What Did Crucifixion Mean?

Have you ever considered why Jesus had to die on the cross? I don’t mean that he had to die, he was a sacrifice for our forgiveness. I mean why did he specifically die on the cross?

• He wasn’t beheaded like Roman citizens were
• Why wasn’t he offered a cup of poison like Socrates, who was able to just drift off to sleep and not wake up?
• He wasn’t even stoned like Jews typically executed people
• Why something like this?

The cross wasn’t just a normal means of execution – it communicated a message. It meant something to those who were condemned and to those who looked on.

We have plenty of positive associations with the cross – but it was designed to evoke horror.

Torment

The first and probably most prominent idea we associate with crucifixion is the pain of it all. Jesus suffered through torture and a brutal execution method when he died for us.

Mark 15:15 ESV

¹⁵ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

Before he would ever make it to the cross he was first scourged. The Romans would use something called a cat-of nine-tails. It was a series of whips studded with rocks, bone, or metal spikes. The Jewish law said that you couldn’t beat a criminal with more than 40 lashes – but he Romans had no restrictions.  The whips were so brutal that they effectively skin the victim as they rip away chunks of flesh.

If you haven’t watched it, I’d recommend that you watch the movie The Passion of the Christ. It has all sorts of inaccuracies and some Catholic beliefs mixed and Jesus looks like a super model – but one thing they do good is the flogging scene.

If you’re not into movies here’s Whipped Peter. Those are the scars from being whipped by his former master before escaping to the North.

The Crucifixion

And then we have the actual crucifixion itself. Some archeologists actually found the tomb of someone they believed to be executed. They came to that conclusion because the nails were still in the bones.

For example, here’s the heel-bone on the right and a full model on the left to give you a better perspective.

So after being whipped to within an inch of your life, carrying your cross beam to the execution site, and being nailed there – you’d be left hanging there until you died. Often the actual cause of death was suffocation. Your body gets weaker and weaker, the pain of the nails in your hand to great to hold yourself up, and soon you can’t do anything to lift yourself up to get a breath.

According to Mark it was six hours before Jesus died – hanging on the cross with his body weight pulling at the nails driven through his hands.

Shame

But the pain of the cross goes beyond and the physical.

People weren’t indifferent to the cross. It wasn’t just any kind of death. It was completely and utterly offensive and obscene. It’s a death that brings shame, and in a way that has no good modern parallel.

Mark 15:29–32 ESV

²⁹ And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, ³⁰ save yourself, and come down from the cross!” ³¹ So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. ³² Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

We can think of people who fell from grace:

• Bill Cosby
• Lance Armstrong

But it’s not just the shame of being publicly ridiculed and being called a liar or hypocrite. It’s the shame of being completely crushed and destroyed. Of being at the complete mercy of the other and being unable to change anything about it.

• Maybe we could compare it to the shame Jews in Nazi Germany might have felt as they walked around with the star of David, and eventually numbers on their arms.
• Think of the shame you would feel after being accused of some embarrassing or scandalous crime and having the media drag your name through the mud just because they could.

The cross was a humiliation that we are unlikely to ever experience. It’s a humiliation that tries to make you something less than a person.

Complete Defeat

That was why Rome loved crucifying its enemies so much – especially it’s political opponents.

It was a way for Rome to tell everyone else in Israel “This is what happens when you call yourself a king and compete with Caesar. This is what happens when you try to start your own kingdom. You lose in the worst possible way.”

We see this in how the Romans treated him:

Mark 15:16–19 ESV

¹⁶ And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. ¹⁷ And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. ¹⁸ And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ¹⁹ And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him.

A Crucified God?

• Pain
• Shame
• Defeat

All of this made Jesus an offense to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks:

1 Corinthians 1:23 ESV

²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,

A dead Messiah was no Messiah at all to the Jews. And to the Greeks? What kind of God gets himself killed by his own creation?

To see someone on the cross was to see someone:

• Pathetic
• Weak
• Helpless

And when Jesus cries out in verse 34

Mark 15:34 ESV

³⁴ And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Everyone would have agreed. This man had trusted in God to save him – but God had forsaken him.

And a surprising number of Christians agree. The prevailing understanding of this cry is that Jesus was forsaken. That the darkness that covers the land in verse 33 is God turning his face away from his son.

Seeing The Cross Differently

But that’s not what everyone sees.

Mark 15:39 ESV

³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Of all people it’s a centurion – one of the Romans who oversaw the crucifixion – who sees that he died in this way – this horrific and shameful way of dying – and proclaims aloud “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

He saw something that nobody else did. Something that nobody in the entire Gospel of Mark at this point had seen.

We’re told in the very first verse that Jesus is the son of God.

Mark 1:1 ESV

¹ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And then that title disappears for the rest of the story.

• It doesn’t matter what Jesus says
• It doesn’t matter what Jesus does
• No miracle ever gets people to see what this centurion saw on the cross

Peter comes close! He calls Jesus the Christ – but it’s not enough. Immediately after Peter’s confession he goes on to deny that Jesus will die in Jerusalem.

Mark 8:31–32 ESV

³¹ And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³² And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Because when Peter hears of Jesus dying and all of this talk about bearing a cross all he can think of is:

• Shame
• Losing
• Defeat
• Humiliation

Mark 15:39 ESV

³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

But when this Centurion – who knew exactly what the cross meant – sees that Jesus died in this viscous and humiliating way he confesses Jesus as the Son of God.

What did this man see that could bring out this unique confession?

Let’s begin by looking at what Jesus said on the cross.

A Cry of Defeat, or Victory?

The only words of Jesus that Mark records for us are found in verse 34

Mark 15:34 ESV

³⁴ And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The crowd around Jesus are apparently mishearing the Eloi Eloi part and think he’s calling for Elijah to come and save him.

And it’s easy for us to mishear him as well. Jesus is calling out that he’s been forsaken – so he must be forsaken!

Citing Psalm 22

Chapter and verse numbers didn’t come around until the 1400’s. So to get people’s attention to the right portion of scripture you would say “Turn to where it is written…” or if you were quoting a Psalm you could just quote the first couple of lines.

For example, I could tell you to turn to Psalm 22 , or I could say turn to “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Because that’s how Psalm 22 begins.

Psalm 22:1 ESV

¹ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

So Jesus is not giving a cry of being abandoned by God – he’s drawing our attention to this Psalm – and not just the first lines. We need to understand the entirety of it.

Psalm 22’s Meaning

Psalm 22 is by David and describes the low parts of his life and, as a result, him thinking that God has abandoned him. And as we read through the descriptions of David’s anguish we notice a number of striking parallels to Jesus’ anguish on the cross.

David and Jesus Were Mocked

Psalm 22:6–8 ESV

⁶ But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. ⁷ All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; ⁸ “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

Compared to Mark 15:27-32

Excessive Thirst

Psalm 22:15 ESV

¹⁵ my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

Compared to Mark 15:23, 36

Pierced Hands and Feet

Psalm 22:16 ESV

¹⁶ For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—

The normal means of crucifixion

Divided Garments

Psalm 22:18 ESV

¹⁸ they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Compared with Mark 15:24.

So clearly we have something larger than just the first line of Psalm 22 in mind as Jesus utters it.

The Psalm begins with asking why God has forsaken David, Jesus. But around verse 21 there’s a sudden and surprising switch:

Psalm 22:21–24 ESV

²¹ Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! ²² I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: ²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! ²⁴ For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.

Three Hours of Darkness

Let’s stop right there for a little bit and focus on verse 24 for a moment:

Psalm 22:24 ESV

²⁴ For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.

How many of us have heard that this is exactly what God did to Jesus on the cross? He turned his face away? That’s one of the prevailing meanings behind the darkness of the land in Mark 15:30

Mark 15:33 ESV

³³ And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

I’ll take Psalm 22’s interpretation – this is not God turning his face away from Jesus. God is not abandoning his son, he is not turning his face away in disgust or abandonment.

If God is turning his face away from anybody – it’s Jerusalem. Consider this passage from Amos 8:7

Amos 8:7 ESV

⁷ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

Their deeds were abusing and oppressing the poor of the land – selling them for silver in verse 6, kinda like Judas did to Jesus.

So God is promising judgement and says that:

Amos 8:9–10 ESV

⁹ “And on that day,” declares the Lord God, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. ¹⁰ I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

What time did the sun disappear in Mark 15? The sixth hour. The Jewish day began at roughly 6:00 AM so the sixth hour brings us to 12:00 noon. God isn’t turning his face away from Jesus – he’s mourning him.

So as Jesus cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s not addressing that to God. He’s addressing it to the people around him. He’s addressing it to us.

• You think I’ve lost
• You think I’m a loser
• You think that even God has turned his back on me

But that’s not the end of the story. Because in three days Jesus got back up. Because while all his enemies died over the years, Jesus still lives at the right hand of God.

And when we look at the death of Jesus not as a defeat – but as a victory…

• The cross is no longer a place of shame – it is an act of obedience that glorifies God
• It’s no longer a place of abandonment – three days later Jesus gets back up
• It’s no longer a place of defeat – but the place where Christ condemned sin and death itself

It is the place where we see God and Jesus as they are meant to be seen.  It is the place where we see God’s love in full – a love that will die for us.

Truly, this is the Son of God.

Application

So back to our starting question: why did Jesus die in the worst way?

• To show us that God is able to overcome the worst things that happen to us.

Jesus was at the absolute lowest he could ever possibly be

• Tormented
• Humiliated
• Abandoned by everybody

But Never Forsaken by God.

Psalm 22 and the crucifixion are testaments to God’s faithfulness – not just to Jesus, but to us as well.

Psalm 22:27–29 ESV

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. ²⁸ For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. ²⁹ All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.

When we are down in the dust, unable to keep ourselves alive, we need to remember and turn to the Lord. The crucifixion is a shining example of how you can be at your absolute lowest in life but never betrayed, forsaken, or abandoned by God.

• It doesn’t matter how painful of an experience you are going through – God has not forsaken you.
• It doesn’t matter how much shame you carry around God isn’t looking away in disgust.
• It doesn’t matter if everybody else has abandoned you and left you to carry your cross on your own – God see, God knows, and God cares.

When we begin to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we need to remember that’s not how our story ends.

• No matter my suffering I will inherit eternal life
• No matter my shame I will be praised by God
• No matter who else abandons me my God is with me
• Even if I die – that’s not how God is going to end my story!

Conclusion

That’s part of what we’re here to remember today. As we take the bread and fruit of the vine we will think of the broken body, and the blood that flowed. We remember the shame that he endured so that we could stand blameless before God.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26

1 Corinthians 11:26 ESV

²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

We are proclaiming that God has not left us in this broken world to suffer and die alone. We are proclaiming that God as not forsaken us – and that Jesus is coming back.