Matthew 27

Today’s Passage: Matthew 27

Morning comes, and the machinery of the world turns over. Everything in this chapter happens quickly, in the ordinary daylight of one Friday in a crowded city at festival time, and Matthew tells it in short plain sentences, the way a witness tells a thing he saw. The council reaches its decision at dawn and hands Jesus over, bound, to the Roman governor, because they can condemn but they cannot execute. Judas comes back with the money and discovers that men who will buy a betrayal have no interest at all in the seller’s conscience. Pilate questions his prisoner, gets one sentence and then silence, and the silence astonishes him more than any defense could have. Three times he tries to get out of it: the custom of the feast, the question put to the crowd, a basin of water. Each attempt fails, and a murderer walks free while an innocent Man is flogged and handed over. Soldiers dress Him up as a king for sport. A stranger from Cyrene is pressed into carrying the cross. At a place called The Place of the Skull they crucify Him, and Matthew records it in a single clause and moves on. For six hours He hangs there, insulted by everyone who passes, from the chief priests down to the two criminals beside Him. Then, at noon, darkness. At three, one cry in His mother tongue, and another loud cry, and He yields up His spirit. At that instant God tears the temple veil from top to bottom, the earth shakes, tombs open, and a Roman officer says out loud the thing this Gospel has been driving toward since its first page. Then the chapter goes quiet: a rich man’s tomb, two women sitting opposite it in the dusk, and a sealed stone with soldiers standing in front of it.

As you read, hold this: The King is condemned, mocked, and crucified, and at the moment He yields up His spirit God tears the temple veil from top to bottom, because the death that looked like the end of Him opened the way to God.

Matthew 27:1–10 (BSB)

¹ When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people conspired against Jesus to put Him to death. ² They bound Him, led Him away, and handed Him over to Pilate the governor. ³ When Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was filled with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. ⁴ “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he said. “What is that to us?” they replied. “You bear the responsibility.” ⁵ So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. ⁶ The chief priests picked up the pieces of silver and said, “It is unlawful to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” ⁷ After conferring together, they used the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. ⁸ That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. ⁹ Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on Him by the people of Israel, ¹⁰ and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord had commanded me.”

The night trial is over and the council still has a problem: it has a verdict and no power to enforce it. So at first light they make it official, bind Him, and walk Him across to the governor. Watch the hands He is passed between in this chapter. A friend hands Him to the priests, the priests hand Him to Pilate, Pilate hands Him to the soldiers, the soldiers hand Him to death, and Matthew keeps using that word until you feel it. He is handed over, and He does not resist any of it.

Then the story stops for Judas, and it is one of the saddest paragraphs in Scripture. He sees that Jesus is condemned, and something in him breaks. He is filled with remorse. He even says the true thing, out loud, in front of the men who paid him: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” Hear that sentence. It is an accurate confession, and it names Jesus innocent from the mouth of the one man on earth who had watched Him closest and would have known better than anyone if He were not. But look where Judas carries it. He takes his guilt to the chief priests, and what he gets back is the coldest line in the chapter: “What is that to us? That is your responsibility.” They had wanted him when he had something to sell. Now that all he has is a conscience, they have no use for him. So he throws the silver into the temple, and goes out, and hangs himself. Matthew tells it in one flat sentence and does not linger, and neither will we.

The priests then have a small legal difficulty on their hands, and their solution shows you everything. The coins are blood money, so it would be unlawful to put them in the treasury. Understand what that means: the money was too defiled to sit in God’s house, but it had not been too defiled to hand across a table to buy the Son of God. Men who will strain a coin and swallow a murder are not new, and they will not be found only in Jerusalem. They confer, they buy a field from a potter, and they use it as a graveyard for foreigners, and the local name for that patch of ground outlived every one of them. And Matthew hears prophecy in it, quoting words that stand in Zechariah about thirty pieces of silver thrown to the potter in the house of the LORD.

"Then I told them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” So they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—this magnificent price at which they valued me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD." Zechariah 11:12–13 (BSB)

Matthew attributes the fulfillment to Jeremiah, and honest readers have wondered about that for as long as there have been readers. The likeliest answers are simple ones. Jeremiah is the prophet of the potter’s house and the ruined jar and the purchase of a field, and Matthew appears to be weaving those images together with Zechariah’s price of thirty pieces; and it was ordinary practice to cite a collection of prophetic scrolls under the name of the major prophet who stood at its head. Either way, do not let the puzzle distract you from the point Matthew is making. The price of the Shepherd was set long before that Thursday, and the God who saw it coming was not startled by any of it.

Matthew 27:11–19 (BSB)

¹¹ Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, who questioned Him: “Are You the King of the Jews?” “You have said so,” Jesus replied. ¹² And when He was accused by the chief priests and elders, He gave no answer. ¹³ Then Pilate asked Him, “Do You not hear how many charges they are bringing against You?” ¹⁴ But Jesus gave no answer, not even to a single charge, much to the governor’s amazement. ¹⁵ Now it was the governor’s custom at the feast to release to the crowd a prisoner of their choosing. ¹⁶ At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner named Barabbas. ¹⁷ So when the crowd had assembled, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” ¹⁸ For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him. ¹⁹ While Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him this message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered terribly in a dream today because of Him.”

Now the two of them stand face to face, the governor of Judea and the King of the world, and only one of them knows which is which. “Are You the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks, and Jesus answers, “You have said so.” It is not evasion. It is an answer that puts the words back in the questioner’s mouth and lets them stand: yes, and you have no idea what you have just said. And then, nothing. The chief priests and elders pile up their accusations, and He gives no answer. Pilate, growing uneasy, presses Him: do You not hear how many charges they are bringing? Still nothing. Not one word to a single charge. Matthew says the governor was amazed, and no wonder. Pilate had spent years in that chair, and every man who ever stood where this Man was standing had talked. They pleaded, they flattered, they bargained, they named accomplices. This One simply looks at him and says nothing, and it unsettles a hardened Roman more than a defense ever could. Isaiah had described that silence seven hundred years earlier.

"He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth." Isaiah 53:7 (BSB)

He is silent because He is not trying to escape. That is the whole of it. The Man who stilled a storm with a word could have flattened this courtroom with a sentence, and He will not, because He came for this. Then Pilate reaches for his first way out. There is a custom at the feast: the crowd may name a prisoner and the governor will release him. And it happens that there is a notorious man in the cells, Barabbas, whose name means son of the father. So Pilate offers a choice he thinks is no choice at all, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ, and Matthew tells us plainly why he bothered: he knew. He knew it was envy that put this Man in front of him, that these were not prosecutors but rivals, and that the case was rotten. And while he sits on the judgment seat, a message arrives from his wife, of all people. Have nothing to do with that innocent man. She has suffered terribly in a dream because of Him. It is a strange, brief shaft of light in a dark chapter: the only voice in Jerusalem that morning raised in the prisoner’s defense belongs to a pagan woman who never met Him.

Matthew 27:20–26 (BSB)

²⁰ But the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus put to death. ²¹ “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor. “Barabbas,” they replied. ²² “What then should I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify Him!” ²³ “Why?” asked Pilate. “What evil has He done?” But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify Him!” ²⁴ When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but that instead a riot was breaking out, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “You bear the responsibility.” ²⁵ All the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” ²⁶ So Pilate released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed Him over to be crucified.

Everything hangs for a moment, and then the moment is worked. The chief priests and elders move through the crowd and persuade them, and the answer comes back, “Barabbas.” Pilate, off balance now, asks the question no judge should ever have to ask a mob: “What then should I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” And they all answer, “Crucify Him!” To his credit he tries once more, and his question is the right one: “Why? What evil has He done?” Nobody answers it. Nobody in this chapter ever answers it, because there is no answer. They simply shout louder, which is what a crowd does when it has no case, and the shouting wins. So the governor of Judea calls for a basin and washes his hands in front of everybody and says, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. You bear the responsibility.” He had the authority to stop it and he did not use it. Water does not wash that off a man. And so Barabbas, a real criminal with real blood on him, walks out into the sunshine a free man because Jesus is going to die in his place, which is the whole gospel acted out in the courtyard before it is preached anywhere in the world.

Now comes verse twenty-five, and we will not hurry past it, because no sentence in this Gospel has been more cruelly misused. Hear first what it actually is. It is a shout from a crowd standing in one courtyard in one city on one morning, a crowd that Matthew has just told us in the previous verse was worked up to it by particular men with a particular aim. It is not a legal formula. It is not a verdict handed down from heaven. It is not spoken over a nation, and Scripture never once treats it as though it were. There is no curse on a people in this verse, and there is no permission in it for anyone, ever, to lift a hand against anyone. Remember who is writing. Matthew is a Jew, telling this about his own people and his own city, grieving as he tells it. So is Peter, so is John, so is Paul, so is Mary, and so, according to the flesh, is the Lord Jesus Christ. The church that was born in that same city seven weeks later was almost entirely Jewish, and some of the people in it had very possibly stood in this crowd. Look at what Peter says to a Jerusalem crowd on that day.

"Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.”" Acts 2:38–39 (BSB)

Read that beside the shout, slowly. “On us and on our children,” the crowd cried. “This promise belongs to you and your children,” God answers through Peter, weeks later, in the same city, to the same kind of gathering, and three thousand of them received it that day. That is what heaven did with verse twenty-five. Now the hard thing must be said plainly and without hedging. For centuries men calling themselves Christians took this single line and used it to justify slander, ghettos, expulsion, forced conversion, plunder, and murder against Jewish people. That was not an unfortunate misreading. It was wickedness. It was a grievous sin committed in the name of the Crucified against His own kinsmen, and there is nothing in this verse or anywhere else in Scripture that excuses one hour of it. If you have ever heard this text used in that direction, take it out of your hands and be done with it. It was never yours for that.

Then take up what the chapter is actually driving at, which cuts far closer to home than any accusation aimed outward ever could. Somebody’s sin put Jesus on that cross, and Matthew has spent this whole passion narrative closing the circle. A disciple sold Him. The rest of them ran. The boldest of them denied Him with oaths by a fire. The priests bought Him, the elders stirred the crowd, the crowd shouted, the governor washed, the soldiers gambled under Him for His clothes. There is not one person in this chapter with clean hands, and the reader is not standing outside the frame looking in. It is our sin that put Him there. And here is the wonder at the bottom of it: the blood those voices called down upon themselves is the very blood that was being poured out to save them.

"This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Matthew 26:28 (BSB)

They asked for His blood to be on them and on their children. In mercy, that is precisely what God offers them, and us, and every soul who will have it. There is no other blood that can be on a sinner and do him any good.

Matthew 27:27–34 (BSB)

²⁷ Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company around Him. ²⁸ They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. ²⁹ And they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand, knelt down before Him, and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ³⁰ Then they spit on Him and took the staff and struck Him on the head repeatedly. ³¹ After they had mocked Him, they removed the robe and put His own clothes back on Him. Then they led Him away to crucify Him. ³² Along the way they found a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross of Jesus. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means The Place of the Skull, ³⁴ they offered Him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, He refused to drink it.

The soldiers take Him inside and call the rest of the company in to watch, because they have found something to amuse them. Here is a man accused of claiming a throne, so they will hold a coronation. A soldier’s discarded scarlet cloak becomes the royal purple. Thorns twisted into a circle become the crown. A reed pressed into His right hand becomes the scepter. Then, one at a time, they kneel down in front of Him and give Him the salute due a king: “Hail, King of the Jews!” And then they spit in His face, and take the reed back out of His hand, and hit Him over the head with it. Do not miss what is happening in that room. Every single element of the joke is true. He is the King. That is His crown, and it is made of thorns because thorns are what came up out of the ground when the curse fell, and He is going to wear the curse of the world on His head before this day is over. The soldiers meant to mock a pretender and staged a coronation instead, and they staged it correctly. Isaiah had already put words in the Servant’s mouth about offering His back to those who struck Him and not hiding His face from scorn and spitting, and here it is being carried out by men who had never read a line of it.

Then they put His own clothes back on Him and lead Him out, and Matthew, who has told the whole night without one word of physical detail, keeps that restraint to the end. He does not describe the flogging. He does not describe what Jesus looked like. He says only that along the way the squad grabbed a man out of the crowd, a man named Simon who had come from Cyrene in North Africa, probably for the feast, and forced him to carry the cross. It is the same word used for the imperial right to compel a civilian to carry a load a mile, and it fell that morning on a pilgrim who had walked a very long way to keep Passover in the holy city and got more than he came for. He is the only man in the world who ever carried that cross for Jesus. And then Golgotha, which Matthew stops to translate for us, The Place of the Skull, and the cup of wine mixed with gall, which He tastes and refuses. He will not go into this dulled. Whatever is in that cup, He means to drink the other cup all the way down, awake. The psalmist had seen even this small bitter detail.

"They poisoned my food with gall and gave me vinegar to quench my thirst." Psalm 69:21 (BSB)

Matthew 27:35–44 (BSB)

³⁵ When they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments by casting lots. ³⁶ And sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. ³⁷ Above His head they posted the written charge against Him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. ³⁸ Two robbers were crucified with Him, one on His right and the other on His left. ³⁹ And those who passed by heaped abuse on Him, shaking their heads ⁴⁰ and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” ⁴¹ In the same way, the chief priests, scribes, and elders mocked Him, saying, ⁴² “He saved others, but He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel! Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him. ⁴³ He trusts in God. Let God deliver Him now if He wants Him. For He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” ⁴⁴ In the same way, even the robbers who were crucified with Him berated Him.

“When they had crucified Him (σταυρόω) stauroō, pronounced stow-ROH-oh. Strong's G4717, to crucify, to fix to a cross. Stauroō simply means to fix someone to a stauros, an upright stake with a crossbeam, and there was no uglier verb in the Greek of that century. Rome kept the thing for slaves and rebels and conquered provincials, never for its own citizens, and it worked precisely because it was slow and public and stripped a man of every shred of dignity while a road full of strangers walked past. What is remarkable is how the Gospel writers use the word. They never once linger over it. Matthew has a single participle, staurōsantes, and he is already moving on to the clothes. The restraint is not coldness; it is reverence, and it is instruction. The horror of the cross is not chiefly what the wood and iron did to His body, dreadful as that was. It is what was laid on His soul there, and no camera could show you that. So when you come to this place in the story, follow Matthew. Look, and be silent, and do not embroider. And then hear what the same verb becomes on the other side of Easter, when Paul takes it up and says that those who belong to Christ have been crucified with Him, and that the world has been crucified to him and he to the world. The worst word in the language became the believer’s own address. Bless His name for that. , they divided up His garments by casting lots.” That is all. Three words in the Greek for the thing the whole Bible has been moving toward, and then Matthew’s eye goes at once to the soldiers on the ground sorting out a dead man’s clothes. It is a stunning piece of writing, and it is not squeamishness. Matthew knows that the worst thing about the cross is not what the nails did to His body. Everyone in his first audience had seen crucifixions and needed no description. So he gives none, and he lets you watch four bored men playing dice for a robe under the Son of God, and then sitting down in the dirt to keep watch, the way you might sit down to wait out a long shift. And in that small squalid detail an ancient song is coming true word for word.

"They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing." Psalm 22:18 (BSB)

Above His head they nail up the charge, which every crucified man carried so the public would know why. Pilate’s clerk wrote it out in block letters, meaning it as a warning and, one suspects, as a jab at the men who had bullied him into this: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. It is the truest sentence any Roman official ever wrote. They fixed the gospel over His head by accident and left it there. And on either side of Him they crucify a robber, one at His right and one at His left, so that the two places two of His disciples had once asked for are filled at last, and filled by criminals, and the King reigns from the middle of them.

Then comes the mockery, and it rolls in from three directions at once. The people going past shake their heads and throw His own words back at Him about the temple and three days. The chief priests and scribes and elders, who ought to have known better than anyone alive, stand there and taunt a dying man. Even the two robbers join in. Listen to what they say, because in their scorn they keep saying more than they know. “He saved others, but He cannot save Himself.” That is not a sneer, it is a creed. It was true. Not because the power was gone from Him, but because He had determined that He would not save both Himself and us, and He chose us. “Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him.” They had it exactly backwards. If He had come down, there would be nothing to believe. He stays up so that there might be. And the last taunt, “He trusts in God. Let God deliver Him now if He wants Him,” is very nearly a quotation of a psalm written a thousand years before, which they were unwittingly finishing for the world.

"All who see me mock me; they sneer and shake their heads: “He trusts in the LORD, let the LORD deliver him; let the LORD rescue him, since He delights in him.”" Psalm 22:7–8 (BSB)

Matthew 27:45–50 (BSB)

⁴⁵ From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. ⁴⁶ About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” ⁴⁷ When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He is calling Elijah.” ⁴⁸ One of them quickly ran and brought a sponge. He filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed, and held it up for Jesus to drink. ⁴⁹ But the others said, “Leave Him alone. Let us see if Elijah comes to save Him.” ⁵⁰ When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit.

At noon, when the sun should have been at its highest over Jerusalem, the light goes out. Matthew does not explain it and does not speculate, and neither should we. Darkness came over all the land, and it stayed for three hours, which is a long time to stand under a sky like that. Then, at three in the afternoon, out of that darkness comes the loudest and most terrible sentence in the Bible, and Matthew is careful to give it to us twice, first in the words that actually came out of His mouth and then in translation, so that no reader in any century can miss it. “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” My God, My God, why have You forsaken (ἐγκαταλείπω) egkataleipō, pronounced eng-kat-al-Y-po. Strong's G1459, to forsake, abandon, leave behind. Egkataleipō is built out of three pieces, and each one presses down harder than the last: to leave, to leave down, to leave someone down and behind in the place where they are. Greek used it for deserting a man in a fight and walking away, for abandoning a house, for leaving a friend where he fell. It is the word Paul uses when he writes that Demas has deserted him and that at his first defense everyone deserted him. It is the word Peter uses on the day of Pentecost, quoting the psalm, to promise that God would not abandon the Holy One to the grave. And it is the word in the sweetest promise a frightened believer ever leaned on, where God has said, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” Take those together and hold them, carefully. The one thing God swears He will never say over His own is the thing His Son cries out from the cross. Whatever else you cannot understand here, and there is much, understand that much: the Son was forsaken so that you never will be. There is no darkness you can be carried into where He has not already been, further down, and alone, in your place. Me?

Sit with that cry a while before you try to explain it, because it will not be explained, only believed and adored. Two things can be said, and both must be held together. The first is that it is the opening line of the twenty-second Psalm, and Jesus knew exactly which psalm He was reaching for. That psalm begins in godforsakenness and passes through pierced hands and feet and mocking heads and gambled-for clothing, all of which had just happened in front of these witnesses, and then it turns, and the last third of it is nothing but vindication and worldwide praise.

"For the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Doe of the Dawn.” A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?" Psalm 22:1 (BSB)

"For He has not despised or detested the torment of the afflicted. He has not hidden His face from him, but has attended to his cry for help." Psalm 22:24 (BSB)

Hold that. But do not use it to empty the cry, as though He were only reciting a hopeful poem and the anguish were a stage direction. The second thing must be said just as plainly: He was not quoting, He was crying out, and He meant every word of it. He was bearing sin, and the horror in His voice is the horror of what sin actually is and what it actually costs.

"God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21 (BSB)

That is as far as Scripture takes us, and it is not our place to go one step past it. We are not told what passed between the Father and the Son in those three hours, and everything men have tried to say about the inner life of God at that moment has more heat than light in it. We are told this much and it is enough for a lifetime: He who knew no sin was made sin for us. Do not speculate. Take off your shoes. Then watch what happens next. Some of the bystanders mishear the cry and think He is calling Elijah, and one of them runs for a sponge of sour wine, and the rest stand around to see whether Elijah will show up. And then Jesus cries out again in a loud voice, which is not how a crucified man dies, for crucifixion kills by slow exhaustion and steals the breath long before it takes the life. And Matthew chooses his words with great care: He yielded up His spirit. Nobody took it from Him. He gave it.

Matthew 27:51–56 (BSB)

⁵¹ At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, and the rocks were split. ⁵² The tombs broke open, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. ⁵³ After Jesus’ resurrection, when they had come out of the tombs, they entered the holy city and appeared to many people. ⁵⁴ When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified and said, “Truly this was the Son of God.” ⁵⁵ And many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to minister to Him. ⁵⁶ Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

And then God moves, and Matthew stacks up four things in a row so fast that you can hardly get your breath. First, and greatest: at that very moment the veil (καταπέτασμα) katapetasma, pronounced kat-ap-ET-as-mah. Strong's G2665, the curtain, the veil before the Most Holy Place. Katapetasma is a fine word for the thing it names. It comes from a verb meaning to spread down, and that is what the curtain did: it hung down and spread across, so that the eye stopped there. Its whole ministry was to say no. Everything about the tabernacle and then the temple was arranged in rings of nearness, courts and chambers each closer in than the last, and this heavy woven thing was the last barrier, with the presence of the living God on the other side of it. It was mercy as much as it was warning, because sinful men cannot walk into that presence and live, and God in kindness put a curtain between. But it was never meant to hang there forever. The writer to the Hebrews takes this same word and does something breathtaking with it, calling the torn body of Jesus itself the curtain, the new and living way opened for us to walk straight in. So do not read the tearing as an accident of the earthquake, or as a temple furnishing coming to grief. It is God’s own answer to the death of His Son, given within seconds of it, in the one building in the world where it would say everything. The way in is open. Nobody who trusts Christ has to stand outside any more. of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Understand what hung there. It was an enormous woven curtain closing off the Most Holy Place, the innermost room where God had put His name, and its whole message was exclusion. This far and no farther. Only the high priest, only once a year, only with blood, and only after a great deal of preparation, and even then he went in like a man walking into fire.

"And hang the veil from the clasps and place the ark of the Testimony behind the veil. So the veil will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place." Exodus 26:33 (BSB)

Look at the direction of the tear, because Matthew tells you and he did not have to. From top to bottom. No human hand starts there. That curtain was tall beyond the reach of any man, and even if a man could have reached it he would have torn it from the bottom up. This was torn downward, from the top, which is to say from God’s side, by God’s hand, and it means that the barrier did not fall because we finally got in. It fell because He came out to us. And with it the earth shook and the rocks were split (σχίζω) schizō, pronounced SKHID-zo. Strong's G4977, to tear, to split, to rend open. Schizō means to tear, to split, to rend something so that it does not go back together, and English still carries it in the word schism. Matthew uses it twice in a single verse, for the veil and then for the rocks, and it is the same verb Mark uses at the Jordan when the heavens were torn open over a newly baptized Jesus. Put those bookends together and you can see what God has been doing all along. At the start of the ministry heaven is torn open downward so that the Spirit can come to a Man; at the end of it the veil is torn open downward so that a way can be opened for everyone else. Both tears run in the same direction, from above, and both are God’s doing, and both cost Him. This is a word for things that are opened permanently. A torn curtain cannot be quietly rehung, and split rock does not heal. What God tore that afternoon has stayed torn for two thousand years, and it will never be mended, because there is no reason on earth or in heaven to mend it. Praise Him for what He tore. , and tombs broke open.

Then the strangest lines in the chapter, and the honest thing is to say plainly that we do not understand them. Tombs opened, and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised, and after Jesus’ own resurrection they came out and went into the city and appeared to many. Matthew tells us this and tells us nothing else. We are not told who they were, or how many, or what body they had, or what became of them afterward, and faithful readers have offered a number of explanations without any of them being provable from the text. What is clear is why Matthew put it here at all: the death of Jesus has already begun to break open the graves. The thing that has held every human family since Eden has developed a crack in it, and the crack runs from Calvary.

And a Roman soldier says the sentence. The centurion and his detail see the earthquake and everything that has happened, and they are terrified, and out of that terror comes the confession this Gospel has been waiting twenty-seven chapters to hear from human lips at the cross: “Truly this was the Son of God.” Not a priest. Not a scribe. A career executioner in the imperial army, who had probably nailed up a hundred men and had never seen one die like that. Then Matthew turns his eye to the edge of the scene and names the ones who stayed. Many women, watching from a distance, who had followed Him all the way from Galilee and looked after Him along the road. Mary Magdalene. Mary the mother of James and Joseph. The mother of Zebedee’s sons, who had once asked for the two seats at His right and His left and had now seen who was given them. The disciples had scattered in the dark. These women stood there through all of it, and God saw to it that their names were written down.

Matthew 27:57–66 (BSB)

⁵⁷ When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who himself was a disciple of Jesus. ⁵⁸ He went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. ⁵⁹ So Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, ⁶⁰ and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut into the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance to the tomb and went away. ⁶¹ Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb. ⁶² The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and Pharisees assembled before Pilate. ⁶³ “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while He was alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ ⁶⁴ So give the order that the tomb be secured until the third day. Otherwise, His disciples may come and steal Him away and tell the people He has risen from the dead. And this last deception would be worse than the first.” ⁶⁵ “You have a guard,” Pilate said. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” ⁶⁶ So they went and secured the tomb by sealing the stone and posting the guard.

Evening, and a rich man steps forward. Joseph of Arimathea has been a disciple quietly and at a distance, and now, with the body of an executed rebel on a Roman cross and every reason in the world to stay home, he goes to Pilate personally and asks for it. Courage sometimes arrives late and arrives anyway. Pilate gives the order, and Joseph takes the body down and wraps it in clean linen and lays it in his own new tomb, the one he had cut out of the rock for himself, and rolls the great stone across the mouth of it and walks away. Every detail there is a kindness, and every detail is also a prophecy being kept to the letter, for the Servant was to be assigned a grave with the wicked and to be with a rich man in His death.

"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth." Isaiah 53:9 (BSB)

And then two women sit down. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, opposite the tomb, in the last of the light, not doing anything, not able to do anything. That is one of the quietest verses in the Gospel and one of the tenderest. There are seasons in a believer’s life when there is nothing left to do but sit facing the place where hope was buried and wait for a Sabbath to pass. They did not know what Sunday held. They sat there anyway. Learn from them that love stays put in the dark.

The chapter ends with the enemies of Jesus doing Him one last unintended service. They come to Pilate the next day, and they cannot bring themselves to say His name, so they call Him that deceiver, and then they quote Him accurately: “After three days I will rise again.” Weigh that. The men who hated Him remembered His resurrection promise, while the men who loved Him had apparently forgotten it, since none of the disciples is anywhere near that tomb expecting anything. So the priests ask for a guard, and Pilate gives them one, and they go out and seal the stone with the governor’s own mark and post soldiers in front of it. They meant to make the tomb secure. What they actually did was make certain that when it was empty, no one could ever say the body had been stolen. There is a soldier standing at that stone, an official seal across it, and the full weight of Rome behind both. Every precaution they took became evidence. God is never more at work than when His enemies think they have finished with Him, and the guard on that tomb is the last proof of it before the sun comes up.