The Gospel writers describe more than the suffering that led to Jesus’ death. They record what He said as He died, the darkness over the land, the torn temple veil, and the response of people who witnessed the crucifixion. Those events explain whose death this was and what He willingly accomplished for us.
Darkness, His Final Words, and a Willing Death
Jesus had been betrayed, arrested, condemned, and mocked. Soldiers scourged Him and led Him outside Jerusalem to Golgotha, where they nailed Him to a cross between two criminals. Rulers and passersby mocked Him as He hung there. The study of Golgotha considers the place of execution.
Each Gospel contributes to our understanding. Matthew records the earthquake and opened tombs, Mark draws attention to the way Jesus cried out and died, and Luke preserves His final prayer to the Father. John describes His thirst, His declaration that the work was finished, and the piercing of His side. Reading them together gives us a fuller account without requiring every writer to repeat every detail.
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
Matthew and Mark place the darkness between the sixth and ninth hours (Matthew 27:45-46). In the usual Jewish reckoning of daylight, this was approximately noon until three in the afternoon. Mark places the crucifixion at the third hour, about nine in the morning, so Jesus had been on the cross for roughly three hours when the darkness began. It continued through the last three hours of His suffering. These ancient time references help us follow the events, but we should not expect the precision of a modern clock.
The word translated land can also mean earth, so that word alone does not settle how far the darkness reached. The Gospels do not identify a natural mechanism either. An ordinary solar eclipse cannot explain it: Passover occurred near the full moon, while solar eclipses occur only at the new moon. Three hours of darkness also differs from the brief total darkness of a solar eclipse. We can accept the Gospel testimony without claiming to know its cause or how far it reached.
Ancient writers such as Thallus and Phlegon are sometimes cited as outside confirmation of the darkness. Claims about their testimony require care, and our confidence in this event rests on the inspired Gospel writers. Their accounts also preserve the words Jesus spoke during those darkened hours:
Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.”
Jesus’ cry expressed real anguish. Mark preserves an Aramaic form, while Matthew records a form reflecting Hebrew, and both explain the words for their readers. Jesus was quoting the opening of Psalm 22: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some bystanders thought He was calling for Elijah and spoke about whether Elijah would rescue Him. Their misunderstanding does not change whom He addressed or the Scripture He quoted.
Luke records this prayer at the end of His suffering.
And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.'” Having said this, He breathed His last.
Jesus addressed the Father and entrusted His spirit into His hands. He had already told His disciples that the Father would be with Him even when they scattered (John 16:32), and His final prayer continued that trust. I cannot interpret the darkness as the Father turning against His Son when Jesus’ own words express His dependence on the Father.
Matthew and Mark record another loud cry after the words from Psalm 22. Luke preserves the prayer committing His spirit to the Father, and John records His thirst and the declaration, “It is finished.” The writers do not supply a second-by-second order for every word, but together they show Jesus speaking with purpose and willingly giving up His life. His terrible physical suffering was real, and He chose to endure it for us.
Psalm 22 Shows That the Father Heard Him
His cry from the opening of Psalm 22 directs us to the whole Psalm. It describes a righteous sufferer surrounded by enemies and mocked while in physical agony. That suffering gives way to vindication and praise in the assembly and among the nations (Psalm 22:22-31). The opening words express the anguish from which that praise will arise:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. But You are holy, Enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in You; They trusted, and You delivered them. They cried to You, and were delivered; They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.
The sufferer cries out because help has not yet come, yet he confesses that God is holy and remembers how He delivered the fathers who trusted Him. Jesus entered the suffering this Psalm foretold without ceasing to be the beloved Son. Quoting its opening did not reduce His pain to a teaching illustration. We need to hear that anguish and also keep reading to learn what the Psalm says about God’s response:
For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard.
Verse 24 expressly says that God did not despise the afflicted one or hide His face from him; God heard when he cried. I understand Jesus’ opening cry in the light of that declaration and His own final prayer of trust. The Father did not reject or abandon Him. While wicked people inflicted His suffering, the Son remained in perfect unity with the Father.
John had already recorded Jesus explaining that His death would be a willing act under His Father’s command.
“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”
That earlier declaration helps explain how the Gospel writers describe His death. Matthew says He yielded His spirit, Luke records His committing it to the Father, and John says He gave it up. No one could take His life apart from His willingness to lay it down. As He had already told His hearers, He had authority both to surrender His life and to take it again.
His willingness did not make His killers innocent. They arrested and mocked the sinless Son of God, tore His flesh through scourging and pierced His body. Those were wicked acts for which the people who committed them remained responsible. Their cruelty could not defeat God’s saving purpose, because Jesus had chosen to give His life for sinners. His willing surrender and their guilt both belong in our understanding of the cross.
“It Is Finished,” the Torn Veil, and the Signs
John brings us to Jesus’ final declaration and then follows what the soldiers did with His body.
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
The Greek word translated “It is finished” is tetelestai, from teleo, a verb meaning to complete, fulfill or accomplish. The Greek lexicon entry includes those senses and also uses connected with payment. John has just told us that Jesus knew all things were accomplished and was fulfilling Scripture. In that setting, His declaration announces completion of the work the Father had given Him.
You may have heard that this word was routinely stamped on first-century receipts to mean “paid in full.” Repetition does not establish that particular historical claim, and a commercial use of the verb does not determine its meaning in every passage. John’s account gives us firm ground for explaining Christ’s completed work. The study on Tetelestai: It Is Finished examines that declaration more fully.
As Jesus died, the temple veil was torn in two from top to bottom, a direction Matthew and Mark both record. I understand this as God’s action, opening what people had no authority to open for themselves. Scripture does not give the veil’s dimensions or thickness, and the familiar claim that horses could not tear it does not come from the Gospels.
Under the Mosaic covenant, the inner veil separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. The high priest went beyond it with sacrificial blood on the annual Day of Atonement, while ordinary worshipers could not enter at will. I understand the torn temple veil in relation to that barrier. Paul explains in Hebrews how Christ’s sacrifice now gives believers access to God:
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Our confidence rests in Jesus’ blood and in Him as the High Priest over God’s house. Paul identifies the veil of this new and living way with Christ’s flesh: His actual bodily offering opened the way for sinners to draw near to God. I do not have to wait for repeated animal sacrifices or depend on a succession of mortal priests to make me acceptable to the Father.
The temple building remained until AD 70, and the early believers continued to enter its courts. Its sacrificial order had nevertheless reached fulfillment in Christ. No further temple sacrifice could add to His once-for-all offering.
Matthew also records that an earthquake split rocks and opened graves when Jesus died. He gives no magnitude, epicenter or exact geographical reach, and he does not describe creation as panicking or mourning. He records an actual earthquake and tells us how terrified the men guarding Jesus were when they saw what had happened.
Rock-cut tombs around Jerusalem help us picture the opened graves. Matthew says many bodies of saints were raised, without saying that every grave opened. He connects these events with Jesus’ death but specifically places the saints’ departure from their tombs and their appearance in Jerusalem after His resurrection. The centurion confessed Jesus at the cross, so he could not have been responding to their later appearance in the city.
Matthew does not name these saints or tell us how long they lived afterward or what eventually became of them. We should not fill in those gaps or give them the place Paul assigns to Christ as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Their appearance testifies to the significance of His death and resurrection, even though Matthew leaves many of our questions unanswered.
Witnesses Confirmed His Death and Burial
The centurion and the other guards were terrified by the earthquake and the events surrounding Jesus’ death. Matthew records their confession, “Truly this was the Son of God!” Mark connects the centurion’s words to the way Jesus cried out and breathed His last, while Luke says he glorified God and declared Jesus righteous (Mark 15:37-39; Luke 23:47). Together these accounts show recognition of His innocence and identity. They do not tell us how fully the centurion understood what he said or how he lived afterward.
Jesus’ acquaintances and the women who had followed Him from Galilee watched from a distance (Luke 23:49). Matthew and Mark name Mary Magdalene and other women who had cared for Him. Some would also watch where His body was laid, prepare spices and return to that tomb. We can follow their testimony from the crucifixion to a known burial place, then to the same tomb found empty. They had not lost track of His body.
John explains why the soldiers approached the three crosses before the bodies were removed. Because the coming Sabbath was a high day, the authorities asked Pilate to have the men’s legs broken to hasten their deaths. The soldiers broke the legs of the two men beside Jesus. When they reached Him, however, they saw that He was already dead and left His legs unbroken (John 19:31-33).
A soldier then pierced His side, and blood and water came out. John gives this eyewitness testimony so his readers may believe, stressing that it is true. He also connects the unbroken bones and the piercing with fulfilled Scripture (John 19:34-37). Medical explanations have been proposed for the blood and water, but John does not give us a diagnosis. He testifies that Jesus was already dead when His side was pierced. His wounds and His shed blood belonged to a real human body.
When Joseph of Arimathea asked for Jesus’ body, Pilate was surprised that He had died so soon. Mark tells us that Pilate questioned the centurion before releasing the body. The centurion confirmed His death, and only then did Pilate permit the burial. We therefore have an official inquiry alongside the observations of the people at the cross.
Joseph wrapped Jesus in clean linen and laid Him in his own new tomb cut into rock. Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes and helped prepare the body, as John records. The women saw where Jesus was laid, and a stone closed the entrance. The tomb was later guarded. Jesus had truly died; the body handled, wrapped and buried was the one that had hung on the cross. He had not merely lost consciousness or cast off His body as an unwanted shell.
His Death Leads to Bodily Resurrection and Redemption
The gospel includes burial because the Savior truly died, and resurrection because that same Savior did not remain dead. Paul carries the testimony from the cross and tomb to the people who saw Him alive:
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried and rose on the third day. Paul names witnesses and recalls an appearance to more than five hundred people at once, most of whom were still alive when he wrote. The risen Jesus could be touched and ate before His disciples, and His body bore recognizable wounds. The very body that had been crucified and buried was now alive and glorified.
Paul calls Him the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). Firstfruits were the initial part of a harvest, anticipating what would follow. Christ’s resurrection guarantees the future bodily resurrection of His people, giving us hope that reaches beyond the burial of our own bodies.
At Pentecost, Peter proclaimed that God had raised Jesus and that His death had fulfilled God’s purpose. He also confronted his hearers with the guilt of the men who crucified Him.
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know– Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
Peter holds the men who crucified Jesus responsible even as he declares that His death fulfilled God’s determined purpose and foreknowledge. Their lawless cruelty was neither innocent nor an act of violence committed by the Father against His Son. God accomplished His saving purpose through the death Jesus willingly accepted. He then raised Jesus, because death could not hold Him.
In his letter, Peter describes how Jesus endured unjust suffering and what His bodily sacrifice accomplished.
For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness–by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Jesus committed no sin and did not answer His abusers in kind. When they reviled Him, He did not revile them; when they made Him suffer, He did not threaten them. He entrusted Himself to the One who judges righteously. Peter directs believers suffering unjustly to His example, then explains that Christ bore our sins in His body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.
Peter describes the healing of Christ’s people in connection with that saving purpose. After speaking of His stripes, he pictures wandering sheep returned to their Shepherd. He is explaining how Christ brings sinners back to God and gives them a new life in which to serve Him. He is not promising that every believer’s physical illness will immediately disappear.
The One who suffered is the eternal, uncreated Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. His atonement rests on His perfection: He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men inflicted His bodily torture and death, while He willingly shed His blood and gave His innocent life. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct, coequal, coeternal Persons, one God acting in perfect unity. Hebrews describes His spotless offering through the eternal Spirit as central to His priestly work:
But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
Paul explains that Jesus entered the greater sanctuary with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. Redemption means deliverance secured through a price; here that price is His innocent life given for us through His blood and death. His saving sacrifice was complete before He was buried and rose bodily from the grave. He did not rise to begin another sacrifice or go elsewhere to finish suffering for our sins.
Animal blood served the ceremonial cleansing God appointed under the first covenant, but it could not accomplish what Christ’s blood does. His sacrifice cleanses our conscience from dead works so that we may serve the living God. As Mediator of the new covenant, He brings sinners into the relationship with God secured by His death. His blood cannot be reduced to a metaphor detached from His physical body and the innocent life He actually gave.
Jesus fulfills both the offering and the priestly work pictured on the Day of Atonement. He is the sinless sacrifice and the eternal High Priest who presented it. No earthly priesthood has to stand between us and the Father, and no fresh altar or repeated ritual can add to the cross. I approach God through His completed offering while depending on His continuing intercession as our living High Priest. The study on the atonement of Jesus Christ examines these distinctions further.
Jesus tasted death for everyone and is the propitiation for the whole world, the sacrifice that deals with our sin. God genuinely offers salvation to every person, although people can resist His grace and finally reject Him. Anyone who repents and believes receives forgiveness and everlasting life. Ancestry, religious office, moral reform and every other human work are powerless to accomplish what His blood has secured.
Everyone who is genuinely born again becomes a new creation, is indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit, and is eternally secure in Christ. Obedience grows from that new life; it neither earns nor keeps salvation. New birth does not make believers sinless, but it produces a real change in their conduct. A Christian label alone cannot substitute for that life, and assurance never excuses lawlessness. The Savior who gave Himself for us is also the risen Lord whom we are called to obey.
The access Christ has given us also shapes our life together. In Hebrews 10, Paul urges us to approach God with a true heart, hold firmly to our hope because He is faithful, and encourage one another in love and good works. We should gather with fellow believers and strengthen their faith as we depend on Christ together (Hebrews 10:23-25). The torn veil helps us understand the confidence and fellowship His sacrifice makes possible.
My Final Thoughts
I do not want to become so accustomed to the crucifixion that I stop considering what Jesus actually endured and accomplished. He suffered in an innocent body, trusted the Father, and willingly gave His life for sinners. The torn veil points me to the access His blood has opened, and His bodily resurrection assures me that the Savior who died now lives. I can come to the Father through Him with confidence. His sacrifice deserves that trusting response rather than mere amazement at the signs surrounding His death.