We have always maintained that the Sabbath-breaker and the friend of tax collectors and sinners cannot be the Messiah, the King of Israel; we cautioned the public against being misled by His miracles, which were performed through Beelzebub's power. The one who claims to be the Son of God is suffering among criminals! Some might have thought our motivations stemmed from personal agendas; however, are we not also waiting eagerly for the true Messiah, the King of Israel? Yet, we cannot accept the Messiah in one who is nailed to the cross, for the Law of Moses declares, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. If He indeed holds the title of King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross right now, and we will be the first to believe in Him. Why does He not come down? He who placed His trust in God and referred to Him as His Father? If He truly could not descend from the cross, and if He was favored by God, then may God rescue Him from this disgraceful execution....! Yet God does not deliver...." These blasphemous remarks seemed to affect the crowd; indeed, the Evangelist Luke notes that the rulers joined in the mockery (Luke 23:35). This addition can be understood as follows: Initially, the people, taken aback by Jesus' humility and His prayer for those executing Him, stood there in a daze, gazing at the horrific sight in silence. But eventually, when the rulers intervened, deriding Jesus and mocking Him, the crowd echoed their insolent taunts. Those passing by reviled Him, shaking their heads and saying, "O you who destroy the temple and in three days rebuild it, save yourself; if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." Were these not the false witnesses who had hastily come forward at the night session of the Sanhedrin to testify against Jesus? Their mockery referenced His promise to destroy and raise the temple within three days, closely mirroring their trial testimony.
Questions often arise about why Christ did not descend from the cross, for doing so would have proven His divine authority and garnered belief among all. Such inquiries persist among many nonbelievers today. How should we respond? The One whose command causes demons, winds, and waves to obey, who healed diseases even at a distance, and who raised the dead certainly could have come down from the cross if necessary. Thus, His not coming down indicates that there were profound reasons for it—reasons known only to God. Indeed, we, as sinful beings, may not understand them. Nevertheless, we can derive inferences based on Christ's own words. The Gospel reveals that because of His Humanity, Christ serves as the archetype of the perfection offered to us; He calls upon us to emulate Him, to live as He, the Christ-Man, lived. To serve as a true model of accessible perfection, He refrained from employing His divine authority for personal relief from His human suffering; otherwise, He would lose the universality of His example, leaving us feeling that His commands were unattainable and nullifying His ultimate purpose here on earth. It is clear that He never used His divine power to alleviate His human struggles and anguish. As a Man, He experienced fatigue; He needed nourishment and rest; He felt thirst and endured hunger's pain; He rejoiced and grieved, unable to always conceal His sorrow, which often manifested in tears. While tempted as a human, He triumphed not by virtue of His divine essence but through submission to the Father's will, commanding us to adopt this same submission as a powerful means of overcoming temptations. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He trembled at the prospect of suffering before Him and pleaded with the Father to delay the fulfillment of His will; yet, He triumphed over this temptation by submitting to the Father's desire, expressing it with the words: "Not My will, but Thy will be done" (Luke 22:42). When He surrendered to the Father's will, the intense agony He faced on the cross elicited His human cry: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). This pleads the question: why, during such a harrowing moment of execution, did not the divine power inherent in Christ alleviate His undeserved torment? I believe it was because, should Christ have come down from the cross or dulled the pain of His excruciating execution, He could not serve as the exemplar of authentic humanity, reflecting what we are meant to be; thereby, the aim of His earthly mission would not have been fulfilled. In fact, He achieved His aim precisely through the unwavering decision not to utilize His divine authority to lessen His human afflictions. Christ, as a Man, perfectly fulfilled all His commandments; He lived as He instructed others to live; His actions were always in harmony with His words; He never leveraged His divine power to ease His adherence to His commandments; and thus, in His Humanity, He serves as a compelling model for us; we are called to live as He did, and we can!
THEOSIS