Why the Cross?

As I write, we are in the Lenten season, reflectively awaiting our celebration of Good Friday and Easter. Every Christian knows the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus—not only for our faith, but for the whole of redemptive and human history. Yet, Christians have often pondered: Why did the Triune God choose a cross for the Messiah’s sacrificial death? Among the myriad of ways one can die, why crucifixion? I am not sure we can ever in this life fully plumb the depths of God’s intention here, and any theological answer we provide would need to be multifaceted. Yet, perhaps we can draw out in this brief blog post some key biblical strands concerning the significance of Jesus’s cross. 

Historical Context

It may be helpful to begin with the penalty itself. For nearly three decades I have been studying the practice and perceptions of crucifixion in the ancient world. A quick summary might look like this.[1] 

Crucifixion is a particular expression of the ancient practice of human bodily suspension. Penal bodily suspension (whether before or after death) antedated the New Testament by at least 2,000 years. In the ancient Near East and Egypt, such suspensions could take the form of impalements or other ways of suspending human bodies, usually as official legal punishments or as brutal treatment of opponents in war. Even the Old Testament repeatedly mentions bodily suspension penalties (e.g., Gen. 40:19; Deut. 21:22–23; Josh. 8:29; 10:26; Ezra 6:11; Esth. 2:23; 5:14; 6:4; 7:9–10; 8:7; 9:13, 25; cf. Num. 25:4). Strikingly, later Roman crucifixion practices parallel such ancient Near Eastern uses of bodily suspension in both law and war.

In the Roman world of the New Testament, a variety of postures could be associated with crucifixion, though outstretched arms on a t-shaped wooden device is commonly depicted.[2] Roman crucifixion was reserved primarily for thieves, slaves, and rebels. Typically, citizens would not be crucified, and when that did occur, it could produce moral outrage among Roman citizenry. Scourging and mutilation often preceded crucifixion, and victims were frequently required to carry their patibulum (horizontal “cross-bar”) to the place of execution. Crucifixion was a long and very painful way to die, which was also designed to produce humiliation and shame. Some have said that this was the worst means of execution that the Romans could conceive, though that may be a slight exaggeration (Romans could be particularly creative in their cruelty toward others). However, crucifixion was certainly the ultimate penalty in the standard Roman legal tradition (listed among the summum supplicium[3]), undoubtedly due to the horror of the cross.[4]

I have regularly heard preachers insist that death on the cross was invariably produced by asphyxiation (victims gasping for breath until they die). Actually, recent medical literature on the subject regularly suggests that a whole range of causes of death could result from being pinned to a cross, including also hypovolemic shock and cardiac failure, among other possibilities.[5] The actual cause of death in any one instance then would depend on a number of individual factors, including injuries sustained prior to the cross, specific method of appending the victim to the cross, and the victim’s overall health leading up to the event (e.g., cardio-vascular condition, degree of fatigue, etc.).

Jewish people shared similar views about crucifixion as other people in the Graeco-Roman world. However, many strands of Judaism additionally connected crucifixion with Scriptural examples (e.g., with Haman in the book of Esther, and especially with the ‘curse of God’ in Deuteronomy 21:22–23).[6]

Having surveyed this background, we could pursue application to the question of “why the cross?” The OT bodily suspension penalty echoes are significant (esp. Deut. 21). The severity of Jesus’s death is certainly astounding, although the NT authors do not emphasize the gruesomeness of the event as much as one might expect. The shame of the cross is relatively rarely mentioned in the NT—most notably in Luke 18:32 (in a passion prediction alongside “mocked” and “spit upon”) and Hebrews 12:2 (as an illustration of Jesus’s endurance, but without reference to salvific implications). Some have recently suggested that Jesus in his crucifixion takes up in a salvific way the shame of believers and thus removes shame, but this does not appear to me to have been overtly stated in the NT.[7] Yet in going to the cross, Jesus did deeply identify himself with human shame, suffering, and misery.

Certainly, all this does make evident why the cross was “foolishness” to Romans and Greeks, and a “stumbling-block” to Jews (1 Cor. 1:20–25).[8]

Why the Cross?

Multiple NT themes assist us in answering the question “why the cross?” Many of these typologically connect Jesus’s death with OT imagery.

For example, Paul links Jesus’s death with the phrase “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal. 3:13, quoting Deut. 21:23). Paul contends (as did the Septuagint before him) that the person enduring penal bodily suspension in Deuteronomy 21 has been cursed by God. Paul then argues that our failure to keep God’s Law deserves a dreadful curse upon us. However, that curse has been transferred to Christ in his cursed death on the cross, who thus pays our cursed penalty and redeems us from our own sin and its consequences. This makes explicit the connection between the OT penalty and the cross of Christ, indicating a typological prescience in God’s Law concerning how the Christ would ultimately undergo the curse of penal suspension for our sake.

Other mentions of Jesus “hanging on a tree” also potentially invoke Deuteronomy 21:22–23, especially in Acts (Acts 5:30; 10:39; cf. 13:29) and in 1 Peter (2:24). Here it may simply be that Jewish people in the first century (like Peter) regularly employed the idiom “hang on a tree” for crucifixion (as is evident in Nahum Pesher and the Temple Scroll from Qumran). However, the resonance with the OT expression “hang upon a tree” is again striking in these NT texts. In any case, Deuteronomy 21:22–23 was often applied to Jesus’s death in post-NT early Christianity.[9]

Further, note the regular application of Psalm 22 to Christ’s death. While this Davidic psalm does not overtly mention crucifixion, the vivid typological imagery is uniquely appropriate to the severity of Jesus’s cross. Thus, we witness such language as “all who see me mock me” (Ps. 22:7), “they have pierced my hands and feet” (22:16), and “they divide my garments among them” (22:18)—see Matt. 27:35, 39–43, 46; Mark 15:24, 29–32, 34; Luke 23:34–35; 24:40; John 19:23–24, 37; 20:25. The particularities of Jesus’s crucifixion death align well with his typological fulfillment of Psalm 22 as “great David’s greater Son.”

Similar resonance may be seen with other OT passages, like Psalm 69:21 (cf. Matt. 27:48; Mark 15:36; Luke 23:36; John 19:29) and Zechariah 12:10 (cf. John 19:37; Rev. 1:7). Indeed, the “him whom they have pierced” imagery of Zechariah 12:10 is aptly collated in the NT with Isaiah 53:5 (“but he was pierced for our transgressions”). And other echoes occur with this key section in Isaiah like “his appearance was so marred” (52:14), “despised and rejected by men” (53:3), “with his wounds we are healed” (53:5), and “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (53:7)—among many other connections with Isaiah 52:13–53:12 (see e.g., Acts 8:32; 1 Pet. 2:22–25; cf. Matt. 8:17; John 12:38; Rom. 10:16). While these OT texts do not directly portray a person dying on a cross, the details they depict are certainly consistent with the violent prolonged crucifixion of Jesus in the NT.

The Passover timing of Jesus’s crucifixion is also vital to NT theology, as is the location of Calvary being “outside the camp.” Such indications connect Jesus’s crucifixion death outside Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans during the festival week (and under the insistence of the Jewish elite) with OT verses on Passover and the Day of Atonement.

Apart from perhaps Deuteronomy 21, it would be too much to say that such OT passages necessitated that the atoning work of the Messiah required him to die on a cross outside Jerusalem. However, in typological hindsight, such passages aptly depict his crucifixion death and its import. 

Beyond that, we also observe in Jesus’s own references to crucifixion that the extremity of his sacrifice on behalf of his friends (John 15:13) exemplifies the kind of servanthood that Jesus calls forth from his disciples. Jesus famously declares: “take up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; cf. Matt. 10:38; Luke 14:27). This daunting call to Christian service and discipleship must have made much greater sense among the disciples after they had witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion. Indeed, Paul elaborates on this teaching in Philippians 2:5–8. Christians should sacrificially serve others in ways inspired by following the profound humility of Jesus’s cross.

Additionally, we have in John’s Gospel a recognition that the cross of Jesus—with Christ suffering and yet exalted high above the crowds below—represents his glory and messianic rule in ways that seem quite disconsonant with the horrid nature of the punishment itself (John 12:23–33; 18:32). Moreover, in John’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that his cross is emblematic of Moses’s bronze serpent, held aloft to heal all those struck by the serpents of the desert (John 3:14–15).

Even at this stage, I am mindful that we have not exhausted the possible reasons that God’s plan required the divine Son to go to a cross. Moreover, the post-NT early church discovered other resonances with the cross (albeit of varying worth).[10] Yet, this article is already long enough.

Beyond the “why crucifixion” question, let us also acknowledge that the fulness of God’s wisdom signals many other OT typological and prophetic streams in the death of the Son of God—ones that may not explicitly necessitate connection with a crucifixion death. For example, Jesus’s death is rightly connected to the Day of Atonement propitiation, the slain Passover lamb, and the culmination of the sin and guilt offerings of the OT. For such OT imagery, we could perhaps hypothesize that a different means of death might have been similarly emblematic. Yet in God’s subversive wisdom (1 Cor. 1:20–25), Christ properly followed his messianic calling by delivering himself over to those who would crucify him, just as Jesus knew this to be his destiny long before the event (thus esp. Matt. 20:18–19; cf. Matt 16:21; 17:22–23; 26:31–32; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34; 14:27–28; Luke 9:22, 44; 18:31–33).

Why Jesus’s crucifixion? Ultimately, because the cross of Christ is the power, wisdom, and glory of God. And this we celebrate, even if we cannot fathom the fullness of God’s glorious redemptive design.

ENDNOTES

[1] For those who are curious, my dissertation was on the perceptions of crucifixion among Jewish people in the time of Jesus (PhD, University of Cambridge, 2000). That was later published as Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion(Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010). A collection of ancient sources relevant to studying Jesus’s trial and execution appears in David W. Chapman and Eckhard J. Schnabel, The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus: Texts and Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2015; repr. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2019). And an array of articles has appeared too, most notably the Oxford Bibliography on “Crucifixion” that John Granger Cook and I co-authored (and recently updated).

[2] For an entry point into this discussion of ancient evidence for crucifixion postures and practices, the curious may wish to glance at Chapman and Schnabel, Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus, 669–81.

[3] On the uses of summum supplicium (applied to crucifixion, but not exclusively), see John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2014), esp. 359–62 (this extremely useful work is now in a second edition as of 2019).

[4] See e.g., Plutarch, Moralia 554a-b; Cicero, Against Verres 2.5.66; Seneca, Epistles 101; Lucian, Prometheus 1. A lay resource here (which remains quite useful) is Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

[5] For example: Matthew W. Maslen and Piers D. Mitchell, “Medical Theories on the Cause of Death in Crucifixion,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99 (2006): 185–88; Thomas W. McGovern, David A. Kaminskas, and Eustace S. Fernandes, “Did Jesus Die by Suffocation?: An Appraisal of the Evidence.” The Linacre Quarterly 90, no.1 (2022): 64–79 (insightful, despite the references they make to the Shroud of Turin).

[6] See e.g., Josephus, Jewish War 2.75; 5.449–51; Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shirata 10; Tosefta, Sanhedrin 9.7; Sifre Deut. 221; Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 3.151–52; 11QTemple 64.6–13.

[7] “Shame” vocabulary varies widely in the NT, with these two passages employing ὑβρίζω and αἰσχύνη. Other terms regularly translated as “shame” into English include ἀτιμάζω, δειγματίζω, ἐντρέπω, and καταισχύνω (with their cognates). For more remote connections of “shame” to the cross,” see 1 Cor. 1:27 (“. . . God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong”), and see Col. 2:15 (“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him”). However, in both these cases the cross is not a moment of shame for Jesus; rather, it is Jesus’s opponents who are put to shame. In the citation of Isa. 28:16 in Rom. 9:33; 10:11; and 1 Pet. 2:6 (“whoever believes in him will not be put to shame”), there is not specific mention of Jesus’s cross. In analogous ways, shame is further mentioned regarding the maltreatment of God’s servants (though not specifically the Messiah) in the parables of Matt. 22:6; Mark 12:4; Luke 20:11.

[8] As Martin Hengel observed years ago in Crucifixion, 1, 86.

[9] For a survey of some key early Christian texts, see my Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions, 241–51.

[10] During the first century or two of the church, some striking (though at times odd) examples occur of Christians finding divine reason for Jesus’ sdeath on a cross (e.g., Ep. Barn. 9:8; Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 55.1–8; 60.1–5; Dial. 40.3; 91.1–2). See further Chapman & Schnabel, Trial and Crucifixion, 676n839.