The Gospel accounts record three hours of darkness while Jesus was on the cross.
Matthew 27:45 From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
Mark 15:33 At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.
Luke 23:44 It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour,
What does this time of darkness mean in terms of the experience of the cross and in terms of the redemption of the world? Here I will explore the way in which darkness is understood in the Bible and then consider how the darkness of the cross is significant in terms of salvation and the Christian life.
Images of darkness in the OT
The Bible uses the image of darkness is various different but connected ways. In the beginning God separated the light from the darkness, calling the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’ (Gen 1:4-5). Darkness here is not a negative reality as such but it represents a separation of day and night. These are separated by the absence of light in the night-time. This separation of light and darkness is used as an image again in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. As the Israelites were being pursued by the Egyptians to the Red Sea the separation of Egypt and Israel is symbolised in the darkness for the one and light for the other. “The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long” (Exodus 14:19b-20).
Consistent with the idea of separation, God himself is separated from the world by a cloud of darkness. At Mt Sinai, when the Law was given to Israel, the LORD was hidden in deep darkness.
“You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness” (Deut 4:11)
“These are the commandments the LORD proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me” (Deut 5:22).
Indeed the holiness of God means that he often hides in the deep darkness. “He made darkness his canopy around him– the dark rain clouds of the sky” (2 Sam 22:12; Psalm 18:11). The darkness is not in God, as he dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16). However, the holiness of God appears here to be hidden by clouds of deep darkness, because his holiness is too awesome for human beings to experience without a means of separation from it.
Another way in which darkness is used in the Bible is to describe those who are in a state of sin. Proverbs describes the wicked as people who walk in dark ways.
“Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who leave the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways” (Prov 2:12-15)
The wicked try to hide their sin in darkness. “Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, “Who sees us? Who will know?”” (Isaiah 29:15).
This idea is echoed in the NT when John writes, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).
Accordingly, darkness is often a judgement upon sin and wickedness, something which comes upon those who are in rebellion against the Creator. When God sent Moses to rescue Israel, he did this through bringing judgement upon the Egyptians. One such judgement is a palpable darkness.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt– darkness that can be felt.” So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days” (Exodus 10:21-22).
Darkness is part of the curses on the disobedient in Israel.
“At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you” (Deuteronomy 28:29).
This idea is present in the Psalms (Psa 107:10-14); Jeremiah (Jer 13:16; Lam 3:2) and Ezekiel (Ezek 32:8). Job also expresses the idea of darkness as part of the judgement of God. “He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away. Darkness comes upon them in the daytime; at noon they grope as in the night (Job 5:13-14).
Those who continue in wickedness will spend eternity in darkness. This idea is present in the OT is Job: “before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow, to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.” (Job 10:21-22). But this idea is even more explicit in many of the sayings of Jesus:
“But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:12).
“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” (Matt 22:13).
“And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 25:30).
The penultimate (second to last) idea is the connection between darkness and the Day of the LORD.
“Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light– pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?” (Amos 5:18-20).
“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand–a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come” (Joel 2:1-2).
“The great day of the LORD is near– near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the LORD will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness” (Zephaniah 1:14-15).
To summarise up to this point, darkness is used to symbolise separation: the separation of the night and the day, the separation of Israel from their enemies, and the separation of the holy God from the world. It is also used in relation to sin and judgement: sinners walk in the darkness and are judged by the darkness. Sinners will eternally dwell in outer darkness. In fact, the great day of the LORD, which Israel awaited with eagerness, would be a day of darkness, a day of judgement. But there is one more association with darkness in the OT which must be explored, although it is connected to those discussed so far. This idea is present right at the beginning of Genesis.
“Now the earth was formless [tohu] and empty [bohu], darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen 1:2).
Here there is an association between the darkness and the formless and empty earth. The words used there – tohu and bohu – are interesting because of the way they are used elsewhere. Tohu can mean solitude, emptiness, nothingness, non-entity, in vain, unreality, confusion, formlessness, chaos, worthlessness. Bohu has similar connotations, including emptiness and wasteland or under judgment.[1] Tohu can be used of a wasteland (Deut 32:10; Job 12:24); cities lying in ruins (Isa 24:10; 34:11), of worthless nations (Isa 40:17), of useless messengers (Isa 41:29), or useless idols (1 Sam 12:21), and of those who make them (Isa 44:9). Bohu is used to designate chaos and confusion in a nation (Isa 34:11). What is more interesting is the only place (other than Gen 1:2) where these two words are used together.
Jeremiah, prophesying about the judgment coming from the land of Babylon, writes:
“I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone. I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking; all the hills were swaying. I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger” (Jer 4:23-26)
This prophecy suggests a reversal of the creation story. Instead of the earth going from formless and void to a fruitful world inhabited by God’s creation, here the land goes from inhabited and fruitful to formless and void, empty of people and birds, ruined and deserted. I believe that this formlessness and emptiness has significance for understanding the meaning of the darkness of the cross. I will come back to this shortly.
The darkness of the cross
When Jesus was on the cross the darkness pierced the day so that the separation between day and night was blurred. As the darkness separated Israel from their enemy as they escaped Egypt, so the darkness of the cross separated the people of God from their enemies. It is in this darkness that Jesus defeated the evil powers who oppress humanity (Col 2:14-15).
As God is separated by hiding in a cloud of darkness, the holiness of God is hidden in the cross behind the darkness. The divinity of Christ is concealed by his weakness and shame in his death. The darkness is symbolic of this hiddenness of holiness and deity. The holiness of Jesus and his deity are hidden both from the human beings around the cross and from the powers of darkness who have provoked the crucifixion.
The darkness is also indicative of Jesus’ bearing of sin. Just as sinners walk in darkness, Jesus is in the absolute darkness of sin as he hangs on the cross. Luther wrote:
And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there ever has been in the world. He is not acting in his own person now. Now he is not the Son of God, born of the Virgin. But he is a sinner, who has and bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer, and who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord (Rom 2:24). In short, he has and bears all the sins of all men in his body – not in the sense that he committed them but in the sense that he took these sins, committed by us, upon his own body, in order to make satisfaction for them with his own blood.[2]
The darkness of the cross is also indicative of judgement on sin. The three hours of darkness while Jesus was dying parallel the three days of darkness which God brought upon Egypt when Pharaoh would not let Israel go. It is also part of the curse of the Law. Jesus bore the curse of the Law for us (Gal 3:13), so the curse involving darkness applied to him: “At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark” (Deut 28:29). This was fulfilled in the darkness which lasted from the third hour (noon) until the sixth hour (3 pm). The rest of the curse is also applicable in that Jesus was unsuccessful, oppressed, robbed, and without rescue.
The darkness is also a foreshadowing of the darkness of the grave. Those who go to the grave in wickedness are cast into the outer darkness, and Jesus on the cross is one who experienced the fate of the wicked. He was in darkness in anticipation of his descent into Hades.[3]
The darkness was also indicative of the Day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is the final day of judgement in which all wickedness will be destroyed and the whole earth judged. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Peter 3:10). The time of darkness at the cross indicated that the day of the Lord had come upon Jesus. As he died, all evil was destroyed and all wickedness judged in the cross. For Jesus the cross was, in the words of Zephaniah, “a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom” (Zeph 1:15).
Like the Old Testament images of darkness, the darkness of the cross has several related meanings. The enemies of humanity are separated from God’s children by being defeated at the cross. The holiness and glory of Jesus are concealed by the darkness. Jesus was a man engulfed in the darkness of sin on the cross. He experienced the judgement of darkness for sin and he took upon himself the destruction of evil and the judgement of the whole world in anticipation of the day of the Lord. But there is one more consideration based on my discussion of the tohu and the bohu in Gen 1:2.
It is at the conclusion of the darkness that Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” After this Jesus cried out again and gave up his spirit (Matt 27:52). The climax of the time of darkness on the cross is a moment of utter despair for Jesus when the relationship with the Father, which had been one of absolute oneness, seems to be gone. It is as if the life of Jesus mirrors that of the broken creation. There is no fruitfulness in his life, no people and relationships to bring comfort, no authority over the created world, no miraculous power to heal the sick. But most of all there is no intimacy with his Father. The sonship of Jesus is in doubt to Jesus himself. At this time of despair Jesus experiences the tohu and bohu, a life of utter emptiness, solitude, nothingness, and confusion. His experience is of the vanity and worthlessness of human existence without God. Because Jesus does not experience sonship at this point he is a man without an identity. The darkness is for Jesus and experience of existential emptiness when he is devoid of all meaning and worth. This is the absolute rock bottom of a life where human sin has done its worst. In the time of physical darkness, Jesus experienced an absolute inner darkness, emptiness and meaninglessness.
Darkness and the Christian life
The darkness which manifested itself physically at the time of the crucifixion has now been overcome in Christ. As a result the New Testament repeatedly speaks about Christians being rescued from the dominion of darkness. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,” (Colossians 1:13). “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). We were once people of darkness, who lived in sin and were under the wrath of God, with the reasonable expectation of condemnation to eternal darkness. But now we are people who have been brought into the light so that we can see the glory of God in the face of Christ. “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (Corinthians 4:6).
Therefore, believers must not live as people in the darkness, but people of the light.
Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.
1 Thessalonians 5:4 But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5 You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.
Before being delivered from darkness to light, it seemed quite reasonable to hide our sins in the darkness and to shy away from God and his will. However, those who now live in the light must shy away from sin and run to the will of God. John says that it is a lie to walk in darkness and claim that we fellowship with God who is in the light (1 John 1:6). For this reason Christians are not to be yoked with unbelievers. “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Cor 6:14). Having been taken out of the darkness, we cannot have anything in common with the darkness any more.
In fact, Christians are at war with the dominion of darkness. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). This warfare is not surprising given what has been said above. We were once a part of the darkness, but now we cannot be part of the darkness any more. The powers of darkness do not want to allow the light to expose the wickedness which lives in darkness. Yet, we can be sure that we have victory over the powers of darkness because, in the darkness of the cross, Jesus has struggled with the powers of darkness and overcome them.
Therefore, eschatologically (finally) the darkness will come to judgement. “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God” (1 Cor 4:5). The struggle which we face with the darkness will not be unending, but will be brought to a final, victorious end when Jesus returns in glory and then there will be nothing but light. Darkness will be no more. In the end of the book of Revelation, there is a description of God’s eternal dwelling with humanity. There will be no darkness there.
Revelation 21:22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
This will be the final state of blessedness for believers. But let me say one final thing about the darkness of the cross in terms of the present Christian experience. The fact that Jesus has experienced the existential darkness of emptiness and meaninglessness means that Christians have been given meaning, purpose and identity in Christ. Our identity is as sons of God. It was Jesus’ sonship which was seemingly lost in his experience of despair on the cross, when he thought himself abandoned by the Father. It is that experience which has made the way for people to become sons of God in Christ. We have been given the Spirit of adoption that we might cry, “Abba, Father”. Therefore Christians cannot lack an identity, because our identity is established by the work of Christ. The existential emptiness of the cross means an existential fullness for the people of God. We share in the fullness which is Christ’s (Eph 3:19). We cannot be without meaning and purpose because Jesus has borne in himself all the meaninglessness and purposelessness of broken humanity. Like the original creation, in which the Holy Spirit took the tohu and bohu, the formless and void earth, and made it into something orderly and good, believers are transformed by the Spirit into the purposeful, people with identity and meaning, who are part of God’s new creation in Christ.