The sufferings of Jesus were, at their heart, punishment — a penalty borne.
Death is a penalty. The wages of sin is death. He was sinless, and yet he suffered the punishment due to sin, even unto death.
His death as a criminal was not an embarrassment to be explained away, but fundamental and essential to the good news itself.
Unjust and Just at Once
In one sense this was unjust — he had done nothing to deserve it.
And yet it was, at the same time, the right and the just thing. It was fitting that he should bear God’s righteous wrath.
He, who as the eternal Son of the Father had taken our human nature on himself, truly God and truly man, died the death of sinners, for sinners, for us all.
Who Killed Him?
Who put him to death? Was it the Romans? The Jewish authorities? Judas? Pilate?
Or was it God?
Scripture will not let us evade the final answer: God ‘did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all’ (Rom 8:32).
To understand what that giving-up entailed, we have to reckon honestly with the manner of his death.
The Most Barbaric Execution Available
Jesus’ death was not gentle. It was brutal.
His crucifixion was, formally, a judicial public execution — yet that bare description scarcely conveys its horror. Crucifixion was the most barbaric and degrading of executions, and was surprisingly and shockingly widespread across the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Carthaginian world.
It was a death penalty of extreme cruelty, kept by the Roman military-political authorities primarily for high-ranking officials and commanders, rebels and enemies of the state; for non-Romans whose crimes were political offences against the empire; for dangerously violent criminals and those guilty of treason; and for escaped slaves.
As such it functioned as a supreme deterrent, expressing unflinching retribution and satisfying ‘the primitive lust for revenge and sadistic cruelty. … At relatively small expense and to great public effect the criminal could be tortured for days in an unspeakable way.’1Martin Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, trans. John Bowden (SCM/Fortress Press, 1977), 87.
In antiquity it was also associated directly with human sacrifice, and more broadly with the very depths of unspeakable human suffering.
And this is the depth of degradation God himself entered and embraced at the cross: ‘In other words, in the death of Jesus of Nazareth God identified himself with the extreme of human wretchedness, which Jesus endured as representative of us all, in order to bring us to the freedom of the children of God.’2Hengel, Crucifixion, 89.
What Actually Happened
Early Christians — hearers and readers — were familiar with crucifixion, which is why the New Testament doesn’t describe it in detail.
For most of us, mercifully unfamiliar, this offers a vivid description of its combination of maximum pain and abject humiliation:
‘The condemned person was first flogged, then made to carry the horizontal beam (patibulum) of the cross to the place of execution. Bystanders along the way could abuse him as they pleased. Outside the town in a prominent place, vertical poles were in place, fixtures from the last executions. The victim was stripped, spiked through the wrists, and the patibulum was hoisted up and attached to the pole. His feet were then nailed to the upright, and a board with his name and crime was fixed above his head. There he hung for however long it took to die. Death, when it came, was from exhaustion and suffocation: when the victim was no longer able to push down on his feet, the full weight of his body sagging from outstretched arms made it impossible to breathe; he died in a few minutes. A strong man might suffer for days before that final collapse. To remain still was agony; movement was worse. Nakedness, immobility, and incontinence — blood, urine, excrement, and flies combined to create a display of impotent degradation. It was hard to imagine such a one any longer as a hero. This was Rome’s answer to “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”’3Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 112. This section tracks Seccombe, pages 111-150.
And This Is the Good News
It is precisely this death — in all its dread, outrage and disgust — that each of the four Gospel accounts insists on placing at the very centre of the good news.
Sit with how strange that is. The gospel message involves public proclamation of a crucified King.
The ruler of God’s kingdom is one whose reign came by way of suffering death on a cross. His triumph was achieved in this way, and no other. His death as a criminal was therefore not an embarrassment to be explained away, but fundamental and essential to the good news itself.
The wisdom and power of God’s saving work were manifested precisely through the experience of acute agony, weakness, wounds and mortality.
The victory of God’s King, and the triumph of God’s kingdom, were accomplished and secured through the crucifixion of that King (1 Cor 1:22-25).
Repulsive in Appearance
In appearance, this is repulsive, feeble and disturbing.
There’s no point pretending otherwise, and the New Testament doesn’t. Paul concedes the appearance directly — a stumbling block to some, foolishness to others.
But its reality, power and purpose are such that it overcomes and surpasses not only the might of the Roman Empire but the pretensions and pride of the entire world (John 16:33).
The word of the cross thus became the spearhead of the gospel message.
Which is worth noticing about the early Christians. They had every incentive to lead with something else — the teaching, the miracles, the resurrection alone. Instead they led with an execution, and made no attempt to soften how it looked.