Crucifixion was a horrible way to die. In the First Century B. C., the Roman orator Cicero wrote this about crucifixion,

To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is – What? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed. . . . The very word “cross” should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things [that is, the procedures of crucifixion] or the endurance of them, but . . . the expectation, indeed the mere mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man.¹

John Stott, in his book The Cross of Christ, describes the harassment the early Christians endured for worshipping a crucified man:

So then, whether their background was Roman or Jewish or both, the early enemies of Christianity lost no opportunity to ridicule the claim that God’s anointed and man’s Savior ended his life on a cross. The idea was crazy.

This is well illustrated by a graffito from the second century, discovered on the Palatine Hill in Rome, on the wall of a house considered by some scholars to have been used as a school for imperial pages. It is the first surviving picture of the crucifixion, and is a caricature. A crude drawing depicts, stretched on a cross, a man with the head of a donkey. To the left stands another man, with one arm raised in worship. Unevenly scribbled underneath are the words ALEXAMENOS CEBETE THEON, “Alexamenos worships God.”

The cartoon is now in the Kircherian Museum in Rome. Whatever the origin of the accusation of donkey-worship (which was attributed to both Jews and Christians), it was the concept of worshipping a crucified man which was being help up to derision.²

Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for slaves and criminals of the worst class. No Roman citizen or free man was ever allowed to be crucified and no one in their right mind would think such a punishment honorable.³

So the question we should be asking is: Why was Jesus Christ killed like this? Jesus was the Son of God.⁴In Him all things live and move and have their being.⁵ He upholds all things by His power.⁶As God, He is sovereign over of all creation;⁷ so surely Jesus could have chosen a more pleasant way to die. He could have died in His sleep or of old age. He could have been beheaded or strangled or drowned. He could have choked on some meat or had a heart attack or a stroke or endured death by disease. There are a thousand different ways that the Son of God could have chosen for His death and He chose what could have been the worst one.

Why? Why did Jesus die this way? Why not choose a quicker, less painful way to die?

The Bible gives us 5 reasons why Jesus Christ died on a cross.⁸

1. To Save Sinners From Hell

John 3:14-18 says,

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Speaking with Nicodemus, a Jewish leader (v. 1), Jesus reminds him of the time when Moses built a bronze snake in the wilderness to heal the Israelites of their deadly snakebites (Num 21:4-9). Throughout their wanderings in the desert, whenever a Hebrew was bitten by a poisonous snake, he could look up to this statue and be healed. In John 3, Jesus says, “In a similar way, I will be lifted up on a cross that whoever believes in Me might be saved.”

What about those who do not believe? Verse 18 says “he who does not believe has been judged already.” Tying the cross in with belief, Jesus says that to be saved, an individual must believe in His work on the cross. To be lost, an individual must refuse to do so. John the Baptist says it this way in John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Anyone who looks to the cross of Jesus Christ in a saving way will not be condemned because Jesus was crucified to save sinners from Hell.

2. To Punish Sin with His Blood

Isaiah, prophesying several centuries before the arrival of the Messiah,⁹ gave this prophesy in Isaiah 53:1-10,

Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.

But He was pierced for our iniquities;
The chastening of our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers.
So He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.

Who crushed Jesus? Who caused Him to suffer? Who was He stricken and smitten and afflicted by? God.¹⁰

Why? Why would God kill His own Son? Isaiah does not tell us but Hebrews 9:26 does. It says, “but now once at the consummation of the ages [Jesus] has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Jesus Christ was punished . . . He was crucified . . . He was despised and forsaken and afflicted . . . to do away with sin.

To quote another passage from Hebrews, “without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (9:22). The process of salvation was made very clear in the Old and New Testaments. A life can only be atoned¹¹ for with another life. The punishment of death that our sins deserve can only be avoided with another death. Blood must be spilt if our sins are to be forgiven. Punishment must be enacted to bring about salvation. As Leviticus 17:11 says,

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.

And the way this played out in the Old Testament is that animals were sacrificed to temporarily pay for Israel’s sins.¹² But in the New Testament, a much greater sacrifice has been offered for both Jews and Gentiles. To save sinners, God has punished His One and Only Son and He has poured out his blood. The spotless, perfect, sinless blood of Jesus Christ was spilt for the sins of every believer. First Peter 1:18-19 puts it this way,

. . . knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

His blood was so perfect that Jesus has removed the penalty of sin once and for all in the lives of His followers. Through Jesus Christ, their sins have been punished completely. Nothing else needs to be done. To quote John Murray:

Our debts are not cancelled; they are liquidated. Christ procured redemption and therefore he secured it. He met in himself and swallowed up the full total of divine condemnation and judgment against sin.¹³

Jesus was crucified to punish sin with His blood.

3. To Satisfy God’s Justice

Romans 3:21-26 says,

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; to whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

This was to demonstration His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Sin does not merely upset God; it infuriates Him. The Lord has a moral hatred to anything that breaks His law. Psalm 5:5 says, “The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.” Psalm 11:5 says, “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates.” The Lord hates sin and He hates the lovers of violence because they go against His nature. They violate His holiness. And, in order for salvation to be offered to mankind, a sacrifice must be provided that makes God both just and the justifier (Rom 3:26). The sacrifice must be able to make the sinners righteous and allow God to stay righteous as well. All God’s anger and hatred towards sin would have to be poured out on this sacrifice in order for His justice to be satisfied. And that is exactly what God did with Jesus Christ.

That is what the word “propitiation” means in Romans 3:25 (quoted above). Propitiation is “The turning away of the wrath of God because of the offering of Christ.”¹⁴ God the Son offered Himself as a sacrifice to God the Father so that the Father might turn His wrath away from believers and turn it completely towards the Son.

Jonathan Edwards described propitiation this way:

God dealt with [Christ] as if he had been exceedingly angry with him, and as though he had been the object of his dreadful wrath. This made all the sufferings of Christ the more terrible to him, because they were from the hands of his Father, whom he infinitely loved, and whose infinite love he had eternal experience of. Besides, it was an effect of God’s wrath that he forsook Christ. This caused Christ to cry out . . . “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

This was infinitely terrible to Christ. Christ’s knowledge of the glory of the Father, and the sense and experience he had had of the worth of his Father’s love to him, made the withholding the pleasant ideas and manifestations of his Father’s love as terrible to him, as the sense and knowledge of his hatred is to the damned, that have no knowledge of God’s excellency, no love to him, nor any experience of the infinite sweetness of his love.¹⁵

Jesus was crucified to satisfy God’s justice. He was treated as if He were lost so that God might save us.¹⁶

4. To Justify Sinners

The fourth reason Jesus died on the cross goes right along with the third. Not only did Jesus satisfy God’s justice, He also made sinners just because those who have sinned are now regarded by God as if they had never committed one unjust act. Again, Romans 3:23-24 says,

. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus . . .

Or, as 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it,

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus Christ has now justified sinners. He has now made them holy in the eyes of a holy God. His holiness has now been given to them and He has received their unholiness. This is what is known as substitution. “Substitution occurs when one takes the place of another. Christ took the place of sinners, suffering the penalty of sin that was due them.”¹⁷ To be a substitute for someone else is to be their replacement. Jesus Christ died on the cross as our replacement and now God gives us His just reward. Believers who have come to Him in faith and repentance are now treated as if they had perfectly kept God’s law.

[Jesus] has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it, and fill us with it; and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them . . .

Our most merciful Father . . . sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him the sins of all men, saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and, briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now cometh the law and saith: I find him a sinner . . . therefore let him die upon the cross.¹⁸

Jesus received our curse that we might receive His blessing. He was regarded as unjust that we might be regarded as just. He was treated as unrighteous that we might be treated as righteous. He justified sinners. And it all happened on the cross.

5. To Be Made Perfect Through Suffering

Hebrews 2:10 says:

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

Exodus tells us that the Israelites were to keep the Passover lambs in their homes for two weeks until it was time to sacrifice them (Ex 12:1-6). They did this to familiarize themselves with the animals . . . to bring a personal touch to the sacrifice. Such a familiarization would make the sacrifice meaningful and more costly to the Israelites. In a similar way, the author of Hebrews says that Jesus Christ was to become familiar with suffering to the point that it perfected Him.

The idea in verse 10 is not that Jesus was morally imperfect before He suffered and morally perfect afterwards. Although Jesus was tempted like any man while He lived on this earth,¹⁹ He was completely without sin.²⁰ So verse 10 does not refer to moral perfection. Rather, the idea here is that Jesus’ suffering, while bringing salvation to all of mankind, also gave Him the ability to relate to all of mankind. Verses 11-13 go on to say:

For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying,

“I will proclaim your name to my brethren,
In the midst of congregation I will sing your praise.”

And again,
“I will put my trust in Him.”

And again,
”Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.”

Hebrews 4:15-16 states:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Jesus was not perfected in righteousness, He was perfected in experience. He was perfected in His ability to relate to all of mankind. As one commentator put it:

What the author is saying is that there is a perfection that results from actually having suffered and that this is different from the perfection of being ready to suffer. The bud may be perfect, but there is a difference between its perfection and that of the flower.²¹

To quote from another:

In order to be a perfect high priest, a person must sympathize with those on whose behalf he acts, and he cannot sympathize with them unless he can enter into their experiences and share them for himself. Jesus did just this.²²

No matter what you are going through in this life, you will never experience a pain greater than Jesus experienced. You will never be whipped and beaten and crucified and spat upon and mistreated like Jesus was. And, even if you are, you will never go through it without sin and you will never suffer for the sins of the world. You will never be offered to God as a sacrifice for sins you did not commit.

Jesus Christ can relate to your pain because, as a human being, he experienced your pain times infinity. He suffered emotionally, physically, and spiritually in ways that we cannot imagined.

And it perfected Him.

For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are being tempted (Heb 2:18).

CONCLUSION

When my wife and I were in Jerusalem, we asked the tour guide to show us where Jesus was crucified. There is now a church built on the traditional location but our guide said it was a originally a stone quarry where the Romans dug rock out of the earth for Herod the Great’s building projects. It was located outside the city walls and it would have been used as something like a First Century garbage dump. Refuse and other unwanted materials would have been thrown into it.

The only place to crucify a man in A. D. 30 was next to garbage. If you were crucified 2,000 years ago, you were not considered to be worth much more than trash.

Why would Jesus suffer this way? Why would the Son of God allow Himself to die such a humiliating death? I have given you 5 answers to that question but I think we could sum it all up with this: As closely as it could be done, Jesus’ physical sufferings mirrored his spiritual sufferings. The physical represented the spiritual.

Before I explain that, it needs to be clarified that Jesus did not suffer physically what He suffered spiritually. To bear the world’s sins . . . To have the anger of His Almighty Father poured out on Him in full . . . To be crushed by God . . . To feel forsaken from His beloved . . . all of this in no way perfectly matched His death on the cross. Many people in Jesus’ day were crucified and, while it was an agonizing death, it did not come close to bearing God’s anger for the sins of the world. In the sense of suffering, Jesus’ crucifixion did not compare to His propitiation. His crucifixion killed Him; His propitiation crushed Him. His crucifixion was painful; His propitiation was Hell. But, on some level, the physical mirrored the spiritual. One was as close as He could get to the other (if I may use that expression).

His betrayal. His mock trials. His beatings. His mockery from the Roman soldiers. His scourging. His crown of thorns. His crucifixion. All of this paralleled the suffering that went on in His soul. While we will never know the torment that Jesus experienced spiritually as a result of our sins, we do know the torment that He experienced physically and it was terrible. And it revealed something of the pain that was in His soul.

And it was all done for the glory of God. “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.”²² God was glorified that Jesus Christ was crucified for our salvation.

End Notes

1 Quoted in John R. W. Stott’s The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006 ed.) 30.

2 Ibid., 31.

3 Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1967 ed.) 227.

4 Matt 16:16; Mk 1:10-11.

5 Acts 17:28; Heb 2:10.

6 Heb 1:3.

7 Matt 28:18.

8 This list is not intended to be comprehensive.

9 John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006) 755. Isaiah was written some time in the 7th century B.C. while Jesus Christ was born in the 1st Century A. D.

10 For more information about God killing His own Son, see Stephen Cavness’ article “Who Killed Jesus” in the 2010 issue of /jtst/.

11 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000). Atonement is “The work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation” (1236).

12 Those sacrifices were not a permanent atonement for sin but “a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1). See Hebrews 10:1-18 for a further explanation about this.

13 Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1955) 58.

14 Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1999 ed.) 630.

15 Jonathan Edwards, Works, ed. by E. Hickman (London: Banner of Truth, 1975) 2:575.

16 2 Cor 5:21.

17 Thomas Oden, Systematic Theology, Volume Two (Peabody, Mass.: Hendricksen Publishers, Inc., 2006) 380.

18 Martin Luther quoted in J. I. Packer & Mark Dever’s In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007) 85.

19 Heb 4:15.

20 1 Pet 2:22.

21 Leon Morris, Hebrews in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981) 27.

22 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews in The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman Publishing Company, 1990) 81.

23 Isa 53:10.