Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” And many women were there looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, among whom was Mary Magdalene, along with Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. (27:54-56)

This brief passage presents two responses to the death of Christ, both of them positive. The first was by the centurion and his fellow soldiers who stood at the foot of cross, and the second was by the women standing some distance away. Another response at this same time (by the unbelieving crowd) is recorded by Luke, and a fourth (by the fearful disciples) is implied in all four gospels.

Those responses are representative of the responses men have made to God throughout history, and they have a powerful and practical application even for our own time.

SAVING FAITH

Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (27:54)

As the title might suggest, a centurion (from the Latin word for 100) was a military officer in charge of 100 men and was therefore of significant rank. This particular officer had been given the responsibility of supervising the three crucifixions. It is likely that he and the other soldiers who were with him keeping guard over Jesus had been in the Praetorium when He was first brought there by the Jewish leaders. They may have been with the cohort of Roman soldiers who accompanied the chief priests and elders to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. They doubtlessly had heard the charges brought against Him by those leaders and had also heard Pilate’s repeated declaration of Jesus’ innocence of any crime against Rome. They may even have overheard the conversation between Pilate and Jesus about His being King of the Jews (John 18:33-37).

Those soldiers probably participated in Jesus’ scourging, in placing the crown of thorns on His head, in taunting Him, and in beating Him with the mock scepter. On Golgotha they had nailed Him to the cross, indifferently gambled for His garments, and jeered at Him while He hung there in agony.

If those men were religious at all, they were idolaters. And if they were from the garrison at Pilate’s headquarters in Caesarea they probably had little knowledge of Judaism and perhaps no previous knowledge at all about Jesus. If they knew anything of Jesus’ teachings or activities it was by hearsay. They were at the cross simply because it was their duty to make certain the execution was carried out properly and without interference.

Because Pilate had pronounced Jesus innocent, they knew He was no threat to Rome. But because the governor finally consented to His crucifixion, they had no choice but to carry out the command. To those men Jesus was no more than a bizarre figure who apparently made a foolish and utterly harmless claim to be some sort of religious king. It was obvious when they first saw Jesus that He posed no military or political threat to Rome, and it must have seemed strange to them that the Jewish leaders took Him so seriously. When He was brought before Pilate, He had already been beaten and spit upon, and He looked anything but regal or dangerous. He neither looked nor talked like the many insurrectionists the soldiers had seen and probably helped execute. He not only had no band of fighting men to come to His defense but had no visible followers at all. And because He did not even offer any self-defense, the guards may have thought Him mentally deranged. When He eventually spoke to Pilate, He claimed to rule a kingdom that was not of this world, sounding to them like He was completely out of touch with reality.

The hatred of Jesus by the Jewish leaders and the multitude was obvious enough to the soldiers, but the reason for it was anything but obvious. They had heard the screams of “Crucify, crucify,” but could hardly have had any idea what was behind the intense bitterness. His supposed claim to be the Son of God seemed just as ludicrous and harmless as His claim to be a king.

But as the fourth hour of His crucifixion began, several things happened to change the soldiers’ attitude, and when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, the soldiers became very frightened.

The first thing to unnerve them would have been the sudden darkness. They would not have been aware of the tearing of the Temple veil and probably not the opening of the graves. But they could not escape noticing the earthquake with its violent splitting of rocks, and that was a terrifying experience even for hardened legionnaires. Phobe (very frightened) is the term from which we get phobia and refers to sheer terror, the absolute panic that causes rapid heartbeat, profuse sweating, and extreme anxiety. It is the verb form of the word used by Matthew to describe the disciples’ response to seeing Jesus walk on the water, thinking He was a ghost (14:26). It is also the word used to describe the reaction of Peter, James, and John when they glimpsed Jesus’ divine glory and heard the Father speak directly to them on the Mount of Transfiguration (17:6).

The context and circumstances of the passage clearly indicate, however, that the centurion and his men were frightened of much more than the darkness and earthquake. They sensed that those awesome natural phenomena had a supernatural origin, and their primary fear was not of those events themselves but of the divine power behind them. Their emotional fright soon turned to spiritual, reverential awe, as testified by the fact that they did not run for their lives or try to find a place of safety but rather declared, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Mark (15:39) tells us that it was the centurion who actually spoke the words, but Matthew makes clear that he spoke for his men as well. All of them suddenly realized that Jesus was not deluded or deranged but was indeed who the Jews had accused Him of claiming to be. As already noted, they had heard their own commander repeatedly affirm Jesus’ innocence, and they may have heard of the warning by Pilate’s wife, who declared Jesus not only to be innocent but righteous (Matt. 27:19). More than that, the few words Jesus spoke during His appearances before Pilate and from the cross must have penetrated their pagan, hardened minds. They now knew they stood in the presence of One somehow related to deity.

The soldiers’ fear gives witness to their awareness of sin, and their reverential awe gives witness to their being confronted by God’s holiness and righteousness. And just as Isaiah in his Temple vision (Isa. 6), they suddenly realized they stood under God’s judgment and condemnation.

And I believe the soldiers’ confession of Jesus’ deity gives witness to the possibility of their salvation. Both their fear and their confession were spiritual responses to Christ. From Luke we learn that the centurion, and presumably the other soldiers as well, not only confessed Jesus’ divinity but “began praising God” (23:47).

The deep conviction of the men is seen in their introducing the confession with truly. They proclaimed without reservation or qualification that the Man at whose feet they now stood was indeed the Son of God.

Some scholars maintain that, because of the Greek construction of the text and because of the soldiers’ pagan background, their statement should be rendered, “Truly this was a son of God,” as seen in some modern versions. The linguistic argument is based on what is called an anarthrous construction, meaning the Greek noun does not have a definite article (“the”). Such is the case in the text of Matthew 27:54, where there is no Greek article (the) before Son. Ordinarily in such constructions the indefinite article (“a”) is understood. But it is clear from secular Greek literature, as well as from many other passages in the New Testament, that the anarthrous construction does not always demand the indefinite article.

When Caiaphas commanded Jesus, “I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63), he used the definite article (Greek ho) before “Son.” By saying, “I adjure You by the living God,” the high priest had already made obvious that he was talking about the true, biblical God of the Jews, and it goes without saying that their Messiah could only be that God’s Son, not the son of any other god. He was accusing Jesus of claiming to be the Son of Yahweh, the creator, covenant God of Israel revealed in the Old Testament.

The same accusation was made by the Jews before Pilate, except without the definite article. “We have a law,” they said, “and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God” (John 19:7). If Jesus had been claiming to be the Son of any but the true God, the Jews would have considered Him a heretic but not a blasphemer. Not only that, but the Jews believed their God had but one divine Son. It is completely untenable, therefore, to take the Greek phrase huion theou in John 19:7 to mean anything but “the Son of God,” despite the fact that it does not contain the definite article.

The same Greek phrase (without the definite article) was used by the angel who announced to Mary that the child born to her would “be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). And after Jesus walked on the water, a similar phrase (theou huios), also without the definite article, was used by the disciples when they confessed before Jesus, “You are certainly God’s Son” (Matt. 14:33). In both of those anarthrous constructions the idea of the Son, rather than a Son, is indisputable.

It was doubtlessly the very words that the Jewish leaders used to accuse Jesus before Pilate (“He made Himself out to be the Son of God”) that the centurion picked up and used himself. The great difference was that he and his fellow soldiers now believed those words to be true. The declaration “Truly this was the Son of God!” became for them a profession of faith in Christ. I firmly believe with the noted commentator R. C. H. Lenski that “this Gentile, called Longinusin tradition, came to faith beneath the dead Savior’s cross” (The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961], p. 1133).

The gracious and profound words of Jesus that they heard, His humble, self-giving demeanor, and His complete lack of anger or vindictiveness all worked in the hearts of the soldiers. But the only way they could have known with such certainty that Jesus was truly God’s Son was through the illumination and conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Even after Peter had spent several years under Jesus’ instruction and had witnessed hundreds and perhaps thousands of divinity-affirming miracles, Jesus made clear to him that it was God the Father, not Peter’s human wisdom and understanding, that inspired his confession that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God (Matt. 16:16-17). Paul assured the Corinthians that “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3).

Only God’s Spirit could have inspired the confession of the centurion and his men, and only His Spirit could have inspired them to praise God (Luke 23:47). The gospel writers, not to mention the Holy Spirit who inspired them, would not have left the soldiers’ meaning open to question. Had the soldiers had in mind a son of some unnamed pagan deity, Matthew and the other writers would have made that clear. When Scripture speaks of God in the singular it always refers to the true God, unless the context specifically indicates otherwise. Luke did not speak of the soldiers’ praising their own god or gods, that is, some pagan deity, but rather “praising God,” which could mean only the true God. However limited their theological understanding may have been at that time, those men truly confessed the true Son of the true God.

The faith of the soldiers is of great significance, and was especially so in the early church. Their testimony was, as it were, Jesus’ own final testimony from the cross. Although given after He had died, that testimony dramatically proclaimed that His grace extends to every sinner, even to those who put him to death. During the very process of His crucifixion, Jesus Christ became the object of the faith of His crucifiers!

His prayer “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34) did not go unanswered. First, one of the thieves who had been jeering Christ turned to faith in Him. Now, after He had breathed His last, the men who had beaten, taunted, and crucified Christ turned to Him and were forgiven and saved. Jesus had declared, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:32). The very men who in unbelief and derision had literally lifted Him from the earth had indeed been drawn to Him in repentance and faith.

A contrasting response to that of the soldiers is seen in that of the crowd of observers around the cross. “And all the multitudes who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts” (Luke 23:48).

Like the soldiers, those people were alarmed about the darkness and the earthquake. And also like the soldiers, they realized that those terrifying phenomena were not caused naturally. Many of them doubtlessly had heard Jesus preach and seen Him perform miracles. Perhaps some of them had themselves been healed by Him. These people knew much better than the soldiers what Jesus stood for and who He claimed to be. They knew how He had all but banished disease from Palestine and had even raised people from the dead. They remembered that, with the rest of the multitude a few days earlier, they had hailed Jesus as the Messiah. They had heard Jesus’ gracious words from the cross and could not have helped suspecting that God’s hand was in the awesome events they were now observing.

But as they “began to return, beating their breasts” in fear and remorse, they showed no sign of repentance. They were perhaps overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and foreboding about their participation in the execution of an innocent man. Like Judas, they may have wished sincerely that they could somehow undo the terrible wrong they had done. They probably realized that God was expressing disfavor through the darkness and earthquake and that they were the objects of that disfavor. But they made no confession, either of their sin or of Christ’s lordship. They felt sorry for Him, but they did not try to help Him. They knew they were under His judgment, but they did not seek His mercy. They neither gave Christ help nor sought help from Him, and instead of turning to Him like the soldiers, they turned away.

It is probable that many people in this crowd eventually returned to Him in faith. A few weeks later, upon hearing Peter’s indictment that “God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified,” many of his hearers “were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ ” After he explained the way of salvation, many who had been in the crowd beneath the cross became numbered among the 3,000 souls converted at Pentecost (Acts 2:36-41).

But the convictions of most of those who turned away from Jesus at the cross remained shallow, and the seed of the gospel was never able to take root and grow into saving faith. Unlike those whom Paul commended in Corinth, most of those who beat their breasts at Golgotha did not have the sorrow “that is according to the will of God [and that] produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.” They evidently had only “the sorrow of the world [that] produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10).

SYMPATHETIC LOYALTY

And many women were there looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, among whom was Mary Magdalene, along with Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. (27:55-56)

The reaction of the second group Matthew mentions was especially beautiful. Unlike the soldiers, who went from unbelief to belief, the many women who were there were already believers. Their response to the crucifixion could be described as sympathetic loyalty.

From John’s account we know that some of the women, as well as John, had earlier been at the foot of the cross (John 19:25-27). But perhaps because they could not bear to observe the suffering of their Lord so closely, those women were now looking on from a distance. They were not afraid of the soldiers or the Jewish leaders and had no concern for their own safety or welfare. They were not ashamed of being identified with Jesus. They withdrew because they were devastated at the suffering and death of the one they had loved so dearly. Their grief was deep and their hopes seemed shattered, but their courage was undaunted.

Sympathetic loyalty is one of most beautiful and distinguishing characteristics of godly women, generally being more evident in them than in godly men. A spiritual woman has the capacity for incredible loyalty in the face of ridicule and danger. Except for John, the rest of the disciples had fled in fear. Even Peter, who mustered enough courage to follow Jesus as far as the house of Caiaphas, was not to be found at the cross.

The great Bible expositor G. Campbell Morgan described those women as “hopeless, disappointed, bereaved, heartbroken; but the love He had created in those hearts for Himself could not be quenched, even by His dying; could not be overcome, even though they were disappointed; could not be extinguished, even though the light of hope had gone out, and over the sea of their sorrow there was no sighing wind that told of the dawn” (The Gospel According to Matthew [Old Tappan, N. J.: Revell, 1929], p. 318).

We do not know the number of women who were there, but Matthew’s speaking of them as many perhaps would suggest up to a dozen. However many they were, these women were among those who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him.

Devoted women had traveled with and served Jesus for a long while. Among the earliest of them were “Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their [Jesus’ and the disciples’] support out of their private means” (Luke 8:2-3). Throughout His ministry, such women ministered generously and lovingly to Jesus and the Twelve with their financial resources, their talents, and their hospitality. It is probable that many, if not most, of the meals they ate were prepared by those faithful women.

Ministering translates diakone, which has the basic meaning of serving and is the verb form of the noun from which deacon is derived. Although the feminine form of the term was not used to describe a specific type of ministry until many years later in the early church, if at all (see Rom. 16:1, where “servant” could be translated “deaconess”), those ministering women were, in effect, the first deaconesses.

Throughout the Old Testament, godly women are acclaimed. The psalmist extolled the Lord by declaring that “He makes the barren woman abide in the house as a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!” (Ps. 113:9). And even apart from the possible office of deaconess, the role of women in the early church centered in their faithfulness as wives and mothers and in their practical care for fellow believers. The kind of elderly widow Paul declared was worthy of support by the church was one who has “a reputation for good works, . . . has brought up children, . . . has shown hospitality to strangers, . . . washed the saints feet, . . . assisted those in distress, and . . . devoted herself to every good work” (1 Tim. 5:10; cf. Luke 4:39; 10:40).

Far from being spiritually demeaning, such self-giving acts of practical helpfulness are a mark of womanly excellence and spiritual maturity—a truth Jesus had a very difficult time teaching the disciples (see John 13:3-16).

The ministry of godly women has always been of great significance in the church. Those women by the cross were the primary believing eyewitnesses to Jesus’ crucifixion, and a woman was the first person to see the Lord after His resurrection. Those faithful women certainly would have had a special place of respect and affection in the early church. When the apostles were first preaching the gospel and testifying of their experiences with Jesus, it is hard to imagine that they did not frequently acknowledge the courage and devotion of those women—who remained with the Lord during His time of agony and death, while they, His specially chosen and trained men, had fled and were hiding out in some obscure part of Jerusalem.

Through His direction of Matthew’s pen, the Holy Spirit identifies some of those godly women by name. The first is Mary Magdalene, the one from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2). Magdalene was not part of her family name but simply indicated she was from the town of Magdala, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, just south of Capernaum. She probably was identified in that way because she was unmarried and could not be identified by her husband or sons, as was the common practice in that day.

The second woman mentioned is Mary the mother of James and Joseph. This James was one of the apostles and was commonly referred to as James the Less (Mark 15:40) or James the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3; Acts 1:13) to distinguish him from the other James, who, with Peter and his brother John, constituted the inner circle of the Twelve. John identifies this Mary as “the wife of Clopas” (John 19:25), apparently a variant of Alphaeus.

The third woman is identified as Salome by Mark (15:40) but is referred to by Matthew simply as the mother of the sons of Zebedee, in other words, Zebedee’s wife. The sons of Zebedee were James and John (Matt. 4:21) and were nicknamed by Jesus “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). From John’s gospel we learn that Mary the mother of Jesus was also at the cross (19:26), although she may not have been with the other women at this time.

The first of the three women Matthew mentions was not married, the second was identified by her children, and the third by her husband. The implication seems to be that divine dignity is bestowed on all categories of womanhood. God has a marvelous and blessed role for women He has gifted with singleness, for women who are faithful mothers, and for women who are faithful wives. And perhaps in order not to suggest a secondary rank for the single woman or for the formerly wicked woman, Mary Magdalene is here named first.

Conspicuously absent from the scene at the cross were the Twelve, except for John. Judas had committed suicide, and the other ten were hiding for fear of their lives. During their Lord’s greatest time of need, they had temporarily violated the basic principle of discipleship. “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me,” Jesus said, “is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:38). At this time the disciples not only did not have the courage to risk bearing their own crosses but did not even have the courage to stand with their Lord as He bore His.