Truly This Man
When the centurion, who stood by opposite him, saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last, he said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God!'
Read
Mark 15 is the crucifixion. It is told plainly, without decoration. The events carry their own weight.
Read the chapter before the walk-through. Notice who is present and where they are standing.
Walk-through
Before Pilate (verses 1–15)
At dawn the chief priests, elders, scribes, and the whole council bind Jesus and hand him over to Pilate.
Pilate asks: are you the King of the Jews?
Mark 15:2He answered, "So you say."
The chief priests accuse him of many things. Pilate asks again: have you no answer? Jesus says nothing more. Pilate marvels.
At the feast Pilate customarily released one prisoner. There is a man named Barabbas in prison — a rebel who had committed murder in an insurrection. The crowd begins to ask Pilate to do as he usually does. Pilate offers them the King of the Jews. The chief priests stir up the crowd to ask for Barabbas instead. What then shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews? Crucify him. Why, what evil has he done? They shout louder: crucify him.
Pilate, wanting to satisfy the crowd, releases Barabbas. He has Jesus flogged and hands him over to be crucified.
Barabbas — a man guilty of exactly the violence Jesus is innocent of — goes free. Jesus takes his place. The substitution is embedded in the narrative before the cross is even raised.
The mockery (verses 16–20)
The soldiers take Jesus inside the palace. The whole battalion gathers. They dress him in purple and weave a crown of thorns. They begin to salute him: hail, King of the Jews! They strike his head with a reed, spit on him, and kneel in homage. Then they strip the purple, put his own clothes back on him, and lead him out to crucify him.
Everything they do to mock is accurate. He is the King of the Jews. He is worthy of homage. The gestures of mockery — the robe, the crown, the kneeling — are the forms of kingship with the content inverted. They are performing the truth without knowing it.
The crucifixion (verses 21–32)
They compel a man coming in from the country — Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus — to carry the cross. They bring Jesus to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. They offer him wine mixed with myrrh — a mild painkiller — but he does not take it.
They crucify him. They divide his garments, casting lots for them. It is nine in the morning.
The inscription of the charge: THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers are crucified with him, one on each side. Those passing by deride him, wagging their heads: you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days — save yourself and come down from the cross!
Mark 15:31–32Likewise, the chief priests also mocking among themselves with the scribes said, "He saved others. He can't save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe."
He saved others; he cannot save himself. It is spoken as a taunt. It is the precise truth of what is happening. He is saving others by not saving himself. The cross is not a collapse of power — it is power exercised in the only way that could accomplish what needed to be done. The mockers have stumbled into a description of the atonement while meaning to ridicule it.
The death (verses 33–41)
At noon, darkness comes over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
At three o'clock, Jesus cries out with a loud voice:
Mark 15:34"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
The Aramaic words are preserved — Eloi rather than Matthew's Eli, which is why some bystanders mishear it as a call for Elijah. This is the opening of Psalm 22. Jesus is praying. In the worst moment — the physical agony, the public shame, the silence of heaven — he addresses God. Not: where is God. Not: there is no God. My God, my God. Still his, still addressed, even from within the forsakenness.
Someone runs to offer sour wine on a sponge. Others wait to see if Elijah comes.
Jesus utters a loud cry and breathes his last.
Mark 15:38–39The veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom. When the centurion, who stood by opposite him, saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
Two things happen simultaneously.
The curtain of the temple — the great woven barrier between the holy of holies and the rest of the world, between the presence of God and ordinary approach — tears from top to bottom. From the top: not by human hands pulling from below, but from God's side. The way that had been managed and mediated and restricted for centuries is opened at the moment of his death.
And a Roman centurion, who has watched him die, says: truly this man was the Son of God.
The messianic secret has been one of Mark's defining features — demons silenced throughout the gospel, healed people told to say nothing, the disciples charged not to tell. Now, at the cross, the secret breaks open. The first human being in Mark's gospel to confess Son of God without being stopped is a Gentile soldier standing opposite the cross. Not a disciple. Not a priest. Not a synagogue ruler. A Roman officer who watched him breathe his last and saw something there that the religious establishment could not see from the temple steps.
The women are watching from a distance: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome. They had followed him in Galilee and served him. Many others too had come up with him to Jerusalem. The disciples had fled. The women stayed.
The burial (verses 42–47)
It is the day of Preparation — the Friday before Sabbath begins at sundown. Joseph of Arimathea — a respected member of the council, who was himself looking for the Kingdom of God — takes courage and goes to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus.
Pilate is surprised that he is already dead. He summons the centurion and asks whether he has been dead long. When he learns it from the centurion, he grants the body to Joseph.
Joseph buys a linen shroud, takes down the body, wraps it, and lays it in a tomb cut out of rock. He rolls a stone against the door.
Mark 15:47Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
They watch. They are witnesses to both the death and the burial — the two facts that will matter most when Sunday comes. They know exactly where the tomb is. They are not confused, not deceived, not mistaken. They saw where he was laid.
Take with you
The centurion's confession is the destination Mark has been building toward since the first sentence.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God — that is how Mark opened. The reader has known from the start. The demons knew and were silenced. The Father declared it at the baptism and the transfiguration. The disciples heard it and did not yet understand it. And now, here, at the end of everything — at the worst moment, in the worst way — a Roman soldier says it plainly, out loud, as a human being for the first time in this gospel.
He says it because of what he saw. Not a miracle. Not a teaching. Not a healing. He saw how he died — the loud cry, the way he breathed his last — and he saw something in it. Mark does not explain what the centurion understood. He records what the centurion said.
Truly this man was the Son of God.
The curtain is torn. The stone is rolled. The women know where he is. And the whole first half of the story — from immediately in chapter 1 to the darkness in chapter 15 — has arrived at its lowest point, which is also where everything turns.