Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Mark 15:31
Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save.
31. the chief priests ] whose high dignity and sacred office should have taught them better than to descend to the low passions of the mob.
mocking said ] “scornynge him, ech to other, with; scribis, seiden,” Wyclif. The ordinary bystanders blaspheme ( Mar 15:29), the members of the Sanhedrim mock, for they think they have achieved a complete victory.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Mar 15:31-32
Let Christ, the King of Israel, now descend from the cross.
A glorious reproach
In the Divinest sense He could not save Himself. Physically, of course, He could have delivered Himself, come down from the cross, and overwhelmed His enemies with destruction. But morally He could not, and His moral weakness here is His glory. He could not because He had promised to die, and He could not break His word. He could not, because the salvation of the world depended upon His death. The greatest man on earth is the man who cannot be unkind, who cannot tell a falsehood, who cannot do a dishonourable act or be guilty of a mean, selfish deed. The glory of the omnipotent God is, that He cannot lie. These men, therefore, should have honoured the weakness that they acknowledged; adored it. Their very confession condemns their conduct. (Homilist.)
The heroism of the crucified
The testimony of an enemy is always valuable. What is it that they testify? First, that He saved others: and second, that in order to save others-nay, they testify not that, yet it is implied in the assertion they make-in order to save others He was content not to save Himself. Perhaps there never was a sentence, that was in one sense so radically false, and in another sense so sublimely true, as this particular sentence. Take it in the abstract, and it contains a most outrageous and glaring falsehood. There was not a moment from beginning to end of His human career in which our blessed Lord might not have turned back from shame and suffering. Yet while these words are false absolutely, they are none the less true relatively. Relatively to the work which our blessed Lord had undertaken, it was necessary that He Himself should not be saved. Because He was the Son, there was a certain blessed, constraining influence which rendered it, in one sense, necessary that He should go forward: but the necessity was not imposed upon Him from without, but accepted from within. It was the necessity of love; love, first and foremost to His Father, and then love to thee and to me. When you look over His history, how much there was to lead Him to exercise this power which all along He possessed. How natural it would have been if He had done so. He has scarcely come into the world before He begins to meet with the worlds bad treatment. When He was born, they had no room for Him in the inn. Would it not have been most natural if our blessed Lord had even then thought better of it. These rebel sinners, these thoughtless beings, I have come into the world to save-they have not even a place whereon to lay My infant form. As He grew up to be a young man, He came unto His own: His very brethren did not believe in Him. When He found that there was cold incredulity, an absence of sympathy in His own family circle, might He not reasonably have been expected to say, Ah, well! this is not what I expected: I thought I should have been received with open arms; that every heart would have been full of sympathizing tenderness towards Me: but they have nothing but hard thoughts to think, and hard sayings to say of Me. Let them alone: from this time I give up the task: it is a hopeless one. We read that He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. How wonderful a thing it was that Jesus Christ should have stood all this, and yet continued true to His purpose still. They laid the cross upon Him, and He faints on the way to Calvary. O, Son of God! Thy body has fainted! Weakness has done its work! Surely Thou wouldest be justified in giving in now! He might reasonably have said, Flesh and blood will bear no more; My physical strength has absolutely yielded under the terrible shock; I can carry it no further. But no, no. He may faint; but He will not yield. Is it not wonderful? What made Him stand to His purpose? What gave Him that strange stability? Well, I can only say, He loved us. Why He loved us, I do not know; but He loved us, and He loves us still; and it is because He loved us that He saved others; Himself He could not save. But we are only skimming the surface. We must endeavour, if we can, to go deeper than this. There is a mystery of sorrow here. If we are to understand what is transpiring on yonder cross, we must endeavour to look within the veil; we must try to see things as God saw them. Yet it is an awful thing to think of that world descending in that gradually lowering scale into the very jaws of darkness and death. Where are we to find the hero of humanity? Who shall fight our battle for us? Who shall avail to lift that sinking world from the very depth of doom into which it is disappearing? No angel in heaven can do it. There is only One who can do it, and there is only one way in which He can do it. By a sovereign effort of His own will, Christ might have called a new world into existence; He might have blasted this world with judgment, and caused it to disappear altogether; but in doing so He would have been stultifying-shall I say?-His own designs; He would have been withdrawing from His own eternal purposes of mercy and love. Nay, nay; the ruinous world must be saved-How is it to be done? The Son of the Fathers bosom steps into that ascending scale. Now look! He does it voluntarily. I lay down My life, He says; no man taketh it from Me; I give it; for it was His own free gift for man, for you, for me. What means this strange sense of desolation! Through all His human life, there was one thing that had sustained Him, one joy that had ever been present to Him. It was the joy of His Fathers presence. He had lived in the light of His countenance. He had refreshed Himself with His fellowship. He had drank of the brook by the way, and therefore He lifted up His head. But lo! the brook by the way seems to be dried up. It was no mere natural thirst that parched Emmanuel. That outward thirst was but the indication, the type, the symbol, of the inward thirst which burned within His soul. What means this strange sense of desolation? What is it? Is it the loss of human friends? No; something more than that. That is bad enough to bear; but it is something more than that. What is it? For the first time in His human life He finds Himself alone. The light is eclipsed; the sun has disappeared from His heaven, and the joy of existence is gone. He gazes round and round-east, and west, and north, and south. What is it? It is but a little matter that the outward sun was eclipsed; but there was a dread eclipse had taken place within the soul of Emmanuel, of which that outward darkness was but the type. What was it? Wherever sin goes it brings its own deadly shame of everlasting night along with it. And because He had taken the burden of the worlds sin upon Him, therefore the shadows of night were resting upon Him now. One shrinks from following out these words, yet one can fancy-and it is no mere fancy-what must have passed through His heart. I could have borne that My own people should treat Me thus: I could have borne that My own disciple should betray Me for thirty pence: I might have borne that Simon Peter should deny me with oaths and curses: I might have borne the outward pain, the bodily anguish: but O, My God, My God, Thy smile has been my light: Thy presence has been My joy. What have I done? How comes it to pass that instead of fellowship I have desolation; instead of Thy joyful company, Thy blessed society, I have this awful sense of loneliness? What is it? What means it? My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? What did it all mean? It meant that He saved others: and because He saved others, Himself He could not save: and so the scale that bore the Christ descended into the deepest darkness, and the scale that bore a ruined world began to rise, and to rise. Lo! the gloom is settled on that, and the sunlight on this: that, is sinking down into the darkness of death; this, is rising into the glories of life. The angels are veiling their faces in horror as they behold the Son of God disappear beneath the cloud: the sons of God are shouting in triumph as they behold a ransomed world rising into the very sunlight of the Divine smile, the curse revoked, the doom recalled, the gates of everlasting life opened to a ruined world. So He carried it through,-that wonderful enterprise-through to the bitter end: and so He drank the cup to the last drop, and He paid the ransom to the last penny, sinner, for thee, and for me. I want to ask you, Have you accepted that which He has purchased at such a price? What is it that renders sin inexcusable? Just this glorious fact we are gazing at. Your condemnation, my friend, lies in this: that at the cost of such indescribable agony as we shall never know, until we get to the other side: and not even then, Christ has bought everlasting life for you, and you have refused to accept it. Tonight, that pierced hand seems to hold it out for you. It seems as though He pleaded with you; as if He were saying, Now, my dear brother, I have saved, not Myself, that I might save thee: I turned not my face from shame and spitting, that thy face might be irradiated with Divine glory: I wore that crown of thorns that thou mightest wear the crown of glory: I carried that cross that thou mightest sway the sceptre: I hung in agony that thou mightest sit in triumph: I fathomed the depth that thou mightest rise to the height. Men! do you think there is anything manly in trampling such love as that under your feet? Women! do you think there is anything womanlike in turning your back upon such love as that? Oh, let us be ashamed of ourselves tonight, that we have sinned against that love so long! (W. H. Aitken, M. A.)
The demand of sinners unreasonable
These words are a demand that He would prove His claims to the Messiahship by coming down from the cross, and a promise that, if He would do this, they would receive Him as the Messiah. It strikes us at once that this demand is unreasonable, even to effrontery.
I. You make demands which are unreasonable, because compliance with them would defeat the Divine plan of redemption. This was one characteristic of the unreasonable demand of the Pharisees. If Christ had come down from the cross, the work of redemption would never have been finished. Similar demands are often made by ungodly men-demands that Christ would come down from the cross-that He would save them in some other way than by His atoning sacrifice, and His blood.
II. Your demands are unreasonable, because you create for yourselves the very difficulties which you claim to have removed. Jesus was moving among the Jews, working the most convincing miracles. They seized Him, and nailed Him to the cross: then they demanded that He should undo what their own malice had done-Come down from the cross, and we will believe. A similar unreasonableness belongs to many of your demands. Is it not your own hand that has plunged your soul into this flood of worldliness, etc.? With what reason can you urge, as your apology for inaction, the chains which your own hands have fastened on your souls?
III. Demands are unreasonable which require additional evidence of the importance of religion, when sufficient has been already given. Unreasonableness of this kind characterized the demand of the Pharisees. They had seen the Saviours miracles, etc. It was unreasonable in them to propose that, if a single miracle should be added to the multitude already given, they would be ready to receive Jesus as the Christ. Precisely similar is the unreasonableness of many of your demands. You say, If I had lived in Christs day, and had seen His miracles, I should have been His disciple. Other demands exhibit the same unreasonableness. The reason most commonly given for indifference to religion, is the inconsistency of professors. I presume every one of you knows some whom he acknowledges as real Christians. You are no stranger to these triumphs of the cross, to these demonstrations of its Divine power. And yet you plead that, because A, B, and C do not live consistently with their profession, you will neglect religion, and treat it as if it were a worthless imposture. Similar are all the reasons for neglecting religion, founded on its mysteries. If men never engaged in worldly business till all who engage in it manage it wisely, honestly, and successfully; if they never acted except on certainty-never acted till everything dark was cleared up, and every objection removed, they would never act at all.
IV. It is unreasonable to demand more, when God has already done so much in your behalf, especially when you have not made improvement of what He has done. The Jews might have known, from the ancient prophecies, that Christ was to suffer an ignominious death. It was unreasonable.
V. Your demands are unreasonable, because God has proved it by testing them. You have made similar demands before; God has condescended to comply with them, and yet you did not, even then, keep the promises you had made. Time and again had the Pharisees asked Jesus to give them a sign that they might see and believe. Signs He had given them, the most stupendous and convincing; yet they were not more ready to receive Him than before. And even when He rose from the dead, they still rejected Him.
VI. Your demands are unreasonable, because, in the very act of making them, you admit what justifies your condemnation. The Pharisees said, He saved others. They admitted that He had wrought miracles. Thus, by the very justification which they attempted, they condemned themselves. So it is with you. Whatever reason you may give for neglecting religion, you admit its Divine authority, its reality, and importance. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant.
VII. Your demands and apologies are unreasonable, because they lay the blame of your continued impenitence on God. (S. Harris.)
The sight of the Saviours suffering
Do you not know that this simple story of a Saviours kindness is to redeem all nations? The hard heart of this worlds obduracy is to be broken before that story. There is in Antwerp, Belgium, one of the most remarkable pictures I ever saw. It is The Descent of Christ from the Cross. It is one of Rubens pictures. No man can stand and look at that Descent from the Cross, as Rubens pictured it, without having his eyes flooded with tears, if he have any sensibility at all. It is an overmastering picture-one that stuns you, and staggers you, and haunts your dreams. One afternoon a man stood in that cathedral looking at Reubens Descent from the Cross. He was all absorbed in that scene of a Saviours sufferings when the janitor came in and said: It is time to close up the cathedral for the night. I wish you would depart. The pilgrim, looking at that Descent from the Cross, turned around to the janitor and said: No, no; not yet. Wait until they get Him down. O, it is the story of a Saviours suffering kindness that is to capture the world. (Dr. Talmage.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Likewise also the chief priests mocking,…. Or “laughed at one another”, as the Syriac version renders it, having gained their point, and satiated their revenge on him:
said among themselves with the Scribes; who were likewise his implacable enemies;
he saved others, himself he cannot save; [See comments on Mt 27:41],
[See comments on Mt 27:42].
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1) “Likewise also the chief priests mocking,” (homoios kai hoi archiereis empaizontes) “In a similar manner also the chief (Executive, administrative) priests repeatedly mocked,” Mat 27:41.
2) “Said among themselves with the scribes,” (pros allelous meta ton grammateon elegon) “And with the scribes they said to one another, repeatedly,” Luk 23:35. In chuckling blasphemy this motley horde of apostate religious leaders made sport of Jesus.
3) “He saved others; (allous esosen) “Others He saved,” Mat 27:42. This was a glorious admission of truth, the purpose for which He came into the world, Joh 3:17; Luk 19:10.
4) “Himself He cannot save.” (heauton ou dunatai sosai) “Himself He is not able to save,” or deliver from the cross and from death, Mat 27:42; By saving His life in the physical sense, He would have lost it in the higher spiritual sense, Mar 8:35.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
‘In the same way also the chief priests, mocking him among themselves with the scribes, said, “He saved others, himself he cannot save. Let the Messiah the king of Israel now come down from the cross that we may see and believe.” ’
This was the second charge mentioned at His examination, that He was the Messiah, the king of Israel. They would remember too His claim that from then on they would see His power and triumph. Well, they felt that they had scotched that. He was powerless to do anything now. Instead of seeing His power revealed they were satisfied that they were seeing His demise.
‘The Chief Priests — with the scribes.’ His enemies had come to gloat over His death in spite of it being a festival day. They were too sophisticated to mock directly and openly, a touch of authenticity, and so they did it between themselves. The lay elders are not mentioned. It was the religious leaders whose jealousy and enmity had sought to destroy Him.
‘He saved others, Himself he cannot save.’ They had been jealous at His power to heal, but now they gloated because He could not heal Himself. Now His powers would do Him no good. Or perhaps they meant ‘in His mind’s eye He saved others’ signifying His claim to be the Messiah. To Mark however there was a deeper significance. He Whom they derided was dying precisely so that He may save others. And when He ‘saved Himself’, as the One Who had power to raise Himself from the dead, it would be after having accomplished what was necessary to be the Saviour of the world (Joh 5:21; Joh 5:26; Joh 10:18). Had He saved Himself earlier He could not have been a Saviour.
‘Let the Messiah the king of Israel now come down from the cross that we may see and believe.’ The ‘now’ reflects their cruel sense of triumph at His helplessness. The statement indicates their old problem of sign-seeking. But He did ‘come down’, and when He did they still did not believe. Mark is aware of the irony of it. In three days time His power would be demonstrated, and they would still not believe.
Note the contrast between ‘the king of the Jews’, Pilate’s incorrect description by an outsider (compare Mat 2:2), and ‘the king of Israel’ which was strictly correct in Jewish eyes.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mar 15:31. Himself he cannot save. Cannot he save himself? Beza, Bengelius.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mar 15:31 . : both in Mt. and in Mk. the priests lead in the unhallowed chuckling, scribes and elders (Mt.) being mentioned only subordinately ( , etc.). : a common fear gives place to a common sportiveness in this unholy brotherhood, now that the cause of their fear is removed.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
also the chief priests the chief priests also (as well as the passers by).
said = kept saying.
among themselves to (Greek. pros. App-101.) each other.
others. Greek allos. App-124.
cannot = is not (Mar 15:23) able to.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
also: Psa 2:1-4, Psa 22:16, Psa 22:17, Mat 27:41-43, Luk 23:35-37
He: Joh 11:47-52, Joh 12:23, Joh 12:24, 1Pe 3:17, 1Pe 3:18
Reciprocal: Act 4:27 – the people
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE LESSONS OF FAILURE
He saved others; Himself He cannot save.
Mar 15:31
I. This is the great lesson of failure.It is Gods will. What a world of meaning there is in those few words! If you believe in Him, if you believe that He has made you, and that He loves you and desires your good, why should you be so impatient and impetuous? God does not blame you for not having the gifts He denies. The man who had one talent in the parable was not punished for having only one talent, but for not making a good use of the talent he had. No doubt in using your own poor talent you will be disappointed; but what matters it? You shall have done your duty, and the issue of your duty rests with God.
II. We form far too ready judgments of success and failure.We set our hearts upon a certain object, and if we do not attain it, we say at once, There; I have failed; or if we do attain it, we say, There is a success, as if there could be no degree of doubt about it. But is not experience always teaching in some strange way that we do not really know what is best for us, or, in other words, that our successes are often failures, and our failures, which we deplore, are often successes? It is clear that we are taught to improve our work by failing in it. There is a wonderful uniting power in defeat. Defeat and even disaster evoke a wealth of generous sentiments in noble minds. There is no more splendid example than the faith of those who, when all seemed to be lost, have yet disdained to despair.
Human life, regarded in its religious aspect, is nothing else than an education of the soul. Christ teaches these two lessons which are so precious, that failure is an instrumentnay, a better instrument than successin disciplining the soul; and that in this mysterious world of which we are the denizens it is only in failing ourselves, as men count failure, that we can hope to render the highest blessings to others.
Bishop Welldon.
Illustration
An accomplished lady once wrote that she had lived long enough to thank God for not having granted her prayers; she meant for not having granted them in the way which she would have chosen. Believe me, as you proceed in life, as you look backward upon the ever-lengthening vista of past years, you will see more and more clearly that it would not have been good for you to have your own way, that you have learnt more from your trials than from your triumphs, and that God has been dealing with you lovingly and wisely, like a Father, in denying you the desire of your hearts, and in teaching you, by however hard a discipline, that you must give up what has seemed to you so good, for the sake of winning some day something which is much better.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE MISTAKE OF THOSE THAT PASSED BY
The men who saw our Saviour dying
I. Thought exclusively of the present.On this side of death they had clear, if narrow and illogical, views. They did not, as a body, think of the future as the balance and rectification of the present. Everything beyond death was shadowy and intangible. Only here, in the world of sense, was the real. The man of this world has a very limited horizon, and there is no completeness in his earthly day, no certainty in the passage of its hours. Man himself, according to his instinctive precautions and the maxims of his experience, is ruined when he dies. What if eternity lie all around us, and beyond be the true life?
II. Were more concerned for pain and physical deprivation than for sin.Not that they pitied the Sufferer: at any rate their pity had no chastening or restraining force. It was only as regarding the pain, etc., as an evil from which men should shrink at any cost, and as judging Him Who, in their ideas, had brought it upon Himself, that they spoke. They did not conceive of themselves as in a worse position than He Whom they beheld. They revelled in iniquity. A time would come when they would say of themselves, It were better we had never been born.
III. Argued from self-love to the salvation of others.It is in this aspect that their illogicalness is most evident. To talk thus showed a want of deep thought. Who is it to whom the world looks for its blessings and benefactions? To the timorous, the calculating, the self-seeking, the selfish? Is it not just the absence of these qualities that inspires our confidence and awakens our expectation? Woe to us, if in our utter loss of all things and our last agony, we have to turn for help and comfort to those whose first thought is for themselves! It is self-contradiction, it is indictment of themselves, when they say, He saved others; Himself He cannot save.
Illustration
The great question with us all now should be, not Could He save Himself? or Could He save others? but Has He saved us? Only in that consciousness can we be saved from the sin and folly of those who taunted and crucified Him. And the evidence of it is not far to seek,Has He enfranchised us from self? Then shall we seek the good of others and the glory of God, and not till then. Let this be our plea with God, and our pattern amongst men, He saved others; Himself He could not save.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
1
This remark of the chief priests fulfilled Luk 4:23.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
The chief priests and scribes also blasphemed by mocking Jesus and claiming that He could not save Himself. Their abuse must have wounded Jesus grievously since they were Israel’s leaders. Their title for Jesus, "King of Israel," focused on the apparent irony of Jesus being the leader not only of the Jews but of their nation. They were the leaders of the nation, not Jesus. The fact that Jesus was apparently helpless on the cross was the supreme irony from their viewpoint. Their Messiah of all people needed to be in control. This was the climax of the religious leaders’ opposition to Jesus (cf. Mar 3:6; Mar 11:18; Mar 12:12; Mar 14:1; Mar 14:64; Mar 15:1; Mar 15:11-13).
"Situational irony occurs when there is a discrepancy between what a character naively expects to happen and what actually happens, or between what a character blindly thinks to be the case and what the real situation is. . . .
"In situational irony the speaker is confident that what he or she says or expects is true, but is unaware that the real situation is, in fact, the opposite. The characters in the story are blind victims of the irony of the situation, while the reader sees the ironic contrast between what the speaker says and the way things really are." [Note: Rhoads and Michie, p. 60]
The rebels crucified with Jesus joined the others who were ridiculing Him. Rejection, abuse, and derision assailed Jesus from the highest to the lowest in society.
The total humiliation of Jesus, which this pericope records, presents Him as the completely submissive Servant of the Lord, even to the point of dying on a cross. What an example He is for all whom God has called to be His servants!