And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
Read Chapter 27
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And they that passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads. All their revilings and insults were blasphemies, as being against the Son of God. "They blasphemed the Holy One of Israel," Isaiah 1:4, and Psalm 22:8. This was a greater torment even than the crucifixion. Whence it is said (Ecclus. vii11), "Laugh not at a man in the bitterness of his soul." And Christ complains ( Psalm 59:26), "They persecute Him whom Thou hast smitten, and added to the pain of My wounds;" and (Ps. xxii13), "They gaped upon Me," &c, so great was their cruelty.
This is the sign which previously Jesus had promised to give them when they asked for it, saying, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” The sign of Jonah is Christ’s cross, death, burial and resurrection. And again, declaring in another way the efficacy of the cross, he said, “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he,” which has this meaning: When you have crucified me and think you have overcome me, then, above all, you shall know my power. For after the crucifixion, the city was destroyed. The Jewish state came to an end. They lost their political order and their freedom. Meanwhile the gospel flourished. The word was spread abroad to the ends of the earth, by both sea and land. Both the inhabited earth and the desert would thereafter perpetually proclaim its power. These are the things Christ pointed to which began to occur at the very time of the crucifixion. For in...
O cross most abominable, most execrable! Did not God rescue the prophets from their dangers? Did God not save the righteous? Why not him? What could equal this folly? The coming of dangers upon the prophets and saints did not injure their honor before God. But what happened to this incomparable person? By what he said and what he did he offended all our expectations to the utmost. He was forever correcting beforehand our assumptions about him. Even when all these ignominies were said and done, they could not prevail, even at that time. The thief who had lived depraved in such great wickedness, who had spent his whole life in murders and house breakings, when these things had been said, only then confessed him. When he made mention of his kingdom, the people bewailed him. These things that were done seemed to testify the contrary in the eyes of many who knew nothing of the mystery of God’s dispensations. Jesus was weak and of no ostensible power; nevertheless truth prevailed even by the...
