The Passion and Exaltation of Jesus

Introduction

Human cruelty toward members of its own species has been a characteristic of our sinful race since the time of the fall. Though the means of perpetrating cruelty change with times and cultures, there have always been and are now individuals, communities, and nations that have devised ways to cause suffering to others--often out of sheer maliciousness and evil, but also under the guise of justice.

No one knows who devised crucifixion as a method for executing the most despised people in the Roman Empire, though it was clearly designed to cause intense suffering in the crucified and, since executions were done in public places, to arouse fear in the spectators. The suffering of the crucified was considered part of the just punishment meted out to wrongdoers. Even one of those put to death with Jesus acknowledged this. When one of the thieves crucified with Jesus railed at him, the other responded, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:40-41).

Yet, as is always the case in even the best of human institutions, travesties against justice occur, sometimes knowingly and blatantly--for rulers themselves are also sinners. Even the thief who spoke up knew enough of the circumstances of Jesus’ condemnation to say further, “but this man has done nothing wrong.”

The condemnation of Jesus by the members of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, and his sentence to death by Pilate were clearly and openly unjust. His death was at first seen to be not only a triumph of evil over goodness but also a devastating catastrophe for his follows. Two of Jesus’ disciples, speaking of his death while on the road to Emmaus, said, “Our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:20-21). Evidently they believed that all had been lost and their hopes had been dashed.

Jesus, however, was no mere victim of a legal travesty. He alone, of all people, being truly human and truly God, was able, by his suffering, to transform the meaning of suffering. The crucifixion and all the events surrounding it had been anticipated and known in the foreknowledge of God, and made the means of the forgiveness of sin and the remedy for the fall of humanity. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26) responded Jesus to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). 

“The scriptures” in the above quote means what we now call the Old Testament. The first passage from the Old Testament that Christians used to proclaim the Gospel was Isaiah 53, which includes the lines, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Therefore, since the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus--his passion and exaltation --the very worst that the worst and most powerful sinners can do is not enough to thwart the will of God. He has even taken crucifixion, one of the cruelest means of punishment ever devised by the cunning of perverted humans, and made it the means of the healing of the world--individual by individual, community by community, nation by nation.

In these paintings by Bill Baumann, you will find the fruit of one man’s reflection on the events that took place in the early first century, but have transformed the entire world, both its history and its future, and made it new.