Cornelius, the Crucifixion, and Forgiveness

The essence of the Atonement is to restore the “oneness” that once existed between Heavenly Father and each of his children.  We were with him in the pre-existence.  We are separated from Him in this life.  We will be brought together again by the Atonement.

But the Atonement of the Savior would have not power or effect were it not for the divine attributes of the Father.  In particular, it is the Father’s love for us that enables the Atonement to succeed.  Christ could suffer for our sins to satisfy the demands of Justice, and we could sanctify ourselves through repentance and through the blessings of the Spirit, but if God were not willing to forgive us for our sins the Atonement would be ineffective.

Forgiveness is one of the most important characteristics of divine nature. 

When Christ hung on the cross, the Jews and their leaders taunted him to save himself.  They shouted at him to show them a sign. They begged him, that if he really was God he could prove it by coming down from the cross and saving himself, and then they would believe on him.  Centuries of readers of that story have concluded that he refused to give them such a sign, and died without saving himself.  That could not be farther from the truth.  In his final moments, he gave them the sign they sought.  He gave them absolute proof that he was God, by demonstrating that he possessed, to the greatest possible degree, the most distinctive attribute of Godhood—he forgave the very people who crucified him.   And in so doing, he saved himself.  

The Jews who condemned Him would still not believe.  But having witnessed the entire scene of His death, and having heard the Lord’s prayer to the Father to forgive those who crucified him, there was one who did believe.  It was the Roman centurian who crucified Him.

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.  Luke 23:44-47

And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. Mark 15:39

Who was this Roman? 

In the military order adopted by Julius Caesar in the decades preceding the birth of the Roman Empire (and the death of the Republic) a centurion was the commander of a hundred soldiers.  This particular centurion would have been in command of the band of soldiers who carried out the crucifixion. 

He would have been specially selected in light of the extraordinary occasion.  This was the Passover.  Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Jews had come from all over Palestine, the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and the Middle East, to worship and celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem.  Among them were many who were revolutionaries, zealots, and rebels, chafing under the rule of Rome and, either overtly or covertly, organizing to revolt against foreign oppression.  If there was going to be a popular uprising, it would start in Jerusalem during the Passover.

And this Passover had especially been a concern.  Rumors of mutinous prophets were swirling throughout Judea. 

Pontius Pilate was the Roman Procurator or “governor”, sent to Palestine to maintain order, if possible, but if not, then at least to maintain Rome’s dominion.  Pilate was extremely sensitive to his precarious situation, and to the increasingly militant opposition to Roman rule. He was fully aware of the turbulent situation in Jerusalem as Passover approached. He would have wanted his best, most loyal, and most “Roman” commanders to be present to maintain order and, if necessary, go to war with the Jews to defend Roman interests, to say nothing of defending Pilate himself.  His best available men would have to be in Jerusalem during the Passover.

But Pilate didn’t live in Jerusalem.  He lived in the opulent quarters of the Roman Governor in Caesarea, on the coast.  He came up to Jerusalem for the occasion of the Passover for the express purpose of maintaining the visible presence of the Empire in the Jewish capital at a time when a revolt was most likely to start, if ever.  The garrison in Jerusalem were mostly mercenaries, conscripts from the dozens of conquered peoples in the far-flung reaches of the Empire.  They spoke a variety of dialects, practiced strange religions, and harbored a multitude of divided loyalties.  They could not be trusted to remain loyal to Caesar in the face of a determined revolt. 

Instead, Pilate would have brought with him to Jerusalem his own loyal garrison of soldiers from Caesarea.  These would be Roman citizens, with their officers chosen from among the young sons of the prominent families in Rome itself.  They would be politically and religiously loyal to Caesar, and they would protect the Roman Governor to the last man.  The best small Roman military force in Palestine would have been stationed with the Roman Governor in Caesarea.  It would be they who escorted him to Jerusalem for the Passover.  And it would be they who crucified Christ.    Matt. 27:27

They would also probably have been a fairly well-educated group.  Roman officers recognized the importance of understanding the customs and traditions to be found among the people whom they conquered. Rome was not in the business of destroying the countries they vanquished.  It was the objective of the Romans to allow people to keep their customs and their religions, as long as they allowed Rome to tie the world together economically.  Rome was the product of merchants.  They were dedicated to building a world-wide economy, founded on commerce and trade.  The Roman legions stationed around the world in its colonies were building business relationships, not just roads.

So it was that this centurion, in the short time that he was able to observe the Son of God on the earth, came to the conclusion that “Truly this man was the Son of God.”  Mark 15:39  And with that, he seems to have disappeared into the mists of time.  We don’t even know his name.  All we know is that he crucified God, and then glorified him.  Perhaps he realized what he had done. 

By all rights, his story ought to serve as the greatest case study for the principle of forgiveness in all of recorded history.  Jesus forgave him from the Cross, and asked the Father to do so.  The centurion himself seems to have regretted the awful punishment he had inflicted on this just and innocent man.  But forgiveness requires total conversion and repentance.  Perhaps the Gospel writers deliberately left untold the rest of the story of this centurion, because nothing more can be learned from it.  But it still gives one pause.  What became of the man who crucified Jesus? 

Following the crucifixion, our attention turns to Peter and the powerful story of forgiveness that he experienced.  He didn’t crucify Jesus, but he did abandon him and deny him.  And yet his sorrow became his greatest strength, while the sorrow of Judas destroyed him.  In Peter’s case, the Holy Ghost enabled his sorrow to be a healing balm.  In Judas’s case, sorrow without the Holy Ghost drove him to madness and suicide.  When the resurrected Savior appeared to the apostles on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the Savior completed the forgiveness of Peter by promising him swift passage to exaltation.  Peter went on to serve the Lord in a manner that few men have equaled.

Was there forgiveness for Pontius Pilate?  We can surmise that Pilate returned to Caesarea after the Passover, along with the escort of Roman soldiers that had accompanied him, lead by the noble centurian.  As far as the Gospel record is concerned, Pilate’s later life became completely irrelevant.  His importance to our understanding of the Gospel appears to be limited to the profound conversations he had with the Savior in Jerusalem.

But perhaps there is another great story of forgiveness that we can tease out of the threads of this history. It  is one that brings Peter himself to Caesarea in the footsteps of Pontius Pilate.  It would not be to pursue Pilate for his role in the crucifixion.  It would be to pursue another.  Indeed, we would hear nothing more about Caesarea from the Gospel writers were it not for an extraordinary conversion that took place there some years later. 

Following the crucifixion, the apostles were devastated.  Their beloved Lord had been executed in the most heinous, inhuman way imaginable.  He had been reduced to the most shameful and ignominious death possible.  Yet the Savior challenged them to be servants to all men, to love all men, and to forgive all men as they had been forgiven.  Could Peter himself learn to forgive as he had been forgiven? If his ability to forgive were tested to the utmost, would he prove himself a true disciple?

For a long time, perhaps several years, the apostles made no effort to spread the Gospel among the Gentiles.  Association with the Gentiles was contrary to Jewish law, and there were many apostles and disciples of Christ who still held to the Jewish law. 

But one day Peter was praying on his housetop at about the sixth hour of the day. As he prayed, he was given to see a vision of a great sheet of cloth knit into the form of a vessel, containing all manner of four-footed animals, wild beasts, creeping things and fowls of the air—things that were forbidden for Jews to eat. A voice came and told him to kill the beasts and eat. He protested that the food was unclean to Jews, but he was told, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” And the vision was repeated three times.  While Peter pondered the meaning of his vision, the Spirit spoke to him again:  “Behold, three men seek thee. Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them.”      

Going down to his door, he met three men who told him that they had been sent by “Cornelius, the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God” to bring Peter to his home to speak to him. Peter had them spend the night, and the next day they and certain others from Joppa went to the home of Cornelius, “a centurion of the band called the Italian band,”  in Caesarea.

Arriving there, Peter was met immediately by Cornelius who fell down at Peter’s feet “and worshipped him.”  And when Peter asked the reason why Cornelius had sent for him, Cornelius explained that four days earlier, he had been fasting until the ninth hour. Then as he prayed, an angel appeared to him.  The angel had told him, “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.” And he had immediately sent men to find Peter.

Hearing this, Peter immediately understood the meaning of his thrice-repeated vision of the night before. When the angel had warned him not to treat things as unclean that God himself had cleansed, he wasn’t talking about food.  He wasn’t inviting Peter to eat of previously forbidden fare.  Whether to continue the ancient Jewish system of dietary restrictions wasn’t such a burning controversy in the Church as would justify the appearance of an angel to the president of the Church.

Rather, the burning controversy that fired contention among the brethren and kept Peter awake at nights was the question of taking the Gospel to the Gentiles.  In response, through his metaphorical revelation to Peter, the Angel was talking about cleansed souls, not cleansed foodstuffs.  Else why would Peter tell Cornelius, “God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.” (Acts 10:28.)  Peter was warned, in effect, that he would meet a person, perhaps many people, whom God had cleansed in preparation for them coming into the Body of Christ, and Peter was not to reject them as unclean. Realizing that, immediately Peter exclaimed, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”   As Peter then explained his past predicament to Cornelius, it was unlawful for a Jew to keep company with a Gentile. But, he concluded, God had warned him not to call any man common or unclean. And as Peter taught Cornelius and his household, the Holy Ghost fell upon them and Peter commanded that they all be baptized.  And it was done.

Now, there is nothing in the holy record that says whether this centurion named Cornelius had anything to do with the crucifixion of Jesus.  But consider this:  His duty station was in Caesarea, where Pontius Pilate resided.  He was assigned to the “Italian band”, meaning those members of the Roman garrison in Judea who were themselves Roman citizens and natives of Italy.  His vision of the angel occurred, according to Luke, at the ninth hour of the day, which Luke also reported to be the same time of day when Jesus died on the cross.  He had already been converted to the Gospel, for he was a “devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always.” And when that same angel appeared to Peter (“Arise, therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them.”) he instructed Peter that “what God hath cleansed, that call thou not common.”  Apparently, God had cleansed Cornelius in preparation for Peter’s visit just as he had prepared Peter to make that visit.  But how and when had God so cleansed Cornelius?

Luke was the only witness among the four Gospel writers who recorded that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And it was Joseph Smith who added, through inspiration,  “meaning the soldiers who crucified him.” And Luke was also the only witness to tell us the story of Cornelius.  As for the centurion who crucified Jesus, Luke reports, “Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.”  That centurion went home to Caesarea after the Passover, converted and forgiven.  It was he that had been cleansed.  Was he Cornelius, the first gentile to be baptized into Christ’s church? Was the first Gentile who took upon himself the name of Christ also the man who crucified him? If so, Peter had surely learned the true meaning of forgiveness. God had not only forgiven Cornelius from the Cross, but had sent angels to find him and bring him into His Church.

One would think that if Cornelius truly was the same centurion who had crucified Jesus, Luke would have mentioned that, given its enormous symbolic significance.  But the Gospel writers occasionally concealed things out of deference to the people involved.  For example, Matthew, Mark and Luke all omitted any reference to the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  Only John tells that story. Why?  Perhaps it was because when Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their accounts, Lazarus was still alive.  Out of concern for his privacy, and to avoid what would surely have been a steady pilgrimage of curious people to his door, they chose to let Lazarus live out his life in quiet obscurity.  Perhaps by the time John wrote his Gospel, which was decades later, Lazarus had died and the story could be told. 

So, perhaps, Luke discreetly concealed the fact that this Cornelius, a Centurion of the Italian Band, and a personal body-guard of Pontius Pilate, had been the same centurion who crucified Jesus. Was it just a matter of privacy?  Maybe, or maybe Luke was just concerned that many of the early Christians would not be so forgiving as Peter.  

If this interpretation of the scriptures is correct, it would explain another mystery. Between the time that Jesus was bound over to Pilate by the Jews and the time he was brought forth to be crucified, he was in the hands of the Romans in the great Antonia Fortress.  Most likely, there were none of his disciples who were allowed to accompany him during his interrogation, humiliation and scourging. So how would it be that the Gospel writers knew so much detail about those conversations and events? Perhaps Cornelius has stood by Pilate’s side as those events took place, as every word and every moment were burned into his memory. Years later, could it be that he was finally able to unburden his soul, make his confession, and tell the timeless story to Peter and his companions when they came to baptize him in Caesarea. Perhaps never in the annals of Christian history has there ever been such a profound and contrite confession as the one uttered by the man who crucified the Savior.

And perhaps never has there been such profound and poignant forgiveness as was offered by Peter to this man after he had listened to the Roman’s account of that night. This was the same Peter who had betrayed the Son of God and fled in terror leaving Jesus to be executed alone, but who had soon been rescued from his shame and guilt by the loving gift of forgiveness from his divine Master. And now he perceives the sincere sorrow of another who had not only betrayed the Lord but crucified him as well. What a great man he had become, to be willing to accept this Roman into the fellowship of the  Saints, cleansed by forgiveness.  We can do no less.

(c) Lary S. Larson 2005