When I Survey
H. Hoeksema
Book 5, Chapter 6
The Descension

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46)

How radically different from the hero worship of the world is what the church confesses concerning her Lord!

When the world commemorates its great men, it lauds their wonderful life, and exalts them for the mighty deeds they perform, for the good they did in the world. A hero is someone that left some impression upon the world, whose name is worthy of remembrance because his life and work served some good purpose, were conducive to the benefit of mankind.

But in this respect the church has nothing to say about her Lord. For the improvement of this world He really accomplished nothing. It would seem that the most important part of His work on earth is that He died. And so, in her most general confession the church declares: "I believe in Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell." The church's account of the earthly career of her Lord closes with the statement that He went down into hell!

And this is quite in harmony with the gospel narrative.

Whoever would be interested to write a biography of Jesus would find little or no material for this purpose in Scripture. The gospel stories are chiefly interested in His birth and death, that is, as far as His earthly life and work are concerned. Of His early childhood we know very little; of His adolescent years practically nothing. The gospel narratives do record His words, and many of His wonderful works, but even these are not such as would be of interest to the world. But it elaborates upon and emphasizes His death as the important event. In fact, He came to die! He was born to descend into hell! He deliberately walked the way of the cross. Freely He assumed our nature, and our life, and that, too, for the very purpose that He might of His own will lay it down again. He was born, He suffered, He died -- such is the brief account of the life and work of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son, our Lord.

In a sense, therefore, we may say that all of Jesus' earthly sojourn was a descension into hell.

When we confess this descension, we do not mean that our Lord at any time personally went into the place of the damned, but that, during His whole life, but especially on the cross, He suffered the sorrows and fears, the astonishment and perplexity, the pains and agony of hell. In that sense, He descended into hell when He came into our world in the likeness of sinful flesh. For thereby He came under the law, and under the curse, though He was personally without sin. All His life He suffered. He bore the sins of His people before the face of the Father, and in their stead was burdened with the load of the wrath of God. And He was contradicted and hated by men. His way was a gradual descent. It became deeper, darker, more difficult to travel as He proceeded. He travelled, so to speak, in the terrible storm of God's fierce wrath, the center of which was on Calvary. And toward that center He deliberately directed His way. Its distant thunder He heard all His life: "Cursed is everyone that is under the law!" As He proceeded the awful and threatening rumble of that thunder became more distinct. He spoke of it to His disciples. At the sound of it His soul was troubled, yet He deliberately set His face toward Jerusalem and Calvary. In Gethsemane the terror of it gripped Him, so that His soul became exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death; yet He did not draw back. And finally He stood in the very center of it when, on the cross, He became a curse for us. All His life, but especially on the cross, He descended into hell.

Yet, even during that six hours of suffering on the accursed tree, there is a difference between the first half of that period and the last.

Even on the cross, His way descends into the depths, declines steeply, until He has tasted death to the full, the vials of God's wrath had been emptied over His head, and He had suffered all the terror and anguish of hell itself. That anguish was conveyed into His body and soul through the means of the cross. For to Him that cross was the Word of God: "Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree." And He understood its language. But that terror of God's cursing wrath gripped His soul in all its agonizing horror and astonishment through the darkness that descended upon the scene at noonday. For to Him that darkness spoke of the day of the Lord, who had come to execute judgment, and to visit the iniquities of His people. Then, especially, His way led steeply down into that awful gloom whence we hear Him utter the agonizing cry of utter astonishment: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Sharply the six hour period of the crucifixion is divided into two equal periods by the falling of the darkness at noonday.

Before noon, the cross appears rather emphatically the work of man. For all the enemies that behold the spectacle on Calvary loudly rail on Him, challenge Him to come down from the cross, and seek to demonstrate to all the world that He is not the Christ, the Son of God, and that He is rejected, not only by men, but also by God Himself. The powers of darkness celebrate their victory.

Then, too, during that first three hours, the Lord Himself is not exclusively occupied with, engulfed in His own suffering. He pays attention to others, to His own. Three times He speaks a word of comfort and salvation: interceding for them, promising to them the glory of paradise, taking final leave from His mother, and entrusting her to the care of His beloved disciple.

But at noon, when the darkness descends upon Calvary, all this changes. The enemies realize that, by this darkness, God has come upon the scene, and the judgment of the cross is taken out of their hands. They are filled with terror, no doubt. They blaspheme no more. In silence they wonder what will be the end of this. And the Lord, too, is silent. He is completely occupied with His own suffering. He speaks not again until the ninth hour, when the darkness is dispelled, and the light of the sun once more floods Calvary with its blessed joy.

For we must understand that this darkness that enveloped Calvary at high noon was directly and plainly a special Word of God.

It was not a phenomenon that could be explained from natural causes by the wise men of this world. No sun eclipse could possibly account for it. In the case of a sun eclipse, it is never completely dark: there is a gradual dimming of the light, followed by a gradual brightening into full light of day. But the darkness on Calvary descended suddenly and completely, at noon, remained for three hours, and was lifted exactly at three o'clock in the afternoon. Moreover, it was neither limited to Calvary, nor did it extend beyond the limits of the land of Canaan; it was over the whole land. And from the text of the account of this darkness in the gospel according to Luke that is followed by the authorized version, we receive the impression that the darkness was first, the eclipse of the sun followed: "And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth (land is the proper translation, as in Matthew and Mark) until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened." Luke 23:44,45. It was not the eclipse of the sun that caused the darkness, but on the contrary, the darkness that hung an impenetrable veil before the sun. When the darkness descended the sun could, perhaps, still be seen, for a moment, appearing through the gloom like a pale disc; then also that faded away, and it was completely dark on Calvary, and night over the whole land of Canaan. The darkness reminded of that judgment of God which for three days spread its terror over the land of Egypt, when God was delivering His people from the house of bondage with a mighty arm.

What is the meaning?

It signified that God Himself had come down upon the land to judge His people, that He was present there on Calvary, and in the whole land, in His fierce anger, to visit our iniquities upon our heads, to execute judgment in righteousness, to destroy all the workers of iniquity.

The great day of the Lord has come!

This is the plain language of Holy Writ. When the Lord appears for judgment, "clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne." Ps. 97:2. When He visits the land of Pharaoh in His wrath, He covers the heaven, and makes the stars thereof dark; He covers the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. The bright lights of heaven He makes dark over Him, and He sets darkness upon His land. Ezek. 32:7,8. Always the day of the Lord is described as a day of darkness: "The earth shall quake before them: the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining." Joel 2:10. "For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of darkness, and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains." Joel 2:1,2. "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." Joel 2:31. "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining." Joel 3:15.

That day of the Lord is a day of judgment, of judgment, to be sure, upon the whole world, but centrally upon His people.

For always judgment must needs begin at the house of God.

God shall judge His people, His church, Zion, in righteousness.

Thus the prophets had spoken of that day of the Lord. "The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more ... The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely, I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn that dwelleth therein? And it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day." Amos 8:2-9. "Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light ... Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it?" Amos 5:18,20. It is the day of wrath, and of vengeance, when the Lord smites us with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart; when we shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness. Deut. 28:29. That Word addresses His inmost being through the darkness: "The day of the Lord is come! The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not again pass by them anymore."

That is the significance of the darkness on Calvary, and over the whole land of Canaan, from noon until three o'clock, on the day of the crucifixion of our Lord.

God is come for judgment upon His people.

For, mark you well, the darkness is not a mere symbol of what the Lord might do, or will do, in some future day: it means that there and then He is present in His fierce wrath.

The period of darkness is very really the day of the Lord. From the sixth to the ninth hour of the fifteenth of Nisan of the year thirty-three of our era, the Judge of heaven and earth was very really visiting our sins against us, executing righteous judgment, emptying all the vials of His terrible anger against sin over our heads.

As we stand here in the darkness of those three dreadful hours, we stand before the tribunal of the Judge of heaven and earth.

He is remembering all our iniquities. The verdict has already been expressed.

Righteous judgment is executed upon us.

-------

But how is this possible?

How can we stand in that judgment?

If God is come to judge His church, to visit our sins upon our heads, to pour out all the vials of His wrath upon us, how can we stand?

Must we not rather expect, as we stand on Calvary, that the end of the world is come upon us, and that we will all be swallowed up in the outer darkness of hell? Is not God here to judge His church, and all the world with her? Are we not standing here at the cross of the Son of God, whom we rejected and filled with reproach, nailed to the accursed tree? Have we not been exposed in all the horrible nakedness of our sin as enmity against God? Did we not fill up the measure of our iniquity? What else, then, can we expect than that this judgment of God will surely deliver Him, the Son, the Only Righteous, from that cross, and damn us into everlasting desolation?

Yet, nothing happens!

For three long hours God is pouring out His wrath over us.

The darkness passes.

And we are not consumed.

How to account for this astonishing mystery?

The answer to this question is found in the center of the three crosses that are planted on the Hill of a Skull. For He that is suspended on that cross is the Son of God, Immanuel, God with us. God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness. That is why we are not consumed in this dark hour. What you behold here on Calvary is the highest realization of that marvelous revelation of Jehovah that Moses beheld in the bush that constantly burned, and was never consumed.

Let us remember that God loves His church, His chosen Zion, with an everlasting love. He loved her freely, sovereignly, from before the foundation of the world, for His own name's sake. In His unfathomable love, He ordained her unto everlasting life and glory in the heavenly realization of His covenant of friendship. Unto that end, He appointed over them a Captain, His own, only begotten Son, that He might represent them in the hour of judgment, and lead them on to the glory of eternal life. And when that beloved church falls, together with the whole human race, into sin and death, He is, to be sure, angry with them in His just judgment, but He still loves them in His wrath. He will execute judgment upon them, for Zion must be redeemed with justice, but so that in His judgment He will reach out for them in His love, and redeem them unto Himself. For this purpose He sent His only begotten Son into the world in the fullness of time. And He came, as the Captain of their salvation, to take their place in the hour of judgment. To that hour and place of judgment He travelled all His life upon earth. And in due time, that is, exactly at the time when God poured out the vials of His wrath, He reached it: "In due time Christ died for the ungodly." And so we behold the amazing spectacle, the paradox of paradoxes, that God from heaven is pouring out His wrath upon His people, and that God in the flesh, suspended on the accursed tree of Calvary, receives all the wrath of God in our stead and in our behalf.

God is pouring out His fierce wrath upon God in the flesh!

God is with us in the darkness, Immanuel is descending into lowest hell for us!

It is the mercy of the Lord that we are not consumed in that hour of darkness!

O, that is why He is so silent in this hour of judgment. He cannot speak now. He must be left utterly alone, wrestling with God. He must hear the Word of God, the Word that speaks to Him through the cross: "Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all that is written in the book of the law to do it." That Word addresses His inmost being through the darkness: "The day of the Lord is come! The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not again pass by them anymore." He listens. Through His deepest soul, and through every fiber of His body that Word vibrates. It curses Him. It fills Him with fear and terror. Yet, He does not rebel. Willingly, out of love to the Father, He descends into deepest hell. He bears it all even unto the end. And so dreadful is His agony that, when finally He has reached the depth of His descension, His outcry can only be a question of astonishment: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

-------

Blessed hour of redemption!

Darkness covered the land until the ninth hour, then the light returns, the light of God's everlasting love and favor.

The last bitter drop of the wrath of God the Servant of the Lord had drunk. He had borne all and atoned. No longer was there any reason or ground left for the darkness. And in the light that dispelled the darkness, the Son of God, hearing the Word of God's justification, responds in the victorious: "It is finished."

And because, in the dark hour of the day of the Lord on Calvary, the Servant of the Lord descended into the depth of hell, and there sprinkled His life-blood in perfect obedience on the mercy-seat, before the face of the Father, His brethren, all that believe on His name, may be assured, even in their greatest temptations, that for them the judgment of condemnation is past.

They are redeemed forever.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us.

There is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus, and in the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God they shall be justified forever.

Hallelujah!