Even Death on a Cross

Introduction

Here you’re making your way to Philippians chapter two, Philippians two is we’re going to be spending our time this morning. So good to be with you today. I’m looking forward to a great day today. I a year ago would have thought this wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but Xander’s gonna go to camp this afternoon, and so that’s exciting for me. Last time I went to camp, Chelsea was not born yet. she was in the womb, and Katie and I were counselors at Dry Creek camp, and now Chelsea is driving. So that tells you how long ago it’s been since I went to camp, so pray for me as well. but I’m excited about that. And for all those who’ve worked hard in various ways to even make that possible, we really are grateful for all of you and what you’ve done.

Let’s begin reading in Philippians chapter two in verse one. Philippians chapter two, verse one, it says, So if there isn’t any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself, being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

In 522 BC, Darius was forced to put down an insurrection near Babylon. This is kind of outside our normal biblical history. We’re familiar with 539 BC, you know, the decree of Cyrus and kind of some of the transitions of power that took place. You know, we have you know, the Assyrians, and then we have the Babylonians and the Medes and the Persians with the Greeks, right? So we have these different peoples that we’re aware of, but sometimes there’s these in-between types of things that happen that we’re not as familiar with. But in this insurrection that took place outside of Babylon, there was a man who was claiming to be the rightful heir to the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. And Darius has to go and to kind of stamp this out.

And it’s this interesting story that we are actually given in an inscription. It was found in an ancient city, Visitun, and there’s this massive inscription with a picture of Darius stamping his foot on top of this person, this insurrectionist. And there are a long list of things. These rulers like to do this sort of thing, talk about their victories and the things they had done. Part of this process, though, involved him taking this man and his followers and crucifying them in the forest. They had to lop down tree after tree after tree to make this happen. And it’s pretty interesting in this text. There’s a lot that’s said about what he did to this ruler. He disfigured his body, he put him on display, but when it gets to that part, he just says, I impaled him.

That’s it. There’s nothing else said. Crucifixion was rarely talked about. And when it was talked about, it was talked about in very vague terms. There’s a couple times in the ancient world that we’re familiar with this, and I only point this out because it’s so significant to our beliefs and to our faith. And it may be hard for us to understand the nature of crucifixion in the ancient world, and I want to come back to that thought here in just a moment. But it’s interesting that some 40 or 50 years later, the descendant of Darius, Xerxes, goes into Greece and he raises Athens, burns it to the ground, and of course they’ve set their sights on taking over Greece, which doesn’t happen. You probably know the story that they end up falling, and the Greeks then eventually become dominant over a period of time.

Xerxes flees to Asia and he leaves this governor of Persia in charge of the region, and the Grecians eventually take it back over, and they capture this governor of the Persians in the exact spot that Xerxes first put his foot in the soil in Greece, they crucified him. There’s a message in crucifixion. There’s something being stated when these Persians, when the Grecians, when these ancient people used crucifixion as a punishment, as an execution. In our culture, we are a very sensitive culture, even when it comes to punishment, and we certainly have no kind of execution that even comes close to relating to crucifixion. Our society actually probably, due to even the hidden influence of Christianity, even among those who reject Jesus, seeks humane and quiet ways to go about things like execution.

But this was not at all the way of the ancient world. And so what’s so unique about the cross? You know, Paul writes this message, and he’s talking about them having harmony and one mind and getting together, and kind of in the midst of this, he goes off into this thing about the mind of Christ and what he’s like, that he is obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And today it’s just a symbol, right? It’s a significant symbol. We think of the cross as freedom, as forgiveness of sins, and all this, but why does Paul state it this way? Why is he talking about even death on a cross? I want us to talk this morning just for a few minutes about what the cross was really about, particularly in the ancient world, and see if we can kind of draw some good applications from that and a better understanding of what’s going on here in Scripture, as Paul’s writing things about crucifixion and about what Jesus went through and what that calls us to, and the kind of life that we are to have as those who follow Jesus.

1. The Cross Was a Demonstration of Weakness

First of all, the cross was a demonstration of weakness. It was to put on display powerlessness, defeat. Right? And that goes behind all the stories I just told you about Darius and about Xerxes. This was the part of the message that was being sent. And so often when we think of crucifixion or we do talks about it during the Lord’s Supper, the focus tends to go, because I think, and it’s not completely wrong, I’m not suggesting that, but it tends to go to the pain of crucifixion. And part of that is because we live so comfortably.

Pain was just a part of the ancient world. I mean, if you weren’t on the higher echelons, if you weren’t an important person, your life didn’t tend to be all that comfortable or great. You could be used as a pawn, sometimes in very painful ways, to accomplish the things that the people in power and in control wanted to have happen. So pain in and of itself was not some extraordinary thing. And of course, as part of the process, the pain is part of what went into the message of crucifixion. But it was actually much more than the pain itself. The pain is just a byproduct of something else, a few other things actually, that are much more important in the process of what was happening through crucifixion.

And one of those is the proclamation of defeat. And so when Darius goes into Babylon and he defeats the insurrectionists and he crucifies or impales them, it’s a message to everyone else who would dare stand against him, who would revolt against his empire. This is what happens when you come against those who are in power. This is what takes place. You are defeated. You are weak, you are powerless. Then everything about the manner of execution and the way it was carried out was to display that. Your arms are put out, you have no way of soothing any kind of pain or difficulty. You have no way of trying to fight off birds that are circling you, ready to prounce on you and to prey on your body.

Everything about it is to proclaim how weak and how defeated and how powerless you are in the moment. Might makes right. And imperialism was strength by force. And every place that these world powers went, they had to show their dominance, their crushing influence on their enemies and forced them into submission. Later on in the Roman world, it was sometimes a little different. It was used for slaves as a method of terror. So that you don’t rise up against these other classes of people.

And they’re kind of pronounced in this evil sort of way. In Rome, they just publicly proclaimed it. I mean, here are the classes. This is the class you’re in. You’re not this class. You’re not as good as these people. I mean, that’s the sort of the way it worked. You had the emperor, you had the senatorial class, the equestrian class, you had the plebeians, which were actually free people, you had freedmen who used to be slaves but now are no longer slaves, and then you had slaves. These are the classes of people, and you knew what class you were in, and you couldn’t advance out of your class without some very specific things happening. And everybody knew what those things were, and there was no qualms about it.

That’s who you were. It was public, everyone was aware, and so the slaves were in a certain class and they were kept there for a reason, and they used things like crucifixion to keep them in their place and terrified of stepping out of it. This is the nature of what crucifixion was like. It was about weakness and who had power. It was about defeat. And publicly proclaiming that defeat, sometimes these slaves came from defeat of one nation over another. And so this was part of that process as well of who they were. The Greco-Roman religion was based on self-serving gods, as idolatry is in general. And this is part of their system as well. They were seen more like heavenly patrons. And they were worshipped in that way because people they demanded glory, and the people wanted stuff, right?

You wanted to be blessed, and so it’s kind of this relationship based on that. And the gods were not considered ethical or holy. You can just look at mythology and see the stories and realize all of that. They were seen as superhuman, but they had the same qualities as most humans, just kind of accentuated. And the deification of emperors makes a lot more sense if we have this sort of concept of what they mean about the gods. And it was about their power and about their glory, and so you can kind of understand how the emperor or those in power would then act in those sorts of ways to establish their dominance, right? To show who’s powerful and to show who’s weak.

I want to circle back to some of this as we work through some other things here in a little bit, but the message of the cross is not necessarily just pain. I mean, that’s that’s part of it, but the bigger message at play here is one of defeat. You are defeated. I mean, if you are being taken and put on a cross, you were a slave that was caught running away or not honoring your master, or you were a nation that defied the world power, whatever it was, it’s showing that you are weak and you were defeated. So taking up our and following Jesus, taking up our cross and following Jesus means that sometimes we appear weak to those who were in the world. And at times it is that actually makes us strong.

In the context of what Paul’s doing here in Philippians 2, he’s trying to get these people to work together, right? Have the same mind, have the same soul. It’s talked about the same goals and ambitions. And so this involves things like self-sacrifice. You see why he would bring in Jesus here and use him as an example, right? Thinking of others more than yourself, not doing things out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility. And kind of all of this then works into this cruciform nature of who Jesus is. Right? Trying to take our life and then match it to the way that Jesus lived and the things that Jesus did. It’s this kind of mindset. But even though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave.

There’s something being said here about the nature of his status, that he didn’t grasp on and hold on to this status as deity. Ravage people were not fit for crucifixion. Certainly the elite were not fit for crucifixion. It wasn’t even allowed. But deity definitely was not fit for crucifixion. And yet we see Jesus himself emptying himself of this status, taking on the form of a slave, coming in human form. He understands this, and we need to understand this. In our relationship and our connection to God, this is the relationship. We are slaves of God. We are servants in his kingdom. Paul talks about this other places.

But he did this thinking of others in a self-sacrificial way. And this is the idea Paul wants to permeate these people in Philippi. People who are in this Roman dominated culture, one in which pride is elevated as a good attribute. Looking out for yourself, getting what you can get. Humility, meekness, those are things that are not applauded in Roman culture. And yet Paul is saying, here, look to Jesus. Look to one who is crucified as your leader. You see the irony here. Nobody was looking to that Babylonian insurrectionist as their leader when he was hanging on a cross. No one was looking to that Persian governor as their leader when he was hanging on a cross in Greece. The message was defeat. The message was weakness, powerlessness.

Why would you ever follow someone like that?

2. The Cross Was for Humiliation and Shame

But even more than that, the cross was for the purpose of humiliation and shame. The two sort of go hand in hand, right? The weakness, the powerlessness, but also the humiliation, the shame, the dishonor. And honor, and again, is somewhat difficult for us to understand, I think, in our culture. Honor was the currency of the ancient world. That’s how everything operated. It’s how that caste system worked. If you wanted to move up in your caste at all, it was going to involve paying tribute, giving glory, this kind of exchange of honor and benefits that would take place. And so honor very much is the currency of the age. Today it’s very different. Image is everything, as Andre Agassi said a long time ago, and that has not changed.

Image means everything to people in our world. Self-expression, who I am as a person, my self-identity, all that sort of thing. That’s the currency of our days. It’s very different. And the things that I do and the way that I act and how that affects my family, there are certain areas of culture in which that matters some. I would think it probably does to most of us, if not all of us here. But in a dominant way in our culture, that’s not that important. You go live your own life, and that’s not a reflection on your family. And these are the sorts of things that are said that makes no sense to the ancient world. Who you are and what you’ve done and what happens to you, all of that reflects on your family and on your friends, on everyone around you.

Death alone was not shameful.

Dying for a cause could be honorable. And I really think maybe the only concept in our culture that remains in this way is our military. There’s a sense of honor that sort of connects people in the military and their ambitions and their goals, and it sort of operates in that way. Pretty much everything outside of that operates from a guilt standpoint. You do things until you get caught. I mean, that’s sort of the way things work in our culture. But that’s not the nature of theirs. And so this death on the cross was shameful. Yeah, it’s painful. But what’s going to last a lot longer than that pain is the shame that’s associated with it for everyone in that person’s family and everyone connected to that person.

That’s why the Hebrew writer says in chapter 12, he endured the cross, despising the shame. I mean, the pain’s assumed. It’s just part of how it works. But it’s the shame that is the reproach of all of this that then matters in the days ahead, and the people around you and those who followed you. The cross was the ultimate humiliation. All dignity was removed. Now, this is where the pain comes in, and it is part of this. It’s just a byproduct of the reality of the humiliation process, the disgrace. That you’re stripped naked, you’re beaten. Your body is shown no respect. The way you would typically respect the human body, even for someone that you don’t like or you have disagreements with. There’s no regard for that in the crucifixion process.

And certainly the pain is as part of that, but the disfiguring and the beating of the body just says, this person is unworth, they’re unworthy. We don’t care about them. They are less than nothing. They are worthless. And we’re going to beat their body to a pulp and nail it to a piece of wood to demonstrate how weak they are and how powerless they are, how shameful they are, how much you should not regard them, how you should not follow them, how they have nothing to offer you.

Taking the form of a slave.

And the Father’s going to receive glory, but the means by which he does that is through self sacrifice. It’s by taking care of his people. His people are not pawns that are set out to only take care of him. He said, I didn’t come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many in Mark 10. This is the difference between Jesus, between the true deity, between God and between all the gods that the Romans and every empire before worshipped and served.

3. Jesus Alters the Meaning of the Cross Forever

It tells us that our God is not like that. God is love. He’s willing to stoop to shameful death for our good. And so Jesus alters the meaning of the cross forever. It makes so much sense to us now because we’re so far removed from this, right? And we know the story and we look back. Many of us have heard it our whole lives. And so, and that’s good. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. It’s good that it makes sense to us, but I for a moment at least want us to consider what that looked like 2,000 years ago. The message that was sent in this process, just as it had been sent numerous times before, to numerous other people who, in some way or some fashion, tried to rise to power or influence, and they were struck down and crucified.

And what happened in that process? It’s a little bit like Gamaliel in Acts 5, when he said, Hey, leave them alone. If they’re nothing, they’re going to come to nothing. But if they’re from God, you’re working against God. Gamaliel and his wisdom gives this advice. That’s sort of, that would have been seen as they’re nothing, right? I mean, they’re taken, they’re crucified, they’re done away with, and now they’re gone. But Jesus flips the script on this. Everything changes. It changes in so many different ways, but particularly in the way the cross is viewed, by 400, by 80, 400, the cross had been outlawed. It was no longer used for execution anymore. It now was seen as an honorable thing. It completely changed the way people viewed this tool and this means of terrible and horrible execution, shameful, painful execution.

Now is seen as this symbol of glory and freedom and mercy and grace. We not see the power of Jesus and how by his death and his resurrection. That’s like later on in life, we see like the electric chair as this message of glory and grace. I mean, can we imagine that? And that’s what’s happening here. Unfathomable. There’s nothing more counter-cultural in the first century world than to imagine that your leader and your Lord, the one who is glorified, was nailed to a tree and hung on display for everyone to see, beaten and stripped naked, and disgraced in the eyes of everyone that comes by. And yet, that’s exactly what takes place.

Though it was meant to be a statement of his weakness and meaninglessness and powerlessness.

And get him out of the way. He’s a threat to their power. He’s a threat to their culture. They want to remove him and they want to remove him in such a way that he displays everything we just talked about. How worthless he was and how shameful he was, and that nobody should follow him. And despite all of that and overcoming death, the cross became a declaration of his power, his authority, his global reign over all humanity. Not his defeat, but his victory.

But it became the symbol of his glory and his honor.

And that is why Paul can say he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Paul’s pulling echoes from the book of Isaiah, some of which we’ve seen recently in our study of Isaiah, about this Messiah who’s to come. And he’s saying, This is the Messiah. This is the one that Isaiah talks about, that the knee is going to bow to, and everyone is going to confess that this person is Lord.

And even in the very beginning, the very first sermon, this was declared by Peter’s mouth. This is the message, right? God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified. Unfathomable. How could that ever be the case? And yet, thousands of people on that day. Right after this.

Probably understanding the irony of it all, say, what can we do?

And what’s the answer? How do we make this right? You probably know Peter’s response and the others, repent and every one of you baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you’ll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the answer to this. This was all part of God’s plan. A plan that doesn’t make sense at all from human perspective or human eyes. The cross, which is a sign of powerlessness and humiliation. Jesus completely changes all of that, and now it is a sign of his victory and his glory. And he invites all who will to follow him.

That which may be shameful in the eyes of the world.

Conclusion

To look at the way the world sees things and say, I don’t want to be like that. I’m not going to see it that way. I want to follow what God tells me because God is love. He is different. He knows the answers. He knows what’s right, and the world doesn’t. That’s the message of the cross. It doesn’t make sense to those who don’t believe and don’t want to follow, but to those who do, it is wisdom and it is glory and it is honor. He says, eventually you will reign with Christ for all eternity. And that’s what you’re invited to this morning. You can give up your life for Jesus Christ. Just as he died for us willingly and self-sacrificially, we can die with him.

And scripture tells us how to go about that. We die with him, and we are buried in baptism. We are resurrected in newness of life, ready to walk with him, Romans 6 chapter talks about. That’s the call that we have. And if we’re ready to answer that call, we can give ourselves up just as he gave himself for us. We can have that same mentality, both in our loyalty to Jesus Christ and our harmony with one another to live a life that is in keeping with the message of the cross. Will you come this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing together.