31 “And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.” Matthew 27:31 (ESV)
20 “And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.” (Mark 15:20–23 (ESV)
20 “And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.” (Mark 15:20 (ESV)
16 “So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus.” (John 19:16 (ESV).
In our study of the Gospel of Matthew’s record of the Passion Week of the Lord Jesus Christ, it has been necessary, and insightful, to examine all four Gospel accounts. This discipline provides us understanding of all the events and encounters which took place during those hours and days.
Today’s focus is on the method of execution called crucifixion. Two concepts related to crucifixion occur in Scripture: the “cross,” a pagan mode of capital punishment, and the “tree,” which was a Jewish form (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13).
“The Greek used in the Christian New Testament uses four verbs, three of them based upon stauros (σταυρός), usually translated “cross”. The most common term is stauroo (σταυρόω), “to crucify”, occurring 46 times; sustauroo (συσταυρόω), “to crucify with” or “alongside” occurs five times, while anastauroo (ἀνασταυρόω), “to crucify again” occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:6. Prospegnumi (προσπήγνυμι), “to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify” occurs only once, at the Acts of the Apostles 2:23,” writes one historical scholar.
The English term cross is from the Latin word crux, referring to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals for execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross. The term crucifix is from the Latin crucifixus or cruci fixus, meaning “to crucify” or “to fasten to a cross.”
“The oldest depiction of a crucifixion … was uncovered by archaeologists more than a century ago on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It is a second-century graffiti scratched into a wall that was part of the imperial palace complex. It includes a caption – not by a Christian, but by someone taunting and deriding Christians and the crucifixions they underwent. It shows crude stick-figures of a boy reverencing his ‘God’, who has the head of a jackass and is upon a cross with arms spread wide and with hands nailed to the crossbeam. Here we have a Roman sketch of a Roman crucifixion, and it is in the traditional cross shape,” explains Clayton F. Bower Jr. “Cross or Torture Stake?”
“The cross work of Christ is central to the Christian faith and its proclamation, because of who it was who died on the cross and what it was he did there. With the apostles the church affirms that it was the eternal Son of God, the Word who became flesh, the Lord of glory, who died on Calvary (Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8; 2 Pet. 1:1; John 1:1, 14; 20:28; 1 Cor. 2:8). Accordingly, in its best moments, the church has “gloried in nothing but the cross” (Gal. 6:14) and has “resolved to know nothing among [the nations] except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2),” explains Robert R. Raymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith
“It has done so even though it knows that the preaching of the cross is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). It has done so, not only because it knows that “God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching [the message of the cross] to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:18, 21), but also because it recognizes that the cross of Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). For Paul to characterize the cross of Christ the way he did in 1 Corinthians 1:24—”the power of God and the wisdom of God”—implies that God accomplished a truly great salvation through the cross work of the Lord of Glory. One can sketch the momentous outlines of that “so great salvation” simply by surveying what the New Testament epistles affirm about the “body,” “blood,” “cross,” and “death” of Christ, words which taken in their contexts represent that great work in terms of a sacrifice (see also 1 Cor. 5:7; Heb. 7:27; 9:26, 28; 10:10, 12, 14).”
18 “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:18–21 (ESV)
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 