Crucifixion vs. The Cross

Tim Challies makes an interesting point regarding the Son of God movie that releases this Friday: the movie will present the crucifixion without the cross.

What’s the difference? The crucifixion is the barbaric torture used by the Romans to execute someone in a slow manner where the person drowns to death over the course of hours. (You may remember at the end of the Gospels’ account, soldiers broke the legs of the other two men hanging with Jesus in order to hasten their death before the Sabbath Passover began; they didn’t break Jesus’ legs because he had already died.)

What cannot be presented in a movie or on a TV screen — and which *must* be presented in words — is the glorious, unfair exchange of Jesus’ righteousness with our sin … on the cross.

In your conversations with both saved and lost friends and family members, please remember to point out this fact. Many men were crucified, but only one Man went to the cross and made the exchange a possibility and a reality.

Think about it. How many hymns and praise choruses even mention the crucifixion? And how many hymns and choruses concentrate on what happened on the cross?

What happened on the cross was so much more than a crucifixion.