Denver Seminary

Then, forcibly roused to consciousness, prisoners were paraded through the streets like animals, where the local populace jeered and spat at them. Stumbling to the place of execution, they were shoved by a soldier backwards to the ground on a crossbar, exacerbating the pain from their scourging. Nails were driven through their wrists, attaching them to the crossbar, and they were then hoisted onto a heavy and permanent wooden post. A final spike was pounded through his feet to the post. The process known as crucifixion now began. Passive breathing, which we all do unconsciously thousands of times each day, became almost impossible for the crucified one. To gain a breath, they had to push themselves up by the legs and feet or by lifting their arms. In either case, this caused enormous pain. Bodily functions were uncontrollable, insects feasted on the wounds, muscles cramped intensely, and there was unspeakable thirst. Usually, spectators and soldiers alike threw refuse on the victims and hurled vile words of abuse. Crucified people were degraded psychologically, socially, and physically, an obscene sight to behold. The idea was not merely to torture victims to death, but to utterly humiliate them. The express purpose of the Roman Empire in crucifying its enemies was to portray them as less than human; the victims were not of the same species and deserved extermination. Given that crucifixion was a common sight throughout the Empire, most Romans agreed with their great statesman and orator, Cicero, who labeled crucifixion summum supplicium (the supreme penalty), exceeding both burning and decapitation in its hideous violence. The Jews, no friends of their Roman overlords, pejoratively labeled all such individuals "cursed." A SYMBOL OF INCOMPREHENSIBLE LOVE Given that Jesus of Nazareth died in such a horrific and stigmatized way, how did the cross become the theological foundation of the Christian faith? This was not accomplished easily or quickly. The ancient world's understandable aversion to the idea of a crucified Savior forced the New Testament authors to fight with all their literary and homiletical strength to keep Christ's death at the center of their preaching, teaching, and worship. Paul's opening salvo in his first letter to the Corinthians illustrates this intent, despite the strenuous religious and intellectual challenges it entailed: For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:21–24, ESV). Moreover, each of the four Gospel writers consciously devoted up to a third of their respective biographies of Jesus to His passion. Contemporary biblical scholarship argues that the historical reality of Christ's suffering was preserved by the early Christian community's oral tradition decades before it was put in literary form. This signified an absolute commitment on the part of the first disciples to keep the cross at the very center of their corporate life and ministry, regardless of how it was perceived by the surrounding culture. A final spike was pounded through his feet to the post. The process known as crucifixion now began. The apostolic witnesses as well as the pastors and teachers of the early church centered the message of the gospel on Christ's crucifixion because they realized that it was here—in the scandal of the cross—that the nature of God is genuinely revealed. It communicates in the most visible way possible the incomprehensible love of our Triune God for His fallen, sinful, and yes, depraved creatures— who are much worse off than they realize. The doctrine of total depravity, so much emphasized throughout Scripture and brought to the forefront of Christian theology by Augustine and the Protestant reformers, does not mean we're as bad as we can possibly be. Rather, as Paul demonstrates in Romans 3, it shows that sin has touched every part of our being, making insidious rebels of us all, people who either blatantly reject God's sovereignty or passively ignore His call to relationship. And yet, as the apostle so famously declared, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8, ESV). Sadly and somewhat surprisingly, this foundational truth of the gospel was, in many ways, lost to the Church in the late medieval era (1300–1500). During this period, the papal curia and its theologians taught that grace was a commodity to be earned by human merit or even purchased via indulgences, which promised to relieve the suffering of souls in purgatory. But in the second decade of the 16th century, a German professor and pastor named Martin Luther demolished these erroneous concepts by inaugurating the theological revolution that later became known as the Protestant Reformation. Luther became the progenitor of sola fide (salvation by faith alone), but his teaching was always centered in the cross of Christ. In his view, humanity is forever tempted towards a theology of glory rooted in an overestimation of its own power and ability. But this is a terrible mistake because in the aftermath of the Fall (Gen. 3) men and women are so deeply trapped in sin that they are, in Luther's words, incurvatus in se (turned in on themselves) with no hope of escape. It is only by God's mercy as evidenced in Jesus' death on the cross that salvation ENGAGE 13

• Cover