... they brake not His legs; V. 34. but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. V. 35. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
Pilate having given his consent, the idea broached by the Jews was carried into execution. The soldiers broke the legs first of one and then of the other malefactor that was crucified with Jesus. But coming to Jesus as the last one, they found that He was dead, that He had already expired. The carrying out of the customary breaking of the legs in His case would have been without purpose, and so they refrained from doing so.
The explanation seems simple enough, and yet there was not the least shred of chance in the happening. The bones of Jesus were not broken because He is the true Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb, of whom all the Iambs that were slaughtered on that festival of old were but types and figures, Ex. 12, 46; Num. 9, 12. As the angel of death in Egypt passed by or over all the houses that were marked with the blood of the lamb, so the blood of this Lamb has turned the wrath of God from us. All those that have the portals of their heart marked with the blood of Jesus will not be visited by the angel of eternal death.
Jesus was apparently dead when the soldiers reached His cross. And yet they wanted to make assurance doubly sure. One of their number, therefore, either pricked His side, as the strictest literalness of the word seems to indicate, in order to determine whether He had merely swooned away, or actually inflicted a deep wound in His side, piercing the heart, and thus fatal if Jesus had still been alive. But when the soldier withdrew his lance, as John relates, both blood and water flowed from the wounded side of the Savior.
This was a strange happening, that the blood of one that had been dead for some time should flow out as from the living body, and that water should come from the wound at the same time. But John insists upon it that no mistake was possible; he, as an eye-witness, was too near not to be certain of the fact just as he describes it here.