100 Sermon Illustrations on Crucifixion

The ancient rabbinic text is clear about the punishment for those who twisted sacred law and misled the people of Israel.

Offenders would be stoned and then hung by their hands from two pieces of wood connected to form a “T.” The Talmud once included this example from the Sanhedrin:

"On the eve of Passover they hung Jesus of Nazareth,” said the

passage, which was censored in the 16th century to evade the

wrath of Christians. “The herald went out before him for 40 days

saying, 'Jesus goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced

magic, enticed and led astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything

in his favor, let him come and declare concerning him.’ And they

found nothing in his favor."

If armies of Jewish and Christian scholars insist on arguing about Mel Gibson's explosive movie “The Passion of The Christ,” it would help if they were candid and started dealing with the hard passages in Jewish texts as well as the Christian scriptures.

At least, that's what David Klinghoffer thinks.

The Orthodox Jewish writer -- whose forthcoming book is titled “Why the Jews Rejected Christ” -- believes these lines from the Talmud are as troubling as any included in the Christian Gospels. They are as disturbing as any image Gibson might include in his controversial epic.

The Talmudic text seems clear. Jesus clashed with Jewish leaders, debating them on the meaning of their laws. They hated him. Many wanted him dead.

It is possible, Klinghoffer said, to interpret these documents as saying that Jesus' fate rested entirely with the Jewish court. The use of language such as “enticed and led astray” indicated that Jesus may have been charged with leading His fellow Jews to worship false gods.

There are more details in this confusing drama. Writing in 12th-century Egypt, the great Jewish sage Maimonides summed up the ancient texts.

“Jesus of Nazareth,” he proclaims, in his Letter to Yemen, “... impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions.

“The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.”

Is that it? What role did the Romans play? In terms of historic fact, Klinghoffer emphasized, it's almost impossible to find definitive answers for such questions. But the purpose of the Jewish oral traditions that led to the Talmud was to convey religious belief, not necessarily historical facts.

“If you really must ask, 'Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?’ then you can only conclude that both the Gospels and the Talmud agree that the Jewish leaders did not have the power to execute Him,” Klinghoffer said.

“Did they influence the event? The religious texts suggest that they did, the historic texts suggest that they did not. It's hard to know. ... But if Gibson is an anti-Semite, then to be consistent you would have to say that so was Maimonides.”

Obviously, Klinghoffer is not spreading this information in order to fan the flames of hatred. His goal, he said, is to provoke Jewish leaders in cities such as New York and Los Angeles to strive harder to understand the views of traditional Protestants and Catholics. And it's time for liberal Christians to spend as much time talking with Orthodox Jews as with liberal Jews.

It's time for everyone to be more honest, he said.

“I don't see anything that is to be gained for Judaism by going out of our way to antagonize a Mel Gibson or to antagonize as many traditional Christians as we possibly can. I think we have been yelling 'Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” Klinghoffer said.

“To put it another way, I don't think it's very wise for a few Jewish leaders to try to tell millions of Christians what they are supposed to believe. Would we want some Christians to try to edit our scriptures and to tell us what we should believe?”

*

On February 25, 2004, Icon films, will be releasing Mel Gibson's much anticipated film The Passion of the Christ. The date of the release was deliberately chosen to coincide with the Roman Catholic holy day of Ash Wednesday, and is indicative of the fact that for Gibson, his film was more of a work of devotion than a money making enterprise. In an interview on the Roman Catholic Television Network EWTN, Gibson candidly stated why this movie is so different from all his others, “It reflects my beliefs-I've never done that before.”[1] He is also quite open about his desire to see his movie used for worldwide evangelism. Many noted Evangelicals including James Dobson and Billy Graham have also come forward to endorse The Passion of Christ and recommend its use as a teaching tool. Currently, The Passion of Christ is riding a groundswell of nationwide support from both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, with many well-known Evangelical congregations, such as best selling author and Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church which purchased 18,000 tickets at seven theatres, doing everything they can to ensure that The Passion of Christ will be a smash hit amongst Christians and “seekers”. Expressing a widely held view amongst the film's supporters, Lisa Wheeler, associate editor of Catholic Exchange, a Web portal dedicated to Catholic evangelism, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “It's the best evangelization opportunity we've had since the actual death of Jesus.”[2]

But should Evangelicals be supporting The Passion of Christ and endorsing its use as an Evangelism tool? Is this really the best evangelization opportunity we've had since the actual death of Jesus?[3] After careful consideration my conclusion is an unequivocal “No.” Here then are five reasons why I believe Evangelicals should not see or recommend the Passion of Christ.

1) Its Origins: Even though Evangelicals are promoting The Passion of Christ, it is not an Evangelical movie. As Mel Gibson, a devout Roman Catholic put it so well; “It reflects my beliefs.” The Passion of Christ is a Roman Catholic movie, made by a Roman Catholic director, with Roman Catholic theological advisers, which gained the endorsement of Pope John Paul II who said after viewing it, “It is as it was.”[4] This is in marked contrast to the Jesus film, which is unabashedly Protestant and Evangelical in its production and message and which has been widely used in evangelizing Roman Catholics. It is largely for this reason that the Jesus film has not been utilized or endorsed by Roman Catholics. By contrast, The Passion of Christ has already proven its effectiveness as an evangelism tool in producing Catholic conversions and encouraging Catholic devotion:

“In his first nationally broadcast interview about his starring role in Mel Gibson's much-anticipated film “The Passion of Christ,” James Caviezel - Gibson's Jesus - detailed on Friday the ordeal of filming the Crucifixion scenes, noting that the overall experience prompted many in the crew to convert to Catholicism.”

...

“Noting “the amount of conversions on the movie,” he said the experience of filming Christ's story “really changed people's lives.”

“Caviezel recalled telling Gibson, “I think it's very important that we have mass every day - at least I need that to play this guy.”

“I felt if I was going to play him I needed [the sacrament] in me. So [Gibson] provided that.”[5]

2) Its Script: Although it is widely thought that the script for the movie is based entirely on the gospel according to John, this is not the case. The script for The Passion of Christ contains much extrabiblical material, and is based in part on a mystical Roman Catholic devotional work by an 18th century German Nun (Sister Anne Emmerich) entitled The Dolorous Passion of Christ. Gibson stated on EWTN that reading Emmerich's book was his primary inspiration for making the movie. By introducing extrabiblical elements, not only does The Passion of Christ change some of the theological emphases of the Biblical account of Christ's crucifixion, but it will also create a false impression amongst the very “seekers” that Evangelicals are trying to reach, that things were said and done at the crucifixion that did not actually happen. For Evangelicals, who would feel very uncomfortable with a version of the Bible that put words into the mouth of Christ that He never spoke, to endorse a movie that does the very same thing seems hopelessly inconsistent. Protestants traditionally rejected the Apocrypha precisely because these books were fabricated and contained inauthentic material, despite the fact that these books might have been useful for evangelism. For modern evangelicals to embrace a vehicle that is inauthentic in order to achieve evangelistic ends indicates a serious decline in faithfulness.

The script for The Passion of Christ not only adds things that didn't occur in the Bible, it cuts out other things that did. The most widely known example of this is the important declaration, “His blood be on us and on our children.” (Matthew 27:25)

The script for The Passion of Christ was translated into Aramaic and Latin by Father William Fulco, an old friend of Mel Gibson's. This was not done for reasons of making it more authentic.[6] The language decisions in the Passion of Christ were made for theological reasons:

“It is crucial to realize that the images and language at the heart of “The Passion of the Christ” flow directly out of Gibson's personal dedication to Catholicism in one of its most traditional and mysterious forms - the 16th-century Latin Mass.

“I don't go to any other services,” the director told the Eternal Word Television Network. “I go to the old Tridentine Rite. That's the way that I first saw it when I was a kid. So I think that that informs one's understanding of how to transcend language. Now, initially, I didn't understand the Latin. ... But I understood the meaning and the message and what they were doing. I understood it very fully and it was very moving and emotional and efficacious, if I may say so.”

The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences by brashly juxtaposing the “sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice of the altar - which is the same thing,” said Gibson. This ancient union of symbols and sounds has never lost its hold on him. There is, he stressed, “a lot of power in these dead languages.”

Thus, the seemingly bizarre choice of Latin and Aramaic was actually part of the message.”[7]

The script of The Passion of Christ was specifically intended to link the crucifixion of Christ with what Roman Catholics believe is the re-sacrificing of Christ that occurs in the mass. Gibson's intent is to show us that the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the altar (the mass) are the same thing. Protestant Evangelicals have historically rejected the idea that Christ can be sacrificed again and declared it “abominable.” Speaking of the concept that the Crucifixion and the mass is the same thing, the Protestant Westminster Confession declares:

“In this sacrament, Christ is not offered up to his Father; nor any real sacrifice made at all, for remission of sins of the quick or dead; but only a commemoration of that one offering up of himself, by himself, upon the cross, once for all: and a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto God, for the same: so that the popish sacrifice of the mass (as they call it) is most abominably injurious to Christ's one, only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of his elect.”[8]

3) Its Theology: Gibson's comment about the sacrifice of the altar and the sacrifice of the cross shows the indispensable link in this movie between the Catholic view of Christ's sacrifice and the portrayal of the Crucifixion in The Passion of Christ. The fact that Evangelicals have uncritically endorsed it speaks volumes about how far the Evangelical Protestant understanding of Christ's death and the related subject of Justification have slipped since the Reformation. In Roman Catholic theology the intense physical suffering of Christ's Crucifixion is the focus along with the emphasis on physical sacrifice. This is one of the reasons why in Roman Catholic iconography we have so much imagery related to Christ's physical pain and that crucifixes show him still suffering on the cross (the sacrifice of the mass means that Christ's declaration that His once for all sacrifice is completed - “it is finished” (John 19:30), never actually comes, and that His suffering has to be constantly repeated). This emphasis on Christ's physical agony is repeated in Roman Catholic devotional material, prayers, and of course the Passion of Christ. The theology of the Bible, however, points out to us that the grand importance of Christ's crucifixion lay not in His physical suffering, but in His once for all propitiation of God's wrath (1 John 4:10). Lest we forget, the greatest torment that Christ experienced on the cross was not caused by the nails driven into His flesh, but in His being made “sin for us” and vicariously suffering the righteous punishment of the Father in our place. Even the worst physical torments inflicted by the Sanhedrin and the Romans upon Jesus were nothing by comparison to the anguish of having the sins of all the elect imputed to Him and making full satisfaction for them. Satisfying the justice of the Romans on a cross was comparatively easy; thousands of condemned men and women including Spartacus and several of the Apostles did that, but only Christ could satisfy the justice of God.

Also central to the Christian Gospel, but missing from The Passion of Christ, is the concept of Christ's active obedience. Christ not only died for the sins of His sheep on the cross but He established their righteousness through His perfect obedience to God's Law. It is only if His passive obedience in dying on the cross and His active obedience in keeping the law are imputed to believers per 2 Cor. 5:21 that believers will be justified before almighty God. The Passion of Christ does not even make any pretence of teaching the active obedience of Christ, the entire notion of which is alien to Roman Catholic theology. Therefore if Evangelicals intend to use this as a Gospel teaching tool, they must understand that at best they are teaching only half a gospel, and that the half they are teaching is defectively presented.

The sacrifice of Christ was a glorious event in which, in accordance with God's plan, full satisfaction for sin was procured by Christ on behalf of His people (Acts 2:43). The Passion of Christ leaves us with a vision of the sacrifice of Christ that is only dolorous (Dolorous: Full of grief; sad; sorrowful; doleful; dismal) and which puts into sharp relief the Roman Catholic notion not only of the importance of Christ's agony, but that of Mary in “offering her Son.” In an interview with Zenit, the Roman Catholic News Service, Father Thomas Rosica, the priest who oversaw World Youth Day 2002 and its Way of the Cross through the streets of Toronto, illustrated how The Passion of Christ, in keeping with Roman Catholic theology, uses extrabiblical content to massively exaggerate the role of Mary:

“One scene, in particular, was very moving. As Jesus falls on the Way of the Cross, there is a flashback to his falling on a Jerusalem street as a child, and his mother running out of the house to pick him up. The interplay of Mary and Jesus in this film is moving, and reaches its apex in the scene of the Pietà.

The Mother of the Lord is inviting each of us to share her grief and behold her Son.”[9]

This use of extra-biblical material, emphasis on physical suffering, exaggeration of the role of Mary, and explicitly Roman Catholic theology should not surprise us, however, as these are all hallmarks of the primary inspiration for this movie: The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give two examples of what I mean especially as concerns the replacement of physical pain for the far greater agony of sin bearing:

“He will not stretch himself out, but we will help him;' they accompanied these words with the most fearful oaths and imprecations, and having fastened a rope to his right leg, dragged it violently until it reached the wood, and then tied it down as tightly as possible. The agony which Jesus suffered from this violent tension was indescribable; the words 'My God, my God,' escaped his lips, and the executioners increased his pain by tying his chest and arms to the cross, lest the hands should be torn from the nails.”[10]

...

“The hour of our Lord was at last come; his death-struggle had commenced; a cold sweat overspread every limb. John stood at the foot of the Cross, and wiped the feet of Jesus with his scapular. Magdalen was crouched to the ground in a perfect frenzy of grief behind the Cross. The Blessed Virgin stood between Jesus and the good thief, supported by Salome and Mary of Cleophas, with her eyes riveted on the countenance of her dying Son. Jesus then said: 'It is consummated;' and, raising his head, cried out in a loud voice, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ These words, which he uttered in a clear and thrilling tone, resounded through heaven and earth; and a moment after, he bowed down his head and gave up the ghost. I saw his soul, under the appearance of a bright meteor, penetrate the earth at the foot of the Cross. John and the holy women fell prostrate on the ground.”[11]

Emmerich's book is literally filled with scenes like those above, and includes many extra-biblical sayings of Jesus which Sister Anne says she personally heard in her visions.

4) Its Medium: Many Evangelical Pastors are hailing movies like The Passion of Christ as part of a new and better way of spreading the Gospel:

“This is a window of opportunity we have. Here's a guy who's putting his money into a movie that has everything to do with what we do,” said pastor Cory Engel of Harvest Springs Community Church in Great Falls, Mont.

“Churches used to communicate by having a little lecture time on Sunday morning. People don't interact that way anymore. Here's a chance for us to use a modern-day technique to communicate the truth of the Bible,” the Rev. Engel said.”[12]

It is indeed true that we live in a highly visual and increasingly anti-literate society that places a premium on sound bites and easily assimilated visual imagery, but does this mean that we should abandon preaching in favor of using movies or dramatic presentations? We need to remember that the last time dramatic presentations replaced preaching as the main vehicle by which the truth of the Bible was communicated was during the middle-ages when the church refused to allow the translation of the Bible into common languages and when in place of the preaching and teaching of God's word, the common people were given visual presentations such as Passion Plays, statues, relics, and icons. These things were designed, like most visual imagery, to play upon the emotions and stimulate a response; but the ability to evoke an emotional response via imagery or drama is not the same as successfully transmitting the Gospel. The means that God has ordained for the transmission of the Gospel, was neither drama, imagery, nor even “lectures” - it is preaching. Preaching involves the communication of the Gospel in a way that patiently convinces, rebukes, exhorts, and teaches (2 Timothy 4:2-4). The Bible teaches us the awesome importance of preaching and why it cannot be replaced by another medium:

We must preach God's Word regardless of how unpopular it is because we are commanded to do so: “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4)

We must preach God's Word because it always accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isa.55:9-11)

God does not command us to produce dramatic presentations of Gospel themes, He commands us to preach. Though this option was freely available to the Apostles as they brought the Gospel to cities with amphitheaters and a long tradition of using the dramatic arts to convey religious and moral themes to the populace they did not do so. The wisdom of the Apostolic methodology has been borne out by the fact that it was when the Gospel was being transmitted primarily by plays and symbolism that true Christianity began to sink under the weight of superstition. We are in danger of returning to precisely that state of affairs by reviving the teaching methodology of the medieval church. Even though it was produced in the 21st century, The Passion of Christ is identical in all critical aspects to the Passion Plays of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.

5) Its Main Character: Billy Graham in his endorsement of The Passion of Christ said, “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the things I saw on the screen will be on my heart and mind.”[13] This is unfortunately part of the problem with all visual representations of Jesus. Although we may intend for them only to have a role in teaching, they inevitably become part of our worship and adoration. As a result of seeing this film James Caviezel, the “Jesus” of The Passion of Christ, will become the figure countless thousands if not millions of people think of when they worship Jesus Christ. To do this is to fall into the trap of changing “the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man” (Romans 1:23) and to violate the Second Commandment.

Every visual representation of Jesus is inevitably a lie. There are two main reasons for this.

The first reason why all visual representations of Jesus are lies is because the only wise God went to great lengths not to leave us with any description of the physical appearance of His Son lest we fall into the sin of image making. Therefore all of our representations of Jesus are inevitably speculations usually based upon our own desires. We create an image of Jesus that says more about the Jesus we want than the Jesus whom God sent.

For instance, isn't it remarkable that the Jesus of The Passion of Christ, as in almost all physical representations of Christ, is tall, slim, and handsome? Why should not The Son of David (Luke 18:38) have been a relatively small man like His great ancestor? It never seems to have occurred to most image-makers that Jesus could be relatively short, or stout, or even have had a receding hairline. This is in spite of the fact that one of the few details the Bible does give us about Christ's appearance is that “He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.” (Is. 53:2b) The fact that we have any concept of what Jesus looks like and that Gibson's Jesus looks like the traditional Jesus, is a testament to the abiding impact of past iconography. While the Gospels, purposely leave out any description of Jesus that we might use to construct an idol, people have created an image of Jesus that has become almost an industry standard, and it is solely for that reason rather than any basis in fact that audiences would have been outraged had Gibson cast Danny DeVito and not James Caviezel in the leading role.

The Second reason why all visual representations of Jesus are lies is that they can never hope to represent the glory of Christ in His true nature. The best an image of Jesus can do is to represent him as a man, and while Jesus was truly a man, He was not merely a man. Jesus was also God, and no artist or filmmaker who has ever lived could hope to create an image that captures the true Glory of Jesus as God. While this may not appear to be a problem to us, the separation of Christ's manhood from His deity is actually a grave heresy called Nestorianism. We must not therefore attempt to separate what God has forever joined together.

For the first four centuries of its existence the church did not use pictures of Jesus as an aid to evangelism. This was despite the fact that they were bringing the gospel to highly visual cultures that had always used imagery to convey religious ideas. The initial movements towards making pictures of Christ were initially strongly opposed, and the practice was formally condemned by the church as late as 753 AD. Unfortunately, once they had taken hold of the public imagination, the practice of making visible representations of Christ proved difficult if not impossible to eradicate and gradually, pictures and dramatic representations of Jesus became quite commonplace in the church. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants overwhelmingly rejected the practice of making images of Jesus as a clear violation of the Second Commandment. They also rejected the notion that such images had a necessary role as “textbooks for the laity” and then proved that notion false by producing generations of other Protestants well versed in the word and familiar with their Savior although they had never once owned or seen a representation of him.

Rather than visual imagery, they relied on the preaching of the Word to save souls, and the gospel made great advances. If we return to the use of imagery and begin endorsing movies like The Passion of Christ, we will be returning to the very state of affairs the first Protestants struggled and died to reform. We must not think that merely endorsing one form of visible representation of Christ will not lead inevitably to others. For instance, it is impossible to make a coherent argument against the use of the crucifix in teaching the Gospel if we have already endorsed the use of a movie that portrays the crucifixion. Merely because one display is static and the other moving does not change their essential nature at all. The Passion of Christ is in essence, an animated Crucifix.

In closing, let me address a common objection, namely that we must use tools like The Passion of Christ in order to reach the lost and that if we don't we are “missing a great opportunity.”

Are we really missing an opportunity though? If we are convinced that using a Roman Catholic movie to present the Gospel is in essence a violation of God's law, how could we possibly use it? Should we sin that grace may abound?

Also, are we really certain that this will be as effective as we think in saving souls? J. Marcellus Kik in his PICTURES OF CHRIST addressed that very question and gave us some wise advice, which I think all Christians would do well to heed:

“But can it not help in the saving of souls, it is asked. But how? Looking at a picture of Christ hanging upon the cross tells me nothing. It does not tell me that He hung there for sin. It does not tell me that He hung there for my sin. It does not tell me that He is the Son of God. Only the Word of God does that. And it is the Word of God that has been given us to tell the story of salvation through the blood of Christ. It is not through the foolishness of pictures that sinners are converted but through the foolishness of preaching.

It is amazing how slowly unscriptural practices enter the Christian Church. We must at all times go back to the Scriptures. The Bible is our infallible guide. And if our practices and doctrines do not conform with the teachings of the Scriptures then we must eliminate them. The Bible instructs the Church not to make any likeness of Christ. The present day pictures of Christ are false and no one would make a serious claim that they resemble Christ upon earth. They separate His humanity from His deity. They do not at all give us a glimpse of His present glory. They are not condoned by the inspired apostles.

God has ordained the foolishness of preaching to evangelize the world. He has promised to attend the preaching of the Word with the power of the Holy Spirit. The so-called pictures of Christ are a hindrance and a temptation to idolatry. Let us cleanse the Temple of God from them.”[14]

Perhaps The Passion of Christ will provide Evangelicals with a great opportunity after all. They are being given a rare opportunity to reject the world's methods and to recommit themselves to fulfilling God's commission to preach the Gospel and to trust that that preaching will always accomplish what He pleases. Let us hope that they will seize it.

______________

1. 13-January-2004 -- EWTNews Feature http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=42801

2. “Churches Make 'Stunning' Show of Support for Gibson's 'Passion'“ Newsmax (Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004)

3. Interestingly enough, the actual death of Jesus on the cross produced hardly any conversions. It is the preaching of Christ Crucified that has historically been “the best opportunity for evangelism”

4. Papal Praise for “The Passion” “It Is as It Was,” John Paul II Says ZENIT (2003-12-18) ttp://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=46445

5 “Mel Gibson's 'Christ' Reveals Crucifixion” Newsmax (Sunday, Jan. 25, 2004)

6. This is especially true when one considers that all the Gospels were written in Koine Greek the common language of the area and not Aramaic or Latin.

7. “The passion of Mel Gibson” By TERRY MATTINGLY, Scripps Howard News Service, January 21, 2004

8. The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 29.2

9. Father Thomas Rosica on Mel Gibson's “The Passion”, National Director of World Youth Day 2002 Weighs in on Film (2004-02-06) http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=48636

10. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich

11. Ibid.

12. “Churches Make 'Stunning' Show of Support for Gibson's 'Passion'“, Newsmax (Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004)

13. “What Others Are Saying” http://www.passionchrist.org/

14. “Pictures of Christ,” by J. Marcellus Kik

Andrew & Joy Webb

304 Broomfield Court

Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311

A man in Hartland, Maine, was treated at a hospital after he nailed himself to a cross. The 23-year-old man apparently was trying to commit suicide Thursday evening in his living room, the Bangor Daily News reported.

Somerset County Sheriff Barry DeLong said Monday that no charges will be filed. “There is no crime here,” he said.

Police said the man appeared delusional and told them he had been “seeing pictures of God on the computer.” He told them he had not seen the hit movie “The Passion of the Christ,” which depicts the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Lt. Pierre Boucher said the man took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed them on the floor. He attached a suicide sign to the wood and then proceeded to nail one of his hands to the makeshift cross using a 14-penny nail and a hammer.

“When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911,” Boucher said.

It was unclear whether the man was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing down his other hand.

Hartland Fire Department members responded, said Boucher, and cut off the wood while it was still attached to the man's hand. The wood and the victim were taken to Sebasticook Valley Hospital, where the nail was removed.

Boucher said he did not know whether the man received further treatment.

________

©Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

*

As a little girl, I remember gazing at a picture of the crucifixion hanging on the wall in my Sunday school class. The body of Christ was thin, sagging limply to one side. His head was bowed low as blood trickled down His face from the crown of thorns. It appeared that the nails in His hands and feet were what fastened Christ to the cross. I would one day discover it was something much more than nails that held Him there. It was the love of a heavenly Father for a sinner like me.

Years later, I was a young adult when I saw the true picture of the crucifixion in the Word of God. The Bible painted a different picture of Christ’s death than the one I had known as a child. “Yet many shall be amazed when they see him-yes, even far off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before. They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there.” (Isaiah 52:14-15, LBT)

In that moment, I realized they had not simply nailed Christ to a cross, placed a crown of thorns upon His head, gashed His side with a spear, spit in His face, given him vinegar to drink, gambled for his clothes, and flogged His body with a whip — they beat Him until He became unrecognizable flesh hanging on a cross.

My mind suddenly flashed back to the first time I walked into the hospital room after my husband was burned in a house fire. Porter’s skin was completely black, his head was swollen twice the normal size and the skin on his arms was gone. He was unrecognizable!

If Porter had been told ahead of time that working in that house would result in being burned over 80% of his body, suffering for eight days, leaving his home, wife and child, and then his death, I’m sure he would have chosen not to go in. Not knowing what was ahead of him, Porter didn’t have that choice, but Christ did. Christ knew the horror of what men and women would do to Him and, yet He chose to suffer. He chose the cross. He chose to leave heaven and come to earth. Christ laid aside His royal crown and took off His righteous robe. He left His Holy Father and His heavenly home to come to the dark land of sin and corruption. The King of all Kings considered Himself nothing, a pauper at best. Born to die, He willingly paid the price for our freedom.

And yet, He was Innocent. Christ didn’t deserve death. He had never sinned. Christ never lied. He never stole anything, nor was He a drug dealer or prostitute. Christ never disobeyed authority or harbored hatred and bitterness toward others. The Son of God never judged or rejected others. He never gambled His money away nor was he a drunkard. He never spoke against His neighbor, cheated on His income taxes or betrayed a friend. No, Jesus Christ didn’t do any of these things, but we did. With fear and trembling I knew for the first time what Christ had truly done for me.

Suddenly, I saw myself at the foot of the cross. In one hand I held a hammer and in the other a whip. I, too, had nailed Christ there. It was my sin. Yet Christ was willing to die in my place as payment for all my past, present and future sins. It wasn’t man’s will or nails of iron that held Jesus there. It was the obedience of a Son and the love of a Father that held Christ on that cross. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

My friend, Christ didn’t die just for me, He died for “whosoever!” That includes you. More so, if you were the only one in the world He still would have come for you alone! Whosoever you are, a parent, a teenager, a man, a woman, a grandparent, or a child, Christ chooses you. Will you choose Him and His death on the cross as payment for your sins? Your life will never be the same.

My Prayer for Today:

Dear Lord, Thank you for paying for my sins by your death on the cross. Come into my life and make me your own. Thank you for saving me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Application Steps:

• First, believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God born to die for your sins.

• Second, turn from your sins, as if you were making a U-turn in your car, and turn toward Christ allowing Him to be the driver of your life.

• Third, pray and ask God to forgive you for your sins, and then accept His forgiveness and love. Thank Him for saving your life and for a new beginning

• Finally, get into a Bible believing church and share your decision to follow Christ with the pastor. Begin reading your Bible in the book of John.

Reflection Points:

• Have you ever committed you life to Jesus Christ? What’s the evidence?

• Have you received His forgiveness, or do you feel you have to be good enough?

• Are you waiting for God to choose you? He already has – over 2000 years ago.

• What impact does the cross have in your life?

• Do you profess to be a believer with your mouth only, or is your life proof of what you believe?

Power Verses:

• Luke 1:47

• Ephesians 2:8-9

• Luke 19:10

• John 6:47

• 2 Timothy 1:9

As a little girl, I remember gazing at a picture of the crucifixion that hung on the wall in my Sunday School class. Christ's body was thin and hung limp to one side. His head was bowed low as blood trickled down His face from the crown of thorns He humbly wore. It appeared that the nails in His hands and feet were what fastened Him to the cross. Soon I would discover it was something much more than nails that held Him there. It was the love of a heavenly Father for a sinner such as I.

Years later, I was a young adult when I saw the true picture of the crucifixion in the Word of God. The Bible painted a different picture of Christ's death than the one I had known as a child. “Yet many shall be amazed when they see him -- yes, even far-off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before. They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there” (Isaiah 52:14-15, Living Bible). In that moment, I realized they had not simply nailed Christ to a cross, placed a crown of thorns upon His head, gashed His side with a spear, spit in His face, gave him vinegar to drink, gambled for His clothes, and beat Him with a whip, but they beat Him until He became unrecognizable flesh hanging on a cross.

My mind suddenly flashed back to the first time I walked into the hospital room after my husband had been burned in a house fire. Porter's skin was completely black, his head had swollen to twice its normal size and the skin on his arms was gone. He was unrecognizable.

If Porter had been told ahead of time that working in that house would result in being burned over 80 percent of his body, suffering for eight days, leaving his wife and child behind in death, I'm sure he would have chosen not to go in. Not knowing what was ahead of him, Porter didn't have that choice, but Christ did.

Christ knew the horror of what men and women would do to Him and yet He chose to suffer. He chose the cross. He chose to leave heaven and come to earth. Christ laid aside His royal crown and took off His righteous robe. He left His Holy Father and His heavenly home to come to the dark land of sin and corruption. The King of all kings considered Himself nothing, a pauper at best. Born to die. He willingly paid the price for our freedom.

And yet, He was innocent. Christ didn't deserve death. He had never sinned. Christ never lied. He never stole anything, never disobeyed His Father, never harbored hatred and bitterness toward others. He never gambled His money away or was a drunkard. He never spoke against His neighbor or yearned for His neighbor's wife. No, Jesus Christ didn't do any of this, but we did.

Suddenly, I saw myself at the foot of the cross. In one hand I held a hammer and in the other a whip. I, too, had nailed Christ there. It was my sin. Yet Christ was willing to die for me in my place as payment for all my past, present and future sins. It wasn't man's will or nails of iron that held Jesus there. It was the obedience of a Son and the love of a Father that held Christ on that cross. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

My friend, Christ didn't die for me only, He died for “whosoever” -– and that includes you. More so, if you were the only one in the world, He still would have come for you alone! Whosoever you are, a parent, a teenager, a man, a woman, a grandparent or a child, Christ chooses you. Will you choose Him and His death on the cross as payment for your sins? Your life will never be the same.

__________

Micca Campbell, assistant director of Certified Speakers, a division of Proverbs 31 Ministries, and a member of Parkway Baptist Church in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, near Nashville.

In the weeks since the release of Mel Gibson's controversial film, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, critics have expressed outrage over what they claim is an overly bloody, brutal depiction of the sufferings of Christ. It makes you wonder if they understand what really took place during the scourging and crucifixion.

Somebody who does know is former journalist Lee Strobel. A few years ago, Strobel researched one of the most persistent claims against Christianity: Did Jesus survive the scourging and crucifixion? Was it possible, he wondered, to examine 2,000-year-old medical evidence and determine if Jesus really died on the cross?

Well, to get an expert opinion, Strobel went to Dr. Alexander Metherell, a research scientist. Metherell has studied the medical data concerning Christ's death, and he's convinced there's no way anyone could have survived what the Romans put him through.

First, there was the flogging. Soldiers used whips of braided leather thongs. The metal balls woven into the lash caused deep bruises, which broke open during the torture. Often the victim's back, in such a beating, was so shredded that his spine was exposed.

Those who didn't die from the flogging went into hypovolemic shock, brought on by blood loss. There would be a loss of blood pressure, leading to faintness and collapse. And the loss of fluids would result in tremendous thirst.

The Gospels indicate that Jesus was in shock as He carried His cross to Calvary: He collapsed in the road, and Simon of Cyrene had to carry the cross for Him. Later, Jesus said, “I thirst.”

And there was the agony of the crucifixion itself. The Romans drove spikes through the wrists and feet of Jesus — spikes that traveled through the median nerves. This caused such enormous pain that a new word was invented to describe it: EXCRUCIATING, literally meaning, “out of the cross.”

Metherell believes that Jesus, like other crucifixion victims, eventually died of asphyxiation. The stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the chest in the inhaling position; in order to exhale, the victim had to push up on his feet to ease the tension in the muscles for just a moment. It would be enormously painful, and exhaustion would eventually set in.

As his breathing slowed, the victim would go into respiratory acidosis, leading to an irregular heartbeat and eventual cardiac arrest. Then, in the case of Jesus, to ensure that He was dead, a Roman soldier thrust a spear into His side.

The flogging, the massive blood loss, the shock, the crucifixion, the stabbing: Could Jesus have suffered all of this and survived?

Not a chance, Metherell told Strobel.

Gibson's film has stirred up tremendous interest in the real Passion Week events. You and I ought to take advantage of it to launch a discussion with unsaved friends — especially if they think the violence in the film was overdone. We should lovingly explain why the real-life passion of Christ was so terribly bloody and brutal: It was because He was taking on the punishment for our sins. His love for us drove Jesus to willingly endure an excruciating death — so that you and I might live.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Zondervan, 1998).

• See BreakPoint's viewer's guide for The Passion of the Christ for talking points about the film.

• John Piper, The Passion of Jesus Christ: Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die (Crossway, 2004).

• T. Wright, “Who Founded Christianity: Jesus or Paul?“ Beliefnet, 26 March 2004.

• Chris Armstrong, “The Goodness of Good Friday,” Christianity Today, 17 April 2003.

• Sam Schechner, “Why Is It Called The Passion?: How Jesus' Suffering Got Its Name,” Slate, 24 February 2004.

• Roberto Rivera, “Levity: Holy Week Reflections on Forgiveness and Grace,” BreakPoint Online, 16 April 2003.

• Richard Pearcey, “Easter and Other Four-Letter Words,” Boundless, 1 April 2004.

• Ted Olsen, “Weblog: Holy Weeklies after The Passion,” Christianity Today, 5 April 2004.

• Frank Schaeffer, “Not This Easter, Mel,” Christianity Today, 30 March 2004. (The son of Francis Schaeffer, a convert to Greek Orthodoxy, explains why he will not watch The Passion of the Christ — or any other film about Jesus.)

• John Fischer, “A Ticket Stub and Tissues,” BreakPoint Online, 31 March 2004.

__________

Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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In yesterday’s Daily Encounter we told the story about the Argyle (prisoner) who, in a Japanese prison camp, gave his life to save that of his fellow comrades.

Surely there is no greater love than what this prisoner displayed. His was the supreme sacrifice. Knowing that he wasn’t guilty, he gave his life to save the lives of his fellow prisoners. Even Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” {2}

And yet, Jesus did display an even greater love. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ [Jesus] died for us.” {3}

So why did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Great Creator of the universe, lay aside his external robes of deity to be clothed in a garment of human flesh, and left the glory of Heaven to come to earth as a man to die for lost mankind?

He did it because of his incredible love for us, to pay the penalty for and consequences of our sin, which is spiritual death. Spiritual death is not the cessation of life. It is eternal separation from God, the author of all love and life. Jesus died for us because it breaks the heart of God to lose us forever in an unthinkable eternity that God calls hell.

And when we consider the excruciation suffering caused by crucifixion-the agony of which Jesus went through for us-we can appreciate so much more the magnitude of God’s love for us. (Be sure to see tomorrow’s Daily Encounter for a medic’s description of the brutality of Roman crucifixions.)

To be concluded .

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, again I thank you for your incredible love gift to the world in giving your Son, Jesus the Christ, to die on the cross in my place to save me from the dreadful consequences of my sin. And Lord Jesus again I thank you for giving your life to pay the penalty for my sins so I can be freely forgiven and receive your gift of eternal life. Help me to live a life in never ending gratitude to you for all you have done for me. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

”With his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were intertwisted every here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of his flagellations. My soul, stand here and weep over his poor stricken body.

Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears, as he stands before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of his own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which his stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.

See how the patient Jesus stands,

Insulted in his lowest case!

Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands,

And spit in their Creator’s face.

With thorns his temples gor’d and gash’d

Send streams of blood from every part;

His back’s with knotted scourges lash’d.

But sharper scourges tear his heart.

We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of his bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost him so dear.

A friend of mine was doing some shopping in his local supermarket and while waiting in line at the checkout noticed the cashier was wearing a striking cross around her neck. As he was paying for his groceries, he asked the young cashier a question that startled her. “Are you a Christian?” he asked.

Taken aback she said, “What do you mean?”

“Are you a Christian?” repeated my friend.

“Oh no,” was the reply.

“Then why are you wearing a cross?” he asked.

“What, this?” she said, looking at her necklace. “Well, it's nice.”

“But it wasn't nice,” he replied. “It was horrible.”

The point is a good one. The cross was a place of execution for serious criminals, a horrific punishment that sought to inflict as much pain as possible during a very slow death. Crucifixion was a terrifying ordeal; yet the cross has become a symbol of dignity, self-sacrifice, heroism, and hope that has impacted art, literature, and music with its potency. Today, however, the cross is little understood, being worn as a piece of jewelry by those who have no idea what they are wearing or what it means. Out of the thousands of people who were crucified by the Romans, why is it that we remember Jesus of Nazareth?

Jesus made it clear that he had come to die; he predicted it specifically in detail several times. He was to be lifted up on a cruel cross in order to draw people to himself. Death did not take him by surprise. His life was not taken from him; he gave it up willingly. Nothing is clearer in the Gospels than the fact that Jesus was going to lay down his life for the sake of others.

When Jesus went to the Cross, he was despised as though he were worse than the worst criminal. He was beaten and insulted. Though he came to save us, we spat in his face and mocked the very one who made and sustains us. He was crucified; he endured the curse of sin though he had committed no sin, so that we (like Barabbas) might not have the penalty inflicted upon us; he took the death blow in our stead. The Cross shows beyond doubt the immeasurable love of God for us, while clearly laying open the wickedness of sin and his hatred of it.

When truly understood, the moral power of the Cross is overwhelming. The Cross remains the crux of the story in which we find ourselves. Christ stood in the middle of two separated parties to bring reconciliation. He came as our substitute, so that we, as violators of the law, can be liberated from the fear of death or judgment and can experience life in every way that God intended. The Scripture says that in this way, as our mediator, Jesus made “purification for sins” (Hebrews 1:3). The Cross satisfied public and divine justice and demonstrated God's mercy to the entire world. So, as it is written, “having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).

Jesus promised that his death on the Cross would draw people to himself — a promise that for centuries has remained true. God's love, generosity, and mercy are the basis of his atonement because mercy has always been the great principle of his government. Jesus tells us there is immense joy in heaven when someone repents and turns to God (Luke 15:10). It is God's highest joy to forgive, and our highest joy is to receive.

The only question that remains is: Will we throw down our arms? After all Christ has done for us through his agony on the Cross, will we accept the peace terms? Our substitute wants to be our liberator!

________

From SEARCHING FOR TRUTH by Joe Boot, © 2002. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, WWW.CROSSWAY.COM. Joe Boot is executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Canada.

Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #27199]

“The cross,” someone said recently, “has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore.” The words at once sent through me a rush of lament, which then settled into a pool of reflection. HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE? How can an image once shameful enough to bow the proudest heads become ordinary? Could the gallows ever be innocuous? Would the death sentence of someone near us ever fail to get our attention?

Theodore Prescott is a sculptor who has spent a great deal of time thinking about the cross. In the 1980’s he began working on a series of crosses using different materials, forms, and processes hoping to reconstitute the cultural and scriptural imagery of the Roman cross. In a sense, Prescott attempts to portray the incongruous. The Roman cross was a loathsome manner of execution that inflicted an anguished death; the Cross of Christ held a man who went willingly - - and without guilt. Though a reflection of beauty and sacrifice, the cross is also an image of physical torture, inseparable from flesh and blood. Even so, its image also bears the mystery of being scandalously vacant. These contrasts alone are replete with a peculiar depth. Yet, our daily intake of the cross “precludes contemplation,” notes Prescott. The cross has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore.

Maybe he is right. But if the Cross has become merely a symbol of Christianity, an emblem of one religion in a sea of others, it is still a symbol that stands apart. Even as an image among many, it stands conspicuously on its own. The symbol of the cross is an instrument of death. Far from ordinary, it suggests, at the very least, a love quite beyond us. Perhaps it is WE who have become ordinary, our senses dulled to unconsciousness by the daily matters we give precedence. The apostle Paul lamented such a blurring of the cross, calling us to a greater vision. “[A]s I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:18-20).

For those who will not look carefully, the cross can be perceived as foolish or not perceived at all. It can be stripped of meaning or emptied of beauty, hope, and depth. But it cannot be emptied of Christ. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). The message of the Cross may be nothing to some, but to those who will stand in its shame and offense, scandal and power, it is everything.

Moreover, where the cross is obscured, Christ is still near. Ironically, what started Theodore Prescott thinking about the absence of the cross’s meaning was a piece of his own art in which many people saw a cruciform image, though this was not his intention. For those who will see, the Cross of Christ is expectantly present in every moment and every scene. In its beauty, we are changed. In the scandal of its emptiness, we are left yearning for the face of the risen Christ: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11).

The Gospel of John reports that Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the beams of the common cross that bore the radical rabbi. It read in three languages: “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” There is nothing ordinary about the manner in which he died, the cross on which he hung, or the symbol of death on which he inscribed a hope that would be carried throughout the nations. There was a cross in history with his name on it, and he went to it with nothing short of transforming the world in mind.

________

Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Texts: John 19:15, 2 Corinthians 5:14

The first of these texts photographs the Cross on the manward side: ‘Away with Him!” The other interprets it from the Godward side: “One died for all.” Of two things supremely the Cross is a revelation. It is a revelation of human sin. It is a revelation of divine love.

Ponder the first of these. The Cross is an exposure of human sin. On that mound outside old Jerusalem the real ugliness of sin was once for all unmasked. There is an eastern story floats down from those times, about a false prophet who by big pretensions and swelling words deceived many hundreds into allegiance. He always wore a veil, on the pretext that he was too sacred to be looked upon without it. One day, however, a suspicious member of his guard suddenly ripped the veil away, exposing a sinister, repulsive face. So does the Cross tear away the deceptive veil from sin, uncovering its stark hideousness.

Think of it: Jesus was the purest, holiest, manliest, gentlest human being who ever lived. He was the most guileless, gracious, virtuous, inoffensive, generous-hearted Man who ever breathed. He was the meekest, lowliest, truest, wisest Teacher, Healer, Exemplar, who ever offered His friendship. He was the most sympathetic, self-sacrificing philanthropist who ever wept over human woes. In Him the sublime ideal became incarnated into the visible actual. That highest good after which the world professes to seek, was here, manifest and unmis- takable! Yet how did men treat Him? They were jealous. They hated Him. They stripped Him. They mocked and murdered Him! They could find no fault; but they could not endure Him because by very contrast His utter genuineness exposed their own hypocrisy. ‘Away with Him!”

Think of this, also, that the representative men who perpetrated the monstrous deed were the highly pious, the fanatically “godly”! They did it in the name of religion, and gloated over it! Think of the three representative nations involved. The indictment was written over His Cross “in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.” The Hebrews, despite their boast of God-given religion, intensely hated Him. The Greeks, despite their boast of philosophy, blindly laughed at Him. The Romans, despite their boast of iron justice, publicly executed Him without fair trial.

In all this, see the veil ripped away. See the human heart laid bare. See the real ugliness of sin exposed. The silken-skinned, gorgeous coloured creature is a savage tiger. The “serpent” which beguiled Eve was not the writhing reptile of today. In its Edenic form, it was probably the most beautiful of all the creatures. That was why Satan entered and used it. Eve’s surprise that it now spoke with a human voice only increased her admiration of it. But the murderous sin inside that elegant form was that same evil thing which nailed Jesus to the Cross. Oh, let me see and learn! Let me watch and pray against this monster, how-ever attractive it may seem, whether in the world outside or in my own heart. Let me ever remember that though sin should assume the innocence of a cherub, it is still the ugly horror which spiked the guileless Jesus to that awful Cross.

Philip Yancey writes that when the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the sixteenth century, he brought along with him samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian story for people who had never heard it. The Chinese readily adopted portraits of the Virgin Mary holding her child, but when he produced the paintings of the crucifixion and tried to explain that the Godchild had grown up only to be executed, the audience reacted with revulsion and horror.

________

Philip Yancey, THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW, p. 33.

Mary was not blinded by her son’s adolescent behavior. After scolding the boy Jesus, she is bewildered and amazed that he is sitting listening, learning, and in dialogue with learned religious leaders. Luke says, “She treasured all these things in her heart.” While she is upset with her son, she also sees something meaningful in his actions. She is not the only one. You will recall when the old man Simeon held the Christ child in his arms he said, “This child is destined to cause the rising and the falling of many in Israel, and he will be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the hearts of many will be revealed.”

There are two well-known pictures, each with the same title, “The Shadow of the Cross.” One by Holeman Hunt depicts the interior of a carpenter’s shop, with Joseph and the Boy Jesus at work. Mary is also present. The Boy Jesus pauses in his work, and as he stretches his arms the shadow of the cross is cast on the wall.

The other picture is a popular engraving which depicts the boy Jesus running with outstretched arms to his mother, the shadow of the cross being cast on the ground by his form as he runs. Both pictures are fanciful in form, but their underlying message is true. If we read the Gospels just as they stand, it is clear that the death of Jesus Christ was really in view almost from the outset of his earthly appearance. At first sight there seems little in them about his death, but as we look deeper we see more. It was part of the divine purpose and plan for him from the first, and very early we have a hint of the cross.

Today, on Good Friday, we remember, honor, and reflect on the God who entered the world of human suffering on our behalf.

“I thirst.”

Only John’s Gospel records these words. They were uttered by Jesus, we’re told, not as a guttural physical response, but with intention: “Knowing that all was now finished,” Jesus said, “I thirst” in order to fulfill the Scriptures (John 19:28). And yet, we ought not think these words are manufactured or insincere either.

Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had, on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, “stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37). “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).

And now, on the cross, He who said these words was Himself thirsty. Why are we told this? Why is the fact that Jesus thirsted important?

The world changed on All Saints Day in 1755. In Lisbon, Portugal, a 10-minute earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fires, killed an estimated 60,000 people, many crushed by collapsing churches where they had gathered to celebrate that Christian holy day.

According to moral philosopher Susan Neiman, for many Western intellectuals this incident of natural evil proved that God could no longer be trusted. The French philosopher Voltaire offered scathing words in a poem:

“Are you then sure,” he wrote, “the power which would create

The universe and fix the laws of fate,

Could not have found for man a proper place,

But earthquakes must destroy the human race?”

And so in the modern era, trust moved from God to man. And it seemed to work: The next few centuries were marked by technological advances, scientific progress, and scholarly criticism of the Bible.

However, the peak of modernism was the 20th century, which revealed that trust in man was badly misplaced: the mechanized slaughter of millions in two world wars, Communism, Auschwitz, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. So where do we turn now if we can’t trust God or man?

The cross directly addresses this world of moral and natural evil: As the prophet Isaiah foretold, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

The cross proves that God is not aloof from human suffering as Voltaire had imagined, nor will human evil have the final say. Our God once thirsted, like we do. He bled, as we do, in this existence of fallen people and a fallen world. In Christ, God entered the world of human suffering, suffered Himself, defeated suffering and now has the scars to prove it.

Nearly two centuries after Voltaire, theologian Edward Shillito, offered a poem with a very different take on the suffering we experience. Here are two stanzas of that poem

“If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;

Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;

We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow;

We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. . .

“The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak;

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;

But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.”

Today on Good Friday, we remember, we worship and proclaim this God, Jesus of the scars. To Him be all glory and praise forever and ever. Amen.

________

Copyright (c) 2022 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[The original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1927]

Can it really be just three months ago we gathered with loved ones to celebrate Christmas? What joy we felt as we celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us.

But today, on Good Friday, we reflect on how that beautiful babe in the manger came to fulfill a mission. A terrible and glorious mission! God invaded planet Earth. He became a human child, to live as one of us, to call us to repent, to love God with our whole heart, minds, and souls, and our neighbors as ourselves.

And today we should tremble and shudder as we remember the horrible climax of His mission. Beaten, scourged, mocked, and stabbed, Jesus mounted the cross, receiving the just punishment for your sins. For my sins. For the sins of the world.

This is why He came and died.

Yes, Easter is coming. The light is at the end of the tunnel. But that’s days away. Today, stop. Think about why He came and died.

He came because He knew that mankind was lost. He knew that we would kill our own babies in the womb by the millions. And that many would call this horrible evil good.

This is why He came and died.

He knew that hatred would drive men and women to strap bombs to themselves to kill innocent people in the name of religion.

This is why He came and died.

He knew that man would deny that God was his creator. That man would seek to remake himself in his own image, tamper with the genetic code, and treat human life as mere test-tube material.

This is why He came and died.

And He knew that His own bride, the Church, would grow cold and distant, forgetful of the faith given once for all. Comfortable with the world and its ways. Seeking relevance instead of love, pleasure instead of holiness.

This is why He came and died.

And He knew that you and I, covered with sin, could never stand before God, our all-holy Father, without His supreme sacrifice.

So today, don’t look ahead to Easter. Instead, reflect on the Passion. Examine your life. And repent! Repent of your sins, repent of your coldness of heart. Ask God to grant you the desire to serve Him, your Lord and Master, with all your strength.

And then, please, ask God for a spirit of repentance and revival to sweep down upon the Church — and upon the nations of the world. It is our only hope in these terrible, dark times.

We speak so often on BreakPoint about Christianity being not just a relationship with Jesus, but an all-encompassing worldview — a way to see and understand all reality. But the Christian worldview is brought into focus only by the cross.

Indeed, if the joy of Christmas and the glory of Easter are the light by which we see all reality, then the cross, Good Friday, is the lens through which we see it.

Allow me to recommend a wonderful resource to help you meditate on the depth and wonder of Good Friday — and how it defines all of reality. It’s called Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus, written by my dear friend, the late Richard John Neuhaus. You can learn more about it at BreakPoint.org.

May God bless you on this terrible, wonderful day.

________

Copyright (c) 2010 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Science provides a physical description of Jesus’ crucifixion:

The cross is placed on the ground and an exhausted Jesus is quickly thrown backwards with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of His wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought iron nail through His wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. Jesus is now crucified.

As He slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in His wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along His fingers and up the arms to explode in His brain; the nails in His wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As He pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, Jesus places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again He feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of His feet. As His arms fatigue, cramps sweep through His muscles, knotting them with deep relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps come the inability to push Himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into His lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in His lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subside.

Jesus suffered all this in front of His mother and brethern. “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother!” (John 19:26,27)

Spasmodically, Jesus is able to push himself upward to exhale and breathe in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in His chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress His heart.

In a moment of desperation, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

It is now almost over; the loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. Jesus’ compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood through the arteries. His tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. Finally, the Lamb of God was ready to lay down His life and die.

About the ninth hour, “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” John 19:28-30

All this the Bible records with the simple words, “and they crucified Him” (Mark 15:24).

What wondrous love is this that Jesus would give His life for us?

The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” –Matthew 21:9

The football team basks in the warmth of a standing ovation. More than 70,000 people cheer, clap, and in every way possible show major love to the team. They had just defeated a favored opponent, and you’d think those guys in the home-team helmets had just found the cure for cancer. Not a discouraging word could be heard.

Fast forward to the next week. Same place. Many of the same fans. Same football team. But now the crowd has turned on them like an attack dog on a stray cat. Boos cascade down from the upper regions of the stadium. Angry fans shout abusive things at the dejected team as the players trudge to the locker room.

Football fans–and other humans–are extremely fickle. We can be madly in love with something one minute and treat it with hatred the next.

With one bad class, a professor can go from being the greatest instructor to the most boring. Sometimes we even turn on friends, making them enemies faster than they can say, “What happened?”

If anybody knows what kind of fickle fans we can be, it’s Jesus.

One day He was being adored, worshiped, honored, and ushered into the Holy City (Matthew 21:1-17). Before the week was over, the people of that same city were calling for Him to be killed in the most cruel and painful way–by crucifixion. They were so eager to have Him killed that they were willing to let a murderer go free (27:19-23).

We may criticize those folks for flip-flopping from Jesus followers to Jesus haters, but we need to understand that we would have done the same thing. It’s our nature. We all suffer from the “what have you done for me lately” syndrome.

That’s what makes God’s love for us so awesome! Our God loves us unconditionally. Even though we may be pretty wishy-washy in our love for Him, He told us that He will never leave us nor forsake us.

Yes, we may be fickle fans, but we can always count on this: We have a faithful God! –DB

REFLECTION

* When was the last time I turned my back on God? When I turned back around, He was still there. Why?

* What can I do today to remind myself not to be a fickle fan in my relationship with God?

* Do I know a rock-steady believer? What can I learn from him or her?

Try to be as loyal to God as He is to you.

Legend has it that during Marco Polo’s celebrated trip to the Orient, he was taken before the great and fearsome ruler, Genghis Khan. Now what was Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant and adventurer, supposed to do before this mighty pagan conqueror? One false move could cost him his life. He decided to tell the story of Jesus as it is recorded in the gospels. It is said that when Marco Polo related the events of Holy Week, and described Jesus’ betrayal, his trial, his scourging and crucifixion, Genghis Khan became more and more agitated, more engrossed in the story, and more tense. When Marco Polo pronounced the words, “Then Jesus bowed his head and yielded up his spirit,” Genghis Khan could no longer contain himself. He interrupted, bellowing, “What did the Christian’s God do then? Did he send thousands of angels from heaven to smite and destroy those who killed his Son?”

What did the Christian’s God do then? He watched his beloved Son die, that’s what the Christian’s God did then. For that was the way Jesus chose to ascend the throne of his kingdom and to establish his Lordship for all time. Not at all the way we would expect God to demonstrate his might and power, but that’s the way it was and that is how we know what our God is like.

If you read the gospels carefully you will find that the writers laid far more stress on the mockery that Jesus endured than on the nails in his hands. John Calvin, writing of King David, said something similar: "The holy king was hurt more seriously by the envy and dishonesty of treacherous men at home than he was by the Philistines and other enemies who harassed him from the outside."

When we say “Jesus died for our sins,” what does that mean? It’s undeniably an essential confession of Christian faith, but how does it work? This much I’m sure of, it’s not reducible to just one thing. I’ve just finished preaching eight sermons on “The Crucified God” and I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the cross means. To try to reduce the death of Jesus to a single meaning is an impoverished approach to the mystery of the cross. I’m especially talking about those tidy explanations of the cross known as “atonement theories.” I find most of them inadequate; others I find repellent. Particularly abhorrent are those theories that portray the Father of Jesus as a pagan deity who can only be placated by the barbarism of child sacrifice. The god who is mollified by throwing a virgin into a volcano or by nailing his son to a tree is not the Abba of Jesus!

Neither is the death of Jesus a kind of quid pro quo by which God gains the necessary capital to forgive sinners. No! Jesus does not save us from God; Jesus reveals God! Jesus does not provide God with the capacity to forgive; Jesus reveals God as forgiving love. An “economic model” of the cross just won’t work. It’s not as if God is saying, “Look, I’d love to forgive you, but I’ve got to pay off Justice first, and, you know how she is, she’s a tough goddess, she requires due payment.” This understanding of the cross begs the question of who exactly is in charge — the Father of Jesus or some abstract ideal called “Justice”?

When we confess with Paul that “Christ died for our sins,” we don’t mean that God required the vicious murder of his Son in order to forgive. How would that work anyway? Did God have some scale of torture that once met would “satisfy his wrath?” Think it through and you’ll see the problem. Was death not enough to satisfy this god? Did it have to be death by crucifixion? Did torture have to be part of the equation? And how does that work? Was there a minimum number of lashes required in the scourging? Did the thorny crown have to have a certain number of thorns in order for this god to call the scales balanced?

Are you squirming yet? Do you want to say, “Well, some of the abuse Jesus suffered was gratuitous torture by the hands of cruel men.” But if that’s the case, how does this division of labor work? How much was necessary to “satisfy God” and how much was just for the sport of it? No, this approach to understanding Jesus dying for our sins clearly won’t work.

So what do we do? Let’s begin here: Before the cross is anything else, it is a catastrophe. It is the unjust lynching of an innocent man. This is precisely how the Apostles spoke of the crucifixion of Jesus in the book of Acts.

“This Jesus ... you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” – Acts 2:23

“You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” – Acts 3:15

“God raised up Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.” – Acts 5:30

“The Righteous One you have now betrayed and murdered.” – Acts 7:52

The Bible is clear, God did not kill Jesus. Jesus was offered as a sacrifice in that the Father was willing to send his Son into our sinful system in order to expose it as utterly sinful and provide us with another way. The death of Jesus was a sacrifice in that sense. But it was not a sacrifice to appease a wrathful deity or to provide payment for a penultimate god subordinate to Justice.

Let me suggest that when we say Jesus died for our sins, we mean something like this: We violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus revealed the heart of God by forgiving us. When Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them,” he was not asking God to act contrary to his nature. When Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them,” he was, as always, revealing the very heart of God!

At the cross we violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus absorbed them, died because of them, carried them into death, and rose on the third day to speak the first world of the new world: “Peace be with you.”

When I say “we” violently sinned our sins into Jesus, I mean that all of us are more or less implicated by our explicit or tacit support of the systems of violent power that frame our world. These are the very political and religious systems that executed Jesus. At the cross we see where Adam and Eve’s penchant for blame and Cain’s capacity for killing have led us — to the murder of God! At Golgotha human sin is seen as utterly sinful. God did not require the death of Jesus — but we did!

So let’s be clear, the cross is not about the appeasement of a monster god. The cross is about the revelation of a merciful God. At the cross we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. The cross is where God in Christ absorbs sin and recycles it into forgiveness. The cross is not what God inflicts upon Christ in order to forgive. The cross is what God endures in Christ as he forgives. Once we understand this, we know what we are seeing when we look at the cross: We are seeing the lengths to which a God of love will go in forgiving sin.

The cross is both ugly and beautiful. It’s as ugly as human sin and as beautiful as divine love. But in the end, love and beauty win.

At 7:05 p.m. Ambulance #2 sped from McDonough County Hospital with red lights flashing and roared down Highway 136 toward the town of Bushnell, Illinois. The dispatch on the dashboard was brief: “Car wreck.”

Sitting in the back beside the stretcher, Steven Mosley watched the trees and telephone poles whiz past and wondered how this call would turn out. You could never tell. Even the recent collision between a pickup and a locomotive, which he was sure would be hideous, had resulted in only a few scratches. Rounding a curve they came upon a crowd of people and two police cars beside the road. Another false alarm, Mosley thought.

But then he saw something out in the field. A Chevy that had once been white was crumpled up about thirty yards from the road. The car had turned end- over-end several times. The Chevy lay there all alone, speckled in the moonlight. Spectators lining the road maintained their distance. Even the police did not go near. Sure sign of a mess.

Clutching his attendant’s bad, Mosley and the other orderly walked across the field. They peered reluctantly through a smashed window. The body was sprawled across the seat. Then the beam of their flashlight illuminated the man’s face. His eyes stared up at them, wide open and full of terror.

Steven Mosley had seen deaths before. Usually their eyes seemed benumbed. This man still shouted. Terror, fully tasted, shone from his gray eyes. It was Steven’s first encounter with death in the raw. Deep in our hearts, we rarely go “gentle into that good night”; life is ripped from our hands.

Few of us in the suburbs are touched by violence. But there was one who took on all that which we rightfully shudder at. That incomprehensible violence that we pray never comes into our neighborhoods has been heaped on the One with an immaculate soul and has torn it apart. Sometimes we do get a glimpse, if only in an accident victim’s eyes, of the Cross as a spectacle designed to pierce our minds and hearts. For a moment it stands stark and unnerving as a silent scream in a mangled car. Christ crucified.

That is the ultimate measure of his courage: facing hell open-eyed, taking on what no man could bear. Christ looked straight into the specter of eternal separation from the Father and yet willed himself to stay on the cross.

Texts: John 19:15, 2 Corinthians 5:14

The first of these texts photographs the Cross on the manward side: ‘Away with Him!” The other interprets it from the Godward side: “One died for all.” Of two things supremely the Cross is a revelation. It is a revelation of human sin. It is a revelation of divine love.

Ponder the first of these. The Cross is an exposure of human sin. On that mound outside old Jerusalem the real ugliness of sin was once for all unmasked. There is an eastern story floats down from those times, about a false prophet who by big pretensions and swelling words deceived many hundreds into allegiance. He always wore a veil, on the pretext that he was too sacred to be looked upon without it. One day, however, a suspicious member of his guard suddenly ripped the veil away, exposing a sinister, repulsive face. So does the Cross tear away the deceptive veil from sin, uncovering its stark hideousness.

Think of it: Jesus was the purest, holiest, manliest, gentlest human being who ever lived. He was the most guileless, gracious, virtuous, inoffensive, generous-hearted Man who ever breathed. He was the meekest, lowliest, truest, wisest Teacher, Healer, Exemplar, who ever offered His friendship. He was the most sympathetic, self-sacrificing philanthropist who ever wept over human woes. In Him the sublime ideal became incarnated into the visible actual. That highest good after which the world professes to seek, was here, manifest and unmis- takable! Yet how did men treat Him? They were jealous. They hated Him. They stripped Him. They mocked and murdered Him! They could find no fault; but they could not endure Him because by very contrast His utter genuineness exposed their own hypocrisy. ‘Away with Him!”

Think of this, also, that the representative men who perpetrated the monstrous deed were the highly pious, the fanatically “godly”! They did it in the name of religion, and gloated over it! Think of the three representative nations involved. The indictment was written over His Cross “in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.” The Hebrews, despite their boast of God-given religion, intensely hated Him. The Greeks, despite their boast of philosophy, blindly laughed at Him. The Romans, despite their boast of iron justice, publicly executed Him without fair trial.

In all this, see the veil ripped away. See the human heart laid bare. See the real ugliness of sin exposed. The silken-skinned, gorgeous coloured creature is a savage tiger. The “serpent” which beguiled Eve was not the writhing reptile of today. In its Edenic form, it was probably the most beautiful of all the creatures. That was why Satan entered and used it. Eve’s surprise that it now spoke with a human voice only increased her admiration of it. But the murderous sin inside that elegant form was that same evil thing which nailed Jesus to the Cross. Oh, let me see and learn! Let me watch and pray against this monster, how-ever attractive it may seem, whether in the world outside or in my own heart. Let me ever remember that though sin should assume the innocence of a cherub, it is still the ugly horror which spiked the guileless Jesus to that awful Cross.

Once upon a mountain top, three little trees stood and dreamed of what they wanted to become when they grew up.

The first little tree looked up at the stars and said: "I want to hold treasure. I want to be covered with gold and filled with precious stones. I'll be the most beautiful treasure chest in the world!"

The second little tree looked out at the small stream trickling by on its way to the ocean. "I want to be traveling mighty waters and carrying powerful kings. I'll be the strongest ship in the world!"

The third little tree looked down into the valley below where busy men and women worked in a busy town. "I don't want to leave the mountain top at all. I want to grow so tall that when people stop to look at me, they'll raise their eyes to heaven and think of God. I will be the tallest tree in the world."

Years passed. The rain came, the sun shone, and the little trees grew tall. One day three woodcutters climbed the mountain.

The first woodcutter looked at the first tree and said, "This tree is beautiful. It is perfect for me." With swoops of his shining axe, the first tree fell.

"Now I shall be made into a beautiful chest, I shall hold wonderful treasure!" the first tree said.

The second woodcutter looked at the second tree and said, "This tree is strong. It is perfect for me." With swoops of his shining axe, the second tree fell.

"Now I shall sail mighty waters!" thought the second tree. "I shall be a strong ship for mighty kings!"

The third tree felt her heart sink when the last woodcutter looked her way. She stood straight and tall and pointed bravely to heaven.

But the woodcutter never even looked up. "Any kind of tree will do for me." He muttered. With a swoop of his shining axe, the third tree fell.

The first tree rejoiced when the woodcutter brought her to a carpenter's shop. But the carpenter fashioned the tree into a feedbox for animals. The once beautiful tree was not covered with gold, with treasure. She was coated with saw dust and filled with hay for hungry farm animals.

The second tree smiled when the woodcutter took her to a shipyard, but no mighty sailing ship was made that day. Instead the once strong tree was hammered and sawed into a simple fishing boat. She was too small and too weak to sail to an ocean, or even a river; instead she was taken to a little lake.

The third tree was confused when the woodcutter cut her into strong beams and left her in a lumberyard. "What happened?" the once tall tree wondered. "All I ever wanted was to stay on the mountain top and point to God..."

Many many days and nights passed. The three trees nearly forgot their dreams.

But one night, golden starlight poured over the first tree as a young woman placed her newborn baby in the feedbox.

"I wish I could make a cradle for him," her husband whispered. The mother squeezed his hand and smiled as the starlight shone on the smooth and the sturdy wood. "This manger is beautiful," she said.

And suddenly the first tree knew he was holding the greatest treasure in the world.

One evening a tired traveler and his friends crowded into the old fishing boat. The traveler fell asleep as the second tree quietly sailed out into the lake. Soon a thundering and thrashing storm arose. The little tree shuddered. She knew she did not have the strength to carry so many passengers safely through with the wind and the rain. The tired man awakened. He stood up, stretched out his hand, and said, "Peace." The storm stopped as quickly as it had begun.

And suddenly the second tree knew he was carrying the king of heaven and earth.

One Friday morning, the third tree was startled when her beams were yanked from the forgotten woodpile. She flinched as she was carried through an angry jeering crowd. She shuddered when soldiers nailed a man's hands to her. She felt ugly and harsh and cruel. But on Sunday morning, when the sun rose and the earth trembled with joy beneath her, the third tree knew that God's love had changed everything. It had made the third tree strong.

And every time people thought of the third tree, they would think of God.

That was better than being the tallest tree in the world.

As a little girl, I remember gazing at a picture of the crucifixion that hung on the wall in my Sunday School class. Christ's body was thin and hung limp to one side. His head was bowed low as blood trickled down His face from the crown of thorns He humbly wore. It appeared that the nails in His hands and feet were what fastened Him to the cross. Soon I would discover it was something much more than nails that held Him there. It was the love of a heavenly Father for a sinner such as I.

Years later, I was a young adult when I saw the true picture of the crucifixion in the Word of God. The Bible painted a different picture of Christ's death than the one I had known as a child. “Yet many shall be amazed when they see him -- yes, even far-off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before. They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there” (Isaiah 52:14-15, Living Bible). In that moment, I realized they had not simply nailed Christ to a cross, placed a crown of thorns upon His head, gashed His side with a spear, spit in His face, gave him vinegar to drink, gambled for His clothes, and beat Him with a whip, but they beat Him until He became unrecognizable flesh hanging on a cross.

My mind suddenly flashed back to the first time I walked into the hospital room after my husband had been burned in a house fire. Porter's skin was completely black, his head had swollen to twice its normal size and the skin on his arms was gone. He was unrecognizable.

If Porter had been told ahead of time that working in that house would result in being burned over 80 percent of his body, suffering for eight days, leaving his wife and child behind in death, I'm sure he would have chosen not to go in. Not knowing what was ahead of him, Porter didn't have that choice, but Christ did.

Christ knew the horror of what men and women would do to Him and yet He chose to suffer. He chose the cross. He chose to leave heaven and come to earth. Christ laid aside His royal crown and took off His righteous robe. He left His Holy Father and His heavenly home to come to the dark land of sin and corruption. The King of all kings considered Himself nothing, a pauper at best. Born to die. He willingly paid the price for our freedom.

And yet, He was innocent. Christ didn't deserve death. He had never sinned. Christ never lied. He never stole anything, never disobeyed His Father, never harbored hatred and bitterness toward others. He never gambled His money away or was a drunkard. He never spoke against His neighbor or yearned for His neighbor's wife. No, Jesus Christ didn't do any of this, but we did.

Suddenly, I saw myself at the foot of the cross. In one hand I held a hammer and in the other a whip. I, too, had nailed Christ there. It was my sin. Yet Christ was willing to die for me in my place as payment for all my past, present and future sins. It wasn't man's will or nails of iron that held Jesus there. It was the obedience of a Son and the love of a Father that held Christ on that cross. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

My friend, Christ didn't die for me only, He died for “whosoever” -– and that includes you. More so, if you were the only one in the world, He still would have come for you alone! Whosoever you are, a parent, a teenager, a man, a woman, a grandparent or a child, Christ chooses you. Will you choose Him and His death on the cross as payment for your sins? Your life will never be the same.

__________

Micca Campbell, assistant director of Certified Speakers, a division of Proverbs 31 Ministries, and a member of Parkway Baptist Church in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, near Nashville.

A missionary home on leave was asked to speak at a number of churches in the area. And in order to help the people better understand where he was serving he decided to purchase a globe. So he went into a store and looked at several. Finally the clerk showed him one that had a light inside. The clerk said, "Of course, a lighted world would cost more." To which the missionary replied, "Yes, I know that. In fact, a lighted world costs everything."

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