Not only is there shame, ignominy and dishonour connected with death by hanging on a tree, there is also a curse, even as it is written in Deuteronomy 21:23, “for he that is hanged is accursed of God.” The divine instructions of Deuteronomy 21 were followed when Joshua slew and hanged on five trees the five kings of the Amorites that had been hidden in a cave at Makkedah (Joshua 10:26-27). The piercing of the Lord Jesus in His crucifixion had been prophesied in Psalm 22:16, and Zechariah 12:10; 13:6, but the repentance of Israel awaits the time when “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.”
In the Synoptic Gospels the Lord Jesus spoke of it being necessary for true disciples to take up the cross in following Him (Matt. 10:38; 16:24; Mark 8:34; 10:21; Luke 9:23; 14:27), and He also spoke of His being delivered up to the Gentiles to be killed, and that expressly by crucifixion in Matthew 20:19; 26:2.
When speaking of His death in John’s Gospel, the Lord said, “the Son of Man must be lifted up: that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:14-15). It is not the derision and contempt of man that are before the mind of the Son of God, but the communication of eternal life to the one that believes on Him. It would not be until the Jews had lifted up the Son of Man that they would know the glory of His Person as the I AM (John 8:28). As lifted up to die between the earth and heaven the Son of Man would be a spectacle for the whole universe, which would be affected by His death, and as lifted up He would draw all to Him (John 12:32).
The Synoptic Gospels bring before us the shame of the cross, Matthew and Mark telling that He, the Messiah of Israel, was crucified between two thieves, Luke writing of two malefactors. These Gospels also faithfully record the insults to which Jesus was subjected by the people, the priests and the soldiers. In John’s account it is so different. It is not an accusation that is written over Him, nor yet a superscription, but “Pilate wrote a title” telling who He was, and he would not alter it when asked by the chief priests. His coat without seam is brought to our notice, unique as He was, then after committing His mother to John, and “knowing that all things were now accomplished…He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:24–30). How blessedly the honour of the Son of God is safeguarded in John’s account of the cross.
Peter brings home to Israel their guilt in crucifying Him whom God has made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:23, 36), and in accusing the high priest and leaders of Israel spoke of God having raised from the dead Him whom they had crucified, slain and hanged on a tree (Acts 4:10; 5:30). When speaking to Cornelius, Peter referred to the Jews hanging Jesus on a tree, but when writing to the Jews of the dispersion he said, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (Acts 10:39; 1 Peter 2:24). If there was the guilt of Israel, there was also “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” and the wondrous grace that dealt with the question of our sins that we might be forgiven.
“Our old man is crucified with Him”
Paul has a good deal to teach the saints of God in regard to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in Romans 6:6 he writes, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Our old man is the personification of all the features derived from the evil nature of man. Every one of these features is hateful to God, for there is nothing good in man, even if men glory in many of the features that are abomination in the sight of God. The awful traits of the old man are the very antithesis of the beautiful graces displayed in Jesus, His gentleness, meekness, lowliness, kindness, long-suffering, peacefulness, delight in the will of God, obedience to the commandments of God, and every other perfection that belonged to the nature of the Man out of heaven.
Every divine test proved that our sinful nature could not be improved, and that the only thing that God could do with the old man was to bring him to an end in judgment, and this God did in the cross of Christ. If man, in his hatred to God and His Son, put Jesus upon a cross, God took the occasion to deal with our old man, and in the cross he was exposed, judged and ended in the sight of God. In dealing with the old man God gave sin its death blow, not yet as removing it from the world, though He will do that in His own time (John 1:29), but as removing it from before His eye in judgment so that His people might understand His estimate of it. Because of what God has done to our old man we are no longer to be in the service of sin, but only serving God who has dealt with sin.
“The preaching of the cross”
Corinth was a city where the wisdom of man was highly esteemed, but when Paul preached to them it was “not with excellency of speech or of wisdom,” for he determined not to know anything among them “save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:1-2). He judged that had he come “with wisdom of words,” like the orators of this world, it would have made “the cross of Christ…of none effect”. He explained this by saying, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:17-18).
To the natural mind it is beyond understanding that the salvation of the soul for eternity can only be secured by faith in One “who was crucified in weakness,” and of whom the chief priests of Israel said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save” (Mark 15:31). There is however no other way by which men can be saved, and while those who perish think the preaching of the cross to be foolishness, those who are saved have proved it to be the power of God.
God, in His wisdom, has not made Himself known to the wise of this world, so that the knowledge of God is not to be acquired by worldly wisdom. Nor can the wise of this world procure salvation by their wisdom which, in the light of the cross, is exposed as utterly weak and foolish. As a religious man the Jew sought a sign from God, and the Greek sought after the wisdom that emanated from the mind and heart of man, but Paul’s preaching did not bring to them what they sought after, it brought them something infinitely more valuable, that which could impart divine life and salvation for the soul.
The preaching of a crucified Christ brought to light the wisdom of God that devised this means, according to His good pleasure, to bring this salvation to men, but it was a stumbling block to the Jew who sought and desired a living Messiah on earth to free him from the bondage of Rome and make him the centre of this world. To the Greek, who sought this world’s wisdom, how very foolish it appeared to present an eternal salvation for the soul in One who was crucified. Those who had procured God’s salvation through faith in Christ, who was presented in the Gospel, He is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (verse 24).
God’s wisdom, made known in Christ, in His cross, and in the preaching, has also provided wonderful things for those who love Him, things which He “ordained before the world unto our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7). This hidden wisdom of God, with all the blessing for those who trust in Jesus, was unknown to the princes of this world, “for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (verses 8). Annas and Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, no doubt thought highly of their exalted positions, and of themselves, but how very guilty and foolish they proved themselves to be, for the cross to which they consigned the Son of God has brought to light the foolishness of this world while revealing the wisdom of God.
The Flesh and the World Crucified
In Galatians 2:20 Paul views himself, in all that he was as man after the flesh, exposed and judged in the cross of Christ; and the life he lived for Christ was by the faith of Christ as occupied with Him in glory where God had set Him down. The Son of God, who loved him so much as to give Himself for him, was the One Paul delighted to preach, and in presenting Christ crucified among them, he was showing them the only way of blessing, so that it was very foolish of them to seek blessing on the ground of law which could only bring a curse to them under law. The gift of the Holy Spirit, and the relationship of sons to God, did not come by works of law, but by faith in Christ presented to them in the Gospel (Gal. 3).
Circumcision belonged to the natural generation of Abraham, it was for man after the flesh, and had no place in the Gospel of God’s grace. There were those from Judaism who sought to introduce circumcision into Christianity, but it was rejected by Paul, and because of having rejected it he was persecuted by the Jews to whom the truth and preaching of the cross was offensive. The cross gave offence to the Jews (Gal. 5:11) because it exposed them as having shamefully treated and slain the Son of God.
If Paul could say “I am crucified with Christ,” he was but entering into the truth of the cross in relation to all the saints of God, for “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24). The life of the man after the flesh is lived in self-gratification, but that is not the normal life of one who believes in Christ, for all connected with self has gone from before God in Christ’s death, so that we might live to God and to Christ in the new life He has given us.
Those who were seeking to circumcise the Galatian Christians were desiring to glory in their flesh, and to escape persecution for the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:12), but Paul gloried in the cross, and was willing to suffer for the proclamation of it. He not only saw the cross as that which brought untold blessing to him through the sufferings of the Son of God, but he saw the world as an obnoxious system to God brought to an end in judgment where Christ died. If the world at the cross exposed Christ in shame, it was itself exposed there in all its deadly hatred and opposition to God; and Paul was content to share the dishonour meted out to his Master by the world that hated Him, but which God judged (verses 14).
Jew and Gentile Reconciled to God
In Romans 3 Paul had shown that there was no difference between the Jew and the Gentile, both were alike guilty before God, and sinners by nature, but in grace God has offered His salvation to Gentile as well as Jew. God’s desire in sending His Son to die was to bring men into right relations with Himself, and this He has done for all who believe in Jesus. In the cross the Jew has gone from before God in judgment, and so has the Gentile, and believing Jews and Gentiles have been reconciled “unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Eph. 2:16).
The enmity that existed between Jew and Gentile has gone in the cross, for both Jew and Gentile with all their peculiar features, and distinct characteristics, no longer exist in God’s sight. Moreover, the enmity of both Jew and Gentile towards God has gone, for both belonged to the old man, and our old man has been crucified with Christ.
“The death of the cross”
Of His own volition the Son of God came down from heaven, and He voluntarily became a Servant to God, willingly obeying His God and Father as Man in this world, yea, delighting in His will. The holy and perfect obedience of Jesus was manifested in His every step and took Him down to death itself, even to the awful death of the cross (Phil. 2:5–8).
There was all the shame, dishonour, sorrow and suffering that Jesus received from man as under the influence of the god of this world, but all this could only bring judgment upon men. The death of the cross also meant for the Lord Jesus the unmitigated judgment of God when He was made sin, and bore our sins. It is this enduring and exhausting of the judgment of a holy God that brings to God the glory of redemption, and that lays the basis for the accomplishment of all His will and purposes, and that, in the grace of God, brings infinite and eternal blessing to all who trust the Saviour.
As believers in the Lord Jesus we should ever be living for Him in the light of the cross, and in view of His coming, knowing Him as our object in the Father’s presence on high. It was in this way that Paul walked through this world, and it was his desire that the saints in Philippi should walk like himself and others who had Christ before them. Some who professed Christianity walked in a different path, they were “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). They did not glory in the cross as separating them from an evil world, but desired the world and its things, even if it was but the religion of this world in which they could find a place for self.
“The blood of His cross”
On the cross Christ’s precious blood was shed to lay the foundation of the reconciliation of all things (Col. 1:20). Even now true believers in the Son of God have been reconciled to God, but the day is surely coming when the whole universe will be in right relations with the God who created it. Every hostile being in earth and heaven will be removed from every seat of authority in which they are found in opposition to God, and Christ will fill all for God’s glory. The foundation of that eternal scene where all will be for the pleasure of the Godhead was laid in the blood of the cross of God’s Son, so that the new creation will shine in the gory of redemption, according to the eternal purpose of God.
To bring the believing Jews into divine blessing it was necessary that all their trespasses, all that the law had noted against them, should be dealt with in the cross of Christ. This God has done, having removed in Christ’s cross the law as a witness of their guilt. The discharge of all their sins, like an account that has been for ever settled, Christ has taken out of the way “nailing it to His cross” (Col. 2:14). If true of the Jew, it is also true for every man that has put himself under law, then has turned to Christ for the discharge of his debt to God.
How very wonderful are the truths concerning the cross brought out in Scripture for our learning, so that we might realise all the blessings that have been secured to us by the cross, all that Christ has sustained to bring us into blessing, and what God has secured for His own glory.
R. 20.8.70