Before nailing Him to the Cross, the soldiers parted among them the poor worldly inheritance of His raiment. [6083] On this point there are slight seeming differences [6084] between the notices of the Synoptists and the more detailed account of the Fourth Gospel. Such differences, if real, would afford only fresh evidence of the general trustworthiness of the narrative. For, we bear in mind that, of all the disciples, only St. John witnessed the last scenes, and that therefore the other accounts of it circulating in the early Church must have been derived, so to speak, from second sources. This explains, why perhaps the largest number of seeming discrepancies in the Gospels occurs in the narrative of the closing hours in the Life of Christ, and how, contrary to what otherwise we might have expected, the most detailed as well as precise account of them comes to us from St. John. In the present instance these slight seeming differences may be explained in the following manner. There was, as St. John states, first a division into four parts - one to each of the soldiers - of such garments of the Lord as were of nearly the same value. The head-gear, the outer cloak-like garment, the girdle, and the sandals, would differ little in cost. But the question, which of them was to belong to each of the soldiers, would naturally be decided, as the Synoptists inform us, by lot.
But, besides these four articles of dress, there was the seamless woven inner garment, [6085] by far the most valuable of all, and for which, as it could not be partitioned without being destroyed, they would specially cast lots [6086] (as St. John reports). Nothing in this world can be accidental, since God is not far from any of us. But in the History of the Christ the Divine purpose, which forms the subject of all prophecy, must have been constantly realised; nay, this must have forced itself on the mind of the observer, and the more irresistibly when, as in the present instance, the outward circumstances were in such sharp contrast to the higher reality. To St. John, the loving and loved disciple, greater contrast could scarcely exist than between this rough partition by lot among the soldiery, and the character and claims of Him Whose garments they were thus apportioning, as if He had been a helpless Victim in their hands. Only one explanation could here suggest itself: that there was a special Divine meaning in the permission of such an event - that it was in fulfilment of ancient prophecy. As he gazed on the terrible scene, the words of the Psalm [6087] [6088] which portrayed the desertion, the sufferings, and the contempt even unto death of the Servant of the Lord, stood out in the red light of the Sun setting in Blood. They flashed upon his mind - for the first time he understood them; [6089] and the flames which played around the Sufferer were seen to be the sacrificial fire that consumed the Sacrifice which He offered. That this quotation is made in the Fourth Gospel alone, proves that its writer was an eyewitness; that it was made in the Fourth Gospel at all, that he was a Jew, deeply imbued with Jewish modes of religious thinking. And the evidence of both is the stronger, as we recall the comparative rareness, and the peculiarly Judaic character of the Old Testament quotations in the Fourth Gospel. [6090]
It was when they thus nailed Him to the Cross, and parted His raiment, that He spake the first of the so-called Seven Words:' Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' [6091] Even the reference in this prayer to what they do' (not in the past, nor future) points to the soldiers as the primary, though certainly not the sole object of the Saviour's prayer. [6092] [6093] But higher thoughts also come to us. In the moment of the deepest abasement of Christ's Human Nature, the Divine bursts forth most brightly. It is, as if the Saviour would discard all that is merely human in His Sufferings, just as before He had discarded the Cup of stupefying wine. These soldiers were but the unconscious instruments: the form was nothing; the contest was between the Kingdom of God and that of darkness, between the Christ and Satan, and these sufferings were but the necessary path of obedience, and to victory and glory. When He is most human (in the moment of His being nailed to the Cross), then is He most Divine, in the utter discarding of the human elements of human instrumentality and of human suffering. Then also in the utter self-forgetfulness of the God-Man - which is one of the aspects of the Incarnation - does He only remember Divine mercy, and pray for them who crucify Him; and thus also does the Conquered truly conquer His conquerors by asking for them what their deed had forfeited. And lastly, in this, that alike the first and the last of His Utterances begin with Father,' does He show by the unbrokenness of His faith and fellowship the real spiritual victory which He has won. And He has won it, not only for the martyrs, who have learned from Him to pray as He did, but for everyone who, in the midst of all that seems most opposed to it, can rise, beyond mere forgetfulness of what is around, to realising faith and fellowship with God as the Father,' - who through the dark curtain of cloud can discern the bright sky, and can feel the unshaken confidence, if not the unbroken joy, of absolute trust.