Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals–one on his right, the other on his left.  Luke 23:33

Nothing symbolizes Christianity as does the cross!  Thus when the cross is removed from the faith, there is nothing of substance, nothing which produces satisfaction, nothing which deals with the fundamental issue of sin and its consequences.  How radical, that something the equivalent of a guillotine, a gallows, or a sword should be so important to Christian faith!

Pompeii was destroyed by a volcano in 78 A.D., yet when it was excavated in 1939, archaeologists found a wooden cross which had been nailed on a wall of a home at Herculaneum. Tertullian, one of the early Christian fathers, said that by the end of the first century, the cross was widely used by Christians as a symbol. Carved on the stone slab of a street in ancient Ephesus, you will find a double cross which was a kind of “street sign” to direct fellow Christians to the home of a sympathetic brother. Augustine, who lived in the fifth century, alludes to the sign of the cross which was used in performing sacraments.

In the Middle Ages Christians began erecting crosses in the center of the city, and for centuries churches have been built in the form of a cross, and crosses have been used on altars as reminders of what Jesus did.

Here’s the issue behind the symbol: Just what is the cross about and how did it become so important in the story of redemption?

Yes, the Romans crucified Jesus Christ at the instigation of the Jewish leaders who were challenged by His assertion that He was God, yet the Romans didn’t invent crucifixion. The earliest historical record of crucifixion says the Assyrians, noted for their cruelty, started the grisly practice about the seventh century B.C. (As a sidebar, note that Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin were all disciples of Assyrian military policy.)

Following the Assyrians the Persian king Darius I crucified 3,000 political opponents at one time in the great city of Babylon in the year 519 B.C. The Greeks overthrew Persia and then adopted crucifixion. It was public, powerful, and exacting; however, it was the Romans who refined the grim business and began to use it widely.  It was first a visual statement used for slaves who betrayed their masters, and non-citizens who were enemies of Rome. Occasionally it was even used for a Roman citizen when a grievance was treasonous and the individual had become a national disgrace.

By the end of the first century B.C. the Romans had adopted the practice as official punishment for non-Romans. Masters of public relations, the Romans knew that public executions made a powerful statement: we will not tolerate lawlessness.  Official practice was that a sign was posted on the cross stating what the public offense was, so that all who passed by might be warned of what would await them should they also be caught.

Archaeology and history combine to give us far more of the grim details than we are comfortable with. We know that the victim was either impaled to the cross, which was then dropped into a hole deep enough to hold the cross upright, or else the vertical pole was implanted in the ground, and then the victim was nailed or tied to the crosspiece which was then raised by a ladder or pulley to the appropriate height. Furthermore, archaeological finds, including some made following the Six Days War of 1963, when Israel took the Kidron Valley outside the walls of old Jerusalem, make it certain that nails or spikes were driven through the wrists and the feet of the victim.

That’s what happened!  But what did it signify?  More on this theme on the next edition of Guidelines.

Resource reading:  Luke 23.