25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. ~ John 19:25-27
Notice in our text that the Apostle John does not mention the mother of the Lord Jesus by name. Matthew and Mark do not even mention that she was there. In fact, she is never mentioned in any of the epistles of the entire New Testament. She is mentioned just one other time in Acts 1:14 when she was gathered with the disciples, that’s it.
The silence underscores that Mary plays no role in anybody’s redemption. If she were some kind of an intercessor between us and Christ, it would have been obvious.
As we read v.25 we learn that despite the nature of the gruesome cross of the Lord Jesus, it is the greatest means by which any of us can stand tall in a world that is out to beat us down. v.25 reads, "Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother." In her hardest hour, Mary stood at the cross.
Think of what she saw as she gazed upon her son. He had been stripped of all of His clothing, utterly ashamed. The Lord Jesus took not just the penalty of our sin that day, He took the shame of our sin. It is the shame that causes us to shun not just ourselves but others. The Lord Jesus went further than we actually ever knew. He took the worst of our sin, He took our shame.
While the Jewish religious leaders were complicit in the crucifixion of the Christ, it was God who was fulfilling His plan by putting His Son on the cross. The crucifixion is an act of God by which He fulfills His purpose to secure the eternal salvation of millions. He had to punish sin in order to substantiate all that is good, true and holy. At the cross of our Lord Jesus, God ruined the eternal effects of the rebellion of Satan.
A further remarkable thing is that the Apostle John's own mother was standing right there at the cross. The second woman mentioned here, "His mother's sister," is the mother of James and John, who were cousins of the Lord Jesus. John accepts the responsibility and takes her into his own home.
The death of Christ on the cross is the purest act of love ever. It is the most perfect sacrifice for sin and the only one that atones. The death of the Son of God is the work of the Father and the Son to provide forgiveness for all who believe in Him.
There were at the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus only four of His followers. There were many more than this as we know, but only four were there. The apostles had fled, with the exception of one man, and that is John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and four women.
This phrase, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is used five times throughout John's Gospel. I believe this phrase explains why John was the only one of the remaining eleven to be at the cross when the Lord Jesus gave up His Spirit. The others were defined by their love for the Lord Jesus, but John was defined by the Lord Jesus' love for him.
In Luke 2, Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, was told that her Child had come into the world for the rising and the falling of many, and through Him a sword would pierce her soul. She had raised the perfect sinless Son of God in her home. She was loved by Him with a love that was not like any other love any other human being has ever known. She was bound to the Lord Jesus in a way that no other human being could ever know. And here it ends at the cross, and a sword goes through her soul.
In John 7, we are told the Lord Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him. So now His mother needs someone to care for her, someone who believes in Him, and that someone happens to be the only disciple standing there. It is the disciple identified as the disciple whom the Lord Jesus loved.
In his entire gospel, John never refers to himself by name. John and his brother James are referred often as the "sons of thunder." They had a loud and rough reputation. In fact, in Luke 9:54 when they came into a Samaritan village, they were rejected by the people of that village. “When James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’” Then the Lord Jesus rebuked them, saying, "You do not know what spirit you’re of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”'
But something dramatic happened to John. When he wrote this gospel, he sees himself completely differently. He now is known as the disciple whom Jesus loved. This is largely why the Lord Jesus chose him to care for His mother for he had experienced the love of Christ and it had transformed him.
“God so loved the world,” is perhaps the most familiar verse in all of the Bible. Here is a transformed man, a man once known for wanting to call down fire from heaven and burn up an entire town is now defined by a love that he would have never encountered had it not been for the obedient and loving Son of God.
