Matthew 27:54

(54) Truly this was the Son of God.—St. Luke’s report softens down the witness thus borne into “Truly this Man was righteous.” As reported by St. Matthew and St. Mark (Mark 15:39), the words probably meant little more than that. We must interpret them from the stand-point of the centurion’s knowledge, not from that of Christian faith, and to him the words “Son of God” would convey the idea of one who was God-like in those elements of character which are most divine—righteousness, and holiness, and love. The form of expression was naturally determined by the words which he had heard bandied to and fro as a taunt (Matthew 27:43); and the centurion felt that the words, as he understood them, were true, and not false, of the Sufferer whose death he had witnessed. That the words might have such a sense in the lips even of a devout Jew, we find in the language of a book probably contemporary, and possibly written with some remote reference to our Lord’s death—the so-called Wisdom of Solomon (Wisd. ii. 13, 16-18). In the last of these verses, it will be noted, the terms “just man” and “son of God” appear as interchangeable.