Jean 19:34

One of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side

The piercing of Christ’s side

I. IT WAS AN ACT OF INSULT AND INDIGNITY TO HIS PERSON. To this, indeed, He was no stranger. In the hall of Pilate, and on the cross He encountered indignities of the cruellest kind. But, beyond the moment of death, the malice of His enemies pursued Him. We cannot behold the body, which the Holy Spirit had prepared, thus mangled, without the deepest sorrow and humiliation. We could not see the body of a convicted malefactor thus insulted without the deepest pity. “He was wounded for our transgressions.” Let us look to Him whom we pierced, and mourn because of Him. And let the believing contemplation of the wounds of Jesus teach us submission under the varied ills and sorrows of our own earthly lot.

II. IT ASCERTAINS, AND PLACES BEYOND QUESTION, THE REALITY OF HIS DEATH. On this some of the most important truths depend.

1. If He had not actually expired, there would have been no sacrifice at all. The true nature of a sacrifice is the actual dying of the victim. If, therefore, the death of Jesus were not put beyond all question, His doctrine might enlighten, and His example direct us, but we should have no assurance that an actual and efficient atonement had been made for sin.

2. The reality of our Lord’s death is essential to the confirmation of the hopes which are founded on His resurrection. If we could not show that death had actually taken place, “our preaching would be vain, your faith would be vain, and you would be yet in your sins.” The piercing of His side put His death beyond question. Believing that He “both died, and rose, and revived,” we look up to Him with sacred satisfaction and joy, and adore Him as “Lord both of the dead and of the living.”

III. IT WAS THE FULFILMENT OF ANCIENT PROPHECIES.

1. With respect to the first of these, it is obvious, that it is the prescription in reference to the Paschal Lamb that is pointed to. The executioner breaks the legs first of the one malefactor, and then of the other; but why does he stop short? Nobody interferes to arrest the fatal blow. But had it fallen the pretensions of Jesus to be the antitype of the Paschal Lamb, and consequently the Messiah of Israel, would have been for ever annulled. While, therefore, the executioner proceeds to do his work, an invisible Power interposed to restrain him. The honour of God’s Son was at stake--the comfort of the Church was in peril--the mission of Jesus must beestablished by the fulfilment of prophecy.

2. Nor is the piercing of His side a less remarkable fulfilment. In the accomplishing of the one, the soldier abstains from doing to Jesus what he had done to the others, and what he had been told to do to all; while, in accomplishing the other prophecy, another soldier does to him what he did not do to the others, and what he was not told to do. And by this opposite conduct of two Roman soldiers were two memorable predictions of God’s Word accomplished.

IV. IT WAS AN EMBLEM OF THE EXPIATORY AND PURIFYING VIRTUE OF HIS SACRIFICE. The piercing of his Master’s side, and the issuing of blood and water from the wound, made a deep and abiding impression on the mind of John, and we find him recurring to it in his first Epistle (verse 6). “This is He who came by water and blood.” In all languages water has been employed as an emblem of moral cleansing, while the universal prevalence of sacrifice has made blood the proper symbol of expiation. (J. Johnston.)

The piercing of Christ’s side

I. THE OCCASION. The scrupulosity of the Jews, which teaches us

1. That superstition is fuller of ceremony than of mercy.

2. That the worst of men are usually very solicitous about external worship.

3. That malefactors are not to be taken out of the hands of justice, and left to the malice of the executioner or the fury of the multitude. They had to ask leave of Pilate for the additional punishment.

4. That when a man once gives himself up to please men there is no end to his compliance. Pilate who began by consenting to scourge Christ ends by signing an order for the breaking of His legs.

5. That Christ was willing to die for us, hence He died before the usual time. Had His legs been broken His death would have seemed the effect of violence rather than His own resignation (Jean 10:18).

II. THE CIRCUMSTANCE.

1. AS an act of Christ’s love and condescension, that He would expose His body to the malice and violence of wicked men. He might have dried up the soldier’s arm as He did Jeroboams; but by this stroke Christ would have His heart opened to show how full of love He is to sinners. As at the beginning Adam’s side was opened and Eve was taken out of it; so is the Church out of Christ’s side. In this circumstance there is

(1) Hope for all wounded sinners. It is said of those converts (Actes 2:37) that “they were pricked to their hearts.” Christ’s heart is wounded that they might be healed. This is the cleft of the rock in which guilty men may find refuge when wrath makes inquisition for sinners.

(2) Matter of thankfulness. Soldiers to endear themselves to their country are wont to show their scars received in public service: so Christ (Jean 20:27). In the sacrament these things are presented to faith.

2. As a certain pledge of Christ’s death. The flowing of blood and water shows that the pericardium was pierced. So His enemies could not say that He was half dead, and that His resurrection was but a reviving out of a swoon. Upon this is based the Resurrection and all its benefits, and the fulness of the expiation which Christ offered to justice.

3. As a Divine necessity. Christ was to die

(1) As a Surety. We deserved death, but our Surety was to pay our debt. This Christ did (1 Pierre 3:18; 1 Timothée 2:6).

(2) As a Testator or Maker of the New Testament. We could never have had the benefit of the Covenant if Christ had not died (Hébreux 9:16). (T. Manton, D. D.)

Forthwith came there out blood and water

Blood and water

In the water and the blood are represented the most essential elements of salvation. The water has a remote reference to baptism, but it chiefly symbolizes the moral purifying power of the word of Christ. The blood points out the ransom paid for our guilt, as well as the atoning sacrifice. The blood flowed separately from the water; justification must not be mingled with, much less substituted for, personal amendment. (F. Krummacher.)

The physical cause of the death of Christ

Since Dr. Stroud published his work on “The Physical Causes of Christ’s Death,” we have met with no doubt expressed as to the death of Christ having immediately resulted from rupture of the heart. “Joy, or grief, or anger, suddenly or intensely excited, have often been known to produce this effect. The heart, which the universal language of mankind has spoken of as peculiarly affected by the play of the passions, has been found in such cases to have been rent or torn by the violence of its own action. The blood issuing from the fissure thus created has filled the pericardium, or sac, by which the heart is enclosed, and by its pressure has stopped the action of the heart” (Dr. Hanna). Common sorrow can, in its sudden extremity, break hearts; why may not that sorrow, deep beyond all other sorrows, have broken His? We believe it did. Now, when blood escapes from its vessels, within a short time it coagulates, its watery part separating from the rest; and there would be, so science tells us, within an hour or two after death such a flow of blood and water from a piercing as that which John saw. The late Sir James Simpson has said on this matter: “It has always appeared, to my medical mind at least, that this mode by which death was produced in the human body of Christ intensifies all our thoughts and ideas regarding the immensity of the astounding sacrifice which He made for our sinful race on the cross. Nothing can possibly be more striking and startling than the appalling and terrific passiveness with which God as man submitted, for our sakes, His incarnate body to all the horrors and tortures of the Crucifixion. But our wonderment at the stupendous sacrifice only increases when we reflect that, whilst enduring for our sins the most cruel and agonizing form of corporeal death, He was ultimately slain, not by the effects of the anguish of His corporeal frame, but by the effects of the mightier anguish of His mind; the fleshly walls of His heart, like the veil, as it were, in the Temple of His human body, becoming rent and riven, as for us He poured out His soul unto death. ‘The travail of His soul’ in that awful hour thus standing out as unspeakably bitterer and more dreadful than the travail of His body.” (C. Stanford,D.D.)