Crucifixion

The crucifixion of Jesus stands at the center of the New Testament and is read backwards into the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms. Scripture treats it as a place (a skull-shaped knoll outside Jerusalem), an event (a Roman execution carried out at the third and ninth hours), and a doctrine (a curse borne, a peace made, a bond cancelled). The same word that names what was done to Jesus is then taken up by the apostles to describe what has been done to the world, the flesh, and the old self of every believer.

The Foretold Sufferer

The crucifixion narrative does not begin in the gospels. The Hebrew Scriptures supply the vocabulary the evangelists then deploy. The servant of Isaiah 53 is "wounded for our transgressions" and "bruised for our iniquities," and "with his stripes we are healed" (Is 53:5). He is "despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Is 53:3), and his grave is "with the wicked" though he had "done no violence" (Is 53:9). Isaiah's servant offers his back "to the strikers" and his cheeks "to those who plucked off the hair," and does not hide his face "from shame and spitting" (Is 50:6). The psalmist describes a sufferer whose heart is broken by reproach, who looks "for some to take pity, but there was none" (Ps 69:20). Zechariah names the marks themselves: "What are these wounds between your arms? Then he will answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends" (Zec 13:6). 1 Pe 1:11 retrojects the testimony, saying that the prophets searched what the Spirit of Christ in them "did point to, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them."

The Man of Sorrows

Before the cross, the gospels present a Jesus already grieved. He sighs at human suffering — "looking up to heaven, he sighed" at the deaf man (Mr 7:34) and "sighed deeply in his spirit" at the demand for a sign (Mr 8:12). He weeps at Lazarus's tomb — "Jesus wept" (Jn 11:35) — and is "troubled" in spirit when he sees the mourners (Jn 11:33). He weeps over Jerusalem (Lu 19:41). At the Last Supper he is "troubled in the spirit" by the prospect of betrayal (Jn 13:21). He is despised within his ministry: opponents say "He has a demon, and is insane" (Jn 10:20), the money-loving Pharisees scoff at him (Lu 16:14). The Johannine summary of the inner cost is his own: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause I came to this hour" (Jn 12:27).

Gethsemane and the Mocking

The pre-execution suffering intensifies in Luke. In great distress at prayer, "his sweat became like drops of blood falling upon the ground" (Lu 22:44). He himself folds the experience into Isaiah's pattern: "this which is written must be fulfilled in me, And he was reckoned with transgressors" (Lu 22:37). After arrest "the men who held [Jesus] mocked him, and beat him" (Lu 22:63). At Calvary itself the Roman soldiers "also mocked him, coming to him, offering him vinegar" (Lu 23:36).

Calvary — The Place

The site is named in three of the four gospels in scope here. Mark calls it "the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull" (Mr 15:22). Luke names it "The skull" and adds the placement of the others: "there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left" (Lu 23:33). John supplies the Hebrew form and places the cross-bearing on Jesus's own shoulders: "he went out, bearing the cross for himself, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha" (Jn 19:17).

The Crucifixion Itself

The act is reported with restraint. Mark: "And they crucify him, and part his garments among them, casting lots on them, what each should take" (Mr 15:24). John gives the soldiers' division of the garments and notes the seamless coat (Jn 19:23). Mark records the cry from the cross at the ninth hour: "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? Which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mr 15:34). Around the cross, Mark records the crowd: those who passed by "railed on him, wagging their heads" and saying "save yourself, and come down from the cross" (Mr 15:29-30). The same chapter records that "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe. And those who were crucified with him reproached him" (Mr 15:32).

Why The Cross — The Pauline Doctrine

Paul converts the event into a doctrine. The crucifixion is the bearing of a covenant curse: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Ga 3:13). It is the means of reconciliation across the Jew-Gentile divide — God reconciled both "in one body to God through the cross, having slain the enmity in himself" (Ep 2:16) — and across the cosmos, God making "peace through the blood of his cross" (Cl 1:20). It is the cancellation of legal indebtedness: God blotted out the bond of ordinances "and he has taken it out from between [him and us], nailing it to the cross" (Cl 2:14). It is the deepest point of the Son's voluntary humiliation: "he humbled himself, becoming obedient [even] to death, yes, the death of the cross" (Php 2:8); for the believers' sakes, "though he was rich, yet for your⁺ sakes he became poor" (2Co 8:9). Hebrews places the same act under the rubric of endurance and joy: "looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame" (He 12:2). The author keeps the topographical detail: "Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate" (He 13:12). Hebrews even fits the suffering into a logic of perfection: God made "the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (He 2:10), and the Son "learned obedience by the things which he suffered" (He 5:8).

The Reproach of the Cross

The cross is socially scandalous as well as legally cursed. Paul writes, "if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling-block of the cross has been done away" (Ga 5:11). The preaching of the cross is itself the stake — "Christ didn't send me to baptize, but to preach the good news: not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void" (1Co 1:17) — and there are "enemies of the cross of Christ" inside the assemblies (Php 3:18). Peter draws the same line for ordinary disciples: "Christ also suffered for you⁺, leaving you⁺ an example, that you⁺ should follow his steps" (1Pe 2:21); "Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you⁺ to God" (1Pe 3:18).

Crucified With Christ — The Figurative Cross

Paul takes the same vocabulary and turns it inward. The believer's "old man was crucified with [him], that the body of sin might be done away" (Ro 6:6). The first-person formulation in Galatians is the model: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Ga 2:20). Those who belong to Christ Jesus "have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Ga 5:24). The cross is also the boundary between the apostle and the world's claims: "far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Ga 6:14). Within the gospels, the call to follow precedes the doctrine: Jesus tells the rich man to sell what he has and "come, follow me" (Mr 10:21).