Psalm 69:21 says, “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” This is a prophecy that Christ would be the One to whom gall and vinegar would be given. Matthew 27:34 says, “They gave Him wine to drink mingled with gall; and having tasted it, He would not drink.” The wine mingled with gall (and also with myrrh—Mark 15:23) was intended as a stupefying drought. But the Lord would not be stupefied; He would drink the bitter cup to the dregs.
Close to the end of His crucifixion, people continued to mock Him by giving Him vinegar to quench His thirst. John 19:28 and 29 say, “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had now been accomplished that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. A vessel full of vinegar was lying there; so they put a sponge full of vinegar on hyssop and brought it to His mouth.” Thirst is a taste of death (Luke 16:24; Rev. 21:8), and the Lord Jesus suffered it for us on the cross (Heb. 2:9). The hyssop in John 19:29 should be the reed in Matthew 27:29 and Mark 15:19, which was a hyssop reed. At the beginning of His crucifixion, the wine mingled with gall and myrrh was offered to the Lord as a stupefying drought, which He would not drink. But at the end of His crucifixion, when He was thirsty, vinegar was offered to Him in a mocking way (Luke 23:36), and He took it. “When Jesus then had taken the vinegar, He said, It is finished! And He bowed His head and gave up the spirit” (John 19:30).
In Isaiah 53:12 we see that Christ would be the One who poured out His soul unto death. Philippians 2:8b says that Christ was “obedient even unto death, and that the death of a cross.” In His crucifixion Christ suffered to such an extent that He poured out His soul, His entire being, unto death.
In the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies related to His death, Christ is also the pierced One. Psalm 22:16 says, “They pierced my hands and my feet.” Zechariah 12:10 prophesies, “They shall look upon me whom they have pierced.” The New Testament fulfillment of these prophecies is found in John 19:34 and 37. Verse 37 is a quotation of Zechariah 12:10. Verse 34 says, “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.” Here we see that two substances came out of the Lord’s pierced side: blood and water. Blood is for redemption, dealing with sins (John 1:29; Heb. 9:22) for the purchase of the church (Acts 20:28); water is for imparting life, dealing with death (John 12:24; 3:14-15) for the producing of the church (Eph. 5:29-32). Christ’s death is, on the negative side, to take away our sins and, on the positive side, to impart life into us. Hence, it has two aspects: the redemptive aspect and the life-imparting aspect. The redemptive aspect is for the life-imparting aspect.
Christ is the One of whose bones not one was broken. This is typified in Exodus 12:46, prophesied in Psalm 34:20, and fulfilled in John 19:32-36. Exodus 12:46 says that the children of Israel were not to break any of the bones of the Passover lamb. Psalm 34:20 says, “He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.” When Christ was crucified as our Passover lamb, His legs were not broken (John 19:33, 36). The Jews, not wanting the bodies to remain on the cross on the Sabbath, asked Pilate that their legs might be broken. The soldiers then broke the legs of the two thieves who had been crucified with the Lord. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that He had already died. Because He had died, it was needless for them to break His bones. Therefore, under God’s sovereignty not one of the Lord’s bones was broken. Both the type in Exodus 12:46 and the prophecy in Psalm 34:20 were fulfilled in the Lord’s death on the cross.
The fact that Christ’s legs were not broken signifies that in Him there is something unbreakable and indestructible. This unbreakable and indestructible element is His eternal life. The Roman soldiers and the Jewish people could come together to put Christ on the cross, but they could not break His eternal life.
We can prove from the Scriptures that the bone signifies life. According to Genesis 2:21-22, the Lord took a bone, a rib, out of Adam and built it into a woman. The woman, Eve, was produced from a bone taken out of Adam. Hence, a bone signifies life that imparts life. The bone taken out of Adam imparted Adam’s life to Eve. In the same principle, Christ’s unbroken bone signifies His unbreakable and indestructible eternal life that imparts His life to us. In Christ as our Passover lamb there is such an unbreakable and indestructible life that can impart life to us.