Editor’s note: This post is part of a series featuring outstanding excerpts from student papers at the BibleMesh Institute, which offers affordable online training for local churches, schools, and ministries. The author’s name has been withheld for privacy and security purposes. He is preparing to serve as a missionary among Muslims in Central Asia.
The Christian stance on the crucifixion does not hide behind its gruesomeness. The Gospels describe, with great detail, the brutal treatment of Jesus in the moments leading up to His death. By giving an accurate account of Jesus’ crucifixion, we are able to proclaim God’s great love, that He would submit Himself to death on behalf of sinful men. Telling of Jesus’ death opens the door for the Christian to proclaim God’s victory, power and authority over sin and death in Jesus’s resurrection.
Mark is clear through his account of Jesus’ death that God’s will was done when Christ was crucified. It is clear through Jesus’s predictions of His death that His crucifixion was not an accident. God was in control of all the events leading up to it and the very event of Jesus’ death on the cross. His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane also points to God’s sovereignty. His words are not those “of a cold-hearted theologian but rather are prayed with the profound conviction that God controls all things.”[1] Jesus’s final words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” also attribute God’s will to Jesus’s death.
Mark leaves out much of the graphic detail involved in Jesus’s crucifixion that the other Gospel writers include. Any reader at the time of Mark’s writing would have no doubt been familiar with what would occur at a crucifixion, but Cook suggests that Mark wanted to emphasize what was truly occurring in Jesus’ death and not detract from it by describing the physical realities. In his brevity, Mark emphasizes Jesus’s final words, a reference to Psalm 22, a Psalm of both anguish and victory. Jesus’s anguish is clear though the “wordless scream” of His death, but the victory of peace can be seen in the affirmation of the Roman soldier and the destruction of the Temple curtain.[2]
Paul stated plainly, the message of “Christ crucified” is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” but nonetheless a message that faithful Christians are called to embrace as the power and wisdom of God, and that they are to preach, not backing down from what is “foolish in the world” (1 Cor 1:23-24, 27). This “foolishness” clearly existed in the time of the early Church and continues to exist today, notably in the Muslim view of the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ death.
The general attitude toward crucifixion at the time of the early church is not unlike the attitude towards Christ’s death presented in the Qur’an. Green gives context to the prevailing public attitude of crucifixion in Roman times, a practice reserved for the most notorious and lowest of criminals.[3] Roman culture viewed crucifixion with such contempt, so as to mock the early Christian church.
The attitude toward crucifixion among Jews in the Roman Empire was even harsher. They believed the victim to be cursed by God (cf. Deut 21:23).[4] Costa summarizes Islam’s stance on the crucifixion based on the Qur’an: “If Jesus, the prophet of Allah was allowed to be tortured and die a cruel shameful death such as crucifixion, the Allah must have failed to save Jesus’ honor.”[5]
Though the message of the cross is offensive, especially to a Muslim hearer, “efforts to remove the offense of the cross flatly contradict the apostolic pattern.”[6] It is essential that Christians, seeking to be faithful to message of the Gospel of Jesus preach “Christ crucified.” Though this may not be what people desire to hear, or accord to their understanding of Jesus, it is what every person so desperately needs.[7] Though Christ was indeed humiliated on the cross, bearing all its reproach, He is honored in what His death achieved, for by his blood He “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” This multitude will cry out to their Redeemer in the last day, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev 5:9-12). By sharing the truth of Christ’s affliction, no matter how offensive it is, Christians are really sharing the power of God for salvation and His free gift of grace (1 Cor. 1:24; Rom 5:15).
[1] William F. Cook III, “The Passion of the Christ according to the Gospel of Mark,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. 8.3 (Fall 2004): 87, https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/equip/uploads/2010/07/sbjt_083_fall04_cook.pdf
[2] Cook, “The Passion of the Christ according to the Gospel of Mark,” 97.
[3] Donald E. Green, “The Folly of the Cross,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 15.1 (Spring 2004): 62. Biblical studies.org.uk. https://www.tms.edu/m/tmsj15c.pdf.
[4] Green, “The Folly of the Cross,” 65.
[5] Tony Costa, “Jesus in Islam,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 20.2 (Summer 2016): 53. https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/equip/uploads/2016/10/SBJT-20.2-Costa-Jesus-in-Islam.pdf
[6] Green, “The Folly of the Cross,” 68.
[7] Ibid.