All his life Jesus Christ was the object of the scorn of men. Even in the womb, there was no room for him in the inn. Men tried to snuff out his life many times. Many times they laid traps to catch him in his words, hoping to find some occasion against him that they might kill him. After he had performed some notable miracle, men met secretly to discuss how to destroy him. Even at the time of the passover, when he had come to Jerusalem, they were minded to assassinate him secretly.

But his hour was not yet.

And now it is that hour and the power of darkness, and Christ is delivered over to their hatred.

Isaiah saw him long before hanging on Calvary’s cross, and Isaiah spoke of him: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:3).

Many years before Isaiah, David had taught Israel to sing of his Seed in his anguish: “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head” (Ps. 22:6–7).

Now at Golgotha these words come true as the passersby revile the dying Christ.

With a terrible swiftness the events of his crucifixion unfold. That very swiftness is evidence of the hatred that lay smoldering deep within men’s breasts against Christ. And when it becomes evident that he is in their power, their hatred breaks forth in a terrible fury motivated by the long-standing enmity of the powers of darkness. All the forces of the demonic kingdom, of the false church and the world, of hardened unbelief and visceral enmity, break out against Christ. They fall on him to tear him to pieces and to heap indignity and cruelty upon him and to pour out venom and malice against him.

The mob in the garden swiftly takes Jesus and binds him. There are no charges. His enemies will come up with some when the time comes. A sham trial is hastily organized. False witnesses are sought, but none can agree about what makes Jesus worthy of death. He is placed under oath, and when he confesses the truth, then with mock indignation the evil consistory condemns him. When Jesus stands before Pilate, then the leaders of the false church go among the people to move them to ask for Barabbas. With blood-curdling screams, over and over again, they demand Jesus’ crucifixion and call down his blood on their heads and on the heads of their children. Trying to escape his responsibility, Pontius Pilate delivers Jesus to Herod, and that reprobate passes Jesus off to Pilate’s soldiers for a moment of levity. Having given sentence against Jesus, the legionaries of Pilate array Jesus in shabby purple, smite him with a reed scepter, crown him with thorns, and mockingly bow before the king. The morning now come, they lay Jesus’ cross on his lacerated back and lead him out to be crucified. They strip him of his clothes, nail him to his cross, place the superscription “The King of the Jews” over his head, set his cross upright upon Golgotha, and sit down to play a game of dice for his vesture.

Now those passing by add to the misery of the dying Christ.

No doubt the devil is behind the words of these passersby. Chief among the princes of this world who crucify the Lord of glory is the devil himself. He and all his demons were opponents of Christ all his ministry long. They are now active in the high priest’s chambers, at Gabbatha, at the palace of Herod, and at Golgotha. We can almost hear their cackling at the cross. They have crucified the Lord of glory! Having attempted to snuff out his life from the first mention of his name in the garden of Eden, when they heard the dreadful promise of the Seed of the woman and of the crushing of their own leader’s head, now they have crucified him before the world.

And they are among the passersby. Who are the passersby? Residents of Jerusalem? Perhaps some are from Galilee. No doubt many are pilgrims from the Dispersion who have gathered to keep the passover. Maybe some are villagers from the surrounding countryside, hastening on some errand at this busy and financially profitable time of year. Others are gawkers gathered by the spreading news of the crucifixion of Jesus. For one reason or another, whether purposefully gathering at the cross or going about the errands of their day, they pass by the terrible scene at Golgotha.

But they pass by.

Where are they going? What are they doing this Friday morning? It does not matter. There at Golgotha they and their lives and their spiritual states are all summarized in the description that they pass by.

They go about their day, cast a hurried glance at the dying Christ, take note of the commotion of the thieves and the smug shouts of the Jewish leaders. They quickly take in the superscription that has been nailed over his head; a smirk of comprehension comes across the faces of some, and a self-righteous surge of outrage arises in the breasts of others. They see the nails and the exhausted figure of Jesus Christ, lacerated, bloody, and bruised from his encounters with Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate. Taking it all in, hurriedly they pass by.

To pass by such a scene is in itself the expression of the coldness of their superficial and carnal natures. What thinking person could pass by three of his countrymen, writhing in their agony and bleeding in their suffering, and not even stop? Jeremiah wept with this bitter lamentation: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger” (Lam. 1:12).

They pass on. It is nothing to them. The cares of the world and the thoughts of the day consume their carnal minds.

Thousands of them. Do they know him? Have they not just hailed him as the Son of David? Did they not hear his gracious words? Did they not see his mighty works? Did they not take note of the authority with which he spoke? It makes no difference. He has now been condemned by the church and before the world. Guilty of some crime, as described by their leaders and as confirmed by the court of Pilate.

Casually they go on with their lives and pass by the cross of the one who had taught them and who, as the testimony of his doctrine, had healed them, recovered sight to the blind, made lame men to walk, cleansed lepers, and raised dead men to life again.

So indifferent, so superficial, so carnal.

He has been condemned; that is all that matters. The church has said that he is guilty. Blind followers of blind leaders, they pass on with their day and with their lives.

But it is worse, for, not even stopping with their day to consider what is happening, they revile him: “Ha, ha, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it, save yourself and come down from the cross!” Foul wisdom of man: “Come down from the cross!” “If thou be the Son of God”: foul blasphemy of the dying Christ by these superficial, carnal, unthinking, and uncritical passersby!

Still worse is their wicked perversion of his words. Christ had spoken similar words: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But they say, “Thou that destroyest the temple!”

There is a vicious sarcasm in these words.

There is a lie in these words. Jesus never said what they say that he said. Oh yes, he said that he would build the temple in three days, but for the rest they pervert his words. With their perversion they with their leaders seek to justify their own unbelief and carnality.

He made his declaration about the temple after he had first cleansed the earthly temple. He had driven out all of the profane buyers and sellers, along with their bleating sheep, lowing cattle, and cooing doves. He had overthrown tables and scattered the moneychangers, who had made God’s house of prayer a den of thieves. Incensed, the wicked leaders had demanded a sign of his authority to cleanse the temple. The Lord gave them the sign of his authority as the Son in God’s house: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).

He accused them of being destroyers of God’s house. It was their appointed place. They were the destroyers. He was the builder. In their hatred of him, they perverted his words: “He said he would destroy the temple and build it in three days!”

Thus twisted, these words had been brought against Jesus by false witnesses at his trial. In that perverted form these words were passed around, repeated, and picked up by the crowd that gathered at his trial. Now that same lie is repeated by those who pass by, who throw these words in his face: “Ha, ha, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days.”

But they were the destroyers of the temple. The words of Christ that they had perverted to justify their crucifixion of him and to excuse their indifference and their blind following of their blind leaders were a prophecy, a divine word of God against them and a sure word of what God would do: “If you destroy this temple—and you certainly will destroy this temple—I will raise it up!”

A word against them, a word against man, a word against man all history long. Man is a destroyer in God’s temple. For the temple of God is simply the house that God builds to be the dwelling place of God and man. The temple is the covenant of God, a covenant of fellowship and friendship of God with man. In the temple one is with God. In the temple one is known of God and knows God, is loved by God and loves God. To be in the temple is to be a friend and servant of God; to be a priest unto God, consecrated to his glory; and to be a willing servant of the most high God. To be in the temple is to be blessed by Jehovah God in all things; to enter into the temple is to have communion with God, to dwell with him, to walk with him, and to talk with him.

That is what Adam destroyed in Eden. The garden had been his temple.

That temple God gave in a figure in the tabernacle. At Shiloh Israel destroyed it too.

That old temple of Solomon that stood in the holy city of David—Israel did almost nothing else than to destroy in that temple. The Israelites filled it with their loveless and formal worship of God, filled it with their idols, and even filled it with the blood of martyred saints. By their wretched unbelief and hardened wickedness, they brought about the destruction of that temple by the Babylonians.

God’s house was rebuilt, and that one too the Jews destroyed.

For forty-six years Herod had been building the temple that then stood in Jerusalem, and that one too the Jews would destroy by their wicked rebellion against their rulers.

But all of those houses were but figures and shadows of the real temple of God, his covenant.

This temple man always destroys because in Adam all men are by nature covenant-breakers, truce-breakers, enemies of God, who stand in implacable hatred of God, mind the things of sin and of death, and are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts. All men by nature willingly follow after the devil, the prince of darkness, the ultimate desecrator of God’s house; and, following Satan, man is always destroying God’s house, violating God’s covenant, unwilling and unable to dwell with God.

And the Lord had accused the Jews of such. Destroy this house! That is what you always do and all that you can do. I will not destroy this house. You destroy this house. I will rebuild it!

They also lied against the truth because when Christ had said, “Destroy this house,” he was not talking about the earthly temple. Every temple and tabernacle that had been before was not only a shadow of God’s covenant but was also a shadow of Christ, Christ whom God gives as a covenant for the people. Those houses were but shadows of his body. That God—who came down to dwell in the temple and took up his abode in the temple and in that temple drew his people unto himself—would come down in the flesh of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the real and abiding temple of God. In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. The essence of the temple, God with man, was realized in the wonder of grace in the incarnation. Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us, the Son of God come in the likeness of sinful flesh. He is God and man united forever inseparably, unchangeably, without mixture or confusion of the natures, two natures—God and man—united together in the one person of the Son of God.

And they sought to destroy him. And man, the sin of man, the guilt and sin, the hatred and enmity, the covenant-
breaking and all the violating of the law of God that his people did—that was the cause of Jesus’ destruction. It was not for his own sin that he was destroyed; it was not for his own guilt; it was for yours and for mine that he was destroyed.

And wonder of wonders, in their act of destroying the temple, God was laying the foundation for its everlasting existence. There on that accursed tree of the cross, God was laying the foundation stone of that temple, rejected indeed of men but elect and precious. They were destroying the temple of his flesh, and he was laying the foundation for a new and everlasting house of God. There at the cross he will lay such a foundation of righteousness—fulfill all obedience and pay for every sin—that he will have the right to perfect that temple, such that it can never be destroyed since his righteousness can never be destroyed.

Shortly, Christ will be raised from the dead; he will ascend up into heaven; he will receive of God his Father the promise of the Holy Spirit; he will return in that Spirit to fill his people, to form and to fashion them as living stones built upon him, the chief cornerstone; and he will continue to raise that temple all history long, until his church as the new Jerusalem will descend out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband.

Yes, he will raise it up!

But to this all, the leaders, in whose ears these very things had been spoken, were blinded by their hatred of him. Their hearts had been hardened beyond description, and their ears were so fat and their eyes so blind that they could not see, hear, or understand any of this.

And they twisted his words to lie against the truth.

And the passersby accept this judgment of their rulers, and the passersby cast it in Jesus’ teeth to explain away the scene from which they will shortly pass away. “Ha, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days! Save yourself. Come down from the cross.”

Come down, if you are the Son of God! As they walk on, they dismiss him.

The devil is in those words too! He is the poison in their tongues.

I say that because the crowd repeats the devil’s challenge to Jesus Christ when the devil tempted Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple at the very beginning of his ministry: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Matt. 4:6).

Devilish challenge.

Those words were spoken by the tempter as he was fully conscious of who Jesus was. The words were a bold challenge for Jesus to reveal himself as the Son of God; to show his eternal power and his Godhead by choosing the way of disobedience to his Father, by sinfully tempting the Lord his God; a challenge to forsake the way of the cross and to choose the way of disobedience, even of personal glory.

And no doubt that venomous barb is thrown at Christ by Satan in the mouths of those who pass by to taunt Christ, to tempt him to forsake the way of the cross, to leave that terrible way of suffering that is about to descend on him in the darkness, and to show his power before all. A devilish dagger thrust deep into the heart of the savior: “If thou be the Son of God! Come down!”

But you cannot say that that is the purpose of the passersby. Theirs is a dismissal of the dying Christ. When they say, “If thou be the Son of God,” they mean that he is not the Son of God. The cross is their irrefutable proof that he is not the Son of God. He is not the Son of God, and he is not the builder of the temple, for he is on a cross, accursed of God and men!

The passersby do not challenge Jesus to reveal his power, but they declare that he has none at all. Their purpose is not to provoke Jesus to come down from the cross but to declare that he could not if he wanted to. He does not come down from the cross because he cannot. He cannot come down because he is not the Son of God.

Blind in their hatred and unbelief to the fact that they are destroying the temple and declaring Jesus to be the one who destroys the temple, being willingly ignorant of the fact that he is even now building the temple, they cannot conceive of another reason, a deeper wisdom, a divine logic for the Son of God to cling to the cross.

Terrible darkness of sin!

Terrible unbelief in those who pass by the bloody tree of the Son of God.

For if you confess the truth of the matter, their argument falls to pieces.

Confess that we are the destroyers of God’s temple and that whosoever destroys in God’s temple, him will God destroy.

Confess that we are destroyers of God’s temple by our sins; by our depravity; by all our unfaithfulness; and by all our hatred, wickedness, and vile deeds.

Confess that we deserve to be destroyed.

Confess that when Christ was crucified in the church by false teachers, I passed by to continue on with my life, perhaps even adding my epithet to those already flung by others.

Confess that, and you will see why the Son of God clung to the bloody cross.

Confess that the temple of God could never be built except upon the foundation of the satisfaction of the justice of God against our sins.

Confess that the temple of God must have an unshakable foundation, a foundation that cannot be laid except by the satisfaction of the justice of God.

Confess that you and I cannot make such a sacrifice! You and I, the blood of the whole world, the sacrifices of the whole host of angels and of all the beasts of the world—if the whole world were consumed for a sacrifice, it could not build God’s temple, for it cannot satisfy his justice.

Still more, confess that by nature we are so wicked and perverse that we would never care to bring such a sacrifice to God. Let God perish, if only we can have our sins.

And still more, let us say that we were willing. Oh, to give something, anything, the most precious thing to God in vain attempts to satisfy his justice and to deliver our souls from everlasting destruction—then we would be swallowed up in the fire of the wrath of God that we would have to suffer forever and yet never make satisfaction for sin.

That is why Jesus stayed nailed to that cursed tree. That is why when they twisted his words and sarcastically cast them in his teeth; why when the devil and all the forces of darkness challenged Jesus to come down, come down, from the cross; why when all the multitudes of passersby charged Jesus to excuse themselves and dismissed him to justify their unbelief, then the Son of God clung, clung to the cross as the terrible storm of the wrath of God gathered to break out with such force as to bring him down into the very suffering of hell.

Because as the Son of God, God in the flesh, God and man in perfect union in one person, God was paying God what God was owed. None but the Son of God could bring a sacrifice so pleasing to God as to make satisfaction for sin. None but the Son of God could enter death, the very death of hell, and come out again. None but the Son of God has blood so precious that every drop of it and all the suffering associated with it touched the heart of God so that at the end of it, God said, “It is enough,” and the Son of God said, “It is finished!”

There was another power, the power that conquers all, at work at the cross: the infinite, eternal, and unfathomable love of God for his people; the love of the savior for his Father; and the love of the savior for his people, who without his atoning death must perish in their misery as destroyers of God’s temple.

Oh, hallelujah, Jesus did not come down!

And when you understand that…if you understand that…then you will stop at Calvary.

Men still pass him by. Wherever there is the preaching of the cross of Jesus and he is set forth and crucified before the eyes of men, there men pass him by. Perhaps they too twist his words and join in a sarcastic reviling of the Christ. Whenever he is crucified by unbelieving men in a doctrinal controversy, then men pass him by, not thinking him worthy of losing their own lives. Many pass into church—they pass in at baptisms and at confessions of faith—and they pass on unmoved and unrepentant. Many stay in the church and from Sunday to Sunday pass Jesus by with every Monday, hastening to get on with their lives. Others pass him by and pass out of the church to join the false church or to run with the world.

When men pass Jesus by—when they pass on unmoved and unchanged, having seen the dying Christ crucified among them—it is because he as the decreeing God had passed them by with the grace of election and appointed them to their destruction as reprobates.

But if you stop when Calvary comes to you, Jesus did not pass you by! He chose you so that you would not pass him by but that you would stop: that you would stop and consider for what reason the Son of God did not come down from the cross; that you would stop and believe; and, believing, that you would fall down and worship. Unless he did not pass us by with the grace of election, we would pass him by too.

Having chosen you, then when the cross comes to you, he arrests you and changes your heart; and then you fall down at the foot of Calvary, and you confess all your sins before him; and you pray ever so fervently,

Lord, thou Son of God, do not come down. Only thy blood can save me; only thy blood can atone for my sin; only thy blood is so precious that God will no more remember my sin; only thy blood is so valuable that for the sake of it I will pass on into heaven; only thy blood can accomplish perfect righteousness, because of which the temple is built; only thy blood can be the reason that I am made a living stone in that temple! O Lord, Son of God, do not come down. Save not thyself, but save me from all my sins.

And you will sing and shout and rejoice in this: that the Son of God did not come down.