Sermon Tone Analysis

“I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”[1]

Zealous Christians sometimes say they are trying to live the “crucified life.”

Actually, I don’t know anyone who is living the crucified life, though each Christian can say with conviction that he or she has been crucified with Christ.

The reason you can’t live the crucified life is that it is impossible to crucify yourself.

There are many ways to kill oneself, but crucifixion requires that another perform the crucifixion.

When we were buried in baptism, we testified that “our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” [*Romans 6:6*].

However, we did not baptise ourselves, nor did we crucify the old nature.

God, by the power of His Spirit performed that action.

Paul’s justly famous affirmation looks back to what God has done for him, and to his present response to the divine initiative revealed through his own life that was being lived out in response to what the Master had done.

*Crucified* — Six out of ten people living in the Roman Empire were slaves.

With such a massive slave population, the Romans feared rebellion against their rule.

Therefore, they felt compelled to find a way to control the restive population.

They chose to control the unruly slave population through intimidation and fear.

Accordingly, the Romans adopted the Persian invention of the cross as a means of capital punishment.

Crucifixion was one of the most horrifying ways of execution that man has ever invented.

It was thought to be so horrible a means of death that by law Roman citizen could be executed by hanging on a cross only under exceptional circumstances.

Not only did the one executed die a slow, agonising death, but the condemned person was humiliated beyond anything we might imagine.

Stripped naked, they would hang suspended between earth and heaven, fighting for days to draw one more breath as gravity inexorably exerted its power over their pinioned body.

The Romans had become experts in extending life for those affixed to a cross, ensuring that they experienced the most painful death imaginable.

Those witnessing these executions would hear the gasps and the groans of the condemned individuals as they struggled to draw one more breath.

The torture that dying criminals endured made an indelible impression on those thinking of rebellion, dissuading them from attempting to overthrow Roman rule.

The cultured world of Rome did not even want to hear about crucifixion.

It was a subject that was not discussed in polite society.

Cicero, defending a Roman senator named Rabirius against a murder charge, warned against the runaway prosecutor who was suggesting crucifixion as the penalty for the senator.

Cicero endeavoured to sway the jury with the following plea, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”[2]

The deep contempt of the Romans for those who were crucified is seen in several instances.

A graffito scratched on a stone in a guardroom on Palatine Hill near the Circus Maximus in Rome shows the figure of a man with the head of an ass hanging on a cross.

Just below the cross, another man is shown raising his hand in a gesture of adoration.

The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.”[3]

Justin Martyr summarises the view of enemies of the Faith providing an example of the ancient distaste for crucifixion.

He wrote, “They proclaim our madness to consist in this, that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all.”[4]

Origen (A.D. 185-254) quoted Celsus as mocking the Christian Faith, “In all their writings (is mention made) of the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means of the ‘tree, ’because, I imagine, their teacher was nailed to a cross, and was a carpenter by craft; so that if he had chanced to have been cast from a precipice, or thrust into a pit, or suffocated by hanging, or had been a leather-cutter, or stone-cutter, or worker in iron, there would have been (invented) a precipice of life beyond the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a cord of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a sacred leather!

Now what old woman would not be ashamed to utter such things in a whisper, even when making stories to lull an infant to sleep?”[5]

Crucifixion was degrading in Jewish thought.

Moses warned in the Law, “If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.

You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance” [*Deuteronomy21:22, 23*].

The warning is echoed by the Apostle in the letter before us this day when he writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” [*Galatians 3:13*].

At the time Paul wrote, the Jews had witnessed multiple horrific examples of crucifixion.

These horrifying executions had undoubtedly made an indelible impression in the Jewish mind.

During the Hasmonean era, Alexander Janneus (102-76 B.C.) crucified eight hundred Pharisees while at their feet their wives and children had their throats slit.[6]

This brutal action ensured tranquility for the remainder of Alexander’s reign.

After the Romans assumed power over Palestine, Varus crucified two thousand men after putting down a revolt in Judea, just before the turn of the century.[7]

An unspecified number of Jews were crucified following a quarrel between Jews and Samaritans,[8] and several prisoners of war were crucified in Caesarea.[9]

Felix, procurator of Judea from A.D. 52-58, crucified many robbers—“a multitude not to be enumerated”—during his reign.[10]

As is well known from the writings of Tacitus, Nero crucified Christians in his garden following the burning of Rome in A.D. 64.[11], [12]

It is apparent that we have no modern equivalent of execution that generates the disgust, the revulsion, the sense of loathing that crucifixion generated in the ancient world.

The Gentiles saw it as a means of showing contempt for criminals, or for rebels, or for vanquished foes.

The Jews saw it as a sign that the one crucified was accursed by Heaven.

All alike saw crucifixion as a sign that the one crucified was rejected by God.

Perhaps, with this brief background, we can begin to appreciate Paul’s assessment of the Christian message: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” [*1 Corinthians 1:23*].

Perhaps this knowledge helps explain why modern preaching has endeavoured to remove “the offence of the cross” [*Galatians 5:11*].

Perhaps there is a lingering revulsion of crucifixion.

Not only is death by crucifixion repugnant, but the very idea of a Saviour who willingly permits Himself to experience such pain is odious to the modern mind.

We don’t like to think that we are responsible for such a shocking death.

We are willing to say that we are sinners, but we want to qualify that statement by saying that we are not really */that/* bad.

Thus, the thought that the Son of God would need to offer His life as a sacrifice by means of a cross repels the modern mind.

Whenever we contemporary Christians speak of crucifixion, we seem somewhat cavalier.

The shame of the cross has been removed; the cross has been reduced to an ornament in contemporary life.

A cross is frequently worn on a chain around the neck as adornment; but it seems to have little meaning.

It is no longer an instrument of shame—a symbol of that which is repulsive; now, it is merely decorative or ornamental.

Today, even among many who profess Christ as Master of life, the cross is worn as adornment—an object of beauty and nothing more.

I cannot imagine the Apostle Paul, or Peter, or John, wearing a cross as an ornament.

Ministers often wear a large cross around their neck as a symbol of their office; but what is worn is seldom a crude, rugged instrument of death.

It is almost always made of polished wood—perhaps olive wood or another wood with supposed symbolic importance; the cross is, therefore, an attractive accoutrement or badge of office to mark the individual as a professional.

We know from history, and from reading the Word of God, that when one was condemned to die, they were flogged—beaten mercilessly and after a sign detailing the crime for which he was being crucified was affixed around his neck, he was compelled to carry the cross member to the place of their execution.

There, he would be stripped naked, laid on the wooden pieces that would form the cross, and spikes be have driven through each wrist and through the ankles.

The cross would then be hoisted to the sky and dropped into the hole prepared for it, and the condemned individual would be left to die.

The cross on which the condemned person would die was not a thing of beauty.

The Romans did not take care to ensure that the cross was polished and attractive; it was an instrument to kill the condemned individual in a most horrifying manner.

If there was symbolism, it was symbolism of governmental might—a warning against rebellion.

I don’t deny that our view of the cross has been transformed, if only superficially, by the sacrifice of the Master; I simply caution that too often we miss the horror that attended the death of the Master.

When Paul writes those words honouring the sacrifice of our Master, few of us can connect with the shock that gripped those first readers in Philippi.

“Though He was in the form of God, [Christ Jesus our Lord] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, */even death on a cross/*” [*Philippians 2:6-8*].

*Crucified for Me* — The Master suffered an agonising death.

Though the Word indicates that He shrank from the torment [*Hebrews 5:7*], He did not shrink from the sacrifice.

None of us can fully understand the agonies the Master suffered; but each of us can adore Him for His love.

Jesus is indeed, “the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

And it is that divine love that shall now be the focus of our inquiry for a brief moment.

Modern theories to the contrary, the death of the Master was not an accident.

Jesus did not yield Himself up on a whim; neither was His death the result of an exercise that got out of hand.

Though recent writings again raise the thought that Judas was duped, Jesus was betrayed, just as the Word says.

The account of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas was not an afterthought by disingenuous or cunning disciples attempting to deceive unwary individuals by explaining away His death.

Jesus was betrayed; but through Judas’ the Word of God has been fulfilled.

Those are such powerful words that Isaiah wrote centuries before the Master’s sacrifice.

They expose each of us as sinners straying from the Shepherd of our souls.

They powerfully reveal the depth of God’s love for each of us.

“All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered