Come down from the cross

And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. 

Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, 

He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. 

He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. Mat 27:40-43 

 

Two things the priests and elders upbraided him with.

[1.] That he could not save himself, Mat 27:42. He had been before abused in his prophetical and kingly office, and now in his priestly office as a Savior. First, They take it for granted that he could not save himself, and therefore had not the power he pretended to, when really he would not save himself, because he would die to save us. They should have argued, "He saved others, therefore he could save himself, and if he do not, it is for some good reason." But, Secondly, They would insinuate, that, because he did not now save himself, therefore all his pretense to save others was but sham and delusion, and was never really done; though the truth of his miracles was demonstrated beyond contradiction. Thirdly, They upbraid him with being the King of Israel. They dreamed of the external pomp and power of the Messiah, and therefore thought the cross altogether disagreeable to the King of Israel, and inconsistent with that character. Many people would like the King of Israel well enough, if he would but come down from the cross, if they could have his kingdom without the tribulation through which they must enter into it. But the matter is settled; if no cross, then no Christ, no crown. Those that would reign with him, must be willing to suffer with him, for Christ and his cross are nailed together in this world. Fourthly, They challenged him to come down from the cross. And what had become of us then, and the work of our redemption and salvation? If he had been provoked by these scoffs to come down from the cross, and so to have left his undertaking unfinished, we had been for ever undone. But his unchangeable love and resolution set him above, and fortified him against, this temptation, so that he did not fail, nor was discouraged. Fifthly, They promised that, if he would come down from the cross, they would believe him. Let him give them that proof of his being the Messiah, and they will own him to be so. When they had formerly demanded a sign, he told them that the sign he would give them, should be not his coming down from the cross, but, which was a greater instance of his power, his coming up from the grave, which they had not patience to wait two or three days for. If he had come down from the cross, they might with as much reason have said that the soldiers had juggled in nailing him to it, as they said, when he was raised from the dead, that the disciples came by night, and stole him away. But to promise ourselves that we would believe, if we had such and such means and motives of faith as we ourselves would prescribe, when we do not improve what God has appointed, is not only a gross instance of the deceitfulness of our hearts, but the sorry refuge, or subterfuge rather, of an obstinate destroying infidelity.

[2.] That God, his Father, would not save him (Mat 27:43); He trusted in God, that is, he pretended to do so; for he said, I am the Son of God. Those who call God Father, and themselves his children, thereby profess to put a confidence in him, Psa 9:10. Now they suggest, that he did but deceive himself and others, when he made himself so much the darling of heaven; for, if he had been the Son of God (as Job's friends argued concerning him), he would not have been abandoned to all this misery, much less abandoned in it. This was a sword in his bones, as David complains of the like (Psa 42:10); and it was a two-edged sword, for it was intended, First, To vilify him, and to make the standers-by think him a deceiver and an impostor; as if his saying, that he was the Son of God, were now effectually disproved. Secondly, To terrify him, and drive him to distrust and despair of his Father's power and love; which some think, was the thing he feared, religiously feared, prayed against, and was delivered from. Heb 5:7. David complained more of the endeavors of his persecutors to shake his faith, and drive him from his hope in God, than of their attempts to shake his throne, and drive him from his kingdom; their saying, There is no help for him in God (Psa 3:2), and, God has forsaken him, Psa 71:11. In this, as in other things, he was a type of Christ. Nay, these very words David, in that famous prophecy of Christ, mentions, as spoken by his enemies (Psa 22:8); He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Surely these priests and scribes had forgotten their psalter, or they would not have used the same words, so exactly to answer the type and prophecy: but the scriptures must be fulfilled. (Matthew Henry)

 

Well, thus our Lord Jesus having undertaken to satisfy the justice of God for the wrong done him in his honor by sin, he did it by suffering in his honor; not only by divesting himself of that which was due to him as the Son of God, but by submitting to the utmost indignity that could be done to the worst of men; because he was made sin for us, he was thus made a curse for us, to make reproach easy to us, if at any time we suffer it, and have all manner of evil said against us falsely, for righteousness' sake. (Matthew Henry)