What Men Did

So the people reasoned. And so they acted. The very manner in which they did away with Jesus seemed to be an ironic confirmation that they were right. For there was a verse in the Jewish law, "Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree" (quoted in Gal 3: 13), suggesting that a man who is put to death by crucifixion ("tree"=wood=cross) is one who stands under the curse of God. What could be more obvious than that Jesus' crucifixion meant that he had been rejected by God, and that he was not the promised Messiah after all? Messiahs don't "hang on a tree"; they conquer, they rule in glory.

Now that, whether we like it or not, is the way most first century people reasoned when confronted with the preposterous claim that Jesus was the Messiah for whom they had been waiting. We have to face very squarely the fact that this is so. Jesus did not win all the multitudes to him by a pleasant personality. He won a few people, yes (though most of them deserted him in the pinch and left him to go to his death without them). But many other people rejected him vigorously and absolutely. They flatly denied his claim, called it a blasphemy, and did their best to get him executed once and for all.

They succeeded.

Or at least, they thought they did. The fact that his death was not the end of the story is a fact we shall presently have to examine. But before we do so, we must realize that his life was a "failure" in the sense in which we ordinarily use that word. What kind of Messiah would be put to death in the first century equivalent of an electric chair, as a common, ordinary criminal, after successful prosecution by both the religious and the civil authorities? A strange Messiah indeed, hardly worth a second glance!