Who Mocked Jesus on Good Friday?
By Matt Watson
“And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.”
Imagine your most humiliating moment, that memory that comes up occasionally to haunt you. The one where you still feel shame. Maybe it was a sin, or maybe it was a series of unfortunate events, but it's one you wish you could wipe away from the universe's memory.
Think of that, and realize that's not even a taste of the humiliation received by being nailed naked to a cross in front of friends, family, and neighbors. Beaten, spit at, scourged, bleeding out, hanging and suffocating, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame of all those who mocked him, for the glory set before him (Heb 12:1-3).
Who mocked Jesus?
There were five groups of people who mocked our Lord on the cross. They were ...
Those passing by on the road
They blasphemed and taunted him (Mark 15:29-39). They recalled his words about the temple, that he would destroy it and build it up again in three days. If that were true, they said, then Jesus would have supernatural power. They challenged him to prove who he was, not realizing that was the very thing he was doing on the cross.
The chief priests and scribes
The chief priests and scribes joined those passing by in jeering at the crucified Jesus. “Others he saved; himself he cannot save” (vv. 31-32). Jesus could heal, he could make the lame walk and the blind see, but he couldn't save himself? Those who saw sign after sign by Jesus, yet they still asked for another, would never believe who Jesus said he was. They didn’t realize that if Jesus saved his life, he would not be saving the lives of those who believed. In condemning Jesus, they unknowingly tried to condemn us all.
The bandits
John tells us one of the bandits repented and had faith as he hung next to the Lord. Before that happened, he tried to lessen his suffering by taunting someone else who was suffering (v. 32). This is not uncommon. Hurt people hurt people. We want to drag people down with us. So it was with this man, though he repented before he died.
Herod and the soldiers
Earlier in Mark, and elsewhere in the gospels (cf. Luke 23:11), we see the soldiers of Rome mocking the Lord, as well as the puppet king Herod. Even though Herod himself was a putz, he had no use for someone he thought as pathetic as the tortured Jesus. Herod, his entourage, and the soldiers wanted to see magic tricks; they had no interest in confessing sin and repenting. Yet even one Roman soldier later acknowledged, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39).
You and me
Is this one shocking to you? It shouldn’t. Our sin mocks the Lordship of Jesus, and it is why he died. Some Christians don't want to hear that. They get offended when told they killed Jesus. They wave it away like smoke in the air. It was the religious institution, the Roman state, or generalized, but very unspecific "sin".
The second verse of Stuart Townend’s hymn, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” explains it well:
“Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life –
I know that it is finished.”
Yes, the religious authorities killed Jesus. Yes, the Roman government killed Jesus. But it was also your sin and my sin that killed Jesus. Jesus died for us, because of our sin. Don't be shocked by this. Accept it and be moved by God's grace to save even you.
Christian, you once mocked the Lord along with the chief priests, the scribes, those passing by on the road, and the soldiers who nailed his wrists to the tree. But that too was forgiven by Christ on that Good Friday two thousand years ago. Not only are we forgiven, but we have reconciliation with him and God the Father because of his death.
This is good news for you to meditate on this Good Friday. Rejoice! Let the truth of the gospel penetrate your head and your heart so that it can work through your hands. Start by meditating on this passage written to the church in Rome:
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
This article was originally published by Matthew Watson with Awake! Put on strength!, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.