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2005 Lenten Study Series: Matthew's Passion of Christ
The Crucifixion of Christ
Read: Matthew 27:32-56
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ~ Matthew 27:46
1. The crucifixion scene is a summary of mockery. Consider all the ways that Jesus suffered.
2. What do you make of the fact that no actual disciple of Jesus was available to help carry the cross other than Simon from Cyrene (Libya) a co-opted stranger?
3. Why did Jesus refuse to drink the wine mixed with gall? Is he rejecting an ill-intended bitter drink or is he refusing a well-intended mind-numbing drink?
4. Reflect on Dale Brunner’s comment on the soldiers who “divided his clothes among themselves by throwing dice.” “The presence of gambling, like the presence of a drugged wine a moment before, pictures still another addition under the shadow of the cross—the place of recovery par excellence” (734).
5. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Of all the words from the Cross these are the hardest ones to hear. As Spurgeon said, “it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. The anguish of the Savior on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endureth it” (Christ’s Words from the Cross, 51). Reflect on the perspective that Jesus’ agony of soul was ultimately and most intensely spiritual.
“Grief of mind is harder to bear than pain of body. . . Spiritual sorrows are the worst of mental miseries. . . .We can bear a bleeding body, and even a wounded spirit, but a soul conscious of desertion by God is beyond conception unendurable” (Spurgeon, 53).
6. In our highly visual culture we are inclined to imagine vivid scenes of the crucifixion rather than to think deeply about what the Cross of Christ means. How does this effect our understanding of the Cross?
“The Gospel writers did not want the physical pain of Jesus’ crucifixion to be central. They esteem the cross so highly that they can teach it only with modesty. To play upon emotions, here of all places, debases. The cross can handle itself” (Brunner, 733).
7. How does the tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom picture the doctrine of the atonement?
9. How does God signify that Jesus’ death is like no other death in all the world?
10. Matthew’s description of broken open tombs and the bodily resurrection of many holy people is difficult to comprehend literally. Was he describing symbolically and pictorially the hope of the resurrection based on the significance of Jesus’ death? Or was he describing a select group of people, like Lazarus, who literally came back from the dead and walked into Jerusalem? If the event was literal, would this not have been a compelling proof of the deity of Jesus, the very thing that Matthew emphasizes did not take place (27:40-50)? If the event was literal, what did these resurrected people do from Friday to Sunday (27:53)? Is Matthew indicating that he is thinking symbolically by speaking of their appearance “after Jesus’ resurrection” and referring to “the holy city” instead of Jerusalem (Matthew’s other reference to the holy city takes place in the temptation account, Mt 4:5)?
11. We know where the women are, but where are the other disciples?
