Luke 23

Today’s Passage: Luke 23

This is the chapter the whole Gospel has been walking toward since Luke told us that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. It begins in a hurry, early in the morning, with a legal problem. The council has reached its verdict, but it cannot carry out an execution, so the whole body rises and walks Jesus across the city to the Roman governor. There the charge is quietly changed. What was argued in the council as a religious matter is now translated into the language a Roman prefect must act on: sedition, tax resistance, a rival king. Pilate examines Him and says plainly that he finds nothing. He tries to hand the case sideways to Herod Antipas, who happens to be in Jerusalem for the feast and who has been curious about Jesus for years. Herod gets no miracle and no answer, mocks Him, and sends Him back. Pilate says a second time and a third time that the man has done nothing deserving of death, offers to punish and release Him, and then gives way to the shouting. A guilty man named Barabbas walks out of prison free, and the innocent one is handed over. From there the chapter moves out of the city: a stranger from Cyrene pressed into carrying the cross, a crowd of weeping women turned aside with a warning, a place called The Skull, and three men crucified together. Luke tells the crucifixion itself in three words. What he lingers over instead are two conversations no other Gospel records, one addressed to the Father and one to a dying criminal. Then darkness, a torn veil, a loud cry, and a borrowed tomb sealed by the coming of the Sabbath.

As you read, hold this: The King reigns from a cross, where His first word is a prayer that His killers be forgiven and His last promise is Paradise, given to a dying criminal who had nothing to offer but a request to be remembered.

Luke 23:1–7 (BSB)

¹ Then the whole council rose and led Jesus away to Pilate. ² And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this man subverting our nation, forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar, and proclaiming Himself to be Christ, a King.” ³ So Pilate asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” “You have said so,” Jesus replied. ⁴ Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.” ⁵ But they kept insisting, “He stirs up the people all over Judea with His teaching. He began in Galilee and has come all the way here.” ⁶ When Pilate heard this, he asked if the man was a Galilean. ⁷ And learning that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent Him to Herod, who himself was in Jerusalem at that time.

Watch the accusation change shape on the walk across the city. In the council room the question had been whether He was the Son of God. In the governor’s courtyard that question would have been laughed out of the room, so three new charges are drawn up for Roman ears: He is subverting the nation, He is forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar, and He is proclaiming Himself a king. The middle charge is simply untrue, and Luke has already made sure you know it, because you were standing there a few days ago when they tried to trap Him on exactly this point and He held up a coin and said:

"So Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”" Luke 20:25 (BSB)

They had heard Him say it. They repeat the opposite anyway. The third charge is the strange one, because it is true in a sense they never intended, and when Pilate puts it to Him directly, “Are You the King of the Jews?”, the answer neither denies it nor lets Pilate keep his own meaning for the word: “You have said so.” He is a king. He is not the sort of king a prefect needs to worry about, and He is a far greater danger to the world than Pilate could imagine. Then comes the governor’s first ruling, and Luke wants you to count these as they come, because there will be several: “I find no basis for a charge against this man.” No basis for a charge (αἴτιον) aition, pronounced AH-ee-tee-on. Strong's G158, a ground for a charge, cause, guilt. The word behind “basis for a charge” is aition, and it belongs to the courtroom. It means the ground of an accusation, the cause, the guilt on which a sentence can rest, and in ordinary Greek it named the thing that actually produced a result. What Pilate is saying is not merely that he personally likes the prisoner. He is announcing, as the only man in Judea empowered to execute anyone, that there is no cause here, nothing that will hold up, no crime that can be made to stick. Luke rings that bell over and over in this chapter. Pilate says it in verse four, says it again in verse fourteen after examining Him in front of His accusers, and says it a third time in verse twenty-two. Herod, questioning Him at length, finds nothing either. A condemned criminal will say the same from a neighboring cross, and a Roman centurion will say it once He is dead. Luke is building a legal record, and the record is unanimous: this Man is innocent. Hold that steadily as you read the rest, because it is the foundation of everything the gospel says afterward. He does not die for anything He did. There is no aition in Him. Whatever it is that puts Him there, it comes from outside Himself, and that is the whole point. . Nothing to try. And the case should have ended there, in the first four verses. It does not end, because the leaders press harder, and their pressing gives Pilate his exit. They mention Galilee. Herod is in town for the feast. A Galilean prisoner is technically Herod’s business, and a decision that can be handed to someone else is a decision a nervous man will always hand on.

Luke 23:8–16 (BSB)

⁸ When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased. He had wanted to see Him for a long time, because he had heard about Him and was hoping to see Him perform a miracle. ⁹ Herod questioned Jesus at great length, but He gave no answer. ¹⁰ Meanwhile, the chief priests and scribes stood there, vehemently accusing Him. ¹¹ And even Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked Him. Dressing Him in a fine robe, they sent Him back to Pilate. ¹² That day Herod and Pilate became friends; before this time they had been enemies. ¹³ Then Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people, ¹⁴ and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined Him here in your presence and found Him not guilty of your charges against Him. ¹⁵ Neither has Herod, for he sent Him back to us. As you can see, He has done nothing deserving of death. ¹⁶ Therefore I will punish Him and release Him.”

Only Luke gives us this scene, and it is one of the saddest in Scripture. Herod is delighted. He has wanted to meet Jesus for a long time, and here at last the famous Galilean is standing in his hall, and what he hopes for is a miracle. A trick. Something to watch. Understand what that means. The tetrarch who silenced John the Baptist wants entertainment from the Son of God on the morning of His death. He questions Him at great length, and Luke records the reply in five words: He gave no answer. Not one. This is the only person in the whole Gospel to whom Jesus says nothing at all. He answered scribes and Pharisees, He answered the mocking and the hostile, He answered a Roman governor two rooms away. To Herod, silence. There is a warning in that which ought to make any of us go quiet. A man may be very interested in Jesus, curious for years, eager for a display, and still never hear a word from Him, because curiosity is not faith and a spectator is not a disciple. Then the mockery, the fine robe thrown over Him as a joke about kingship, and the prisoner sent back down the hill. And Luke drops in a small, bitter observation: that day the two men became friends, having been enemies before. The world’s rivals can always find common ground over Christ. Back before Pilate, the governor now assembles everyone, chief priests, rulers, and the people, and delivers a second verdict as clear as the first. He examined Him publicly. He found Him not guilty. Herod found nothing either. He has done nothing deserving of death. And then, in the same breath, Pilate says the thing that gives the whole game away: “Therefore I will punish Him and release Him.” Therefore. There is no therefore about it. If the man is innocent, you release him and you do not touch him. Pilate is trying to buy off a crowd with an innocent man’s blood, and once a judge is willing to do a small injustice to keep the peace, he has already agreed in principle to a large one.

Luke 23:18–25 (BSB)

¹⁸ But they all cried out in unison: “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” ¹⁹ (Barabbas had been imprisoned for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.) ²⁰ Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate addressed them again, ²¹ but they kept shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” ²² A third time he said to them, “What evil has this man done? I have found in Him no offense worthy of death. So after I punish Him, I will release Him.” ²³ But they were insistent, demanding with loud voices for Jesus to be crucified. And their clamor prevailed. ²⁴ So Pilate sentenced that their demand be met. ²⁵ As they had requested, he released the one imprisoned for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over to their will.

You will notice the verse numbers jump from sixteen to eighteen. That is not an error in your copy. The Berean Standard Bible follows the earliest Greek manuscripts, and the sentence some later copies number as verse seventeen, about the governor being obliged to release a prisoner at the feast, is not in them, so it is not printed here. Nothing in the story is lost; the custom is plain enough from the crowd’s own demand. And what a demand it is. Away with this man. Release Barabbas. Luke then adds a parenthesis, and you must not read past it quickly, because the whole gospel is hiding in it: Barabbas was in prison for insurrection and for murder. Insurrection is precisely the crime Jesus is charged with and did not commit. Barabbas actually did it, and killed a man doing it. So here are two prisoners, and by the end of the morning the guilty one walks out into the sunshine and the innocent one goes to the cross that was waiting for the guilty one. Substitution is not a doctrine somebody invented centuries later to explain the cross. It is lying on the surface of the story, in a governor’s courtyard, with the names attached. Pilate tries twice more. He asks the only sane question in the chapter, “What evil has this man done?”, and answers it himself for the third time: no offense worthy of death. And then Luke gives us four of the most desolate words in the New Testament. Their clamor prevailed. Not their evidence. Not their argument. Their volume. Pilate sentenced that their demand be met, released a murderer, and handed Jesus over to their will.

Be careful here, because this is a passage that has been handled wickedly. The crowd in that courtyard is a crowd, in one city, on one morning, assembled and stirred by particular men with a particular interest in the outcome. It is not a people, and it never was. Luke himself will not let you make it one. Before this chapter ends, some of those very people will walk home from the hill beating their breasts, a member of the council that condemned Him will be revealed as a man who never consented, and a group of women from Galilee will still be standing there when nearly everyone else has gone. Remember, too, that everyone in this scene who loves Him is Jewish: Mary, the apostles, the women, Joseph of Arimathea, and the Lord Himself according to the flesh. Christians have used these verses against Jewish people for centuries, and it has been a grievous sin, and it is answered in advance by the first words the Savior speaks from the cross a few verses from now. If you want to know who is responsible for the death of Christ, the honest answer runs closer to home than any crowd in any century. He was handed over for me, and He was handed over for you.

Luke 23:26–31 (BSB)

²⁶ As the soldiers led Him away, they seized Simon of Cyrene on his way in from the country, and they put the cross on him to carry behind Jesus. ²⁷ A great number of people followed Him, including women who kept mourning and wailing for Him. ²⁸ But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹ Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’ ³⁰ At that time ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’ ³¹ For if men do these things while the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

Simon had come in from the country and had nothing to do with any of this. Cyrene was in North Africa, so he was very likely a pilgrim who had traveled a long way to keep the Passover, and a Roman soldier had the legal right to press any provincial into service on the spot. He is seized, the beam is put on his shoulders, and Luke describes his position in a phrase he has used twice before in this Gospel for something else entirely: he carried it behind Jesus. Twice the Lord had said that anyone who would come after Him must take up his cross and follow, and here is a man doing it literally, unwillingly, on the worst morning of his life. Mark tells us Simon’s sons by name, as men the church knew. Make of that what you will, and be slow to complain about the interruptions God allows into your morning.

Then the crowd, and the women mourning and wailing. And He turns. Consider that. On the road out to His own execution, He turns around to speak to weeping women, and what He says is not about Himself: do not weep for Me, weep for yourselves and for your children. This is not a rebuke of their tears. It is a prophet’s warning, spoken with grief, about what is coming on the city within one generation. Forty years later Roman legions would surround Jerusalem and the horror would be such that people would call the childless blessed, an inversion so total that in a world where barrenness was counted the heaviest sorrow, it would come to look like mercy. And they would cry out for the mountains to fall on them, borrowing the old cry of a people under judgment who could not bear to face it. Then the proverb, and it cuts to the bone: if men do these things while the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? If this is what the world does to the innocent Son of God, living and green, what will the fire find to burn in wood that is dead and dry? Do not miss where His mind is on this road. He is not gathering sympathy. He is weeping over Jerusalem, as He wept over it coming down the Mount of Olives, and warning her one last time.

Luke 23:32–38 (BSB)

³² Two others, who were criminals, were also led away to be executed with Jesus. ³³ When they came to the place called The Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals, one on His right and the other on His left. ³⁴ Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up His garments by casting lots. ³⁵ The people stood watching, and the rulers sneered at Him, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.” ³⁶ The soldiers also mocked Him and came up to offer Him sour wine. ³⁷ “If You are the King of the Jews,” they said, “save Yourself!” ³⁸ Above Him was posted an inscription: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Read verse thirty-three again and notice what Luke does not say. “They crucified Him there.” That is all. The most agonizing death the ancient world could devise, and the physician who wrote this Gospel declines to describe one moment of it. He assumes his readers know what a cross does; he refuses to make a spectacle of his Lord. We will follow him in that. What he gives us instead is the company: one on His right and the other on His left, the very positions two disciples had once wanted in His glory, filled on this day by two condemned criminals. He is numbered with them, exactly as the prophet said He would be.

And then the first word from the cross, and it is a prayer, and only Luke records it. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Be told plainly, so that nothing surprises you later: some of the earliest manuscripts do not contain that sentence, and scholars have long discussed why, while the Berean Standard Bible prints it as Scripture, as most translations do, and we will receive it and teach it as it stands. Now weigh what it says. The first thing out of His mouth after the nails is not a defense, not a protest at the injustice everyone in this chapter has admitted, not a word about His own pain. It is intercession for the men doing it. He does not announce their pardon; He asks His Father for it, which is the work of a priest, and He is already doing on the cross the very work the cross was for. Them surely includes the soldiers at His feet, who were following orders and had no idea whose garments they were gambling for. It reaches wider than that. Peter would stand in the temple a few weeks later and tell the men of Jerusalem that they had acted in ignorance, and then call them to repent and be forgiven, and thousands of them were. That is this prayer being answered. Sit with it for a moment. If the Lord Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the men who crucified Him, there is no one you know, and no one you have been, who stands outside the reach of that mercy.

Around Him, everyone says the same thing in three different voices. The rulers sneer, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.” The soldiers mock, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!” A criminal will take it up in a moment. Save Yourself. It is the identical temptation the devil brought in the wilderness at the beginning of this Gospel, come back for one last attempt at the end, and it fails the same way. And listen to what these mockers accidentally confess. He saved others is a true sentence; they have watched Him do it for three years and cannot deny it. And “the Chosen One” is the very title the voice from the cloud used on the mountain of transfiguration:

"And a voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is My Son, whom I have chosen. Listen to Him!”" Luke 9:35 (BSB)

They mean it as an insult. Heaven had already said it as a fact. The same is true of the placard nailed above His head. Pilate wrote it to publish a crime and to needle the men who had cornered him, and what he actually published was the truth: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. He is enthroned. The crown is thorns and the throne is a cross, and He is reigning from it. And the reason He does not save Himself is not that He cannot. It is that He came to save others, and on this day He cannot do both.

Luke 23:39–43 (BSB)

³⁹ One of the criminals who hung there heaped abuse on Him. “Are You not the Christ?” he said. “Save Yourself and us!” ⁴⁰ But the other one rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same judgment? ⁴¹ We are punished justly, for we are receiving what our actions deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴² Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” ⁴³ And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Here is the scene that no one but Luke gives us, and if you have read this Gospel from the beginning you will feel at once that it is the place everything has been going. Both men began by mocking. The other Gospels tell us that, and then Luke shows us what happened to one of them while they hung there. Something breaks open in him. He rebukes his companion first, and hear the order of what he says, because it is the anatomy of a soul coming home. He fears God: “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same judgment?” He condemns himself without excuse: “We are punished justly, for we are receiving what our actions deserve.” No blaming Rome, no blaming his upbringing, no protesting that others were worse. He simply agrees with the verdict against him, which is the one thing none of us wants to do and the only door there is. And then he defends Jesus: “But this man has done nothing wrong.” That is the fourth voice in this chapter to declare Him innocent, and it comes from a convicted criminal a few feet away who has been watching Him die.

Then he turns his head, and the prayer he prays is one of the smallest in the Bible. “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” Look at what he has to work with. He is looking at a man who is bleeding to death beside him, mocked by the whole establishment, apparently finished, and he calls that man a King with a kingdom still ahead of Him. That is faith with nothing whatever to lean on except the Person in front of him. And look at what he asks for. Not a throne, not rescue, not even mercy in so many words. Only this: remember me. Do not forget that I was here. And now weigh what this man does not bring. He has no time left, perhaps a few hours. He cannot be baptized, he cannot join a church, he cannot make restitution to a single person he wronged, he cannot go back and undo one hour of the life that put him on that cross. He has no good works pending and no future in which to produce any. He has literally nothing to offer God but a request. And the answer comes back immediately, and it is more than he asked: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise (παράδεισος) paradeisos, pronounced pah-RAH-day-sos. Strong's G3857, paradise, a walled royal garden. Paradeisos is not originally a Greek word at all. It came into Greek from Persian, where it named a walled royal park, the enclosed garden of a king, planted with trees and watered and kept, into which the king brought those he delighted in. The Greek translation of the Old Testament used it for the garden in Eden, and by the first century it had come to name the place of rest where the righteous dead wait in the presence of God. Paul uses it of the place he was caught up to, and the risen Christ promises the tree of life in the paradise of God to the one who overcomes. So when Jesus says this word to a dying man, He is telling him that the gate slammed shut at the beginning of the Bible is open again, and that he will walk through it before the sun goes down. Notice what makes it Paradise, though. The center of the promise is not the garden. It is the two words at the heart of it: with Me. Wherever Christ is, that is Paradise; anywhere He is not would be no paradise at all. And notice the plain comfort in it for anyone who has stood at a graveside. The Lord did not tell him he would sleep in unconsciousness for an age. He told him that today, this very day, he would be with Him. .” Not someday. Today. Not remembered from a distance. With Me. This Gospel told you at the beginning what it was about, and it said it in one line at the house of a tax collector:

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”" Luke 19:10 (BSB)

There is the thesis, and here on the hill is the proof, at the last possible hour, with no time left for anyone to improve the sample. If you have ever quietly suspected that grace is for people who clean themselves up first, this man is God’s answer to you, and He nailed the answer up in public where nobody could miss it. Now guard the truth from two errors, because both of them are common. It is not a reason to delay, for no one is promised a deathbed or a clear mind at the end of it, and this man did not plan his conversion, he was overtaken by mercy. And it is not a reason for anyone to despair, for if a criminal under sentence can be saved in his final hour by asking, then no one you love is beyond the reach of prayer, and neither are you. Praise God for a Savior who takes people at the eleventh hour and does not dock their wages.

Luke 23:44–49 (BSB)

⁴⁴ It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁵ The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. ⁴⁶ Then Jesus called out in a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.” And when He had said this, He breathed His last. ⁴⁷ When the centurion saw what had happened, he gave glory to God, saying, “Surely this was a righteous man.” ⁴⁸ And when all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts. ⁴⁹ But all those who knew Jesus, including the women who had followed Him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things.

At noon, when the sun should have been at its height, the light went out for three hours. Creation itself draws a curtain over what is happening to its Maker, and the prophets had long used darkness at midday as the sign of the day of the LORD. And then, miles away in the temple, with no hand touching it, the great veil (καταπέτασμα) katapetasma, pronounced kat-ap-ET-as-mah. Strong's G2665, the curtain, the veil before the Most Holy Place. The katapetasma was the heavy woven curtain that hung before the innermost room of the temple, and its whole purpose was to say no. Behind it was the Most Holy Place, where the presence of God dwelt among His people, and no one went in. Not the worshipers, not the priests who served daily at the altar, not the Levites. Only the high priest, only once a year, only with blood, and even then not without careful preparation. Every Israelite who came up to the feasts saw that curtain hanging there as a permanent announcement that God is holy and sinners are shut out. Then, on a Friday afternoon, while a Man died outside the city walls, it was torn from top to bottom, which is to say it was torn from God’s end and not from ours. No priest cut it. No earthquake could tear cloth so neatly down the middle. God Himself opened His house, and He did it at the precise moment the true sacrifice was offered, because there was no longer any reason to keep anyone out. Nothing you could ever do would have torn that curtain. It was torn for you. tore from top to bottom. Luke puts that in the same breath as the darkness, before He has even died, so that you will read the death in its light rather than merely reporting a marvel that followed it.

The letter to the Hebrews reads that torn curtain exactly as Luke means it:

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of His body," Hebrews 10:19–20 (BSB)

Understand what that means for your Monday morning. There is no queue, no season, no qualified man who must go in on your behalf. The way into the presence of God is open, and it was opened at terrible cost, and it will never be closed again.

Then the loud voice. A man dying that death has no breath to spare, and the last thing Jesus does with what He has is pray: “Father, into Your hands I commit (παρατίθημι) paratithēmi, pronounced pah-rah-TITH-ay-mee. Strong's G3908, to entrust, to commit into another's keeping. Paratithēmi is a plain word from ordinary life, and that is what makes it beautiful here. It means to set something down beside someone, and in commercial use it meant to deposit a treasure with a trusted friend for safekeeping while you were away, on the understanding that it would be given back. It is the word for handing over what is precious to hands you know will hold it. Luke uses this same verb when Jesus tells the disciples to entrust much to the one who has been given much, and Paul uses it of committing the gospel to faithful men and of entrusting his own soul to God. So the last act of the Lord Jesus in this life is a deposit. He does not merely die; He places His spirit into His Father’s hands, deliberately, out loud, in the sure expectation of receiving it back. The cross does not take His life from Him. He hands it over. And He leaves that word behind for every believer who has ever had to face what He faced, because the same verb is on Stephen’s lips as the stones fall and in Peter’s letter, where those who suffer are told to entrust their souls to a faithful Creator. That is the whole of Christian dying, and a great deal of Christian living besides. Into Your hands. He has never yet lost anything committed to Him. My Spirit.” Those words are not new. They are the fifth verse of a psalm of David, a line Jewish mothers taught their children to say last thing at night before they slept:

"Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth." Psalm 31:5 (BSB)

He dies with a child’s bedtime prayer on His lips, and He adds one word to it that David never could. Father. See how this chapter is bracketed. The first word from the cross was “Father, forgive them,” and the last is “Father, into Your hands.” Between those two the whole work is done. And then Luke writes, “when He had said this, He breathed His last,” and the verb is worth noticing, because nothing was taken from Him. He laid it down. Now watch who is standing there when it is over. A Roman centurion, an officer of the empire that killed Him, in charge of the detail, gives glory to God and says, “Surely this was a righteous man.” That is Luke to the very end: the outsider sees it first, as the shepherds did, as the Samaritan did, as the tax collector did. The crowds who had come out for the spectacle go home beating their breasts, the exact gesture Luke gave the tax collector in the temple who could not lift his eyes and went home justified. Something has begun in them. And at a distance, not fleeing, not speaking, stand those who knew Him, including the women who had followed Him from Galilee, whom Luke named chapters ago and told us had supported the ministry out of their own means. The men have scattered. The women stay and watch, and because they watch, they will know exactly where to come on Sunday morning.

Luke 23:50–56 (BSB)

⁵⁰ Now there was a Council member named Joseph, a good and righteous man, ⁵¹ who had not consented to their decision or action. He was from the Judean town of Arimathea and was waiting for the kingdom of God. ⁵² He went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. ⁵³ Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb cut into the rock, where no one had yet been laid. ⁵⁴ It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was beginning. ⁵⁵ The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how His body was placed. ⁵⁶ Then they returned to prepare spices and perfumes. And they rested on the Sabbath, according to the commandment.

Do not hurry past the first thing Luke tells you about Joseph. He was a Council member. He sat in the very body that rose in verse one and walked Jesus to Pilate, and Luke is careful to add that he had not consented to their decision or action. So the council was not of one mind, and the chapter that opened with “the whole council rose” closes with a member of it burying the Lord with his own hands. Remember that the next time you are tempted to speak of any group of people as if they were all one thing. There was a good and righteous man in that room, waiting for the kingdom of God like old Simeon and Anna in the temple at the start of this Gospel, and when the moment came he stopped being quiet about it. Going to Pilate to ask for the body of an executed rebel was not a small errand. It cost him his anonymity, and probably his standing, and he did it anyway. It is a striking thing that in the hour when the men who had walked with Jesus for three years were nowhere to be found, the courage came from a secret disciple on the wrong committee. God has His people in places you would not think to look.

Then the burial, done quickly, because the light was going. A linen cloth. A tomb cut into the rock where no one had yet been laid, so that no one could ever confuse whose body came out of it. And the sun setting on Preparation Day, the Sabbath beginning, the clock running out on everything. The women from Galilee follow, and Luke tells us precisely what they did: they saw the tomb, and they saw how His body was placed. He wants you to know there were witnesses who could not have gone to the wrong grave on Sunday, because they watched Him laid in this one. Then they go home and prepare spices and perfumes, which is love with nowhere to put itself, the last service they can imagine rendering. And then the final sentence of the chapter, and it is quietly astonishing: they rested on the Sabbath, according to the commandment. With their hearts in pieces and their hands full of burial spices, they kept the day. The Lord of the Sabbath lay in a borrowed tomb, and His friends obeyed the word He had given at Sinai and waited. It is the stillest verse in the Gospel. Everything has been done. Nothing more can be done. And the reader who knows how the story goes can hardly bear the silence, because the first day of the week is coming.