THE THREE DARK HOURS OF CALVARY
by Dr Peter MastersFROM SWORD & TROWEL 2003 No
4Eight Purposes and Lessons
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the
ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew
27.45-46.)
The crucifixion of Christ began at 9 am, the scene being bathed in daylight until noon, when sudden, total darkness descended, continuing until 3 pm. This darkness covered all the land of Judea, and perhaps a little more,[1] and cannot be explained in natural terms. It was not an eclipse of the sun, because the crucifixion occurred at the
time of the Passover, and this always coincided with a full moon. It was not a sirocco, an
insufferably hot wind which carried sand and obscured the light, because this would
surely have been noted in the Gospels, and would not, in any case, have resulted in
complete darkness.
The extinguishing of the light of the sun was nothing less than an act of
God, the old writers taking the view that it was specifically a miracle wrought by Christ,
despite His weakness.
This dramatic failure of light doubtless struck fear into the hearts of the
people, the Jews having been schooled in the prophecies of warning, telling of a coming
judgement in which the sun would be darkened.
It was certainly appropriate that nature, made by the Lord, should be
compelled to bow her head when He carried out His greatest work on Calvary’s cross.
The sun paused in tribute, and all human activity was called to a halt. Apprehension and
awe prevailed, and all insults were silenced.
The words of Isaac Watts convey the impact on nature of the greatest
sacrifice and transaction in the history of the world -
Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker, died
For man the creature’s sin.
What could the darkness mean? Why did it occur? What did it say
or signify? What did God intend by the sign language of these three mysterious hours?
Here are eight observations to be drawn from the hours of darkness.
1 THE WORK OF SALVATION CONCEALED FROM SCORNFUL MINDS Second to the cross, the most prominent feature of Calvary was the
shouted insults of the rulers and bystanders. ‘Let him save himself,’ they taunted. ‘If thou
be the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ ‘He saved others; himself he cannot
save.’ ‘He trusted in God; let him deliver him now.’
As soon as thick darkness enveloped the scene, all ridicule was
immediately silenced. How could they have continued to shout these cynical things when
they could not see what was happening? Perhaps Christ was dismounting from the cross;
perhaps the Father had transported Him away like Elijah - who could be sure? The great
crowd fell silent with apprehension, partly through shock, partly through their knowledge
of awesome prophecies, and largely through their inability to see what was taking place.
There was neither sun nor moon, and obviously people did not carry lamps in broad
daylight.
The mocking crowd had yelled abuse for three hours; now they would see
nothing, signifying how God would blind the minds of all future cynics and slanderers, so
that Christ’s sacred transaction for sinners would be beyond their reach.
When the mercy of God opens our blind eyes in conversion, He first
prepares the way by removing our contempt.
As for the people who watched the Lord suffer, they had sinned against the
prophets, and against Christ’s miracles, character and teaching. Now they would see
nothing - until the Spirit came down on the Day of Pentecost to pierce many hearts.
Scornful unbelievers will never be allowed to see the hidden depths of the
atonement, or to really understand the reasons for and the nature of the Lord’s torment.
There can be no realisation of redemption unless at the same time pride and unbelief are
caused to fall. This truth, we believe, is part of the message of the hours of darkness.
2 CHRIST’S GREAT DIGNITY MARKED For three long hours the Lord suffered visible torment, this being ample
time for the historical attestation of the fact that He had truly entered human flesh and
suffered. Then, half-way through the ordeal, a veil was drawn across the scene (perhaps
by Himself), testifying to His noble station. The darkness did not lessen His suffering, but
paid tribute to His Godhead.
His dignity was so great and His glory so extensive, that defiled eyes
would not be permitted to stare at Him for longer than was necessary. One might say that
Christ’s visible humiliation was curtailed to signal His divine greatness.
3 CHRIST’S EXTREME PAIN CONCEALED As the hours passed, the mental and physical anguish of the Lord, through
the eternal weight of punishment, must have tortured His face and racked His frame to a
hideous degree. The full extent would be hidden from public view.
However, there was a greater reason for the darkness, which was this.
Outward appearances could never show the real nature of Christ’s suffering, for there was
no way mortal eyes could see or measure the inner, hidden pain of His anguish.
If we were to be transported back to Calvary to see Him there, we would
not be able to say, ‘I know how much He suffered.’ His appearance could never convey
just how much He bore. We think of the eternal woe due to millions of people,
compressed unimaginably into the space of six hours. We think of the impact of guilt and
punishment upon a holy, sinless soul. The three hours of darkness teach us that a
suffering far, far beyond anything that could be seen was being borne at Calvary.
Indeed, here was suffering far beyond the human mind to grasp, not only
in terms of extent, but in terms of wonder. The Perfect One
suffers as though guilty. The Just One and the Judge of all the earth receives the stroke of
justice. The Great Physician suffers more than anyone else, and more than all people put
together. The Creator dies. Calvary was truly an event far beyond the evaluation and
measurement of watching eyes.
4 CHRIST’S DESOLATION INDICATED The darkness also conveys something of the unique mental anguish
suffered by the Lord through His experience of separation from the Father. It was this
terrible experience which led to the cry, as the darkness came to an end, ‘My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
That dense darkness signified His aloneness, and His sense of being
abandoned. It took the form of despair, crushing grief, a vacuum of hope and a sentence
of eternal banishment. Do we appreciate enough the comprehensive nature of the agonies
of Christ as He took upon Himself the very feelings that we should have suffered?
However, He took even more, because He bore the compounded desolation of many
millions.
In His divine nature He could never be cut off from the Father, but in His
human nature and experience He must suffer all for us, and must taste the
awful experience of having the door of hope, Heaven, and happiness slammed shut,
leaving Him in a dark and terrible abyss.
All our sin, and the love of it, including the sins of pride, unbelief and
wilful rejection of mercy, deserve the righteous anger and indignation of God, and Christ
must suffer not only the pain, but the consequences of being under that wrath. The
darkness speaks of that despair.
5 DARKNESS INVITES US TO ‘SEE’ OUR OWN SIN ON THE CROSS The hours of darkness enable us to consider another aspect of Calvary,
because it was not Christ suffering for Himself, but for His people. We are
really there, for He suffers for our sins, not His. All our evil deeds, words
and thoughts were put on the sinless Saviour and punished, and none of His.
If we had been at Calvary, gazing at His tortured features, perhaps our
sympathies would have been so exercised by the sight of Him, that we would have had no
mind for the wider meaning of His death. But the hours of darkness terminated vision and
stirred the mind to question and consider.
We need sometimes to see, not the Saviour, but our own sins - ‘For he
hath made him to be sin for us, who [that is Christ] knew no sin.’
What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered,
Was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain:
Lo! here I fall, my Saviour,
’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favour,
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace.
6 ACTIVITY OF THE HOSTS OF DARKNESS INDICATED When the chief priests, captains of the Temple and the elders came
to arrest the Lord, He said to them, ‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness’
(Luke 22.53). The hour of the power of darkness refers to the onslaught of Satan
and his demons upon the Lord as He hung on Calvary’s cross, and the three dark hours
fittingly portray their terrible activity.
Of course, the main sense in which Christ conquered the devil and his
legions is that He bore from the Father the punishment of all the sins which stood against
believers. By doing this He set them free and thwarted Satan’s designs. But the
literal hostility of the devil, culminating in the ‘hour of darkness’ must not be
overlooked.
Filled with hatred and fury, the demons of darkness hemmed Him round,
in a frantic if hopeless endeavour to bring Him into sin, and also to unleash upon Him as
much hatred as they possessed. They knew their hour had come, but blind rage knew only
desperate vindictiveness.
C H Spurgeon described Calvary in these words: ‘The howlings of hell
rise in awful clamour. The pit is emptying out its legions. Terrible as lions, hungry as
wolves, and black as night, the demons rush on in myriads.’
Who can tell what horrors Christ bore in ‘the hour of the power of
darkness’, but at the end He was shown to be victorious over them all, and ‘led a host of
captives’ (Ephesians 4.8), and ‘having spoiled principalities and powers, he
made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it’ (Colossians 2.15).
Christ as Saviour took the punishment of our sin, bore its consequences in
the stress of forsakenness, and also suffered the venomous hostility of ‘the power of
darkness’.
7 PROOF THAT ONLY CHRIST CAN SATISFY JUSTICE The three hours of darkness were suddenly and decisively ended at the
word of Christ. If the people in that great crowd of onlookers had obtained lamps to
pierce the gloom, what would they have seen? Their feeble lights would have shown
little, merely emphasising the darkness.
Only the word of Christ disperses darkness, both then and now. Man’s
little lights of learning, and of philosophy, art, poetry or psychology, cannot explain or
resolve the darkness of the human predicament. Only the Gospel can do this. Only
Christ’s atonement can satisfy the demands and the righteous anger of God towards
sinners.
Surely one of the reasons why darkness came down at Calvary, was to
demonstrate that Christ alone could dispel it. As He uttered the opening words of
Psalm 22, the light returned.
Nevertheless, so implacable is human scorn, that within moments the
people had recovered their composure, and resumed their barrage of insults.
8 A SIGN THAT ALL IS RECEIVED BY FAITH Half the passion of Christ takes place under cover of darkness to impress
upon us that we do not seek Him by sight but by faith. We ‘see’
enough to know what He did; then darkness tells us that we are not saved by gazing at a
crucifix, or focusing on a mental picture of His ordeal. We are not helped by viewing the
stations of the cross, or over-emphasising the physical features of His death.
We can only faintly imagine these things, and this is as much as we need,
because we are saved by resting our souls on the fact of what Christ achieved. We gaze
not at physical realities, whether in our imagination, or in movies depicting Calvary, but
we look with the eye of faith at the greatest accomplishment in history - the purchase of
eternal souls. The dark hours of Calvary caution us, and send us to Calvary by the route of
faith.
More matters may also be signified by the dark hours. They may have been
a call to those present, and to all people, to think. They may, in effect, have said, ‘You
cannot now see, so reflect on what this means.’ It may be that darkness was given so that
onlookers would probe their hearts, to look within, and to make a repentant response to
God.
It has also been suggested that the dark hours were prophetic, speaking of
the treatment that would be meted out to Calvary throughout the remainder of human
history, as self-righteous, ‘works’ religions sought to obscure it, and atheism fought to
suppress it.
Certainly, those dark hours are deeply meaningful, for with Christ, even
the darkness has light for the soul.
Two Extracts From - Yesterday, Today and Foreve
by Edward
Henry Bickersteth, 1825-1906
Was love stronger than death? Upon that cross
They grappled as in final strife. For now
Hell put forth all its malice, and let loose
Its gather’d vengeance. All the air was dense
With fiends, and blackness, blacker than the night
Which Moses’ rod on smitten Egypt drew,
Dismay’d the heavens: such delegated power
Had Satan, regent of the air, and all
The gloomy hosts of darkness at his beck
Hemming the Saviour round. And, as the load
Immense, intolerable, of the world’s sin,
Casting its dreadful shadow high as heaven,
Deep as Gehenna, nearer and more near
Grounded at last upon that Sinless Soul
With all its crushing weight and killing curse,
Then first, from all eternity then first,
From His beloved Son the Father’s face
Was slowly averted, and its light eclipsed.
Around His disembodied soul the powers
Of darkness swarm’d, and Satan face to face
With burning falchion barr’d His path. One look,
Mere virtue bent on mere maliciousness,
Pierced him like lightning, and shot withering fire
Among his blasted hosts. Distraught they stood,
Insensible, one moment; and then fell
From round Him, as the billow’s cloven pride
Falls in thick spray from off the vessel’s prow . . .
Footnote [1] The Greek could be translated ‘over all the earth’, but this is unlikely as half the
earth would be in darkness anyway, and, probably, in God’s ‘economy’ this miracle would be intended only for those
who knew what was happening.
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