mark, impresses the soldier: "when the centurion saw that He so cried out and expired, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God." He had seen death upon the battlefield, perhaps in many a shape, but never a death like this. If we take John's account, it is the cry that has rung through so many hearts since then, Tetelestai, "It is finished." If it be not the great cry itself, it certainly went with it; and how has that become for Gentile faith the gospel-utterance! It has assured of peace made with God, stilled to rest the tumult of other things, and subdued the heart to Jesus, to the Son of God who loved and gave Himself for the sons of men.