John 19

Wesley: they would have accounted remaining bodies a profanation of any Sabbath, but of this in particular. That Sabbath was a great day—Sabbath, second day of unleavened bread, and the sheaf of new corn: a treble solemnity. Arminians hear the old irony of John 18:28: careful about the day, careless of innocent blood.

Religion can police calendars while asking for broken legs. The request is still a human act they could have refused. Preparation-day scruple does not annul the guilt of the cross they sought.

Calvin: the narrative edifies faith because Scripture is fulfilled in Christ's person, and because it contains a mystery of no ordinary value. Hypocrites attend to small matters and pass by the greatest crimes: strict about outward pollution of a Sabbath, unmoved at taking an innocent man's life.

By their agency the Lord carries into effect what was of greatest importance—that the body of Christ remains uninjured, and that blood and water will flow from his side. Their Sabbath request becomes the tool of Passover fulfillment.

Soldiers obey: crurifragium for the two others, a merciless mercy that speeds death. Arminians do not romanticize the empire. Ordinary men do terrible work on an ordinary order.

The two others are still in the story. The middle cross has already been preached as for sinners. Breaking legs is not the atonement; it is the world's violence continuing beside a finished work.

The first and the other: John makes us watch the soldiers approach Jesus last. Providence is in the sequence. The two die by broken legs; the third will be found already gone.

Ungodly men will say one man simply dies sooner than another. If we examine the whole course, we are constrained, with Calvin, to ascribe the rapid death and the untouched legs to the secret purpose of God.

Already dead: he has given up his spirit; they do not break what the Passover law said must remain whole. Those in Wesley’s line hear a public fact meant to be believed—he died—and a restraint on the soldiers' usual violence.

Seeing he was dead is evidence offered to the world. The unbroken bones will preach. People may still refuse the testimony; they are not refused a true death and a true sign.

Calvin: that they break the robbers' legs and then find Christ already dead, and therefore do not touch his body, appears a very extraordinary work of providence. His death was brought on much more rapidly than men could have expected, and this prevented his legs from being broken.

The Lamb of God keeps the Passover pattern by God's timing, not by soldiers' kindness. Already dead is the same giving-up of v. 30. The substitute has actually died; the type is not left half-kept.

Wesley: it was strange, seeing he was dead, that blood should come out; more strange, that water also; and most strange that both should come immediately, at one time, and yet distinctly—pure and true water as well as pure and true blood. The beholding testifier marks miracle and mystery.

Wesleyan Arminians read blood and water as the true atonement and the true washing, held out to the world. Blood answers guilt; water answers uncleanness. The fountain is opened (Zechariah 13:1) as widely as the piercing was public. Sufficient for the world, applied to believers who come to this side and drink; not a private cistern for a hidden few, and not automatic salvation without faith. 1 John 5:6 will say he came by water and blood—the same Jesus, the same gifts.

Calvin refuses a childish Longinus legend and locates the meaning in Scripture: Christ brought the true atonement and the true washing. Forgiveness and justification were prefigured in sacrifices (blood); sanctification of the soul in washings (water). John presents a visible token that the fulfillment of both graces is in Christ.

Baptism and the Supper lead us to this side, that by faith we may draw from it as from a fountain. The blood actually atones; the water actually marks the washing he gives his people. This is not a mere symbol of a possible clean heart. The soldier meant to check for death; God meant to show a finished, effectual redemption flowing from the pierced Son.

Wesley: his testimony is valid, unexceptionable; his conscience bears witness that he testifies for no other end than that ye may believe. Arminians rest on the purpose clause: you also may believe. The eyewitness writes so that readers in every place have a sincere invitation.

Testimony is for faith, and faith is a free response the Word seeks. Blood and water are not a private vision. The beloved disciple stakes his truthfulness on it so that unbelief will not be able to say it was never offered.

Calvin hears John accommodating the narrative to the Scriptures he immediately subjoins, and especially that believers may infer what he states elsewhere: Christ came with water and blood. The witness exists so that you may believe.

The testimony is true because God authored both the event and the witness. “That you may believe” is the aim of a gospel that actually creates the faith it calls for in those given to the Son—without turning the invitation into a feint. John knows he tells the truth; the church is meant to rest here.

Wesley: originally spoken of the paschal lamb, an eminent type of Christ (Exodus 12:46). Classical Arminians take the type as wide as the first Passover was: a lamb for a household, blood on the door, a people told to look and live. The true Lamb fulfills the type for the world the type already taught to shelter under blood.

Unbroken bones are a public sign that this death is the death God wrote. Fulfillment is meant to be read and believed, not to shrink the Lamb's reach to an in-group the first Passover never pictured that way.

Calvin: the citation is from Exodus 12 and Numbers 9. Moses takes for granted that the lamb was a figure of the true and only sacrifice by which the Church was to be redeemed. Paul applies the rule to Christ our Passover without hesitation.

Christ was not only the pledge of our redemption but the price of it. In him we see accomplished what was exhibited to the ancient people under the figure of the passover. The Jews are reminded to seek in Christ the substance the Law prefigured but did not actually accomplish. The Church's redemption is the aim of the unbroken bones.

Wesley: he was pierced by the soldier's spear. They who have occasioned his sufferings by their sins (and who has not?) shall either look upon him in this world with penitential sorrow, or with terror when he comes in the clouds (Revelation 1:7; Zechariah 12:10). Arminian interpreters hear a worldwide looking: every sinner is in view; looking may be repentance now or dread later.

And who has not? is Wesley's net. The pierced one is set before the world. Penitential looking is still offered; refusing it is not proof you were never meant to look.

Calvin: the Evangelist quotes Zechariah not as a wooden literalism forced onto Christ, but to show that Christ is that God who complained the Jews had pierced his heart. What a Roman soldier's hand did, John justly imputes to the Jews. The prophet, Calvin thinks, includes both remnant repentance unto salvation and vengeance on despisers.

Looking on the pierced one is granted to a remnant and will be terror to the rest. The piercing is the wound by which he saves his people. Zechariah's God-in-the-flesh is this Jesus, actually pierced, actually looked upon by those the Spirit will give a new heart.

Wesley: acknowledging Christ when even his chosen disciples forsook him. In that extremity Joseph was no longer afraid, Nicodemus no longer ashamed. Wesleyan Arminians hear secret fear giving way to a costly confession. The death has loosened a will that had been bound by reputation.

Fear was blameworthy; coming is possible. Joseph uses the light he had and finally walks in it. Discipleship that was hidden can still come into the open. The body is not left to the empire because a man chose, under grace, to stop hiding.

Calvin: riches had prevented Joseph from professing; the Evangelist expressly says fear kept him from declaring openly. Yet when affairs are at the lowest ebb he comes forth. This was effected by a heavenly impulse: they who through fear did not honor him alive now run to his dead body as if they had become new men.

The death is more quickening than the life (John 12:24). Ambition and love of money had no charms left. Calvin refuses to let false Nicodemites hide behind this story: the time for burying is past; Christ now reigns, and concealing faith under wicked rites is not Joseph's honor.

Nicodemus—John 3's night visitor—comes in daylight with a royal weight of spices. Wesley: no longer ashamed. Wesleyan Arminians read the arc without embarrassment: the man who asked How can these things be? now honors the lifted-up Son. Night faith has become public love.

Seventy-five pounds is too much for a polite gesture. He is using remaining light and finally coming to the Light (3:21). The new birth he could not diagram is showing in a work carried out in God. Nothing in the verse says his earlier coming was fake; it says it was incomplete, and that he could still come. The world that was loved in 3:16 includes this ruler who at last brings myrrh to the body.

Calvin: Nicodemus held honorable rank; his riches are obvious from the expense. Till now riches prevented profession. A heavenly impulse makes new men of both. They bring spices to embalm, but would never have done so if they had not been perfumed with the sweet savor of his death.

Here is proof that the death was more quickening than the life. The teacher of Israel is not self-improved; he is newly bold because the grain of wheat has died. Calvin still warns those who bury Christ by hiding him: this Nicodemus runs to a corpse at the world's midnight, whereas we are called to confess a reigning Lord. The night of chapter 3 is answered, not by Nicodemus's native courage, but by the Spirit's making him a new man at the tomb.

They took, they bound: two men doing Israel's ordinary burial with extraordinary spice. Arminians honor the custom without turning it into a ladder. The body is treated as a beloved's body, not as trash the empire left.

Wrapping is love's last office before the third day. The custom of the Jews is not mocked. God lets ordinary piety serve the King. Those who handle him here are disciples at last, and the handling is a confession the world can see.

Calvin: when Christ had endured extreme ignominy, God determined that his burial should be honorable, a preparation for the glory of the resurrection. The money expended may seem superfluous; consider God's design, leading them by his Spirit to this honor, that by the sweet savor of his grave he might take away our dread of the cross.

Things out of the ordinary course are not always examples for us to copy in pomp. The Evangelist says he was buried according to Jewish custom—a ceremony of the Law that supported hope until the Mediator's resurrection shone. We who have the brightness of that rising should keep sobriety.

Wesley: a garden in the same tract of land; the cross did not stand in the garden. New tomb, unused. Arminians hear creation-language: a garden, a new place, a body laid where death has not yet claimed a tenant.

The newness is for faith. No other corpse will be able to explain an empty shelf later. God gives a clean room so that the world may know whose rising it is. Golgotha and garden sit in one tract—curse and the beginning of new creation within a walk.

Calvin: it did not happen by accident that he was buried in a new sepulcher. Though he died as other men die, he was to be the firstborn from the dead and the firstfruits of them that rise, so he had a new sepulcher in which no person had ever been laid.

Joseph and Nicodemus looked to convenience before sunset; God offered what they did not seek, a tomb distinguishing his Son from the rank of other men. The local situation will also prove the resurrection and light the next chapter. Firstfruits need an unused grave.

Wesley: they chose the rather to lay him in that sepulchre which was nigh, because it was the day before the Sabbath, drawing to an end, so they had no time to carry him far. Arminian readers let the haste stand: ordinary calendar pressure, love, a body laid in hope.

They laid Jesus there. Night is coming, and so is the first day. The men who were afraid and ashamed have done what they could. The world that pierced him now has a guarded garden and a named tomb. The invitation of this Gospel has not narrowed: the buried King is the one Nicodemus first approached, the one whose side poured blood and water, the one whose finished work is sufficient for the world and applied to those who believe.

Calvin: they are gratified that the place is near, that they might not violate the Sabbath; contrary to their intention God provides a sepulcher unused. The burial has tokens that distinguish the Son, and the nearness will serve the resurrection narrative.

They laid Jesus there because Preparation required haste, and because the Father required a particular grave. The given Son has finished the work, poured out the true atonement and washing, and been laid in a new tomb as firstfruits. Those he actually saves will find this garden empty. Until then the body rests under a providence that does not lose what it has undertaken to preserve.