Romans crucified criminals. The cross was the cruellest torturous tool for execution. Unlike now, crosses in the ancient world were not donned as necklaces but dreaded as demons.
Crucifixion was an open activity, subjecting the criminal to public shame, just like death by hanging. Hanging and crucifixion happened on a tree, and this was of symbolic significance.
Man’s relationship with the tree begins in Genesis, where he was told ‘from any tree of the garden you may eat freely’ except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:15-17).
Mankind’s malady thus begun when he ate of the forbidden fruit and tried after that to hide his shame behind the trees (Gen. 3:8).
From then, ‘the tree becomes a cultic object and the carving an idol. The prophets condemned Israel’s apostasy as “adultery with stone and tree” (Jer. 3: 9 RSV; cf. Isa. 40: 20; 44: 13 if.; Ezek. 20: 32)’ (The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology).
The tree becomes not just a symbol of man’s damning idolatry, but a place where he dies cursed.
“If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God).” Deut. 21:23
Crucifixion was known in the ancient African city of Carthage (modern-day Tunisia), and Greece. Rome could have received this custom from Carthage and perfected its cruelty.
The person to be crucified was stripped and scourged, causing his body to bleed from the inflicted wounds. Then he would be made to lie naked on the rough wood to which he was nailed.
‘The victim was then hoisted on to the stake with the cross beam. Death came slowly after extraordinary agony, probably through exhaustion or suffocation’ (TDNT).
Crucifixion is by far the worst form of death man ever imagined, and this was Christ’s death.
Christ Crucified
The crucifixion of Christ was a scandal, a miscarriage of mankind’s justice. The human courts of law, through a mock trial, sentenced a sinless Man to die a criminal’s death.
But the death of Christ was also a scandal of grace, ‘the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God’ (1 Peter 3:18). Here is a paradox: the just God sends His sinless Son to suffer death and injustice so as to give life to criminals, saving them from their self-inflicted curse.
The cross of Christ must at once strike us with horror for the cruelty and injustice it represents. And yet, with numbing awe must we behold how sovereignty saves sinners through paradox, how God redeems all things by use of humanity’s greatest sin, the murder of the righteous suffering Servant and Son of God.
It is in this framework that we must hear Paul’s words: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.’
These words must never be taken lightly. The current Christian who lives in an age distant from the cruel era of real crucifixion dare not sing about the cross as if it were an almost painless symbol of public death. Stamp out from your mind even the mildest memories of your rockstar wearing a cross necklace.
The cross speaks of cruel death, our death, not our celebrity’s sense of fashion.
It is infinitely more than a piece of wood hanging on our church walls or a metallic piece of art around our necks. O that a sweet horror strikes our numb senses at the sound of the cross!
The God-Man
Jesus, as One Person, is God-Man. The Chalcedonian Creed reminds us that the two natures co-exist in Christ without mixture or separation. The Creed confesses
One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the unity, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is, in Christ incarnate, God and man, are eternally united, without confusion of natures (so that humanity does not become divine nor Divinity become human by nature) and without separation (so that humanity lives because of the divine life itself).
United to God via Christ’s humanity are those the Father chose in the Son from the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4), so that as Christ dies, so do those God chose in Him. It is only because of divine election that we can say ‘I am crucified with Christ.’
The implications of this, of course, are twofold: no one can ever be in Christ who was not in Him when He was crucified, and no one can ever be outside Christ who was in Him when He died.
Crucified with Christ
Christ was crucified on the tree because Adam ate of the tree he should have left alone. In Adam, we all ate of that tree, and thus, in Adam, we all died (1 Cor 15:22). This is crucial to understand if we are ever to see the cross of Christ aright.
Adam’s sin is ours. We were in him when he rebelled, all of us, young or old, male or female, black or white. God in condemning Adam condemned us, and ‘by one man’s offence, many died’ (Rom 5:15).
But when the Son of God became man, He took up humanity in Himself and made us sons of God. Although He was by nature sinless, by identifying with us, He was identified with our sin, and consequently our destiny.
As a result, He bore our judgment, ‘the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God.’
The trees could not and did not hide Adam’s shame. For it was shame inflicted by sin, against the One from whose sight no creature could hide (Heb 4:12). Thus, Christ suffered humanity’s public humiliation (Heb 13:12-13).
Because Christ fully identified with and paid the penalty for our sin, we now fully identify with His glorious resurrection. He ‘was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification’ (Rom 4:25).
We live His life because He died our death. In that sense, it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives within me (Gal 2:20). By identifying with our fate, He reversed it as God-Man, so that the Elect identify with His destiny.
This understanding argues against a western individualistic reading of God’s redemptive history. We do not represent ourselves before God through our free will. We are either dead in Adam or alive in Christ. There is no other way.
I live, not by my power, but because I am united to Christ. The death that Christ died was mine. Unless I am alive in Christ, I am still dead in Adam.
But I was there when He died, for I was in Him, by election. I was there when He rose again (Eph 2:5-6) because I was in Him, my Head. I am saved through my unity with Him, just as I was damned in Adam.
In this, Christ achieved actual redemption for actual people, not potential salvation for potential people.
Because I am crucified with Christ, I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives within me.
Rejoice, O Christian, for Christ our Lord has conquered the grave that Adam dug. May Easter remind us of this truth. But more so, may the Spirit of God in us diffuse the fragrance of Christ’s triumphant life!
For:
“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 1 Cor 15:54-55