Now That He is Dead (John 19:31-37)

It is interesting that John not only gives a lot of details about what happened to Jesus before he died. While the other Gospel writers refer to some of what happened to the body of Jesus after his death it is John who gives us the most information. In fact, as far as the details in the verses we are going to consider are concerned, they are only found in the Gospel of John.

How to get the day wrong?

The Jewish leaders were getting nervous in case God would be offended by having crucified victims still on their crosses when the special Sabbath arrived. Their nervousness indicates that it was not usual for people to be executed during that annual occasion. If it were a regular occurrence, then they would know that Pilate would ignore their requests. So there must have been something unusual about having victims on the cross at that time. They had engineered it, but they did not seem to have been concerned about that.

Of course, the particular Sabbath that they were concerned about was one that was connected to the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt. It was a day for recalling how God had come down and delivered them from the grip of a powerful enemy. Their eyes were wide open as to anything that might mar their celebration, but the eyes of their souls were totally blind to the way of deliverance that had just been achieved on the cross that they despised.

Mind you, it was odd to have to ask a current conqueror to do something to help them remember a previous deliverance. Their antics showed that they were as enslaved as the ancestors had been, with the obvious exception that the ancestors knew they were about to be delivered. Here, their descendants were despising the Deliverer. But if you are spiritually blind, you will show that you are spiritually blind in every way possible.

It is striking how cruel Christless religion can be. Here were religious officials who could give chapter and verse for all that they were engaged in at the Passover, down to small details. But there was no compassion in their hearts. They could have asked Pilate that he would arrange for them to be killed instantly rather than make a request that led to more pain even if the action hastened death by a few hours.

The hastening to eternity

So another band of soldiers was despatched to perform this gruesome task. When they reached the place they saw that the two criminals were still alive, so their legs were broken. Something similar happened to each, yet from another point of view what happened to them was very different.

The similar thing that happened to them was not just that they now both had two broken legs. Instead, what was similar was that they were now heading downhill at speed into eternity. Strangely, although they were physically close to one another they were on two different roads. They had travelled on the same road in order to get where they now were, but while nailed to the cross one of them had changed direction whereas the other had not.

As far as the one who was heading to heaven was concerned, the breaking of his legs was a way in which the promise he had heard from Jesus would be fulfilled. A few hours before, Jesus had promised him that before that day was out he would be in Paradise with Jesus. He had seen Jesus die and go there. Perhaps he wondered how the promise would be fulfilled, given that he would have known that crucifixion was not a quick death. It is surprising to realise that the request of the Jewish leaders was the means that Jesus used to get his new servant into heaven.

It is striking that the penitent criminal was not spared the full effects of the sentence that he received for his actions as a rebel against the authorities. Of course, he had already realised this when he rebuked his former colleague for asking Jesus to perform a miracle and get them off the cross. The request for a miracle did not come from faith, but the willingness to accept the consequences of wrong actions did. Having a guarantee for entering heaven is not a promise that the steps to the door will be comfortable.

What would have encouraged the penitent criminal as he hung there with his broken legs? The same encouragement that he had before they broke his legs, which was the wonderful promise of Jesus. In a sense the circumstances were changing for the criminal, but the promise he had received from Jesus remained faithful and true. And so the converted criminal becomes a picture to us of several of the essential features of the Christian life.

When we think of the other criminal, we see that he went to hell from being beside Jesus. It is difficult to imagine the blindness of the human heart, yet we see in this man an example. He suffered beside Jesus as the Saviour paid the penalty for sinners so that they would not suffer a lost eternity, yet it made to difference to how the criminal regarded himself or others. He died hardened in his sin, despising the Saviour.

The distinctiveness of Jesus

Two details are given here about the body of Jesus. One is that the soldiers did not break his legs and the other is that blood and water came out of his side when his dead body was pierced. With regard to how they knew he was dead, it is possible that they were informed of this by the centurion on duty who had witnessed Jesus deny. Someone had the authority to stop the soldiers from breaking his legs, so that may be what took place. John knows the real reason as to why they did not do so, and that was the fact that God had long ago predicted what would happen. So once again the representatives of the greatest earthly powers unwittingly function under the authority of the kingdom of heaven.

For some reason, one of the soldiers decided to pierce the side of Jesus with a spear. Perhaps he was sceptical about the claim that Jesus was dead because usually it took longer for crucified persons to die. Lots of theories have been put forward as to the significance of the blood and water that came out of the side of Jesus. There have been suggested medical explanations and there have been theological theories. Among the theological ones are that water and blood represents the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, although I cannot see how blood depicts the Lord’s Supper. If there is symbolism in them, then I would suggest that John is indicating that the death of Jesus is the way of cleansing, which was depicted in the Old Testament rituals as being by water and blood.

The fulfilment of Scripture

John connects to the two details to Old Testament passages. As far as not breaking the bones of Jesus is concerned, John says that this occurred in order to fulfil Exodus 12:46 and Numbers 9:12. Exodus 12:46 contains instructions about the original Passover lamb: ‘It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.’ Numbers 9:12 deals with subsequent celebrations of the Passover and regarding them it was stated: ‘They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break any of its bones; according to all the statute for the Passover they shall keep it.’ John saw that the prevention of his bones being broken revealed that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Passover lamb.

It is worth pausing to think about the Lord’s Supper and the words of institution in which Jesus says that his body was broken on behalf of his people. His body was assaulted in several ways when he was on the cross and we would have imagined that somehow bones would have been broken. Yet none were, and the fact is that in the broken body there were no broken bones. If there had been, Jesus would not have fulfilled the type of the Passover lamb.

The Passover basically involved three things and we can see how each was fulfilled at Calvary. They were a flawless sacrifice, deliverance from slavery, and formation of a people for God. The sinless Saviour is the fulfilment of the flawless sacrifice. He paid the price to ransom his people from the slavery of sin and set them free to serve himself. And one of the ways that they do so is through the corporate fellowship and activities of the church. Because Jesus is our Passover, we have been liberated from the powers of darkness and set free to become his worshippers and his witnesses.

The piercing of the body of Jesus by the soldier was a fulfilment of Zechariah 12:10: ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.’ The piercing in that prophecy occurs before a great outpouring of the Spirit in Jerusalem. Perhaps John was thinking of how the Day of Pentecost a few weeks later was the outcome of what happened to Jesus when he was pierced. On that occasion the Spirit was poured forth from heaven by Jesus in a marvellous manner and among the large number of converts would have been some of those who witnessed his death.

John does refer to the piercing again, in Revelation 1:7: ‘Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.’ The nature of this observation of Jesus will be very different. John is referring now to the second coming of Jesus and in this allusion to the prophecy there is not a mention made of mercy or of the gracious work of the Spirit. Those who pierced Jesus – whether the actual soldier or the Jewish leaders whose request to deal with the body set the process in motion or Pilate who granted their request – will see Jesus again. But they who preferred to serve an earthly ruler will discover then that Jesus is the Ruler.

So what can we say about the dead body of Jesus? Clearly the religious leaders misunderstood it completely. For one of the criminals the progress of his journey of faith was still linked to the body of his Saviour. And it is good for us who were not there that God ensured there would be a witness (John) who would be equipped by him to explain what happened there in the light of the Old Testament, and how Moses at the beginning and Zechariah almost at the end speak about Jesus.