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.