The Central scandal of Christianity has ALWAYS been the Crucifixion. This was the most disgraceful kind of death known. It bore implications labeling its victim as a socially undesirable person. It was the kind of death reserved for those who had been found to be dangerous to the social fabric and the political order. It is no wonder that the people of that world, including those in the Roman Empire of the first century, LAUGHED at the claims made by Christians about one of those, Jesus of Nazareth, who’d been humiliated with this manner of death.
The Gospel writer John uses the word Lifted Up frequently as a way of referring to the crucifixion (John 3:13-15, 8:28, 12:32 & 34, etc). Actually it is an ambiguous word in Greek. It could be used to describe the process of lifting a person up onto a cross for execution; but it could also be used for the process of enthroning a King… lifting the person onto the throne and up to the status of monarch. What John is telling us in using the ambiguous word Lifted Up to refer to Jesus’ crucifixion is that this act of disgraceful death, is in Jesus’ case ALSO the means of exalting him as the world’s King. The double meaning of the word Lifted Up, is John’s way of suggesting that if with one eye you see the disgrace, then with the other eye (the eye of faith) you can see the love of God enthroned.
The King of love is not humiliated in his death. On the contrary his death is the enthronement of all that he stands for. It is the elevation of love to its proper place. Love is not disgraced in one who gives up his life for his friends. The Scandal of Good Friday and its Cross is that it forces us to examine our understanding of the love of God, and the love which God enables through us.
Baptized, to imitate His love,
