With the Cross Road Once Again
x Powerful Facts About the Cross of Christ & His Crucifixion
- Pastor, Author
- 2018 xiv Mar
Not also long ago a book was published with the title: What was God doing on the Cross? It appears that in that location are two questions being asked, not one. Offset, "What was God doing on the cross?" Why was the God-man impaled on a Roman gibbet? It seems shocking that God should be crucified? Second, "What was God doing on the cross?" One time we've agreed that the God-man was on the cross, we wonder, "what was he doing there?" What was he accomplishing through the crucifixion of Jesus? To what end and for what purpose was Jesus, the God-man, suffering?
The trouble is that in that location are growing numbers of Christians who are having an increasingly difficult time answering that question. The reason for this is 3-fold: (ane) a diminishing sense of God's holiness; (two) a diminishing sense of mankind's sinfulness; and (3) an inordinately increasing sense of self-worth. Whereas I affirm the need for a proper self-prototype, I fear that many are fast becoming so impressed with themselves that they can't help but wonder why Jesus had to dice for them at all! But when we wait at the Scripture, we realize that the God-man, Jesus, was on the cross suffering the eternal penalty we deserved because of the infinity of God's holiness and the depths of our depravity.
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The Pain and Shame of Crucifixion
Any try to empathize the sufferings of Christ must reckon with the fact that "2 thousand years of pious Christian tradition have largely domesticated the cross, making it difficult for u.s. to realize how information technology was viewed in Jesus' time" (Carson, 573). Both the painful and shameful aspects of crucifixion accept get blurred, and no affair what we may remember we know near this manner of execution, it only does not mean the aforementioned matter for us as information technology did to those living in the first century.
The NT itself does not provide much information concerning the details of crucifixion. There is a remarkable brevity and restraint on the office of all 4 gospel authors when information technology comes to the actual crucifixion of Jesus. All that is said in Matt. 27:35a; Mark 15:24a; Luke 23:33; and John 19:18, is that "they crucified him." Why is then petty recorded for united states? There are at least two reasons. In the first place, crucifixion was so frequent and its details such mutual cognition that they must certainly have believed it unnecessary to be more precise. People in the kickoff century were all too painfully familiar with crucifixion. More important is the fact that crucifixion was so utterly repugnant, so indescribably shameful that they deemed it improper to become across the barest minimum in describing our Lord's feel of it. More on this after.
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Historical Crucifixion
Nosotros must call back that the theological significance of the cross cannot be separated from the historical and physical event itself. The kinds of crosses used would vary according to their shape: 10, T, t were the most mutual forms. The height of the cross was too of import. Normally the victim's feet would be no more than i to two anxiety above the ground. This was so that wild beasts and scavenger dogs common in the city might feed on the corpse. Martin Hengel (Crucifixion, 9) quotes Pseudo-Manetho as saying, "Punished with limbs outstretched, they see the stake every bit their fate; they are fastened and nailed to it in the virtually bitter torment, evil food for birds of prey and grim pickings for dogs." Jesus may well have been made an exception to this dominion (cf. Matt. 27:42,48). If and then, it wasn't out of mercy, but in order to increase his humiliation by exposing his shame more than readily to passersby.
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The Nails
The nails were spikes used to impale the victim to the tree. In 1968 in a cemetery at Gi'vat Ha-Mivtar (near Jerusalem), a bulldozer unearthed the skeletal remains of a human being named "John" who had been crucified:
"The feet were joined almost parallel, both transfixed by the same boom at the heels, with the legs adjacent; the knees were doubled, the right one overlapping the left; the trunk was contorted; the upper limbs were stretched out, each stabbed by a blast in the forearm" (cited in Lane, 565).
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Prolonging the Victim'southward Desperation
The crucified man's correct tibia, the larger of the 2 bones in the lower leg, had been brutally fractured into large, sharp slivers, perhaps to hasten his suffocation by making it nigh incommunicable to push button himself upwards the vertical beam, an action required to sustain animate (although this theory has been challenged by Frederick T. Zugibe in his article "Two Questions Nearly Crucifixion," inBible Review, April 1989, 35-43). Although this homo was crucified through the forearm, information technology is possible to exercise then through the palm, contrary to what some take said. If the nail enters the palm through the thenar furrow (an area between 3 bones) it breaks no bones and is capable of supporting several hundred pounds.
Often times a minor peg or block of forest, called a sedecula, was fixed midway up the vertical beam, providing a seat of sorts. Its purpose was to forbid premature collapse and thus prolong the victim's agony.
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Cause of Death on the Cross
The precise cause of death has been debated for years. D. A. Carson summarizes:
"Whether tied or nailed to the cross, the victim endured countless paroxysms equally he pulled with his arms and pushed with his legs to keep his chest cavity open up for breathing then complanate in burnout until the demand for oxygen demanded renewed paroxysms. The scourging, the loss of blood, the stupor from the pain, all produced agony that could get on for days, ending at last past suffocation, cardiac arrest, or loss of blood. When there was reason to hasten death, the execution team would boom the victim'southward legs. Death followed almost immediately, either from shock or from collapse that cut off breathing" (574).
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Crucifixion equally Majuscule Punishment
It is difficult to imagine a more hideous form of death sentence. Crucifixion was believed to be an effective deterrent in the ancient world and was thus often employed.
Appian reported that following the defeat of Spartacus, the victor Crassus had half-dozen,000 prisoners crucified on the Via Appia between Capua and Rome (Bella Civilia, I.120). Earlier their final boxing, Spartacus himself had a Roman prisoner crucified to warn his men of their fate should they be defeated. It is strangely ironic that Julius Caesar was hailed as being merciful to his enemies when he ordered their throats cutting prior to their being crucified in club to spare them the indescribable suffering of prolonged desperation on the cantankerous.
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Siege of Jerusalem
Josephus described the fate of the Jews taken captive in 70 a.d. when Jerusalem was destroyed. The soldiers, "out of the rage and hatred they bore the prisoners, nailed those they caught, in different postures, to the crosses, by way of jest, and their number was so great that there was not enough room for the crosses and not enough crosses for the bodies" (cited in Hengel, 25-26). Josephus indicates that the Roman full general Titus hoped that this would hasten surrender of those still in the beseiged metropolis.
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Obscenity and Humiliation
Worse than the hurting of the cross was the shame of the cross . See 1 Cor. 1:18-25. Why does Paul refer to the cross every bit foolishness and a stumbling-block? It isn't considering the concept or do of crucifixion was intellectually incoherent (like 2 + 2 = 5) or illogical. Rather, the message of conservancy through faith in a crucified Savior was deemed "foolishness" and a "stumbling-cake" because the cross was itself the embodiment and emblem of the nearly hideous of human obscenities. The cross was a symbol of reproach, degradation, humiliation, and disgust. It was aesthetically repugnant. In a word, the cross was obscene.
The cross was far more than an musical instrument of capital letter punishment. Information technology was a public symbol of indecency and social indignity. Crucifixion was designed to do more than merely impale a human being. Its purpose was to humiliate him equally well. The cantankerous was intended not but to break a man'southward body, simply also to crush and defame his spirit. At that place were certainly more than efficient means of execution: stoning (cf. Stephen in Acts 7), decapitation (cf. James in Acts 12), etc. Crucifixion was used to humiliate also as to harm.
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Publicly Naked
For example, crucifixion was always public. In fact, the most visibly prominent identify was selected, usually at a crossroads, in the theatre, or elsewhere on high ground. The reason was to intensify the sense of social and personal humiliation. Victims were usually crucified naked. Jewish sensitivities, however, demanded that the victim vesture a loincloth. In the Bible physical nakedness was oft a symbol of spiritual shame and ignominy. John Calvin wrote:
"The Evangelists portray the Son of God as stripped of His dress that we may know the wealth gained for us past this nakedness, for information technology shall apparel us in God's sight. God willed His Son to be stripped that nosotros should appear freely, with the angels, in the garments of his righteousness and fulness of all skillful things, whereas formerly, foul disgrace, in torn wearing apparel, kept us abroad from the approach to the heavens" (194).
The first Adam, originally created in the righteousness of God, by his sin stripped u.s.a. naked. The last Adam, suffering the shame of nakedness, past his obedience clothes the states in the righteousness of God.
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The "Foolishness" of a Crucified Savior
The aboriginal assessment of crucifixion is seen in the style information technology was dealt with in their literature. Historians in one case mistakenly assumed that the scarcity of references to crucifixion in cultured literary sources was proof that information technology was rarely employed. More recently it has been adamant that the more refined literary artists omitted reference to crucifixion, not because it was unknown, but considering they did not desire to disgrace or defile their piece of work by mentioning such a vile and obscene do. In Greek romances and the theatre, crucifixion of the hero/heroine was routine, only in every instance he/she was delivered from the cross and fix costless. In other words, heroes could not on whatever account be allowed to suffer such a shameful decease. This was one reason why the notion of a crucified savior was "foolishness" to the Greeks.
Crucifixion was referred to equallycrudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicum, or "that near cruel and disgusting penalization." Pliny the Younger (112) chosen Christianity a "perverse and extravagant superstition" because it preached Christ crucified (Epistulae, x.96.iv-eight). Tacitus called it a "pernicious superstition."
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The Cantankerous Forbidden for Romans
The shame associated with crucifixion was so intense that information technology was expressly forbidden that a Roman citizen be executed in that way. Cicero wrote:
"Fifty-fifty if nosotros are threatened with death, nosotros may die free men. But the executioner, the veiling of the head, and the very word 'cross' should be far removed not simply from the person of a Roman denizen but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears. For it is not only the bodily occurrence of these things or the endurance of them, only the liability to them, the expectation, nay the mere mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free human" (Defence of Rabirius, five,xvi).
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A Symbol of Indignity
The symbolic emphasis of the cross in the ancient world is also seen in the do of hanging on a cross the corpse of a human who had been executed by some other ways. What possible reason would at that place be for doing this, except to field of study his proper noun/reputation to the worst possible social indignity?
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The Contradiction of a "Crucified Messiah"
The obscenity of the cross explains Paul's early opposition to the church and its gospel. Paul was "ravaging" the church (Acts eight:iii; a give-and-take that literally refers to a wild beast tearing at its prey, ripping flesh from os); he was "animate murderous threats" at the church (Acts ix:i); he "persecuted" the church "to the expiry" (Acts 22:four); he was "furiously enraged" at the church (Acts 26:11); and "tried to destroy it" (Gal. 1:13). Why?
It wasn't primarily because the church claimed that Jesus was God incarnate, nor because of any perceived threat to the Mosaic police or the Temple (although that accusation was raised; cf. Acts vi:13). The principal stumbling-block for Paul was that Jesus had been crucified. A crucified messiah was a contradiction in terms . One may accept a Messiah, or one may accept a crucifixion. But one cannot have a Messiah who is himself crucified! The concept of the Messiah evoked images of power, splendor, and triumph, whereas that of crucifixion spoke of weakness, degradation, and defeat.
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Crucifixion as Curse
In Jewish police force (run across Deut. 21:23) "the corpse of a judicially executed criminal was hung up for public exposure that branded him as cursed by God. The words were also applied in Jesus' solar day to anyone crucified; and therefore the Jews' demand that Jesus be crucified rather than banished was aimed at arousing maximum public revulsion toward him" (Carson, 574). (See Acts 5:thirty; 10:39; 13:29; one Pt. 2:24; and esp. Gal. 3:13 where reference to expiry on a "tree" is prominent.)
Thus what Paul (or Saul, actually) was hearing proclaimed past Christians was that he who was to savour God'due south richest blessing instead endured God's about reprehensible curse. How could these Jews honor every bit God and Savior one whom God himself had openly and plain cursed? Worse than a contradiction in terms, a crucified Messiah was an outrageous irreverence! Yet, annotation how the early church highlighted this very fact! See Acts 2:23; 4:nine-12; v:29-31.
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The Offense of the Cross
Thus the offense of the cross does not come from the fact that information technology is theologically incoherent or intellectually illogical or legally impermissible. The crime of the cross came from the fact that the cantankerous, itself a visible symbol and concrete embodiment of moral shame and aesthetic repugnance, was the instrument of death for him who claimed to be Messiah and Savior. This explains why Paul was himself so horribly mistreated and scorned when he preached the gospel. Come across esp. Gal. 6:xiv; Acts 26:24 (cf. 2 Cor. 5:xiii); Phil. 2:6-11 ("fifty-fifty expiry on a cross").
In sum, Jesus died non only for the guilt of our sins, merely also for the shame of our sins!
Related:
Where Was Jesus Crucified?
Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
seven Facts Near the Resurrection of Jesus
How Sometime Was Jesus When He Died?
Article originally published on SamStorms.com. Used with permission.
Sam Storms is an Amillennial, Calvinistic, charismatic, credo-baptistic, complementarian, Christian Hedonist who loves his wife of 44 years, his two daughters, his four grandchildren, books, baseball, movies, and all things Oklahoma University. In 2008 Sam became Lead Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Sam is on the Board of Directors of both Desiring God and Bethlehem Higher & Seminary, and also serves equally a member of the Council of The Gospel Coalition. Sam is President-Elect of the Evangelical Theological Lodge.
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Source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/10-things-every-christian-should-know-about-the-cross.html
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