Our Good Friday service is a time of somber reflection and intimate worship. Ponder the Holy Moments at the cross as Dr. Marty Baker takes a look at the Roman centurion’s experience at the foot of the cross. Remember Christ’s sacrifice as we take communion together. See amazing visuals as our drama team brings the pain and beauty of Calvary to life.
Samuel Porter Jones was born on October 126, 1847. His father, John, was a lawyer, real estate entrepreneur, and a follower of Jesus Christ. His mother, Queenie, was a homemaker and a devout believer. His paternal grandfather, Samuel, was a Methodist preacher, and so, too, was his great-grandfather. Faith ran through the spiritual veins of many family members, but not Sam’s.
At eight years old, his mother died. Her last words to her boy modeled those of 2 Samuel 12:23, “Sam, I will never be able to return to you, but you can come to me.”
He didn’t heed her advice. During the Civil War, Sam joined with Union troops heading to Kentucky. After the war, he studied law and was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1868. Quickly, he became known as two things: a brilliant lawyer and an out-of-control alcoholic.
When he learned his father was near death, he went to him. His father’s final words, like those of his mother, challenged him: “My poor, wicked, wayward, reckless son. You have brought me down in sorrow to my grave. Promise, my boy, to meet me in heaven.”
Overwhelmed with his father’s words, Sam fell to his knees and said, “I promise, I’ll quit drinking. I’ll meet you and mother in heaven.”
His promise didn’t last long. Immediately, he left his father’s side and headed into a favorite bar. As he asked for a glass of liquor, he looked in the mirror and saw his matted, dirty hair, filth on his clothes, swollen lips, and bloodshot eyes. He thought to himself, “Is this all that is left of the proud, brilliant lawyer?”
With that, he broke his glass on the bar floor, frightening the bartender. He screamed out of despair, “Oh God! Oh God, have mercy!” God did show mercy, because at that precise moment, a wayward son to his earthly mother and father, and also to his heavenly father, came home to the house of faith. He got a cup of black coffee, spent three days fighting his demons, purchased some new clothes, got a shave and haircut, and went back home to his wife and children. Walking in the door, he exclaimed, Honey, God has given you a new husband and the children a new daddy, and I wonder if you will forgive me and start all over.” She did. They did. By 1872, Sam Jones became a circuit preacher of the life-transformative power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Today, he enjoys time with his parents, I’m sure, along with many other family and friends who also walked with Jesus.
Sam’s story begs a question: How did God work to move Sam from rock-solid unbelief and love of sin to rock-solid belief and love of Christ and holiness? He sovereignly orchestrated pivotal events in his life which, unbeknownst to him at the time, plowed the hardened soil of his spiritual heart.
What happened to Sam in the late 1800s is exactly what happened to the battle-hardened, I’ve-seen-everything Centurion in charge of Christ’s crucifixion detail. For him, Christ’s crucifixion started like many he had led before. The beating. The whipping. The arduous walk to the hill called Golgotha. The driving of five-inch-long nails that were three-eighths inch square through each hand. The bending of the subject’s knees so his feet could be nailed to the cross. The placing of the cross in the hole to position it vertically. The hammering of wedges to hold it in place. Yes, all of this seemed like business as usual, as gruesome as it was, but he was callously used to it because it was his job as a commander of eighty well-trained and disciplined soldiers.
This day would prove to be like no day he had ever seen during a crucifixion because the man in the middle was no mere man. He was the God-man who was finishing His redemptive mission by willingly laying his life down for sinners like the Centurion and his crucifixion detail. And in typical loving fashion, as Jesus was dying, He worked in and through various events that day to plow the hardened heart of this rough and tough soldier who formed the backbone of the ruthless Roman army.
What events did Jesus employ that day to reach out to this expressionless, unmerciful soldier? Moving chronologically through all the gospel accounts, which give us different perspectives on that tragic day, we can easily see how God plowed this man’s cold, hard heart so that the seed of the gospel might be planted and sprout into life eternal.
- He couldn’t believe Jesus offered forgiveness to those soldiers who greedily divided up his cheaper garments, but gambled for his tunic, which was a seamless garment (Luke 23:34; John 19:23-24). “Who talks like that when they are being taken advantage of?” he must have thought. He says, with what little breath they can muster, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they are doing.” The soldiers knew exactly what they were doing. They were stealing his clothes, His last earthly belongings. The Centurion must have pondered, “How could the man in the middle offer forgiveness for thievery?”
- He couldn’t believe the look on Jesus’s face when the people and the religious leaders mocked him on the cross. Instead of responding with vile, negative words, he just looked at them with sadness and love. Most men who are mocked when they are dying mock in return. But not this man. The Centurion took note because there was something different about this man with a sign over his head that said he was some king.
- He couldn’t believe the discussion Jesus had with the two criminals crucified to his left and right. At first, they both mocked Jesus, but then something happened with the one brigand. As the one mocked Jesus, the other had a flash of insight and said, “40 But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 “And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” 43 And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23). Paradise. Now, there is a place the Centurion would like to go. A place of beauty, love, and joy. All the things he had seen on earth as a career soldier were blood, guts, and fear. He must have wondered, “Can this so-called King of Jews take a person like me to Paradise?”
- He couldn’t believe how the man hanging helplessly on the middle cross took the time to make sure another man in the crowd, John, took care of his mother. Who does that? Crucified people are not thinking about others. They are simply struggling to breathe as they arch their backs and push with their nailed feet to get a small amount of air amidst the excruciating pain (John 19:25-27). But this man, this king, spoke words of love, care, and compassion: When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He *said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour, the disciple took her into his own household (John 19). With those words, the Centurion must have thought of his mother. If he were dying like this, would he be able to speak as this man did?
- He couldn’t account for the sudden darkness that descended from noon until 3 p.m., which is when the sun shines the brightest. How did this happen? (Matt. 27:45). He had never seen an eclipse like this. Absolute darkness engulfed the entire land, as if it were 12 a.m., not 12 p.m. Furthermore, the Centurion knew that eclipses don’t last for three hours, so this was something altogether different. This was something only God could pull off. Everyone in that polytheistic culture knew that eclipses didn’t occur during the full moon of the god, Luna. And it was a full moon, so there was no way this was an eclipse. Something bigger and more ominous was occurring, and the Centurion knew it. In the darkness, it felt as if sin and outright evil were engulfing Golgotha.
- He had never heard a crucified person say the things the man in the middle said. Out of the darkness, his words penetrated the ears of all who could hear, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46); “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46); and “It is finished (John 19:30). What was finished? Crucified people could hardly talk because of the pain they endured, but this man spoke all the way up to the end, as if he were in full control. The manner of His death certainly caught the Centurion’s attention. More than this, all of these collective events plowed his cold, hard heart.
- He just couldn’t logically account for the localized earthquake that shook Golgotha right after Jesus exclaimed like some victor, not a victim, “It is finished.” (John 19:30). This was no little earthquake either. Rocks on Golgotha cracked, popped, and split in two from the force of the tectonic plates moving against each other. (Matt. 27:51). We now know that rocks don’t fail unless the earthquake is greater than a 6.5 on the Richter scale. I’ve been in quakes larger than this, and believe me, they are no fun, especially when you hear rocks crunching under your feet in your tree-lined neighborhood. This must have been some quaking, and rightly so because earthquakes are associated with the judgment of God in the prophets (Isa. 5:25; 24:18; Joel 2:10; Nahum 1:5-6). Though the Centurion’s theology and understanding of the Israelite prophets were probably negligible at this point, he was smart enough to use his logical brain to connect the dots of all of these perfectly timed events surrounding the death of this particular Jewish king.
Trying to hold his position as a proud and disciplined soldier as the earth moved under his feet that he couldn’t see because of the eerie darkness, the divine plow had accomplished its redemptive work. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us what happened next:
Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening,[1]became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54)
The Greek describes their fear with two words: ἐφοβήθησαν σφόδρα, or ephobethesan (from phobeo) and sphodra (from extremely), meaning these crack troops who feared nothing were utterly petrified.
Why? They used their reasoning abilities to connect the divine dots. The words Christ spoke from the cross, coupled with the perfect timing of all of these mighty cosmic events, left them with but one conclusion: They had just crucified the very Son of God. So, there in the darkness, I believe, a Roman Centurion and some of his men traded armies. There is the darkness, light, spiritual light shone brightly in their hearts because they now had faith in Jesus, who paid for their sins on that cruel, splintery tree. Interesting. The Centurion went up to Golgotha, possessing great pride in the red of his tunic that marked him off as a mighty Roman officer. But there in the thick darkness of 3 p.m. on the fateful Friday afternoon, that red meant nothing to him anymore. What now mattered was the red on the cross that flowed from the Son of God. The red of his uniform marked him off as a military leader, but the red of the cross marked him off as an eternal child of God.
How did all of this happen? How did the sinner become a saint? How did this soldier and some of his troops move from being inheritors of eternal death to being inheritors of eternal life? God lovingly designed a string of chronological events to plow the hardness of their spiritual hearts so they would choose to receive the blood-stained seed of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, who really was the Christ, the Son of God.
In the stillness of this Good Friday service, I have but one observation: Perhaps, the same God who plowed this Centurion’s heart, along with some of his menacing men, is plowing yours today through a series of unimaginable, unforeseen, maybe unwanted events. And you are taking note because they are all just too implausible if God is not behind them. What should you do? Place your faith in the Savior, Jesus, just like this Centurion did with his men.
For those who are already believers, take advantage of this holy moment to remember when God plowed your heart. Looking back, you see clearly what God did to get your spiritual attention. Thank Him for that because it was those events that led you to the feet of the only one who could save you. You know his name, so speak it: Jesus, the Christ, the Savior of the sinners, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done.
