These verses relate what took place when the Lord Jesus yielded up the ghost. The blessed Lord died, laid down the life which He had, and which none had title or power 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 followed which nothing else could accomplish—which all His own blessed and beautiful life, as God incarnate, 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 yielded 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 graves after his resurrection. Heaven, earth, and hell, felt a power they had never owned before.
“By weakness and defeat
He won the meed 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 of having 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, typifying 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.”
It is most blessedly significant, too, the manner in which it was rent—viz., “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.
Two facts of immense importance stand connected with the precious death of the Lord Jesus Christ—first, everything on God’s side is manifested and declared; secondly, everything on man’s side is exposed and judged. By the rending of the veil not only is God set free to act in righteous love toward guilty rebels like us, but the affections of His nature, His heart, are disclosed in such a wondrous way, leaving us absolutely nothing to do in the presence of such favor but to adore and worship. Wonderful it is to think that there are no secrets in God’s heart now; the sorrows of the beloved Son have told the secrets of the Father’s bosom. Jesus, who was the only- begotten Son, ever in His bosom, declared Him, and never more truly than when God forsook Him, when His heart was broken by reproach, when He looked for some to take pity, and there was none, and for comforters, and found none. It is very blessed to see that on God’s side both His heart and the new place in which He would set us in His Christ, according to His heart, are both made known at the same time that everything on our side is exposed and judged. What tidings would this latter be to our hearts without the former? How could one ever face such a scene if the heart had not the knowledge of a home with Him who is the “brightness of eternal glory?” I am sure we are feeble in our apprehension of the terribleness of judgment, Divine judgment, as expressed in the cross of Christ; but (not to anticipate on that head) we are as feeble in apprehending the beauty of that Divine circle now thrown wide open to us, that spot, that unique region on God’s side, where not only all His secrets are divulged, but where His heart finds its own satisfaction in disclosing its treasures to us! The earliest moment in which the blessed God could do this He did it, and that was when His own Son, who came to do His will, accomplished it to the perfection of God’s own nature; then it was the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, the silence which had long reigned within that mysterious curtain was broken, and within it, where only one man, of one tribe, of one nation, on one day of the year, was permitted to enter, poor hearts like ours are entitled to be perfectly and always at home.
“God now brings thee to His dwelling,
Spreads for thee His feast divine;
Bids thee welcome, ever telling
What a portion there is thine.
In that circle of God’s favor, Circle of the Father’s love, All is rest, and rest for ever, All is perfectness above.”
Then, secondly, at the same time that all on God’s side is opened, all here on man’s side is both exposed and judged; the sun was darkened, the earth quaked, the rocks rent, the graves were opened: now it was that destruction and death felt the power of Him whose fame they had heard with their ears. If our hearts only entered a little more into the wonderful extent of this judgment, we should never desire to revert to anything so judged here, the emancipation would be wonderful to us. If we understood the cross better, the Lord’s Supper would be our continual attitude of soul; positive delight to connect ourselves with Him in His death, and remember Him in it, because through that death the circle of God’s festivities was opened to us, and because in His death the love of Jesus, as well as of His Father, was expressed to us. It would, moreover, fortify our hearts against crushing disappointment, for how could we expect anything but death here, if our hearts were in the continual remembrance of His precious death for us?
“Remember Thee and all Thy pains,
And all Thy love to me;
Yea while a breath, a pulse remains,
Will I remember Thee.”
‘‘Note: This also appeared in Helps in things Concerning Himself, vol. 3.