Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 27:54

"Now the centurion, and they that were with him watching Jesus, when they saw the earthquake, and the things that were done, feared exceedingly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God." — Matthew 27:54 (ASV)

Truly this was the Son of God. St. Luke’s report softens this testimony to, Truly this Man was righteous. As reported by St. Matthew and St. Mark, the words probably meant little more than that (Mark 15:39). We must interpret them from the standpoint of the centurion's knowledge, not from that of Christian faith. To him, the words “Son of God” would have conveyed the idea of someone who was God-like in the most divine elements of character: righteousness, holiness, and love. The expression was naturally determined by the words he had heard tossed back and forth as a taunt (Matthew 27:43). The centurion felt that these words, as he understood them, were true—and not false—of the Sufferer whose death he had witnessed.

That the words could carry such a meaning, even from the lips of a devout Jew, is found in the language of a book that was probably contemporary and possibly written with some remote reference to our Lord’s death—the so-called Wisdom of Solomon (Wisdom 2:13, 16-18). In the last of these verses, it should be noted, the terms “just man” and “son of God” appear as interchangeable.