cross

• center of Christianity

143:6.3The first night of the camp on Mount Ger­izim the apos­tles ex­pected that Je­sus would re­buke them for their at­ti­tude to­ward the woman at Ja­cob’s well, but he made no ref­er­ence to the mat­ter. In­stead he gave them that mem­o­rable talk on “The re­al­i­ties which are cen­tral in the king­dom of God.” In any re­li­gion it is very easy to al­low val­ues to be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and to per­mit facts to oc­cupy the place of truth in one’s the­ol­ogy. The fact of the cross be­came the very cen­ter of sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity; but it is not the cen­tral truth of the re­li­gion which may be de­rived from the life and teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• physical description of Jesus’

187:1.1Be­fore leav­ing the court­yard of the prae­to­rium, the sol­diers placed the cross­beam on Je­sus’ shoul­ders. It was the cus­tom to com­pel the con­demned man to carry the cross­beam to the site of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Such a con­demned man did not carry the whole cross, only this shorter tim­ber. The longer and up­right pieces of tim­ber for the three crosses had al­ready been trans­ported to Gol­go­tha and, by the time of the ar­rival of the sol­diers and their pris­on­ers, had been firmly im­planted in the ground.

187:1.2Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the cap­tain led the pro­ces­sion, car­ry­ing small white boards on which had been writ­ten with char­coal the names of the crim­i­nals and the na­ture of the crimes for which they had been con­demned. For the two thieves the cen­tu­rion had no­tices which gave their names, un­der­neath which was writ­ten the one word, “Brig­and.” It was the cus­tom, af­ter the vic­tim had been nailed to the cross­beam and hoisted to his place on the up­right tim­ber, to nail this no­tice to the top of the cross, just above the head of the crim­i­nal, that all wit­nesses might know for what crime the con­demned man was be­ing cru­ci­fied. The leg­end which the cen­tu­rion car­ried to put on the cross of Je­sus had been writ­ten by Pi­late him­self in Latin, Greek, and Ara­maic, and it read: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.”

• Simon of Cyrene bore Jesus’

187:1.9Shortly af­ter pass­ing through the gate on the way out of the city, as Je­sus stag­gered on bear­ing the cross­beam, his phys­i­cal strength mo­men­tar­ily gave way, and he fell be­neath the weight of his heavy bur­den. The sol­diers shouted at him and kicked him, but he could not arise. When the cap­tain saw this, know­ing what Je­sus had al­ready en­dured, he com­manded the sol­diers to de­sist. Then he or­dered a passerby, one Si­mon from Cyrene, to take the cross­beam from Je­sus’ shoul­ders and com­pelled him to carry it the rest of the way to Gol­go­tha.

187:1.10This man Si­mon had come all the way from Cyrene, in north­ern Africa, to at­tend the Pass­over. He was stop­ping with other Cyre­ni­ans just out­side the city walls and was on his way to the tem­ple ser­vices in the city when the Ro­man cap­tain com­manded him to carry Je­sus’ cross­beam. Si­mon lin­gered all through the hours of the Mas­ter’s death on the cross, talk­ing with many of his friends and with his en­e­mies. Af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and be­fore leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem, he be­came a valiant be­liever in the gospel of the king­dom, and when he re­turned home, he led his fam­ily into the heav­enly king­dom. His two sons, Alexan­der and Ru­fus, be­came very ef­fec­tive teach­ers of the new gospel in Africa. But Si­mon never knew that Je­sus, whose bur­den he bore, and the Jew­ish tu­tor who once be­friended his in­jured son, were the same per­son.

• physical description of Jesus’

187:2.1The sol­diers first bound the Mas­ter’s arms with cords to the cross­beam, and then they nailed his hands to the wood. When they had hoisted this cross­beam up on the post, and af­ter they had nailed it se­curely to the up­right tim­ber of the cross, they bound and nailed his feet to the wood, us­ing one long nail to pen­e­trate both feet. The up­right tim­ber had a large peg, in­serted at the proper height, which served as a sort of sad­dle for sup­port­ing the body weight. The cross was not high, the Mas­ter’s feet be­ing only about three feet from the ground. He was there­fore able to hear all that was said of him in de­ri­sion and could plainly see the ex­pres­sion on the faces of all those who so thought­lessly mocked him. And also could those pres­ent eas­ily hear all that Je­sus said dur­ing these hours of lin­ger­ing tor­ture and slow death.

188:4.1Al­though Je­sus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mor­tal man nor to pro­vide some sort of ef­fec­tive ap­proach to an oth­er­wise of­fended and un­for­giv­ing God; even though the Son of Man did not of­fer him­self as a sac­ri­fice to ap­pease the wrath of God and to open the way for sin­ful man to ob­tain sal­va­tion; not­with­stand­ing that these ideas of atone­ment and pro­pi­ti­a­tion are er­ro­neous, nonethe­less, there are sig­nif­i­cances at­tached to this death of Je­sus on the cross which should not be over­looked. It is a fact that Uran­tia has be­come known among other neigh­bor­ing in­hab­ited plan­ets as the “World of the Cross.”

188:4.2Je­sus de­sired to live a full mor­tal life in the flesh on Uran­tia. Death is, or­di­nar­ily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mor­tal drama. In your well-meant ef­forts to es­cape the su­per­sti­tious er­rors of the false in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the mean­ing of the death on the cross, you should be care­ful not to make the great mis­take of fail­ing to per­ceive the true sig­nif­i­cance and the gen­uine im­port of the Mas­ter’s death.

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

188:4.4Be­fore Je­sus lived on earth, you might pos­si­bly have been jus­ti­fied in be­liev­ing in such a God, but not since the Mas­ter lived and died among your fel­low mor­tals. Moses taught the dig­nity and jus­tice of a Cre­ator God; but Je­sus por­trayed the love and mercy of a heav­enly Fa­ther.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

188:4.6Je­sus lived and died for a whole uni­verse, not just for the races of this one world. While the mor­tals of the realms had sal­va­tion even be­fore Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, it is nev­er­the­less a fact that his be­stowal on this world greatly il­lu­mi­nated the way of sal­va­tion; his death did much to make for­ever plain the cer­tainty of mor­tal sur­vival af­ter death in the flesh.

188:4.7Though it is hardly proper to speak of Je­sus as a sac­ri­fi­cer, a ran­somer, or a re­deemer, it is wholly cor­rect to re­fer to him as a sav­ior. He for­ever made the way of sal­va­tion (sur­vival) more clear and cer­tain; he did bet­ter and more surely show the way of sal­va­tion for all the mor­tals of all the worlds of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

188:4.8When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and lov­ing Fa­ther, the only con­cept which Je­sus ever taught, you must forth­with, in all con­sis­tency, ut­terly aban­don all those prim­i­tive no­tions about God as an of­fended monarch, a stern and all-pow­er­ful ruler whose chief de­light is to de­tect his sub­jects in wrong­do­ing and to see that they are ad­e­quately pun­ished, un­less some be­ing al­most equal to him­self should vol­un­teer to suf­fer for them, to die as a sub­sti­tute and in their stead. The whole idea of ran­som and atone­ment is in­com­pat­i­ble with the con­cept of God as it was taught and ex­em­pli­fied by Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. The in­fi­nite love of God is not sec­ondary to any­thing in the di­vine na­ture.

188:4.9All this con­cept of atone­ment and sac­ri­fi­cial sal­va­tion is rooted and grounded in self­ish­ness. Je­sus taught that ser­vice to one’s fel­lows is the high­est con­cept of the broth­er­hood of spirit be­liev­ers. Sal­va­tion should be taken for granted by those who be­lieve in the fa­ther­hood of God. The be­liever’s chief con­cern should not be the self­ish de­sire for per­sonal sal­va­tion but rather the un­selfish urge to love and, there­fore, serve one’s fel­lows even as Je­sus loved and served mor­tal men.

188:4.10Nei­ther do gen­uine be­liev­ers trou­ble them­selves so much about the fu­ture pun­ish­ment of sin. The real be­liever is only con­cerned about pres­ent sep­a­ra­tion from God. True, wise fa­thers may chas­ten their sons, but they do all this in love and for cor­rec­tive pur­poses. They do not pun­ish in anger, nei­ther do they chas­tise in ret­ri­bu­tion.

188:4.11Even if God were the stern and le­gal monarch of a uni­verse in which jus­tice ruled su­preme, he cer­tainly would not be sat­is­fied with the child­ish scheme of sub­sti­tut­ing an in­no­cent suf­ferer for a guilty of­fender.

188:4.12The great thing about the death of Je­sus, as it is re­lated to the en­rich­ment of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and the en­large­ment of the way of sal­va­tion, is not the fact of his death but rather the su­perb man­ner and the match­less spirit in which he met death.

188:4.13This en­tire idea of the ran­som of the atone­ment places sal­va­tion upon a plane of un­re­al­ity; such a con­cept is purely philo­sophic. Hu­man sal­va­tion is real; it is based on two re­al­i­ties which may be grasped by the crea­ture’s faith and thereby be­come in­cor­po­rated into in­di­vid­ual hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: the fact of the fa­ther­hood of God and its cor­re­lated truth, the broth­er­hood of man. It is true, af­ter all, that you are to be “for­given your debts, even as you for­give your debtors.”

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

188:5.3Je­sus, by the power of his per­sonal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose bet­ter ways of liv­ing. Je­sus por­trayed a de­liv­er­ance from the past which in it­self prom­ised a tri­umph for the fu­ture. For­give­ness thus pro­vided sal­va­tion. The beauty of di­vine love, once fully ad­mit­ted to the hu­man heart, for­ever de­stroys the charm of sin and the power of evil.

188:5.4The suf­fer­ings of Je­sus were not con­fined to the cru­ci­fix­ion. In re­al­ity, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth spent up­ward of twenty-five years on the cross of a real and in­tense mor­tal ex­is­tence. The real value of the cross con­sists in the fact that it was the su­preme and fi­nal ex­pres­sion of his love, the com­pleted rev­e­la­tion of his mercy.

188:5.5On mil­lions of in­hab­ited worlds, tens of tril­lions of evolv­ing crea­tures who may have been tempted to give up the moral strug­gle and aban­don the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Je­sus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, in­spired by the sight of God’s lay­ing down his in­car­nate life in de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man.

• symbol of triumph of love over hate, sacred service

188:5.6The tri­umph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Je­sus’ at­ti­tude to­ward those who as­sailed him. He made the cross an eter­nal sym­bol of the tri­umph of love over hate and the vic­tory of truth over evil when he prayed, “Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” That de­vo­tion of love was con­ta­gious through­out a vast uni­verse; the dis­ci­ples caught it from their Mas­ter. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this ser­vice, said, as they stoned him to death, “Lay not this sin to their charge.”

188:5.7The cross makes a su­preme ap­peal to the best in man be­cause it dis­closes one who was will­ing to lay down his life in the ser­vice of his fel­low men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be will­ing to lay down his life for his friends—and Je­sus had such a love that he was will­ing to lay down his life for his en­e­mies, a love greater than any which had hith­erto been known on earth.

188:5.8On other worlds, as well as on Uran­tia, this sub­lime spec­ta­cle of the death of the hu­man Je­sus on the cross of Gol­go­tha has stirred the emo­tions of mor­tals, while it has aroused the high­est de­vo­tion of the an­gels.

• symbol of triumph of love over hate, sacred service

188:5.9The cross is that high sym­bol of sa­cred ser­vice, the de­vo­tion of one’s life to the wel­fare and sal­va­tion of one’s fel­lows. The cross is not the sym­bol of the sac­ri­fice of the in­no­cent Son of God in the place of guilty sin­ners and in or­der to ap­pease the wrath of an of­fended God, but it does stand for­ever, on earth and through­out a vast uni­verse, as a sa­cred sym­bol of the good be­stow­ing them­selves upon the evil and thereby sav­ing them by this very de­vo­tion of love. The cross does stand as the to­ken of the high­est form of un­selfish ser­vice, the su­preme de­vo­tion of the full be­stowal of a righ­teous life in the ser­vice of whole­hearted min­istry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great sym­bol of the be­stowal life of Je­sus truly in­spires all of us to want to go and do like­wise.

188:5.10When think­ing men and women look upon Je­sus as he of­fers up his life on the cross, they will hardly again per­mit them­selves to com­plain at even the sever­est hard­ships of life, much less at petty ha­rass­ments and their many purely fic­ti­tious grievances. His life was so glo­ri­ous and his death so tri­umphant that we are all en­ticed to a will­ing­ness to share both. There is true draw­ing power in the whole be­stowal of Mi­chael, from the days of his youth to this over­whelm­ing spec­ta­cle of his death on the cross.

188:5.11Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a rev­e­la­tion of God, you do not look with the eyes of the prim­i­tive man nor with the view­point of the later bar­bar­ian, both of whom re­garded God as a re­lent­less Sov­er­eign of stern jus­tice and rigid law-en­force­ment. Rather, make sure that you see in the cross the fi­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the love and de­vo­tion of Je­sus to his life mis­sion of be­stowal upon the mor­tal races of his vast uni­verse. See in the death of the Son of Man the cli­max of the un­fold­ing of the Fa­ther’s di­vine love for his sons of the mor­tal spheres. The cross thus por­trays the de­vo­tion of will­ing af­fec­tion and the be­stowal of vol­un­tary sal­va­tion upon those who are will­ing to re­ceive such gifts and de­vo­tion. There was noth­ing in the cross which the Fa­ther re­quired—only that which Je­sus so will­ingly gave, and which he re­fused to avoid.

188:5.12If man can­not oth­er­wise ap­pre­ci­ate Je­sus and un­der­stand the mean­ing of his be­stowal on earth, he can at least com­pre­hend the fel­low­ship of his mor­tal suf­fer­ings. No man can ever fear that the Cre­ator does not know the na­ture or ex­tent of his tem­po­ral af­flic­tions.

188:5.13We know that the death on the cross was not to ef­fect man’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to God but to stim­u­late man’s re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal love and his Son’s un­end­ing mercy, and to broad­cast these uni­ver­sal truths to a whole uni­verse.