Perspectives on the Death of Jesus

The cross of Jesus Christ involves a historical event where a man was convicted of a crime against the Roman government, and He was sentenced to death by crucifixion. And the story tells us and describes the environment, the location, the characters that were involved, the method of death that was employed, and even the words of Jesus that He spoke from the cross. And not only do we get the information and the details that describe the event as it took place, but we even get in the Gospel record some people’s interpretation of the meaning of the event.

For example, Caiaphas said, “It is expedient for the nation that this man be put to death,” (John 11:50). And so from his perspective, we learn that the execution of Jesus was done out of political expediency—to get the heat of the Romans off the Jewish Sanhedrin. “And let’s quiet down the people; we’ll sacrifice this itinerant preacher.” We see Pilate’s statement where he cleanses his hands and he says, “I find no fault in this man” (Luke 23:4). And he has an interpretation of his own political expedience. Or we hear the testimony of the centurion at the foot of the cross, who said, “Surely, this man was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:64).

And what was going on here? Was it simply an event of a poor, misguided, Jewish rabble-rouser who was put to death through some political chicanery that took place in Palestine two thousand years ago? Was this one a deluded charlatan guilty of treason against both the synagogue and the state? Or was this God incarnate, going to the cross to die a cosmic death of atonement that would have radical consequences for the eternal destinies of thousands and millions of people, indeed for the whole world? What is the meaning of the cross?

Well, there have been many attempts to look at the cross and reinterpret the cross. But what we have in the New Testament is not merely the record of the event of the cross, but also we have the record of the interpretation of the event in the New Testament. That’s the primary function of the epistles. But what I want to remind you of this. If you were a newspaper reporter standing at the foot of the cross on Golgotha, and you watched the drama of the crucifixion of this Jew unfolding before your eyes, I don’t think that it would be immediately apparent to your naked eye that the death of this Man was the most important death in world history of any man—that this Man, at that moment, was carrying, by imputation, the sins of the world.

If you looked at Jesus on the cross, you saw a Man in a loin cloth, sweating and bleeding and dying. And you would see skin and flesh and bones and hair and toenails, but you wouldn’t see this package of human sin wrapped up and placed upon His body. It was invisible. So how would you know that the death was an atoning death, were it not for divine revelation?