Wherever you find Christians, you find crosses. There are huge crosses towering in the Alps and Andes. There are little crosses that hang around people’s necks. They are found on spires and gravestones, at roadsides, on dashboards and shelves. There are Celtic crosses, Crusader crosses, crosses of St Anne, and Coptic crosses. They are made of gold, silver, bronze, plastic, wood and stone. Churches have traditionally been built in the form of a cross. And, of course, there is no counting the frescos, mosaics, icons, and oil paintings that have the crucifixion scene for their subject. The only corporate ceremony that Jesus commanded his followers to observe, the Lord’s Supper, celebrated every Sunday in thousands of churches, focuses on the cross with its central symbols, bread and wine, portraying his body broken and his blood shed. The ceremony he gave us for initiation into the Christian faith, baptism, symbolises our dying and rising with Christ.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in The Observer on 26 March 1967:

One thing at least can be said with certainty about the crucifixion of Christ: It was manifestly the most famous death in history. No other death has aroused 100th part of the interest, or been remembered with 100th part of the intensity and concern ...

For eighteen hundred years the cross has been the major symbol of Christianity. It has not always been so. The earliest Christian motifs seem to have been a peacock (symbolising immortality), a dove, the athlete’s victory palm, or in particular, a fish (the letters of the Greek word for “fish” being an acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour). However, it seems certain that, at least from the second century onwards, Christians not only drew, painted and engraved the cross as a pictorial symbol of their faith, but also made the sign of the cross on themselves or others. From then it increasingly dominated all other symbols of Christianity.

When one considers the horror with which crucifixion was regarded in the ancient world, the adoption of such a symbol seems very odd indeed. Crucifixion was possibly invented by the Persians and was taken over from them by the Greeks and Romans. It is probably the cruellest method of execution ever practised because it deliberately delayed death until maximum torture had been inflicted. Victims could suffer for days before dying. The modern hangman’s rope or electric chair are tame by comparison. Cicero, in his defence of the elderly senator Gaius Rabirius in 63 B.C., declared:

The very word “cross” should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things [sc. the procedures of crucifixion] or the endurance of them, but the liability to them, the expectation, indeed the mere mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man.

To the Jews it was equally abhorrent, but for a different reason. They made no distinction between a “tree” and a “cross”, and so applied to crucified criminals the terrible statement of the law that “anyone who is hung on a pole [or tree] is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).

Why then have Christians chosen this as the central symbol of their faith? One of the reasons is because of who they believe the person dying on that cross really was. In my booklet Was Jesus Really God? I spell out some of those beliefs. It is because they believe he is all that he personally claimed to be that New Testament scholar Tom Wright can say, in his recent book Simply Christian (1):

The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the King of the Jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfilment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns.

The second reason, however, and why Christians believe the second of these options, is because of what he achieved by his death, and that is what this book is all about. Martin Luther declared, “If you want to understand the Christian message, you must start with the wounds of Christ.” Theologian Emil Brunner said in his book The Mediator, “He who understands the Cross aright…understands the Bible, he understands Jesus Christ.” He then quotes Luther:

Therefore this text – “He bore our sins” – must be understood particularly thoroughly, as the foundation upon which stands the whole of the New Testament or the Gospel, as that which alone distinguishes us and our religion from all other religions.

Christians believe that there is wonderful power in the cross. John Stott, in The Preacher’s Portrait, says:

It has power to wake the dullest conscience and melt the hardest heart, to cleanse the unclean, to reconcile him who is afar off and restore him to fellowship, to redeem the prisoner from his bondage and lift the pauper from the dunghill, to break down the barriers which divide [people] from one another, to transform our wayward characters into the image of Christ and finally to make us fit to stand in white robes before the throne of God.

The influential bishop Leslie Newbiggin, in his book Journey in to Joy, tells of the experience that brought him into the Christian faith. He says:

As I grow older I am less inclined to be dogmatic about many things. But there are a few things about which I am sure. I am sure about Jesus Christ ...

Forty-two years ago there was a student at Cambridge who was not a Christian believer, but was very much concerned about the way the world was going and his responsibility for it. This student decided to spend a good part of his first long vacation working with the miners of the Rhondda valley in South Wales, who had been rotting in unemployment and misery for a decade. The experiment was not a success. But one night, overwhelmed by the sense of defeat and of the power of evil in the world, there was given to him a vision of the cross of Jesus Christ as the one and only reality great enough to span the distance between heaven and hell, and to hold in one embrace all the variety of humankind, the one reality that could make sense of the human situation. I was that student.

Over the last two thousand years there have similarly been millions of people who have found in the cross of Christ the meaning of life. Through it they have found forgiveness for the worst of sins, peace of mind, a purpose for living, perseverance under the greatest of trials and hope for a glorious future beyond death. This being the case, what is it that makes the cross so significant?

People have had their theories about the cross: the penal theory, developed in the Reformation era and still the one most accepted amongst evangelicals; the subjective theory, originating with Peter Abelard, a medieval monk; the classic theory, popularised by Swedish theologian Gustav Aulen in his book Christus Victor; the ransom theory, popular in the early church period; the satisfaction theory, originating with Anselm (1033-1109). For those who wish to delve in detail into such things I would commend John Stott’s magnificent book The Cross of Christ (2).

However, the purpose of this book is not to look at theories of why Jesus died, but rather to let the Bible speak for itself. It is not written primarily for sceptics, but for those seeking the truth about the meaning of life and what the Bible actually says. Apart from such subjects as the nature of God and his moral governance of the world, the cross is arguably the major theme of the Bible, certainly of the New Testament, followed closely by the resurrection of Jesus and his coming return to judge the world and welcome his people. The emphasis is such that one could well say Jesus’ prime purpose for coming into the world was to die. As the eminent preacher R. W. Dale put it, “While he came to preach the gospel, his chief object in coming was that there might be a gospel to preach.” In symbol, metaphor, story and by direct statement, the Bible constantly illuminates the significance of this event and indicates that what Jesus did on the cross has reference to every human being.

Many people have died horrible deaths, sometimes voluntarily for some great cause, or out of love for others, but Christians have always believed there was something different about the death of Jesus. This difference is due to a number of things – who it was that did the dying, why his death was necessary and what it achieved. As regards to who he was, in the booklets Is Jesus Really God? and Understanding the Trinity, I have given the biblical and historical evidence for believing that Jesus was no ordinary man but the Second Person of the divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who took human flesh and blood in the womb of Mary. In other words, though Jesus’ death was a very human death, the one who was doing the dying was the creator of the universe. And as theologian James Packer put it in an article in Christianity Today, “As his life was a divine person’s totally human life, so his dying was a divine person’s totally human death.” As regards to why his death was necessary and what it achieved, that is what the rest of this book is all about.

In the 1993 film In the Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood played the part of Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan. As a young agent he was assigned to President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. When the assassin fired, he froze in shock. For 30 years afterwards he wrestled with the ultimate question for a Secret Service agent: Can I take a bullet for the President? In the climax of the movie, Horrigan does what he had been unable to do earlier: he throws himself into the path of an assassin’s bullet to save the chief executive.

Secret Service agents do such things because they believe the President is so valuable to the world that he is worth dying for. Obviously, they would not do it for just anyone. At Calvary, Christians believe, the situation was reversed. The President of the Universe actually took the bullet for each of us. As the Scriptures declare, he died “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). That is how much he values you and me.

The cover of a recent Newsweek asked the question: “Who killed Jesus?” Mel Gibson understands who. In his magnificent but gut-wrenching film The Passion of the Christ, which prompted the question, the hand that holds the spike being nailed through Christ’s hand is that of Gibson. Rembrandt understood who. In his painting The Raising of the Cross, the soldier pulling it up is Rembrandt.

Professor Albert A. Trevor, in his History of Ancient Civilisation, says:

In the later years of Tiberius, probably soon after A.D. 30, occurred in Judea an event unnoticed by Romans, the Crucifixion of Jesus. Yet this seemingly insignificant affair was to become the central event in future Western history and the despised Galilean was destined to triumph over all the gods and emperors of the Roman world.

Christians would go further and say that it was not only the central event in future Western history, which it indeed was, but it is the central and most important event in all of human history. Anglican scholar, Bishop Stephen Neill, put it like this:

In the Christian theology of history, the death of Christ is the central point of history; here all the roads of the past converge; hence all the roads of the future diverge.

If you want to understand why Christians should think this way, then read on to see what that wonderful book, the Bible, has to say about it. R. V. G. Tasker, in his foreword to James Denney’s classic book The Death of Christ (3), says:

The ‘theology which helps us to evangelise’ is the theology which recognises ‘the centrality, the gravity, the inevitableness and the glory of the death of Christ’, wherein the unity not only of the New Testament but also of the entire Bible is to be found. To put the emphasis anywhere else; or to use the language of the New Testament about Christ’s death in a sense other than that given to it by the New Testament writers, is to debase the Christian religion and paralyse the life of the Church. On the other hand, to recognise the death of Christ for what the New Testament asserts it to be is, in Denney’s view, to possess the essential clue to a proper understanding of His person, of the purpose of His incarnation, of the working out of His vocation during His earthly ministry, and of the influence He has had upon all who have accepted Him as Saviour.

Denney himself says: “The simplest truth of the gospel and the profoundest truth of theology must be put in the same words – ‘He bore our sins.’” After you have read this book, you may judge for yourself whether these statements represent indeed an accurate reading of the Bible.

Soon after posting his 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenburg, Luther declared that the only person who deserved to be called a theologian was he “who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the Cross.” My hope is that not only will theologians be encouraged to keep this truth central in their teaching, but also that preachers will find here many useful sermon outlines for proclaiming the heart of the gospel, and those who are still searching after the truth will find their quest abundantly satisfied.

____________________

(1) SPCK, 2006, ©. This book has been described as the most thrilling attempt to re-express the heart of the Christian faith and the transformation it offers to every area of personal and social life since C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

(2) Inter-Varsity Press, 1986, ©.

(3) The Tyndale Press, 1951, ©. Quotes by Denney are all taken from this book unless otherwise stated.