The Wonderous CrossSample

The Convinced Centurion

For hours, the centurion had been watching him die. Death, torture, and humiliation were his daily fare, but there was something very different about this man and this execution. The centurion was a hardened Roman soldier who had become immune to the sights and sounds of death. It was all in a day’s work, but it wasn’t every day, they put to death a so-called “king.”

He and his soldiers found a faded purple cloak and threw it over Jesus’ lacerated back, twisted a crown of thorns and jammed it into his brow, and thrust a staff into his right hand as a scepter. Their mockery and cruelty continued as they knelt before him and hailed him “king of the Jews.” Then they punched him and spit in his face, and led him away to be crucified.

At 9:00 a.m. the soldiers hoisted Jesus’ cross into its upright position. The centurion stood guard and pretended he wasn’t listening to the interactions happening around Jesus’ cross. He couldn’t help but notice Jesus’ uncanny and gracious responses to those who continued to hurl abuse and scorn at him.

At noon, when the sun was at its zenith, it suddenly became dark as midnight. This was not the kind of darkness that rolls in with an afternoon storm. The centurion had never seen or felt such penetrating, menacing darkness – especially darkness in the middle of the day!

Three hours later, darkness continued to cover the land. Crucifixion was designed to take a long time, and when the final throes of death mercifully came, the last moments were often uglier than those before it. So the centurion was surprised, when only six hours in, with full control of his body and mind, Jesus yelled out with a loud voice, “It is finished!” and breathed his last. Seconds later, the earth began to shake, and rocks all around Jerusalem split in two. When the earthquake stopped, the centurion exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”

One of the ironies of Calvary is that the place of death became a place of new life, for the thief, the centurion, and many of the soldiers who observed what happened. On the darkest day that has ever been, the day when it became midnight at noon, it was actually the very best day of all.

It’s only by grace, that those who in their ignorance had been accomplices to his murder, were the first to be saved by it. Salvation began that Good Friday right where the centurion stood: at the foot of the cross, and it still happens there today. Surely, he IS the Son of God!