NOTES for Mar 15:16-47
In the Gospel account of the Savior's crucifixion, the description of the triumph experienced by all who hated Jesus during His earthly life makes a special impression. Those who loved Him can only grieve and weep. Of course, this is only an apparent triumph; it simply throws into sharper relief what will happen very soon, three days later, when everything falls into place. But those three days still have to pass; they have to be lived through, and not even Jesus' closest disciples expected the Resurrection. Those days were all the harder because the triumph of the forces of evil was not some convention or staged scene; it was as real as Jesus' death on the cross itself. In essence, here at the foot of the cross, two realities, two worlds, came into contact with each other: the great world of God, and the small, limited little world of those who stand against God, separated from Him. But to those who find themselves in that little world, it always appears to be the only reality. And in that reality it is evil that triumphs, and it triumphs as truly as that little world itself is real. Physically, the great world of God and the little world of those who oppose God can exist in the same space and at the same time; those who belong to them can see one another and speak with one another. Spiritually, however, they are two different worlds, and on the day of the Last Judgment the distinction between them, formerly visible only to a few, becomes obvious to everyone: the great world of God becomes the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks, and the little world of those who oppose God becomes the outer darkness of the Gospel parable. In the outer darkness death triumphs; in the Kingdom, life. And the victory of darkness, which appears so real in the little world, turns out on the day of the Resurrection to be its real and complete defeat in the great world of God. Each person decides for himself which of these worlds to live in, just as those who stood at the foot of the cross on the day of the Savior's death made their own decision.