Big Idea: Jesus dies on the cross, mourned by some and mocked by others, but confidently placing himself in his Father’s hands.

Understanding the Text

The crowd demanded Jesus’s crucifixion in 23:21, 23, and that now takes place, cruelly embodying Jesus’s earlier warning that to follow him would mean to “take up the cross” (9:23; 14:27). A variety of reactions on the way to “the Skull” and at the cross reflect the different ways people have responded to Jesus and his claims within the Gospel. But as the scene progresses, a sequence of positive notes offsets the official rejection of Jesus (the faith and salvation of one of the criminals, the supernatural darkness and tearing of the temple curtain, Jesus’s own calm demeanor in death, and the surprised reaction of the centurion) and so ena…