He who saves others cannot save himself.
The leaders of the Jewish nation looked with grave suspicion on every one who claimed to be Messiah; and as they. fully believed that when Messiah came he would "abide forever," the crucifixion of Jesus was the plainest possible proof that he was not Messiah. This text is the taunt founded on this idea. "He saved others" is satire. They did not believe that he had saved anybody. To them his imposture and his helplessness were at once shown in this—"himself he cannot save." Those mockers were wrong every way.
I. CHRIST DID SAVE OTHERS. Illustrate, by specimen cases, the following three points:
1. He did save from disability and disease. He gave sight to the blind, and cleansed the leper.
2. He did save from death. He brought Lazarus back from the grave.
3. He did save from sin. Authoritatively saying to the paralytic, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." He did "save to the uttermost."
II. CHRIST COULD HAVE SAVED HIMSELF. Had he so wished, he could have commanded the service of "twelve legions of angels." "There was not a moment, from beginning to end of his human career, in which our blessed Lord might not have turned back from shame and suffering. At the very moment when these words were uttered, be had but to speak, and he would have been surrounded by the responsive hosts of heaven, and in one moment his pain would have been exchanged for triumph." Nails could not hold him against his will. He could have come down from the cross.
III. CHRIST WOULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF. There is the mystery of the great self-sacrifice. Because he would save others, he would not save himself. Relatively to the work which our blessed Lord had undertaken, it was necessary that he himself should not be saved, His mission required:
1. That his submission to God's will should be fully tested. And the last test of a man is this—Can you die just when God pleases, just where God pleases, just how God pleases?
2. That mission required the surrender of a human life as a sacrifice for sin. That was the Divine plan for the redemption of men from sin; Jesus must offer that sacrifice, so he would not come down from the cress. Our Lord's own will gave the virtue to his sacrifice. He could have saved himself, but he would not. He meant to yield himself, in a voluntary act of obedience to God. "By the which will we have been sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all."—R.T.