%20(1).jpg?width=80&height=80&name=untitled%20(16%20of%2039)%20(1).jpg)
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
Hebrews 12:1-2 assumes its readers appreciate the horrifyingly shameful nature of crucifixion. The author writes:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus acknowledged the intended shame of the cross, and he despised what man posited as the height of degradation and indignity, namely crucifixion. Instead, he made it the path for his joy and victory. This is astonishing. But the cross has become so familiar to us that it has lost its power to offend. It’s no longer offensive to Christians because we’re used to seeing it, talking about it, and singing about it all the time. Nor is the cross offensive to non-Christians. For them it is a mere religious symbol or fashion accessory. Consider that many celebrities and rock stars sport a cross and yet have no devotional commitment to “Christ and him crucified.” There’s little shameful about jewelry.
Yet, as soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive. The early Christian theologian Origen rightly called it the “utterly vile death of the cross.” Utterly vile death. The cross is about a man being put to a grotesquely physical and shameful death. Crucifixion was the most gruesome means of execution imaginable. It made a lethal injection look like a vaccination shot for chicken pox and the electric chair like a ride at Knott’s Berry Farm. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) described it as “a most cruel and disgusting punishment.” It was associated with extreme torture, horrific bleeding, nakedness, humiliation, degradation, and agony. Its twisted genius was in a conscious design to kill only after the victim had endured the maximum possible suffering and shame.
And it was the aspect of shame that rendered the cross an abomination to the Roman world. The notion of shame may once again infuse the extraordinary parabolic descent of the Son of God with potency. R. Alan Streett observes, “Honor and shame were two fundamental values that dominated and shaped behavior in the Mediterranean world.” [1] Honor and shame framed their social and political worldview with far-reaching implications. For example, a person’s reputation carried multigenerational consequences for good or ill. This is because there was no such thing as an individual. Rather, a person derived their most irreducible identity from their family relations. Bringing and sustaining honor was, therefore, of paramount importance since it affected, well, everyone in your family. This was accomplished by pursuing wisdom, be it Stoic or Hebraic. Equally importantly, one would want to eschew every notion of shame. To garner shame due to a cultural faux pas or criminal act would leave a stain not only on one’s name but one’s entire family. Once a person’s reputation was despoiled, it was hard, if not impossible, to rectify.
In this culture, crucifixion purposed to maximize the shame of the crucified with a stigmatizing effect on their family. It was meant to be thoroughly dishonorable which is why crucifixions were public events that placarded the humiliation of one who was an enemy of the state. Marcus Crassus, for example, punished survivors of the slave rebellion under Spartacus (73-71 BC), known as the Third Servile War. Crassus ordered upwards of 6,000 slaves to be crucified on both sides of the Appian Way, with the condemned stretching miles from Rome toward Naples. Their bodies were abandoned to decay on the instruments of their death and as carrion for birds and animals as an added disgrace for their rebellion. Crucifixions were no place for sentimentality because crucifixions were for subhumans.
This is why Romans did not crucify their own citizens, no matter the crime. Cicero claimed, “It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one; what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.” [2] There was no word for it. No polite word, at any rate, for the word for “cross” was taboo in Roman society. To quote again from Cicero, “Let the very mention of the cross be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.” Crux was in Latin the equivalent of any of a number of our four-letter-words in English.
Compounding dynamics were intended to render the crucifixion of Jesus singularly shameful. First, there was the public humiliation of his multiple trials. Then, there was his public denunciation, his flogging in the nude, and finally, the placement of a purple robe and crown of thorns on his head - each for the expressed purpose of garnering scorn. All of this shameful treatment was topped by the choice of a murderer, Barabbas, over righteous Jesus. The disciples and his mother, Mary, witnessed every aspect of these abasements.
In his weakened and mutilated condition, the instrument of his execution—the patibulum or crossbar—was torturously mounted to his back for him to haul in a public parade for scorn. We shouldn’t gloss over the humiliation associated with this procession of condemnation. Bearing the patibulum was akin to “digging your own grave,” witnessed by his family members and a few of his closest associates. They, too, would’ve acutely felt the shame.
Once at the place of execution, located on a major artery into Jerusalem for maximal exposure, Jesus himself was stripped naked again. Literally nailed to vertical and horizontal planks of wood, he was elevated face-forward towards the road to upend norms of modesty and incorporate the ultimate social indignity — public nakedness. A grown man hangs naked in front of his mother and friends. Shameful. And yet, they never abandon him. The death of Christ was purposed to be a definitive disincentive toward having allegiance to him.
And yet, it failed to do so, even while the social stigma of shame remained. An example has been uncovered at the Palatine Hill in Rome. There, on the wall of a house, is etched the oldest surviving image (graffiti) of a crucifixion. It is called, the “Alexamenos Graffitio.” The rudimentary sketch depicts a man with the head of a donkey (a jackass) crucified. Another man, Alexamenos (according to the artist) stands at the foot of the cross with one arm raised in worship, hailing the subhuman ass-man. A taunt is scribbled underneath: “Alexamenos worships God.” This mocking tag said that Alexamenos is an ass for worshipping the ass on a cross. This is how the Romans poured their scorn on those who worshiped a crucified man: They shamed them in keeping with the shamefulness of crucifixion.
Philip Ryken observes that as offensive as crucifixion was to the Romans, it was even more offensive to the Jews. [3] According to Hebrew law, any man who was crucified was under a divine curse. To be cursed by God is shameful. Deuteronomy 21:21-22 says: “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone hung on a tree is under the curse of God.” The first Christians spoke of Jesus as “killed … on a tree” (Acts 5:30; 10:39). He, then, was the cursed one, whose shame resulted in a cry of dereliction: “‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sachathani?’—which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matt. 27:46). To buffer the citizens and the holy Temple of Jerusalem from the curse, crucifixions took place outside Jerusalem — shamefully cast out and rejected from his rightful royal city.
The shame of the cross reveals a worldview inversion. Jesus experienced maximal shame. It was this kind of shameful death, the most shameful death ever, that he scorned. And he did so because there was joy set before him — our redemption, the salvation of his bride, the Holy Church.“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). The shamed one goes to the cross unashamed, for he knows that it is the means of atonement: his victory over sin, death, and the devil, and superlative joy. This is why we are to “fix our eyes on Jesus who endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
He recognized that it was an affront to everyone who seeks to be justified and vindicated before God because of their own merits.
Jesus knew the cross was an abomination to the Gentiles, a curse to the Jews, and even to his Father in heaven. He recognized that it was an affront to everyone who seeks to be justified and vindicated before God because of their own merits. Yet, however offensive the cross may be to others, Jesus scorns its shame and allows it to fall upon himself for our eternal benefit, not allowing that shame to make him turn back from accomplishing the atonement. And, in the space of “three days,” the shame of the cross upends the world and inverts the worldviews of those baptized into the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ Jesus so that they, too, would take up a cross and follow him. The Virgin Mary and Saint John are the standing examples of those at the foot of the cross’ shame, who would themselves scorn the shame of the cross and instead see it as maximal love, glorious beauty.
This explains the remarkable fact that the cross has survived at all. How could such a shameful instrument of ignoble death persist for millennia? How could it be the line of demarcation between the faithful and the faithless? Ryken answers, saying, “Only because the cross was no offense to Jesus Christ. For him, it was the price he gladly paid to save his people.” [4] It was the price of blood, the forfeiting of his life. And for everyone who bows the knee to the crucified-to-death king on the tree, the cross ceases to be either offensive or shameful. Instead, it becomes the proof of the underlying shameless love of the Savior who gave his life to us.
[1] R. Alan Streett, Songs of Resistance: Challenging Caesar and Empire (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022), 15.
[2] Marcus Tullus Cicero, In Verrem 2.5 (3), 170.
[3] James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Heart of the Cross (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999), 122.
[4] Ibid., 125.
%20(1).jpg?width=36&height=36&name=untitled%20(16%20of%2039)%20(1).jpg){kind=small}
