Paul: Jesus the Crucified One
The cross stands as the centerpiece of Paul’s whole approach to understanding Jesus and his relationship with the Father. Every time Paul mentions the cross – which he does literally dozens of times, “on almost every page of his letters,” he offers a different perspective.
“How has God fulfilled the promises to Abraham? Through the cross. What is at stake if unthinking ex-pagans eat meat offered to idols? They may offend a brother or sister ‘for whom Christ died’. What happens in baptism? People die with Christ. How did God overthrow the rule of the evil powers? The cross was his triumphal procession. What is the supreme revelation of God’s love, and hence of his unshakeable commitment to his people and his world? The death of Jesus. How are Jew and Gentile reconciled? Through the cross.”
It’s easy for us living some 2000 years after this gruesome and ignominious spectacle of Jesus’ crucifixion to become insensitive to what it really involved and to become dulled by hearing Paul speak of crucifixion the way he does. After all, crucifixes are now seen everywhere, they’re worn as jewelry, and they’ve become part and parcel of our culture as ornaments.
As a consequence, people now have become “blissfully unaware that this symbol depicts the ancient equivalent, all in one, of the hangman’s noose, the electric chair, the thumbscrew, and the rack. Or, to be more precise, something which combined all four but went far beyond them; crucifixion was such an utterly horrible thing that the very word was usually avoided in polite Roman society …. Somehow we need to remind ourselves of this every time Paul mentions Jesus’s death, especially the mode of that death.”
The critical point that Paul wants to make concerning Jesus’ crucifixion is that through this act of utter humiliation and shame “God has reversed the world’s values. He has done the impossible. He has turned shame into glory, and glory into shame. His is the folly that outsmarts the wise, the weakness that overpowers the strong. This cross is for Paul the symbol, as it was also the means, of the liberating victory of the one true God, the creator of the world, over all the enslaving powers that have usurped his authority. That is why it is at the heart of ‘the gospel’.”
“Paul, with both feet planted firmly in the prophets, addressed the pagan world with the news of a new king, a new emperor, a new Lord.” The crucifixion represented for Paul God’s “decisive victory over the ‘principalities and powers’ of this world.”
“The announcement of the ‘crucified Messiah’ is the key to everything because it declares to the rulers of this age that their time is up; for had they realized what was going on, ‘they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’” (I Cor. 1: 18 – 2:8)
But, “towering over almost everything else, the death of Jesus, seen as the culmination of his great act of obedience, is the means whereby the reign of sin and death is replaced with the reign of grace.” (Romans 5: 12-21). (emphasis mine)
For Paul, the gospel of Jesus Christ is “the announcement of a royal victory.” And his crucifixion is “the moment when God’s astonishing love was unveiled in all its glory.” (Romans 5:6-11; 8:31-39)
The ultimate point that Paul wants to make is that “the shameful death of Jesus at the hands of the pagans was, for Paul, the center and starting-point of what ‘the gospel’ was all about …. It was the Jewish message of good news for the world.”
“But (someone might say) hundreds of Jews, young and old, were crucified by the Romans in the first century. Why was this execution so special? Paul’s answer would have been two-fold. The crucifixion was different because of who it was that was crucified, and because of what happened next.” Namely, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
“Jesus’ resurrection, his Messiahship, and the fact that he is therefore Lord of the world. Together with the crucifixion, these constitute the basic elements of Paul’s ‘gospel.’”
Note: all quotes are from What Saint Paul Really Said, by N. T. Wright
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
7/15/15
