AT 27:51-52{THESE verses relate what took place when Jesus yielded up the ghost. The blessed Lord died, surrendered the life which He had, and which none had title to take from Him. "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Such are His own blessed words. The moment that was done results came forth which nothing else could accomplish, which even His own blessed and beautiful life on earth could never have produced. But the giving up of His life, His surrendering Himself as a willing victim to death, as the just judgment of God due to sin, as well as wielded by the power of Satan, is followed by the veil of the Temple being rent in twain from the top to the bottom, by the earth quaking, the rocks rending, the graves opening, and many bodies of the saints which slept, coming forth out of the grave after His resurrection. Heaven, earth, and hell, felt a power they had never owned before.
"By weakness and defeat
He won the weed and crown;
Trod all our foes beneath His feet
By being trodden down.
He hell in hell laid low,
Made sin, He sin o'erthrew;
Bow'd to the grave, destroy'd it so,
And death, by dying slew."
The “Holy of Holies " was separated from the rest of the temple by a veil, made of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen work; it signified the distance of man as a sinner from God, and set forth the impossibility on the part of God to have any intercourse with man in his sins. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest; God could not come out, and man could not go in. But now all is reversed, the veil was rent; that veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, typified the spotless humanity of the Lord Jesus. It must be rent before the full moral glory of God can come out, and before we can go in. The new and living way was consecrated for us "through the veil, that is to say, his flesh."
Once more, observe the manner in which it was rent, namely, "from the top to the bottom;" thus declaring that no hand but God's could rend it. He declares that He does not wish the distance, which up to this moment existed, any longer to continue, and not only so, but undertakes Himself to remove it, and in such a way as to display all the righteousness, holiness, truth, and love of His nature. The life of Jesus, beautiful, and perfect, and blessed as it was, His services to man, His obedience to God, could never have rent the veil or opened the graves. If there were no Savior who died, whose blessed body was given, and whose blood was shed, God were still concealed behind that veil. Man, even at his best, was still at a distance; hell still unconquered, and he that held the power of death still unsubdued. But, blessed be God, it is not so, now that Christ has died. All of God has come out, sin in its root has been judged, the way into the holiest has now been made manifest. The 'Christ who died is risen and glorified, and in His face shines the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. W. T. T.