A Lent Study: Week 5 – Cross

 

“He was pierced for our transgressions… and by His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)  

“We preach Christ crucified… the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24)

The cross does not appear in the Old Testament, but the reality is already known. Israel knew the horror of public execution on wood, the shame of bodies displayed on stakes, and the weight of covenant curses. Deuteronomy mentions the one “hung on a tree” as cursed (Deuteronomy 21:22–23), where sin and judgment were not abstract ideas but visible realities. The prophets saw empires like Assyria and Babylon use poles and stakes to display their power, and Esther records Haman’s execution on a great wooden stake (Esther 7:9–10). These are not crosses, but the same torture seen through the cross. Alongside this, Israel carried the memory of the Valley of Hinnom — Gehenna — where child sacrifice had taken place (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31–32). It became a symbol of everything Israel rejected: idolatry, violence, the destruction of innocence. By Jesus’ time, Gehenna had become a metaphor for divine judgment, consequences of turning from God were imagined in fire and ruin.

Jesus knew this history. When He spoke of Gehenna, His “hell,” He was drawing on Israel’s deepest wounds — the memory of children offered to false gods — and setting the stage for the Child offered not by human cruelty but by divine love. Isaiah’s suffering servant stands in the centre of this, bearing wounds not for his own sin but for the sins of others (Isaiah 53). He is crushed, pierced, and sacrificed. The imagery is not crucifixion, yet it resonates the same themes: innocence, suffering for the guilty, love absorbing violence, God entering into human pain. Collectively, stakes, trees, sacrifice, and the memory of Gehenna all shape Israel’s imagination long before Rome invents the cross. The Old Testament therefore gives us the world in which the cross will make sense — a world longing for a final sacrifice, healing, and act of love that will gather these shadows into one redeeming light.

Then Jesus enters the story. The Gospels slow down at the cross. Chapters that moved quickly now linger. The cross is not an interruption to Jesus’ ministry; it is its climax. He speaks of it repeatedly: the Son of Man must suffer, take up your cross and follow me, this is my blood of the covenant. The Greek word stauros means an instrument of execution — shameful, public, humiliating. Rome used it to crush resistance. Jesus transforms it into the place where God’s love is seen. Paul refuses to move past it. “We preach Christ crucified.” For Paul, the cross is not a tragic necessity; it is the wisdom and power of God. It is where the old covenant meets the new, the law meets grace, and death meets resurrection. The cross becomes the hinge between covenants — the turning point of the entire biblical story.

Jesus does not simply die on a cross; He carries it, shouldering the weight of human violence, betrayal, abandonment, and sin. He enters the suffering servant’s story, becomes the Passover lamb, fulfils the covenant, and absorbs the world’s brokenness. He refuses shortcuts, retaliation, or to save Himself. At the cross, Jesus reveals God not as distant judge but as self‑giving love. Father, Son, and Spirit are united in this act of love. The cross is not God’s anger unleashed but God’s love poured out.

Lent leads us here. The cross asks: what does love look like. Lent leads us not to despair but to the depth of God’s commitment, where mercy becomes visible, repentance becomes restoration, wilderness becomes homecoming, where dust becomes glory, and where the cross becomes a doorway through which resurrection enters.

Today, crosses are everywhere — jewellery, tattoos, logos, architecture. But the biblical cross is not an accessory; it is a calling. We are called to live by the cross, to carry it, and to look at it as the cost of love — the place where God takes what is broken and dead and makes it whole and alive. Israel knew the weight of suffering on wood, the terror and public shame; Jesus knew it more deeply, bearing it not as punishment but as love. So, when we take up the cross, we lift not only what Israel once feared and what Jesus once carried, but the accumulated weight of human pain across thousands of years, trusting that in this one act of hope and love, God is still making all things new.

A reflection  

The cross is the place where God’s love is revealed in its fullest depth — a love that suffers, carries, absorbs, and transforms. It is the hinge of the story, the centre of salvation, and the shape of the life we are invited into.

A question  

What does the cross mean to you? Does it affect the way you live? Where does the cross meet you this Lent — in your suffering, longing, failures, relationships, or hopes? What might it mean to stand honestly before it and let its truth reshape you?

A prayer  

Crucified Christ, You who carried the cross before we ever could, teach us to see in Your suffering the depth of Your love. Where we feel unworthy, remind us of Your mercy. Where we feel lost, draw us into Your story. Where we resist surrender, soften our hearts. Shape us by the cross, and lead us toward the resurrection it promises.  

Amen.