December 1

The Sacred Garments

They parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. — Mark 15:24

We love to think of those sacred garments which our Saviour had worn. Perhaps they had been made by His mother’s hands, or maybe by the hands of some of the other women who followed Him from Galilee, ministering unto Him. They were the garments, too, that the sick had touched in reverent faith, receiving instant healing. We treasure the garments of those we love when they are gone from us. How sacred they are! How it would pain us to see them divided among rude enemies and worn by them about the streets! A peculiar sacredness clings to everything that Jesus ever touched; and what desecration it appears to our hearts to see these scoffing heathen soldiers take His garments and divide them among themselves as booty! Then what terrible sacrilege it seems to see them throwing dice and gambling under the very cross while the Saviour hangs there in agony!

Why was Jesus stripped of His garments? Was there no meaning in it apart from the mere custom? Was it not that He might prepare garments of righteousness for us in our spiritual nakedness? One night of bitter cold and pitiless storm a mother was out in the wilds with her child in her arms. Unable to carry her precious burden and find a shelter, she took off her own outer clothing , and wrapping it about her little one she laid him in a cleft of the rock, and hastened on, hoping to find help. Next morning some shepherds heard the cry of a child, and found the babe safe and warm in the rock’s cleft. Then, not far away in the snow, they discovered the mother — dead. She had stripped off her own garments and died in the cold to save her child. Did not Jesus do the same? He took off His raiment and hung naked on His cross, that we may stand in the final judgment arrayed in robes of beauty.