When the centurion, who stood by opposite him, saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 39. The centurion considered the crying out of our Saviour as an effect not of human, but divine power, since it generally happens that people at the moment the soul quits the body are reduced to so debilitated a state, that they are scarce able to utter the least word. Although Jesus was truly the natural, not the adoptive, Son of God, it is nevertheless probable that the centurion, being a Gentile, did not speak in this manner as if he knew Jesus to be the natural Son of God. He did not know that the Son of God was really true God, equal to the Father, but called him Son of God, as if adopted, on account of his extraordinary sanctity; or, perhaps, he might have called him the Son of God, in order to oppose the Jews, who called our Saviour a blasphemer, because he made himself the Son of God. D. Diony.