We put a premium on freedom. It’s kind of what we are all about. Many have sacrificed to ensure freedom for us; countless men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving their lives to ensure that freedom. But despite this and even though we live in the land of the free, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are free.

Central to the Christian faith is freedom. We get saved, we are free, we are forgiven, we have peace, joy; there is love in our hearts and it feels good. We eventually make it to church, maybe invited by the person who introduced us to Christ. But a funny thing happens, it seems that the joy and freedom we have experienced is eroded away by those who tell us all the things we need to do now that we are Christians. All the things we need to do to be acceptable Christians. The life that starts out in freedom, that starts out as a gift is now somehow bound by duty and obligation. To live in freedom takes courage and is somewhat more difficult to walk in because we are shaped by the fear of what people might think or say about us. So we try hard to conform so as not to be rejected by our new brothers and sisters in Christ.

The freedom we discover in Christ is nurtured by grace. The word grace in the Greek is charis and simply means gift. But we don’t know how to handle receiving a gift. We immediately turn it into an obligation. We treat gifts from an economy of exchange. If you buy me a gift for my birthday, then I am obligated to buy you a gift on your birthday. Not only that but one which reflects an equal amount of thought, care, sentiment, and money.

And because we presume to know what grace is, we almost always treat God’s grace to us as yet another (albeit much grander) economic exchange. We react to God’s grace as though we are obligated to give back to God since he has given to us. We do this often by denying ourselves, working to live moral lives, dutifully making ourselves better people. But as Paul says in Galatians 1:7, “that is no gospel at all…” NIV

The whole notion of a gift is that it is 1) unmerited; 2) there is no obligation; 3) there is nothing expected in return. It is a gift, a grace, charis. The only legitimate response to a gift is gratitude, and it is this gratitude, which is meant to be the dominant attitude and posture of the Christian. It is the garden where love springs forth from … loving gratitude.

Have you ever wondered why the New Testament doesn’t teach about tithing? It’s because the New Testament teaches we give from a heart of gratitude and not from the burden of obligation. When we perceive the gift we have been given, our gratitude will far surpass the offering of a tithe. Everything about our life from the air we breathe to the salvation we have been granted is gift, and if we move away from hearts of gratitude, we drift into a life of duty and obligation…the world of ‘shoulds’. I should be nice, I should go to church, I should…..you can fill in the blank. This is our ‘default’ setting, to borrow a term from technology.

Living concerned of “what others will think” or a life of “I should…” is not living freely; instead it represents a life of duty and obligation, not an expression of freedom. Consequently, we are not living in the freedom Christ paid for. So in loving gratitude let’s receive fully the gift of Christ in us.

It is the end of a long day. It was a good day. There is no other day like it on the calendar, no greater day in church history or for that matter in all of history. Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection!

Paul writes to young Timothy in 2Timothy 2:8: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel! Pretty simple, definitely not complicated, yet nevertheless quite radical!

Christianity is not some sort of mind numbing philosophical narcotic to help us manage our lives better; it’s a radical relationship with the very alive Jesus Christ, a relationship with the living God! Jesus Christ was Crucified, he died a horrible and violent death for our sin, then rose from the dead! He’s alive! He is physically alive! He is not some sort of disembodied spirit, like a ghost. He has risen as a human being, exalted and sits at the right hand of the Father! This is the cornerstone of our faith that somehow we push to the margins of our lives.

This is radical stuff! There is nothing religious about this at all! The idea of God dying on a cross is sheer foolishness,? Preposterous! How could he? Why would he? How dare he? This is utterly scandalous! What kind of God is he who would die on a cross? What kind of god would choose to be crucified to show his love for us?

Let’s change gears for a moment. For resurrection to happen, what must first take place? Of course, in order for resurrection to take place there must be a death. Something has to die in order to be resurrected and of course that’s the rub. We don’t want to die.

There are many types of death. There is physical death, which is our greatest enemy, but there are other types of deaths as well. It is a type of death when our dreams go unfilled; it is a type of death when a relationship disintegrates; it is a type of death when we experience rejection…. when we are misunderstood and judged;

It is a type of death when we experience shame, and failure, when life doesn’t turn out how we had planned. It is a type of death when you face the unknown, when you leave the security of the familiar for waters unchartered. And of course there is a death because of our sin.

We do everything in our power to keep from dying. We resist dying, we try to hang on, to preserve our lives…but the truth is, grace is only understood when you have died. Without the cross there is neither grace nor resurrection.

Like a sponge Christ has absorbed our sin. We have been set right with Christ not because of being so morally stellar in our relationships or by our impeccable obedience to a set of rules! We have been set right because of Christ’s faithfulness, not ours. Christ not only died for me, on my behalf, but he died because of me as well. He was crucified because of my sin. It is my sin that killed him. Harsh, but true.

And when you owe your life to someone … it changes how you live and the only appropriate thing you can do is say thank you.

Part 4: The Agony of the Cross

It is interesting that the four gospels have nothing to say about the physical suffering of Christ during his crucifixion. The gospel writers wanted us to focus on something else. We ask the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” But a really good question that is seldom asked is, “Why did Jesus have to be crucified?”[1] Why was crucifixion the manner of death chosen by God…

Isaiah 53:1   Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?… 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, striken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed… 10 Yet it was the LORD’S will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. NIV

The first phase of a Roman execution was scourging. A Roman soldier would use a whip made of leather cords with small pieces of metal and bone tied into the cords. The one being scourged would be stripped naked, there would be no loin cloth. The idea of scourging was to tear into the skeletal muscles. This would not only cause enormous pain, but also cause extreme blood loss and often set the stage for circulatory shock.

The person crucified would be paraded through the streets to maximize shame. At the crucifixion site the prisoner would be thrown to the ground exposing the torn flesh to dirt, rock, and debris. With arms in a bent position, the nails would be driven through the wrists between the ulna and radial bones to the crossbar. Once they were nailed to the crossbar they were hoisted up on to the post. The crossbar would be attached to the post by mortise and tenon, and then with the legs bent the feet were nailed to the post.

Once crucified, people could live for as long as three or four days and though the pain was excruciating what actually killed them was the inability to breathe. The only way to gain a breath would be by pushing oneself up from the legs and feet, or by pulling oneself up by the arms, both of which would cause intense agony. Now add to this horrendous pain, uncontrollable bodily functions, insects feasting on wounds, thirst, muscle cramps, bolts of pain from the severed medial nerves in the wrists, and the lacerated back scraping against the wooden posts with every breath.[2] Tortured, the one crucified dies from the weight of his own body as he suffocates.

So back to our question, “Why did Jesus have to be crucified?” “Why was crucifixion the manner of death chosen by God?”[3] Why did he choose the most torturous, shaming, and agonizing manner of execution devised by man for his death? The answer? What better way to show his love for us!

1John 4:9  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 75

[2] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 95

[3] Rutledge, 75

Part 3: The Shame of the Cross

 As we approach the Passion Week, our thoughts naturally gravitate toward the crucifixion and the resurrection. We identify the cross as a religious symbol, but it was not so in the early church. The cross was shameful, ugly, degrading and no one in Paul’s time would have ever thought of wearing a cross or hanging a cross in their home or putting one up in their place of worship. The cross was despicable and to die on the cross was grotesque and inhumane.

If you recall from our last entry that in 1 Corinthians 1:23 the word for stumbling block in the Greek is scandalon; it is the word we get scandal/scandalous from and it can also be translated as the word, offense, as in Galatians 5:11. The cross is at the heart of the Christian faith and it was scandalous and offensive… and it still is.

If we think that Jesus’ crucifixion was simply a tortured death then we have missed one of the most important aspects of the cross. The crucifixion was designed to be the ultimate insult to personal dignity. It was meant to be the most shaming, humiliating, and dehumanizing action ever conceived of by man.

We think of the crucifixion generally in terms of atonement, the legal means of our justification and this is a most powerful and important truth. But sometimes in our attentiveness to the atonement we neglect the idea of the cross as being scandalous and the awful stigma of crucifixion in the Roman Empire.

Crucifixion was an execution designed for maximum public exposure.[1] The victims were completely stripped, naked and exposed to the elements, and left to be picked at and eaten by insects and birds until they died by suffocation. Those who were crucified were subject to vicious ridicule because they were less than nobodies, their lives didn’t count, their lives were considered less than meaningless. The victims were thoroughly and completely rejected from the brotherhood of humanity. That was the whole purpose of the cross.

 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The meaning of the cross lies not only in physical suffering, but especially in rejection and shame. God let himself be pushed out of the world (and) on to the cross.”[2]

So now I want you to ponder the cross in your life. It has most likely caused you shame. It has probably broken your heart and has caused you a fair amount of disillusionment. It may anger you that it doesn’t seem fair or that God won’t take it away. It’s not that you must somehow enjoy the feeling of shame; Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus despised the shame but endured the cross because of the joy of what was to come. In no way do I wish to trivialize your suffering, but please hear me when I say that Jesus understands the shame you feel. It is a facet of the cross, but it doesn’t define who you are.

The cross brings you to that place where you feel all alone and rejected and that you have failed… worse than having failed, that you are a failure. The cross is that place where your dreams and desires die. And the work of the cross is death, public and humiliating, torturous and painful. The cross is that place you would never choose to go, so Jesus leads you. It is the place where you discover that everything has been peeled away, stripped away from your life. And what you are left with is Jesus.

The way of the cross is the way of Jesus; it is the way of the gospel; it is the way of the church; it is the way of sacrifice, and if the church doesn’t embrace the way of the cross, it isn’t a very safe place to worship.

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 92

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 98.