Death into Life

I've been reflecting recently on symbols, particularly symbols of death and the way that God likes to subvert them. The NT is littered with symbols of death that mean life for us: sacrifice, blood, the cross. God has literally, and symbolically, turned death into life. Our life is in death: Jesus' death on the cross brought us life, we're cleansed by his blood, we die with him in baptism, we die to ourselves, we die to live. Jesus triumphed over death, for it had no hold on him. God raised him from death, as he will raise us all. Blood, sacrifice, the cross no longer mean death to us, but life!

"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." 2 Corinthians 4.10-11


I've heard people compare wearing a cross to wearing a little electric chair around the neck. A useful analogy perhaps, expressing some of the absurdity of wearing an execution device as a fashion statement, but I suggest it doesn't go half-way far enough. The electric chair doesn't have a fraction of the symbolic power wielded by the cross two thousand years ago.

Crucifixion was the Roman's preferred method of execution: gruesome, public, efficient. It was an excruciatingly painful way to die, deliberately lengthy and public. Part of its usefulness for the Romans was the way it allowed them to humiliate their enemies in defeat, and display publicly the consequences of disobedience and rebellion. Famously, in 71BC, Emperor Crassus ordered 6600 rebellious slaves crucified, one every 1000 paces, on the Appian Way between Capua and Rome, the defeated followers of Spartacus, who led the slaves in an uprising against Rome from 73-71BC. Crassus never ordered the crosses taken down, so this gruesome reminder of the consequences of rebellion remained to warn travellers on his highway for many years, perhaps decades.

To the first century Roman world the cross signified Roman domination, the power of the Roman state to subdue its enemies. To the nations controlled by Rome the cross was a symbol of occupation and oppression, slavery and fear. I cannot think of a modern equivalent that comes close.

The electric chair, if anything, symbolises the kind of bloodless, clinical death favoured by the American judicial system, in which most states now favour lethal injection (the electric chair is seen as too barbaric). Executions, as carried out in the modern Western world, are tightly controlled, relatively private and carefully designed not to offend the sensibilities of law-abiding citizens. These methods of execution have no power as symbols, hardly even summoning up the reality of death, from which we all live happily sheltered. Most of us have never even seen a dead person, let alone watched them die in agony.

It is hardly possible for us to grasp the magnitude of the change in fortunes of the cross as a symbol. Jesus' death and resurrection turned the most disgusting and oppressive symbol of death and bondage the world had ever seen into the most powerful symbol of love and freedom in the earth and heavens. Talk about a victory! This is subversion of the highest order. God took the worst the enemy could offer and made it his most potent symbol of love and grace.

"..having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Colossians 2.15


You need the resurrection to complete the story, the victory over death, but that doesn't diminish the eternal significance of the cross. Jesus isn't only the risen King, he's our crucified Lord. At God's right hand, but still displaying the wounds of death, in his hands and side. Jesus' death is forever part of who God is; the Lamb who was slain,"chosen before the creation of the world" (1 Peter 1.20), now stands "in the centre of the throne" (Rev 5.6).

"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!" Revelation 5.12

Amen!