He Opened Not His Mouth

In Isaiah’s famous Messianic passage about the Savior, he wrote, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb so he opened not his mouth” (Mosiah 14:7).  I believe that there are at least two ways to see the fulfillment of this prophecy that Christ would “open not his mouth” at the end of his life. 

The first was in the way that He said nothing to some of the accusers He was brought before.  When He was in front of Pilate, “The chief priests accused him of many things: but he answered nothing.”  When Pilate pressed Him saying, “Answerest thou nothing?  Behold how many things they witness against thee,” Christ still “answered nothing” (Mark 15:3).  When Pilate found out that Christ was from Galilee he got Herod involved and sent the Savior to Herod, the man Jesus had called a “fox” (Luke 13:32).  Despite the fact that Herod “hoped to have seen some miracle” from Jesus, when the ruler “questioned with [Jesus] in many words,” the Savior “answered him nothing” (Luke 23:8-9).  Later again when the Jews were demanding to Pilate that Jesus be crucified, Pilate was afraid and “went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer” (John 19:9).  Christ felt no need to defend himself or to fight back verbally like most humans would do.  We all have a tendency to want to justify our actions and to explain ourselves to others, especially when we are wrongfully accused.  But Jesus needed no such validation from men.  He knew who He was, He knew his mission, and He knew who the true Judge of men was.  He went without speaking as a “sheep before her shearers,” thus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy.

                Perhaps there is a second, related way in which the Savior “opened not his mouth” during the process of the atonement and crucifixion.  When He was captured in the garden and Peter impulsively drew his sword, Christ said, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53)  At any point in the process of His arrest, trial, scourging, and crucifixion, he could have “opened his mouth” and called down help from the Father.  And yet instead He went humbly and did not speak those words that could have brought Him relief.  Jacob put it this way in terms of the verbal power Christ had: “Wherefore, if God being able to speak and the world was, and to speak and man was created, O then, why not able to command the earth, or the workmanship of his hands upon the face of it, according to his will and pleasure?” (Jacob 4:9)  Christ created the world by the power of His word, He calmed the raging sea with only a word, He multiplied the bread and fishes by His word, and He performed many other miracles through the power of His word.  And yet even when others mocked, “He saved others; himself he cannot save,” Christ still submitted humbly without opening his mouth to call down the powers of heaven (Matt. 27:42).  He would “drink out of that bitter cup” alone, refusing to do anything but complete the Father’s will.