CONTENTS

Introduction: WHY A BOOK ON THE

PASSION OF CHRIST

Chapter 1: THE HISTORY OF THE PASSION

PLAYS

Chapter 2: THE THEOLOGY OF THE

PASSION PLAYS

Chapter 3: THE SCOURGING AND

CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS

Chapter 4: THE CROSS OF CHRIST

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 INTRODUCTION

Why a Book on The

Passion of Christ
Somebody emailed me a message suggesting that I am
wasting my time writing a book that exposes the unbiblical
elements and teachings of Mel Gibson The Passion of the Christ.
After all, most movies are not documentaries. They are largely
based on fiction, not on facts. I would like to respond to this
observation by mentioning two facts.

First, the major reason for writing this book is not merely
to critique Gibson’s movie, but to lead people to a fresh
appreciation of the centrality, necessity, and achievements of the
Cross. In The Passion of the Christ, Gibson makes no attempt to
address the fundamental question: Why was it necessary for
Christ to suffer and die for our salvation? His sole objective is to
portray the relentless brutal torture of Christ from the time of His
arrest until His death. But, many are asking, Did Christ need to be
tortured unto death to satisfy the demands of a punitive God? Did
Christ pay the penalty of our sins through the intensity of His
sufferings or through His sacrificial death?

These questions are especially relevant today when the

presence of sin and the need of a Savior are largely dismissed as
outmoded concepts. A vindictive and punitive portrayal of a God
who allows His Son to be tortured unto death can only play into
the hands of skeptics who find the notion of forgiveness through
the vicarious cruel suffering and death of an innocent victim to be
a perversion of justice.

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 These important questions are examined at length in the
last chapter of my book, which is the longest and in many ways
the most important part of the study. The chapter investigates the
necessity, the achievement, and the benefits of Christ’s death for
our life today.

A second reason for devoting part of my book to an

examination of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, is the fact this
movie is not an ordinary film which is soon forgotten. It is a
major cultural event whose influence that will be felt for a long
time. Millions of people have viewed the film, making it one of
the biggest blockbusters in history. The movie will be replayed
over and over, especially during the season of Lent and Easter.

Over four million copies of the DVD versions of the movie

were sold in the USA at the time of its release in August 2004.
This film will promote fundamental Catholic beliefs such as the
brutal sufferings of Christ to satisfy the demands of a punitive
God, the co-redemptive role of Mary, suffering as a way to
salvation, the reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice at the Mass, the
demonic impersonations of Satan, and the collective
responsibility of the Jews for the death of Christ.

In view of the important impact the film will continue to

have in promoting fundamental Catholic beliefs, it is imperative
to examine carefully the claims made concerning its accuracy.
The viewing public must be given the information needed to
determine what is biblical and what is unbiblical in Gibson’s
portrayal of Christ’s Passion.

Gibson’s Claims of Biblical Accuracy

Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ is heralded

by numerous Catholic and Protestant church leaders as the most

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authentic reenactment of the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life. To
add biblical and historical authenticity to the movie, Gibson has
the characters dressed to reflect the time, and speaking Aramaic
and Latin. A major theme in the film’s publicity has been its
faithfulness to Scripture.

In an interview with Christianity Today, Gibson said:

“Wow, the Scripture are the Scriptures—I mean they’re
unchangeable, although many people try to change them. And I
think that my first duty is to be as faithful as possible in telling the
story so that it doesn’t contradict Scriptures. Now, so long as it
didn’t do that, I felt that I had a pretty wide berth for artistic
interpretation, and to fill in some of the spaces with logic, with
imagination, with various other readings.”

In an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC News’

Primetime, Gibson was asked whether he considered his film to
be “the definitive depiction of the Passion.” He replied: “This is
my version of what happened according to the Gospels and what I
wanted to show—the aspects of it I wanted to show.” The issue is
not the sincerity of Gibson’s claims about the faithfulness of his
movie to the Gospels, but whether his production, The Passion,
validates his claim.

Catholic Leaders Attest the Accuracy of The Passion

Numerous Catholic and Protestant church leaders support

Gibson’s claim of biblical accuracy. Vatican officials have
openly endorsed The Passion, obviously because it effectively
promotes fundamental Catholic beliefs. The film was shown to
members of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pontifical
Council for Social Communications, and the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. All of them expressed unanimous approval,

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praising it as the most accurate reenactment of Christ’s Passion
ever produced.

For example, Archbishop John Foley, President of

Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said: “I don’t
think there would be well-founded criticisms because all the
material in the film comes directly from the Gospel accounts.
There’s nothing in the film that doesn’t come from the Gospel
accounts. So, if they’re critical of the film, they would be critical
of the Gospel.”5 Similarly, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-
Valls describes the movie as “a cinematographic transposition of
the historical events of the Passion of Jesus Christ according to
the Gospel.”

Protestant Leaders Attest the Accuracy of The Passion

Many Protestant church leaders have joined the Catholics

in enthusiastically promoting The Passion as a biblical
masterpiece. For example, Ted Haggard, President of the National
Association of Evangelicals, said in an interview: “This film is
probably the most accurate film historically than anything that has
ever been made in the English world . . . So we have no
hesitations. We were watching it for biblical accuracy and we
thought it was as close as you can get.”

Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in

Southern California purchased 18,000 tickets because he
believes that the movie is “Brilliant, biblical—a
masterpiece . . . It is not just a dramatization. It’s a
historic description.” Similarly, Jack Graham, President
of the Southern Baptist Convention, affirmed: “The
movie is biblical, powerful and potentially life-
changing.”

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 Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, Robert Schuller of Crystal
Cathedral, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and radio
commentator Paul Harvey, just to name a few, have all endorsed
the film as an unprecedentally truthful reenactment of Christ’s
Passion which is supposed to result in mass conversions to
Christianity.

Scholars Question the Biblical Accuracy of The Passion

The enthusiastic endorsement of The Passion by numerous

Catholic and Protestant church leaders stands in stark contrast
with the reviews by biblical scholars who have taken time to
compare the script of The Passion with the Gospels’ accounts of
Christ’s suffering and death. These scholars express serious
concerns over major biblical and historical errors present in the
movie.

In the forthcoming book book I cite several scholarly

reports. For the sake of brevity I will only mention the
symposium prepared by team of leading international scholars.
They were invited to contribute chapters to a symposium which
analyzes different aspects of The Passion. The title of the
symposium is Jesus and Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE
CHRIST: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History. The
aim of the symposium is to help readers appreciate The Passion
more fully by understanding the differences between the Passion
of the Gospels and the Passion of the movie. Some of the chapters
praise the artistic qualities of The Passion and defend Gibson’s
artistic interpretation of the Gospel narratives.

Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb, editors of the

symposium, summarize the findings of the investigation, first by
acknowledging that The Passion is faithful to the Gospels’ basic
outline of the “betrayal, arrest, examination, flogging,

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crucifixion.” However, they continue, noting that the movie
departs from the Gospels in several crucial areas. They write:
“Much of the film does not represent accurately either the
Gospels or history. At other times, the flashbacks are wholesale
creations—all entirely legitimate in an artistic creation, but not
given the claims of ‘accuracy.’ In crucial areas the story of The
Passion takes considerable licence with the Gospels narratives.
The film adds scenes that have no basis in the Gospels’ plot, and
considerably alters the characterization of many of its key
characters.”

Why Bible Scholars Disagree with Popular Preachers?

How can we account for the radical difference in the

evaluation of The Passion between reputable Bible scholars and
brand-name preachers? A plausible explanation is the fact that
pastors are so busy with their pastoral obligations that they do not
have time to engage in a time-consuming comparative analysis of
the script of The Passion with the narratives of the Gospels. Thus,
pastors tend to express their feelings, rather than their findings.

By contrast, scholars usually do their homework before

publishing their findings, because they wish to protect their
credibility. A Latin proverb says: Verba volant, scriptum manet—
“Words fly, the writing remains.” Most of the words uttered by
preachers from a pulpit are soon forgotten, but what is published
cannot be erased. It can haunt the author for long time.

At the time of the release of Gibson’s movie, a few

Adventist preachers delivered a series of sermons on THE
PASSION OF CHRIST, extolling the faithfulness of Gibson’s
movie to the Scripture. I heard some of the recorded sermons, and
I was greatly distressed by some of the inaccurate statements. I

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concluded that it would be unfair to evaluate a sermon as if it
were the presentation of a scholarly paper.

Pastors have an extremely busy schedule which hardly

allows them blocks of time for indepth research. Often they end
up expressing their feelings rather than their findings. Thus, let us
be tolerant when we hear a preacher saying things that are
inaccurate. After all, even the presidential candidates made
inaccurate statements during the debates. After each debate it was
interesting to listen to the critics who listed all the factual errors
made by each candidate. But, in the case of sermons, the only
critical response usually occurs around the Sabbath dinner table.

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 Chapter 1

THE HISTORY
OF THE PASSION PLAYS

The central message of the Christian faith is the incarnation, life,

suffering, death, Resurrection, ascension, and Return of Jesus
Christ. Of these, the death and Resurrection of Jesus form the
pivotal part of the Gospel’s message because they reveal God’s
provision and power for the salvation of believers.
In his movie The Passion of the Christ (henceforth The Passion),
Mel Gibson focuses almost exclusively on the suffering and death
of Jesus, with only a moment’s reference to the Resurrection. For
him, the most important part of the Gospel story is the relentless,
brutal torture of Christ unto death. Since the Gospels’ account of
Christ’s trial and crucifixion is very brief and cryptic, Gibson
ultimately writes his own Passion story.
In his detailed analysis of The Passion, John Dominic Crossan,
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University,
notes that only “about 5 percent comes from the Gospels—that is,
the general outline and the sequence of events; about 80 percent
comes from Emmerich [nineteenth-century German mystic who
authored The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ]—that is,
the details and characters that carry the best and the worst of the
non-Gospel additions and expansions; and about 15 per cent from
Gibson—that is, everything that escalates the violence above that
already prevalent in Emmerich.”1

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Questions Raised by The Passion. Since Gibson’s vision of
Christ’s suffering and death derives mostly from non-biblical
sources, some important questions need to be addressed. Why
does Gibson portray Christ so bloodily when there is only one
brief reference to blood in one of the Gospels? We read: “One of
the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came
out blood and water” (John 19:34). Why does Gibson give us
Christ’s blood, not in a communion cup, but by the gallon? Why
does blood flow freely from the flayed flesh of Christ’s body from
the moment of His flogging until His crucifixion?

Why does Mary play such a prominent role in The Passion,

sustaining her Son and sharing in His suffering throughout the
ordeal? How can we explain the prominent co-redemptive role of
Mary throughout Gibson’s movie? In the Passion narratives, Mary
is mentioned only once, when Jesus entrusts her to the care of
John, saying: “Woman, behold your son,” and to John, “Behold
your mother” (John 19:26-27). By contrast, the movie showa the
blood sluicing from the Cross covering Mary when she embraces
her Son’s feet and later cradles His bloody body in the same
position as that of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Why does the scourging of Jesus—described in a total of three

lines in the four Gospels—take up thirty minutes of the film?
Why does Gibson portray Caiaphas and the Jews as bloodthirsty
villains, collectively determined to see Christ crucified at any
cost, when the Gospels tell us that the Sanhedrin was divided in
their deliberations over the fate of Christ (John 11:47-48; 10:19-
21), and that a great multitude of Jews “bewailed and lamented
him” (Luke 23:27) on the way to Golgotha? In other words, why
does Gibson choose to disregard those aspects of the Passion
narratives that depict the positive response of many Jews to
Christ?

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Furthermore, why does Gibson emphasize the sufferings and
death of Jesus at the expense of His life, teachings, Resurrection,
and heavenly ministry? Why is the flashback to the Last Supper
placed in conjunction with the Crucifixion, rather than before
Christ’s arrest in Gethsemane when it occurred? Is Gibson
portraying in a veiled way his Catholic belief in the juxtaposition
between Christ’s sacrifice at the Cross and its reenactment at the
Mass?

Plays Gibson Adheres to the Traditional Passion. The answers

to these and similar questions are to be found in studying the
history and theology of the Passion Plays, which have developed
in Western Europe since the thirteenth century. Such a study will
show that Gibson did not invent the script of The Passion. As a
committed traditional Catholic, he adheres strickly to the
traditional pre-Vatican II Passion Plays, which have been
influenced more by mystical visions than by biblical,
archeological, and historical sources. For example, Vatican II
acknowledged that Passion Plays have often inflamed angry
mobs, leading them to pillage, burn, and murder thousands of
Jews in Europe. Thus the Council issued a document, Nostra
Aetate-—Our Age, which officially repudiates the traditional
deicide charge (God-killers) against the Jews and urges great
caution in any future dramatic presentations of the Passion of
Christ.

The directives of Vatican II were expanded in 1988 by the United

States Catholic Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs. The committee issued a pamphlet, Criteria
for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion, which
stresses that Passion Plays must be accurate and objective in their
use of biblical and historical sources to portray the final events of
Christ’s life. Unfortunately, as Catholic reviewers point out,
Gibson largely ignores these recent Catholic directives, choosing

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instead to follow his own pre-Vatican II traditional mystical
beliefs.2

The Objective of This Chapter. This chapter looks at Passion

Plays in general and Gibson’s movie in particular from a
historical perspective. The aim is to help Christians understand
some of the factors that have contributed to the development of
the narrative and theology of the Passion Plays. This historical
survey sheds light on such pertinent questions as these: Why do
the Passion Plays promote the notion that Christ had to suffer
exceedingly more than any human being in order to meet the
demands of divine justice? Why have Passion Plays encouraged
the physical abuse of one’s body (flagellation) as a way of
salvation? Why do Passion Plays exalt Mary as a partner with
Christ in our salvation? Why have Passion Plays fostered a deep
contempt for the Jews, inspiring countless Christian viewers to
pursue the Jews, mass murdering them in numerous European
cities?

Regarding the role of the Passion Plays in fueling hatred for the
Jews, Hitler himself, after attending the renowned Passion Play in
Oberammergau, Germany, in 1930 and 1934, acknowledged that
the production was “a convincing portrayal of the menace of the
Jewry” and a “precious tool” for his plan to liquidate the “muck
and mire of Jewry.” 3 Most likely, the Nazi’s plan to exterminate
the Jews would have been carried out irrespective of the influence
of the Passion Plays. But it would be hard to deny their influence
in predisposing Christians to accept the “final solution.”
The widespread Christian support for Hitler’s efforts to liquidate
the Jews can be understood in the light of the contempt for the
Jews promoted by the Passion Plays. The lesson of history is hard
to miss. By portraying the Jewish people as murderers of Christ,
Passion Plays set the stage for Christians to become murderers of
the Jews. The crime initially committed by some Jews against

13
Christ was later repeated countless times by Christians against the
Jews.

The Value of a Historical Survey of the Passion Plays. This

historical survey is designed to help especially the people of the
United States, who have a relatively short social history, to look at
The Passion from a historical and theological perspective. Most
Americans view Gibson’s movie ahistorically—that is, without a
historical perspective. They assume that the film is an accurate
portrayal of Christ’s Passion produced by a gifted filmmaker.
Thus, they wonder what the fuss is all about. But The Passion was
not produced in a vacuum. There are seven centuries of history
behind the Passion Plays. During these centuries, distinctive
Catholic belief became embedded in the plays. Also, thousands of
Jews were attacked, beaten, and murdered by inflamed Christians
who left the annual Passion Plays raging against the “Christ-
killers.”

European nations like France, Austria, Italy, and Germany have a

longer history and a fresher memory of how the entire Jewish
population of certain cities was murdered by angry mobs inflamed
by Passion Plays. In fact, the anti-Semitism promoted by Passion
Plays like Gibson’s movie is still very much alive today, as
Jewish synagogues have been burned down recently in several
European cities. This explains why French, Austrian, and German
political and religious leaders have strongly opposed the release
of The Passion in their respective countries.

This chapter traces briefly the history of the Passion Plays,

focusing especially on the best-known European Passion Play of
Oberammergau in Germany. We seek to understand those factors
that contributed to the origin and development of the Passion
Plays and their impact on popular piety and anti-Semitism.
The next chapter builds upon the findings of this chapter by

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taking a closer look at the theology of the Passion Plays.
Consideration will be given to the influence of the Passion Plays
in promoting the Catholic view of the Mass as a reenactment of
Christ’s sacrifice; the Catholic view of Christ’s brutal suffering
and death to satisfy the demands of a harsh, punitive God; the
mystical view of “suffering unto glory”; the use of images,
statues, and crucifixes as aids to worship; the prominent role of
Mary as a partner with Christ in His suffering and intercession;
and the portrayal of the Jews as murderers of Christ.
The intent of this historical and theological survey of the Passion
Plays is to provide a much-needed background for people to
evaluate Gibson’s movie from a historical and theological
perspective. An understanding of why the Passion Plays came
into existence—and of how they have promoted unbiblical
theological beliefs, popular piety, and a deep hatred for the
Jews—will help sincere Christians to recognize Catholic heresies
subtly embedded in The Passion.

The act of pointing out the problems of The Passion must not be
interpreted as an indictment against Gibson’s sincerity, or a denial
of the providential way the movie may lead some people to
appreciate, perhaps for the first time, the price Christ paid for our
salvation. Gibson is sincerely committed to promoting his
traditional, pre-Vatican II Catholic faith. We can only wish that
more Protestants would display the same commitment to their
faith.

God can use bad things to good ends (Rom 8:28). Thousands of
people every day claim to have found Christ on a pilgrimage to a
holy shrine or at a Pentecostal crusade where charismatic
preachers like Benny Hinn effectively manipulate people’s
emotions, deluding them into deceptive healings and salvation.
The fact that in His providence God can communicate even

15
through the mouth of an ass (Num 22:28) does not make what is
intrinsically bad a good thing.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

OF THE DEVOTION TO CHRIST’S PASSION

During the first ten centuries of our era, the devotion to Christ’s
wounds and sufferings on the Cross were practically unknown.
Paul speaks of dying with Christ and rising with Him through
baptism (Rom 6:3-6). This is an existential experience of
victorious living, not a devotional imitation of Christ’s sufferings.
In other places, the New Testament encourages believers to be
“partakers of Christ’s sufferings” (1 Peter 4:13; 5:1; Phil 3:10),
not through self-flagellation, but by accepting the “reproach for
the name of Christ” (1 Peter 4:14). By the late first century and
early second century, Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch
were calling upon Christians to follow the example of Christ in
His Passion by being willing to suffer and die for their witness to
Jesus. The notion of suffering with Christ through self-inflicted
wounds is absent in the Christian literature of the first
millennium.

In the early Christian inscriptions, the symbol of the cross are

relatively rare. Only about twenty crosses have been found in the
Roman catacombs, mostly in the form of + or a T in tombstones
accompanying the name of the deceased. Contorted figures of
Christ on the Cross were unknown in the earliest centuries. In
obedience to the Second Commandment, there was no pictorial
portrayal of Christ’s appearance, life, and suffering during the
first three centuries.

Important iconographic changes began in the fourth century with

the entrance of pagan masses into the Christian church. Statues,
pictures, relics, and crucifixes were introduced into the churches

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and popular piety. The alleged discovery of the “true Cross” by
Constantine mother, Helena, in 326, contributed in a significant
way to the devotion to the Cross. Pieces of the “true Cross” were
distributed throughout the world. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem to visit
the sites of the Passion became increasingly popular.
Pilgrims normally went in procession to the traditional sites of the
scourging, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus. Monks promoted the
view that the true disciple of the crucified Christ must follow Him
in suffering in order to join Him in glory. The notion of “suffering
unto glory” by inflicting pain upon one’s body became part of the
medieval monastic discipline and popular piety. The devotion to
the crucifix became widespread, encouraging Christians to imitate
Christ’s physical sufferings.

The Devotion to Christ’s Humanity. Significant shifts in

devotional practices occurred in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Among them was a new devotion to the humanity of Christ, both
among the monks and the laity, known as the “New Piety.” This
devotion led to an identification with Christ’s suffering and a
desire to suffer with Him in His Passion as a way of salvation.
The Passion Plays were the natural outgrowth of this new
devotion to and imitation of Christ’s human suffering.
The participation in Christ’s Passion derives from the belief in the
reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice at the altar when the Mass is
celebrated. This doctrine, known as “transubstantiation,” was
defined at the Lateran Council of 1215. This dogma teaches that
the bread and wine are converted into the whole substance of the
Body and Blood of Christ by the priest during the celebration of
the Mass. Consequently, Christ offers Himself afresh for our
salvation every time the Mass is celebrated. This belief in the
salvific value of the reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice at the Mass
made it possible for Passion Plays to bring that sacrifice
dramatically before the people for their own personal redemptive

17
involvement. This consisted of imitating and participating in
Christ’s redemptive suffering.

This teaching is foreign to Scripture where we are told that Christ

“offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins . . . [and] by a
single offering he has perfected for all time those who are
sanctified” (Heb 10:12, 14). These developments of the doctrine
of the Mass and of the devotion to Christ’s human suffering were
a precondition for the origin of the Passion Plays. All these beliefs
and practices, as we shall see, represent human attempts to make
salvation a human achievement rather than a divine gift of grace.
It is important to note that a Passion Play is in many ways an
animated Mass for devout Catholics. As Gibson himself said in an
interview, “The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences
by brashly juxtaposing the sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice
of the altar—which is the same thing.”4 The two are the same
thing for Gibson simply because Catholics believe that at the altar
the priest offers Christ afresh as a sacrifice for our salvation. This
teaching exalts the power of the priest, while obscuring the once-
for-all sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice.

Devotion to Christ’s Wounds Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153),

author of the hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” is generally
singled out as the initiator of the devotion to the humanity of
Christ, especially His wounds. In one of his sermons, Bernard
writes: “What can be so effective a cure for the wound of
conscience and so purifying to keenness of mind, as a steady
meditation on the wounds of Christ?”5
In the monastic literature of the time we often find reference to
the five wounds of Christ. Each of the five wounds was intended
to heal the entry of sin into our bodies through the five senses.
Peter Damian (1007-1072), an influential monastic reformer,
explains this point with clarity: “Jesus is stripped of His clothing;
he is beaten, bound, and spat upon; his flesh is pierced by a

18
fivefold wound, so that we may be healed from the entry of vices
which reach us through the five senses.”6
Many popular prayers and religious practices developed at this
time centered on the five wounds. A prayer attributed to Clare of
Assisi consists of five sections, each of them devoted to one of the
wounds. “A Pater and an Ave [two popular Catholic prayers]
followed each section, with the following versicle and response:

V. The five wounds of God

R. Are my healing medicine.
V. By thy five wounds
R. Deliver me, O Christ, from ruin.
V. Grant peace, O Christ,
R. By thy five wounds.”7

The Catholic devotion to Christ’s wounds helps us to understand

Gibson’s confession that he survived a near suicidal period of his
life by meditating on Christ’s wounds. “I had to use the Passion
of Christ to heal my wounds,” he told an Australian newspaper.8
Gibson’s mystical understanding of healing through Christ’s
wounds goes beyond Isaiah’s words: “with his stripes we are
healed” (Is 53:5). The prophet speaks of stripes, wounds, and
bruises in the context of the death of God’s Servant for the
“transgression of my people” (Is 53:8). But in Gibson’s mystical
thinking, Christ’s wounds have healing power per se, because
they can be identified with our own wounds. “His pain is ours and
our pain is His, all obediently borne.”9 In other words, believers
can participate in Christ’s redemptive suffering by bearing
physical pain. This notion is foreign to the Bible and ultimately
enables believers to redeem themselves through their own
sufferings.

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Devotion to the Passion The devotion to Christ’s Passion
assumed new heights in the thirteenth century with the coming of
Francis of Assisi. He is the first person in the history of
Christianity to claim to have borne the stigmata—that is, Christ’s
wounds in his hands. In a Testament drawn up in 1226, shortly
before his death, Francis claims to have received the wounds of
Christ on September 17, 1224. In Catholic thinking, the stigmata
are the decisive sign of complete identification with Christ by
penance and prayer and a qualification for sainthood.

The preaching of Franciscan, Dominican, and Carmelite friars

during the thirteenth century led Christians all over Europe to
accept the belief of suffering as the sole way to glory. The
Christian devotion to Christ’s Passion focused especially on His
physical sufferings. But, more importantly, the devotion to
Christ’s Passion gave rise to Passion Plays and the so-called
Stations of the Cross, which soon became very popular in central
Europe. By 1700, Passion Plays were staged in 160 places in
Bavaria alone and a similar number is documented in nearby
Tyrol. The best-known European Passion Play is that of
Oberammergau, which will be considered shortly.
“A feature common to all these phenomena,” Jesuit Scholar John
O’Malley explains, “was the practical neglect of the Resurrection.
The Stations of the Cross, for instance, were precisely that. They
ended with the placing of Christ in the tomb.”10 In his blink-
length portrayal of Christ’s Resurrection, Gibson faithfully
follows a well-established mystical tradition in which “suffering
has meaning of its own and the ‘resurrection’ signals little more
than that the mystical ordeal is over.”11 In Gibson’s mystical
Catholic tradition, Christ’s teachings and active ministry are
overshadowed by the attention paid to the mocking, scourging,
torture, and death He endured for the sake of sinners.
“Mystics built devotions around his scourging after a Cardinal
returned from the Holy Land bearing the pillar to which he said

20
Christ had been chained. Flagellant lay groups clogged the streets,
seeking bloody identification with the flayed Christ.”12 So
dominant grew the devotion to the Passion, writes Catholic
historian Gerard Sloyan, that believers felt “meditation on the
Passion alone could achieve unity with Christ and yield some
share in the work of redemption He accomplished. . . . It came to
overshadow not just the Incarnation, but even the Resurrection.”13
The mystical emphasis on Christ’s suffering, at the expense of His
Incarnation and Resurrection, is clearly evident in Gibson’s movie
where one can miss the Resurrection by a blink of the eyes.

THE ORIGIN OF PASSION PLAYS

The devotion to the Passion inspired the staging of Passion Plays

which portrayed the trial, scourging, torture, and crucifixion of
Jesus. In the earliest stages, the Passion Plays consisted merely of
the reading of the biblical accounts related to the major events of
Christ’s life. Eventually, the sacred readings grew into Passion
Plays with dramatic readings scripted and worship leaders acting
the roles of key persons. Well-developed texts are available from
the thirteenth century. Initially, Passion Plays were presented as
part of the worship service inside a church. As the script became
more elaborate, it became necessary to move them outside the
church, staging dramatic presentations stsged in town squares.
A major contributing factor to the origin of Passion Plays during
the thirteenth century is the catastrophes and tragedies that
changed the shape of European life and with it of Christian piety
and prayer. Europe was ravaged by wars, disease, and famine.
Among these were the Crusades (1095-1396), the Hundred Years
War (1337-1453), and, in the midst of these, the Black Plague of
1348-49 that took the lives of over twenty million people. The
specter of death was ever present. Most people lived mean,
brutish, and short lives. In the midst of these multiple calamities,
people became fearful, apprehensive, and superstitious.

21
By portraying Christ’s patient response to brutal sufferings, the
Passion Plays became a source of encouragement for average
believers facing misery and terror. Such believers thought that no
matter how badly they suffered, the Christ of the Passion had
suffered much more. One mystic reported that Christ told her: “I
was beaten on the body 6,666 times; beaten on the head 110
times; pricks of thorns in the head, 110 . . . mortal thorns in the
forehead, the drops of blood I lost were 28,430.”14 By dedicating
their suffering to Christ’s, believers sought to atone for their sins
and to avert divine judgments.

Suffering as a Way of Salvation With such a mentality

prevailing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, devout
Christians sought various ways to imitate Christ’s sufferings as
portrayed in the Passion Plays. “Bridget of Sweden burned herself
with a candle wax every Friday, to remind herself of Christ’s
wounds and ate bitter herbs to recall the gall (reminiscent of
Jewish seder practice memorializing Egyptian slavery). Jeanne
Marie of Maillè thrust a thorn into her head during Passion Week
one year; it fell out on Holy Thursday without leaving a scar.
Peter Olafsson wounded himself with hair cords and the briars
and brambles on which he lay, adding to this self-flagellation.”15
Devout believers took no pleasure in their pain. It disgusted them,
but they bore courageously their self-inflicted wounds in order to
participate in Christ’s Passion in the present and to share in His
glory in the future.

Flagellant confraternities developed in various parts of Europe.

“Their whipping of themselves to atone for their sins spread all
over northern Europe as an attempted means to check the Black
Death (1347-49) and more generally ward off the wrath of God.
They read letters that purportedly came from God threatening
earthquakes, famine, and the devouring of people’s children by
wild beasts if they did not repent.”16

22
People responded with outbursts of emotion to the display of
Christ’s suffering portrayed by itinerant flagellants and the
Passion Plays. The plague of 1347-48, the poverty, and the urban
unemployment made people susceptible to the superstitious belief
that by sharing in Christ’s sufferings they could atone for their
sins and bring healing to many.

One may wonder how Christians could believe that Jesus had to
suffer and die again and again, even through the sufferings of His
followers, in order to dispense the benefits of His redemption.
The major reason is to be found in their ignorance of Scripture.
The Bible was unknown to the laity. Their faith was nourished by
superstitious stories and drama such as the Passion Plays rather
than by the teachings of the Word of God. The problem still exists
today, as several subscribers to my ENDTIME ISSUES
newsletter expressed appreciation for the vital information about
the prominent role of Mary provided by The Passion, though it is
absent in the Gospels. For them, what they saw in the movie is
more enlightening than what they read in the Gospels!

The Passion Plays Undermine the All-sufficiency of Christ’s

Sacrifice The once-for-all character of Christ’s sacrificial death,
as explicitly taught in Hebrews, was unknown to Medieval
Christians. “Christ has entered . . . into heaven itself, now to
appear in the presence of God in our behalf. Nor was it to offer
himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly
with blood not his own; . . . But as it is he has appeared once for
all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself” (Heb 9:24-26).

This fundamental biblical teaching of the all-sufficiency of

Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is apparently unknown to Mel
Gibson and to countless millions of Catholics who have been

23
blinded by the Catholic teaching on the salvific value of the
reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice at the Mass. Gibson is
determined to promote the Catholic heresy of the Mass. In an
interview he stated his determination “to shake modern audiences
by brashly juxtaposing the sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice
of the altar—which is the same thing.”17 This means that for
devout Catholics The Passion is an animated Mass, which many
unwary Protestant viewers accept as a biblical teaching.
There is considerable variety in the texts of the Passion Plays. For
the German-speaking regions alone, there are approximately 50
different plays. Among the best known fifteenth-century plays are
the Vienna Passion, the St. Gall Passion, the Frankfort Passion,
and the Maestrich Passion. Doubtless the best known European
Passion Play is that of Oberammergau, which began in 1634.
While the scenes of the plays cover mostly the same final events
of Christ’s life, there is a tendency, even in the oldest Passion
Plays, to break away from the biblical text by incorporating
popular non-biblicalbeliefs.

CHRIST’S BRUTAL SUFFERING

TO SATISFY DIVINE JUSTICE

One belief which is a central element of both classical Passion

Plays and Gibson’s movie is that Christ had to suffer exceedingly
more than any human being because He had to satisfy the
demands of divine justice for all the sins of humanity. This belief
is found especially in mystical literature. For example, in her
book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Anne
Emmerich describes how angels “showed him [Christ] the
satisfaction which he would have to offer to Divine Justice, and
how it would consist of a degree of suffering in his soul and body
which would comprehend all the sufferings due to the
concupiscence of all mankind, since the debt of the whole human
race had to be paid by that humanity which alone was sinless—

24
the humanity of the Son of God. . . . No tongue can describe what
anguish and what horror overwhelmed the soul of Jesus at the
sight of so terrible an expiation.”18

This belief is reflected in the brutal torture of Jesus both in the

Passion Plays and Gibson’s movie. Contrary to the brief and
sober account of the scourging of Jesus that we find in the
Gospels (Mark 15:16-19; Matt 27:27-31), in The Dolorous
Passion, Emmerich devotes a whole chapter to the scourgings of
Jesus, describing in minute details the four scourging of Jesus
carried out on an alternating basis by six drunk and sadistic
Roman soldiers, who escalated the torture with their arsenal of
instruments until they reduced His body to a bloody heap of
shredded flesh.19

With unsurpassed cinematic skills, Gibson gives a stunning

dramatization of Emmerich’s description of the scourging of
Jesus. He has Christ tied to a post in Pilate’s courtyard, and then
follows a ten-minute sequence in which “first, the Savior is
whipped with a stick until his back is raw. Then he is whipped
with a cat-o’-nine-tails that has metal barbs at the end of each
tether; in one shot we see the hooks dig deep and tear out his
flesh. Then Christ is rolled over and he is flayed from the front.
Later, after the long march to Golgotha, he is nailed to the cross in
slow-mo close-ups in which each hammer stroke brings forth a
fresh gout of blood. . . . To Gibson, each drop is holy, so the more
of it the better. Each chunk of flesh dug out by the lash is Christ’s
sacrifice in all its beauty, so bring it on. The cumulative effect,
however, brings only numbness.”20 This graphic violence is
essential to Gibson’s theological understanding of the intensity of
Christ’s sufferings in order to satisfy the demands of divine
justice. We shall return to this point in the next chapter in the
discussion of the Catholic satisfaction view of Christ’s suffering
and death.

25
 THE PROMINENT ROLE OF MARY

Another significant feature of the Passion Plays is the prominent

role of Mary in sustaining her Son and sharing in His suffering
from Gethsemane to Golgotha. At the foot of the Cross she even
utters a formal condemnation of the Jews, known as the “lament–
planctus,” saying: “Oh the crime of this hateful race, the animal-
like hands of those crucifying you. Oh this barbarous people, oh
blind, deplorable race! Oh He who is innocent is condemned by a
damnable people, fulfilling what is necessary. Oh Men of blood
rate against the Lord of salvation.”21 This lamentation and
imprecation of Mary against the Jews has been a standard feature
of the Passion Plays until recent times.
Spielleitung Stückl concisely summarizes some of the Marian
scenes present in Passion Plays, but absent in Scripture:

“1. Planctus Mariae (Mary’s lament or complaint): Mary

expresses her sorrow over Christ’s passion and death in a long
poem or lament. In some plays Mary’s lament follow immediately
after Christ’s death and the witness of the Roman Centurion (St.
Gallen), in others her planctus begins already during the way of
the Cross and is pursued after the death of Jesus.

2. Mary’s pleading with Judas and Jesus: in some plays Mary

pleads with Judas to spare Jesus’ life or she pleads with Jesus to
choose a different way to bring about redemption, a request Jesus
must decline. Mary then accuses the angel Gabriel who declared
her blessed among all women. The angel reminds her of Simeon’s
prophecy. But Mary visits and reminds Jesus of his obligation to
the fourth commandment [that is, the fifth commandment about
honoring parents]. He in turn draws her attention to His obligation
to the Father in Heaven.

26
3. Mary plays a role in the paschal events of Passion plays,
especially in scenes where Christ appears to his mother.
Sometimes this apparition is announced already at the
Annunciation.”22’

The traditional prominent role of Mary in the Passion Plays is

reflected in Gibson’s movie, in which Mary follows her Son along
the Stations of the Cross. She urges Him to choose a different way
to bring about redemption. She gathers His flesh and blood after
the scourging. She comforts Him, embracing His bloody feet at
the Cross, and holding His body on her knees in the famous Pietà
pose. The message is clear. Mary actively participated with her
Son in our redemption. In the next chapter we will examine what
contributed to the development of the Catholic theology of Mary
as a partner in Christ’s Passion on earth and intercession in
heaven.

THE HOSTILITY OF THE JEWS TOWARD CHRIST

Another major theme developed in the Passion Plays is the

hostility of the Jews toward Christ. Samuel Weintraub notes that
“there are at least six anti-Jewish themes that are developed and
belabored in most Passion Plays.

“(1) The Jewish antagonists of Jesus—and by implication all

Jews—are depicted as degenerate, loathsome, almost subhuman
creatures. The Jewish priests in particular are hateful and
bloodthirsty, zealous in defense of their own privilege, and
obscene in their pleasure over Jesus’ suffering. These priests lead
a corrupt religion, whose vindictive legalism is juxtaposed to
Christian love, mercy and universalism.

“(2) The crowd before the Roman Governor’s palace becomes a

Jewish ‘mob,’ echoing their priests’ sadism. They—and again by

27
implication all Palestinian Jews—clamor for the death of Jesus.
Gleefully, they welcome the responsibility for his execution, upon
themselves and their descendants. Thus, Jews are judged to be
collectively guilty of deicide, and permanently rejected by God.

“(3) These plays either obscure or deny the Jewish background of

Jesus and the apostles. Their commitment to Jewish religion and
ethics is concealed; indeed, many plays represent them as total
renegades from Jewish traditions.

“(4) The most damaging perversion of history involves the

characterization of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor who
ordered Jesus’ execution. Pilate, whom responsible historiography
has described as a ruthless tyrant, is pictured as a fair ruler who
was unfortunately swayed by Jewish pressure to order the
crucifixion. Thus, the role of crucifier, and responsibility for the
execution, is handily shifted from the Romans to the Jews.

“(5) The use of Christian Scriptures is one sided and highlights

texts with real or potential anti-Jewish import; New Testament
passages which suggest more positive images of Jews and
Judaism are frequently neglected.

“(6) There is a tendency to sever the story of Jesus from its

historical context in first century Israel. Thus, the plays dissociate
the life of Jesus and the primitive Church from their setting in
Jewish religion and social life. Similarly, they fail to present the
realities of Roman oppression, which are necessary to understand
both Jesus’ ministry and the actions of his Jewish antagonists.”23

The Jews Were Progressively Demonized In his classic book,

The Anguish of the Jews, Jesuit Scholar Edward Flannery refers
to the centuries which saw the development of the Passion Plays
as “the centuries of woe, in which the Jews were progressively

28
demonized, that is, portrayed first as in league with Satan
opposing Jesus and then as Devil themselves.”24 The latter was
achieved by placing a monstrous horned headgear on the Jewish
priests and leaders, making them look like the Devil himself. It
was only in 1990 that significant changes were made in the
Oberammergau Passion Play, which included the removal of the
horned headgear from Jewish leaders.

Bishop Eugene Fisher, Director of the U.S. Conference of

Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Affairs, points out that “during the centuries which saw the
development of Passion Plays, Jews were increasingly blamed for
all the ills of society, from killing Christian babies and poisoning
wells to spreading the Black Plague. Though the popes and
responsible Church officials condemned these absurd charges
(pointing out, for example, that Jews drank from the very wells
they were accused of poisoning), people became more and more
vulnerable to believing just about anything evil that was said
about Jews and Judaism.”25

The Persecution of the Jews The mass hysteria provoked by the

Passion Plays found expression in two different ways. On the one
hand, it inspired self-flagellation to atone for personal sins and to
ward off the wrath of God. On the other hand, it fueled the
persecution of the Jews. People who left their annual Passion
Plays would be inflamed, raging against “Christ-killing Jews” and
accusing them of being responsible for well poisoning, causing
the Black Plague, and ritual murder. These accusations led to the
dehumanization, brutalization, expulsion, and murder of Jews
throughout Europe.

The tragedy consequence of the Passion Plays has been the

creation of a powerful melodrama foreign to the Bible. A clear
distinction has been made between the good guys and the bad

29
guys. The good guys are the “Christians”—Jesus, His apostles,
Mary His mother, Mary Magdalene, Veronica, and so forth. The
bad guys are the evil “Jews”—the high priests Caiaphas and
Annas, Judas Iscariot, and the Jewish mob that called for Jesus’
crucifixion. The fact that Jesus and His disciples were Jews
themselves does not seem to matter. Nor does it matter that even
after the Resurrection there were no “Christians.”
The distinction in the book of Acts is between believing and
unbelieving Jews, not between Christians and Jews. The latter
distinction is a later development due to the intensification of the
conflict between believing and unbelieving Jews. Yet, in the
Passion Plays, including Gibson’s movie, Jesus and His followers
have been portrayed through the centuries as innocent and holy
Christians, and the Jews as corrupt and brutal thugs.
This stereotyped image of the Jews as a wicked people has been
fostered by the Roman Catholic doctrine that blamed them
collectively as a people for the crucifixion of Christ. This doctrine
prevailed until Vatican II in 1965. In a document called Nostra
Aetate,“Our Times,” Vatican II rejected the deicide charge
leveled against the Jews: “True, authorities of the Jews and those
who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (cf
John19:6). Still, what happened in His Passion cannot be blamed
upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the
Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the
Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God as if
such views followed from the Holy Scriptures.”26

Historical Catholic Anti-Semitism The infamous Catholic

teaching that blamed the Jews as a wicked people guilty of killing
Christ has been promoted by some of the greatest Catholic saints
until Vatican II. For example, John Chrysostom, a famous
Catholic preacher and saint who served as Patriarch of
Constantinople (397-403), preached a series of sermons against
the Jews. He said: “The Jews are the most worthless of men—

30
they are treacherous, greedy, rapacious—they are perfidious
murderers of Christians, they worship the devil, their religion is a
sickness . . . The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for
killing God there is no expiation, no indulgence, no pardon.
Christians may never cease vengeance. The Jews must live in
servitude forever. It is incumbent on all Christians to hate the
Jews.”27

In a similar vein, Gregory of Nyssa (330-395), a renowned

Catholic theologian and orator, describes the Jews as “Slayers of
the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God, haters of
God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies
of the father’s faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers,
slanderers, scoffers, men whose minds are in darkness, leaven of
the Pharisees, assembly of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners
and haters of righteousness.”28

The stereotyped notion of the Jews as wicked and murderous is

also reflected in medieval poetry and art, where the Jews are
identified with the Devil and are pictured with the Devil’s horns,
tail, and a goat beard. Satan himself is pictured as a Jew, or in the
company of the Jews, or riding on the back of a Jew. The Passion
Plays reinforced these stereotyped images of the Jews by
portraying them with horns and tails, sadistically torturing
Christ’s body.

Passion Plays Fueled Bloody Reactions against the Jews

Historically, Passion Plays not only helped people to get ready for
Easter, but also to fuel their hate against the Jews as “Christ-
killers.” Lethal bloody reaction against the Jews often followed
the performance of medieval Passion Plays. The physical attacks
against the Jews were so violent that in some cities the whole
Jewish population was murdered. “In Rottingen, Germany, in
1298, the entire Jewish population of the city was put to the stake.

31
Then the angry mob spread through Germany and Austria,
pillaging, burning and murdering about 100,000 Jews. In Prague
in 1389, 3,000 Jews killed; in Seville, Spain, in 1391, 4,000 Jews
killed. In three months that year, the slaughter spread across
Spain, with a death tally of about 50,000 Jews. The year
Columbus ‘discovered’ America, the nation that sent him out,
Spain, expelled its entire Jewish population.”30

The slaughter of the Jews that followed Passion Plays became so

frightening that both civil and ecclesiastical authorities forbade
the production of Passion Plays in such cities as Freiburg in 1338,
Frankfurt in 1469, Rome in 1539, Paris in 1548, and Strassburg in
1549.

In Rome, the Passion Play was staged in the Colosseum by the

Confraternity of the Gonfalone—a male-dominated institution
actively involved in the social life of the city. In 1539, about
70,000 people viewed the play at the Colosseum. After the play,
the crowd led by the Confraternity passed through the Jewish
Quarter, killing Jews and destroying their properties. The violent
incident prompted Pope Paul III to outlaw the play, despite the
repeated attempts of the Confraternity to start it again.31
During the eighteenth century, local governments banned the
Passion Plays in many parts of Europe. The people of
Oberammergau pressured the Bavarian government to grant them
a special permission to continue its play because of the solemn
and binding vow they took in 1633 to stage the Passion every ten
years if God would halt the spreading of the Bourbon Plague in
their town.

In the nineteenth century, Passion Plays regained popularity,

partly because of the attacks of the French Revolution against
Christianity and their impact on the European religious life.
Concerned Christians felt that the world was becoming more

32
sinful and more hostile toward Christ and His message. To make
reparation for the hurt caused to Christ by the anti-Christian
philosophies, Passion Plays were revived to inspire Christians to
imitate Christ in suffering for the sins of the world. Unfortunately,
these plays also revived the historical “Christian” hate for the
Jews.

The ultimate consequence of the superstitious and violent anti-

Semitism fueled by church teachings and dramatized through the
Passion Plays was the Holocaust. Hitler could not have carried out
his Final Solution without the cooperation of many Christians in
Germany and other European countries. Hatred for the Jews,
nourished by centuries of church teachings dramatized by Passion
Plays, eventually transformed Europe into a fertile ground for the
mass murder of the Jews.

The Oberammergau Passion Play The best-known European

Passion Play is that of Oberammergau. This village, located in the
Bavarian Alps, began the regular performance of the play in 1634.
The story of its origin is well known. In 1633, during the chaos of
the Thirty Years War, the bubonic plague was ravaging southern
Germany. When the plague reached the isolated village of
Oberammergau, it threatened to decimate it. The town council
took a bold action. They pledged to perform a play depicting the
life and death of Jesus the following years in 1634 and then every
ten years thereafter, if God would spare the town from further
ravages of the plague. The plague subsided and the villagers
performed the Passion Play in 1634; with few exceptions, they
have continued to do so each decade.

During the eighteenth century, the Bavarian government banned

the Passion Plays because they were superstitious and impious
with the devil and his minions active on stage, inciting the Jews to
torture and crucify Christ. The Oberammergau town fathers

33
showed an amazing persistence and succeeded in obtaining
special permission to continue the play.

To keep authorities from banning the play again after 1800, the
script was rewritten. In each successive decade, significant
changes were made to the text in response to political and
theological pressures. Major revisions were made in 1990 and
2000 as a result of pressure put on the villagers by Catholics,
Protestants, and Jews. Gone were the devilish-looking horned
headgear of the Jewish leaders, and the blood curse from Matthew
was diminished to a single line in 1990 and totally eliminated in
2000. The new revised Oberammergau Passion Play has become
the model for the plays staged throughout the Christian world.

Anti-Semitism in the Oberammergau Passion. Play

It is fair to say that the people of Oberammergau most likely have
never intended to present an anti-Semitic play. After all, there
were no Jews living in their village during the nineteenth century.
What they presented in their play reflected the mainstream
Catholic tradition of branding the Jews as Christ’s killers,
condemned to live under a perpetual curse. Pope Honorius III
speaks of “the perfidy of the Jews, condemned as they are to
perpetual slavery because of the cry by which they wickedly
called down the blood of Christ upon themselves and their
children.”32

We noted earlier that Vatican II attempted to make amends for the

millennia of Catholic hostility toward the Jews by rejecting the
traditional charge of deicide that accused the Jews of being
Christ-killers under a perpetual curse. The current pope, John Paul
II, has gone further than any previous pope in history by
apologizing for the past Catholic atrocities committed against the
Jews. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church, as well as

34
Protestants in general, has developed a more positive and tolerant
attitude toward the Jews.

Unfortunately, Gibson’s Passion Play is in the trajectory of the

medieval Passion Plays in its portrayal of the Jews as bloodthirsty
people, sadistically determined to see Christ tortured to death. He
ignores the teachings of Vatican II and more specifically the
guidelines for the production of Passion Plays which were
published in 1988 by the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops.33 His use of the Gospels is one-sided, selecting texts
with a potential anti-Jewish import while ignoring those texts
which portray the Jews in a more positive light. Specific examples
will be considered in the following chapter.
The dramatic concept of the older version of the Oberammergau
Passion Play (followed by Gibson) is the melodrama, which
contains a clear contrast between the good and evil people. The
good people are the “Christians”—Jesus, His disciples, Mary His
mother, and so forth. The evil people are the “Jews”—the high
priest Caiaphas, the leaders, Judas Iscariot, and the Jewish mob
who called for Jesus’ crucifixion.

The portrayal of the Jews in the Passion Plays as corrupt and

brutal reflects the prevailing nineteenth-century view of the Jews
as unbelieving foreigners who should be allowed to reside in
European countries only by special permission. Occasional
attempts by local authorities to grant to Jewish subjects something
approaching equal rights were opposed because of religious
prejudice. For example, a petition signed by the leading citizens
and the priest of Hilders, Bavaria, in 1850 expressed outrage that
civil and political rights might be granted to Jews, “an alien
people that is hostile to Christians everywhere, and that to this
day harbors the same hate toward our religion with which it once
nailed the Savior to the Cross!”34

35
Adolf Hitler Loved the Oberammergau Passion Play
It is not surprising then that Adolf Hitler knew and loved the
Oberammergau Passion Play, which he saw in 1930 and 1934. He
spoke glowingly of the play, saying: “It is vital that the Passion
Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of
Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of
what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in
Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that
he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole
muck and mire of Jewry. If nowadays we do not find the same
splendid pride of race which distinguished the Grecian and
Roman eras, it is because in the fourth century these Jewish-
Christians systematically destroyed all the monuments of these
ancient civilizations.”35

Most likely the people of Oberammergau had no intention of

inspiring the Holocaust as they staged the play that Hitler saw.
“The Nazis,” as Prof. Gordon Mork points out, “would doubtless
have gone their genocidal way without being able to include
Oberammergau in their propaganda bag of tricks. But
Oberammergau has had to bear a burden because its traditional
play was fully capable of being exploited by Nazi anti-Semitic
propagandists.”36

Passion Plays and Anti-Semitism Today Are Passion Plays or

films still capable of fueling anti-Jewish hostility and
propaganda? The answer appears to be “Yes.” For example, Steve
Purham, the chief executive of SurfControl, notes that websites
espousing religious hatred have increased 26% during the first
four months of 2004. Some of the “news events that appear to
have triggered the recent sharp increase in hate sites, include the
controversy over gay marriages and the release of Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ, which has been used by some
extremists as a platform to express hatred of non-Christians.”37

36
In surfing the Internet, one can find numerous examples of anti-
Jewish propaganda. For example, an anonymous “angry white
female” writes: “The fact that Jews control so much of what we
think via Hollywood, lends an air of mystery and awe to this
Gibson vs. the Jews dispute. The man just may be something like
William Wallace and The Patriot! Just imagine the Jews in power
shaking in their boots at the prospect of being accurately
portrayed as Christ-killers, rather than their usual arrogant
churning out of anti-White and anti-Christian movies designed to
promote self-loathing and hatred of White western culture, people
and history.”38

Fortunately, such anti-Jewish voices in America are relatively

few; but let us not forget that Adolf Hitler also was dismissed
during the 1920s as a lunatic fringe of German politics. The
history of the Passion Plays we have briefly surveyed teaches us
that anti-Jewish sentiments can be fanned into conflagration,
causing untold sufferings to the Jews.
We need to learn from the mistakes of history so that we can
avoid repeating them. One wonders whether Gibson has ignored
the mistakes of history, or wishes to repeat them. One thing is
certain. The timing of the release of The Passion was particularly
poor, given the current rise in anti-Jewish as well as anti-Muslim
sentiments in the world today.

CONCLUSION

Our survey of the history of the Passion Plays indicates that their
origin goes back to the thirteenth century, as a result of two major
contributing factors. The first is the devotion to Christ’s human
sufferings, especially the wounds of His Passion. The preaching
of Franciscan, Dominican, and Carmelite friars promoted the
devotion to Christ’s Passion, which in turn influenced the staging
of Passion Plays, focusing on the trial, scourging, torture, and

37
crucifixion of Jesus. Devout Christians sought various ways to
imitate Christ’s sufferings as portrayed in the Passion Plays as a
way of salvation.

A second contributing factor to the origin of Passion Plays is the

catastrophes and the tragedies that changed the Christian life and
piety at that time. Europe was ravaged by wars and diseases like
the Black Plague of 1348-49 that took the lives of over twenty
million people. In the midst of these calamities, the Passion Plays
became a source of encouragement for the misery and terror
facing average believers. By dedicating their suffering to Christ,
believers sought to atone for their sins and to ward off the wrath
of God.

In many ways, the Passion Plays became a dramatic and visible

portrayal of fundamental Catholic beliefs and piety. One of the
beliefs is that Christ had to suffer exceedingly more than any
human being because He had to satisfy the demands of a punitive
God for all the sins of humankind. In the next chapter we shall see
that this Catholic view of God as a sadistic, exacting, and punitive
Judge bound by a law outside Himself reduces the Cross to a legal
transaction in which a meek Christ suffers the harsh punishment
imposed by a punitive Father for the sins of humanity. This is a
gross distortion of the Gospel, because the Cross reveals how the
righteous and loving Father was willing through His Son to
become flesh and suffer the punishment of our sins in order to
redeem us without compromising His own character.
Another significant Catholic belief that became embedded in the
Passion Plays is the prominent role of Mary as a partner in
Christ’s Passion on earth and intercession in heaven. During
Christ’s journey along the Via Dolorosa on the way to Golgotha,
Mary is portrayed in Passion Plays as always being near Christ,
acting as His comforter and coach. Through their eye contact,
Mary infuses mystical power on her Son. In the next chapter we

38
shall see how the elevation of Mary to a co-redemptive role with
Christ has resulted in the widespread idolatrous worship of Mary
in the Catholic Church—a worship condemned by the first and
second commandments.

A most disturbing feature of the Passion Plays is the portrayal of

the Jews as a wicked, bloodthirsty people, collectively guilty for
Christ’s death. We found that this infamous teaching was
promoted by some of the greatest Catholic saints before Vatican
II. This teaching has led to the dehumanization, brutalization,
expulsion, and murder of countless Jews throughout Europe.
In his movie The Passion, Gibson follows the traditional script of
the Passion Plays by portraying the Jews as a sadistic and
bloodthirsty people, collectively guilty of Christ’s death. The next
chapter will show that Gibson intentionally disregards the positive
Gospels’ scenes where multitude of Jews follow Jesus throughout
His ministry all the way to the Cross. For example, he does not
show “all the multitude who assembled to see the sight [of the
crucifixion], and when they saw what had taken place, returned
home beating their breast” (Luke 23:48). The reason for
disregarding the positive response of many Jews to Christ is
Gibson’s determination to follow the pre-Vatican II Catholic
tradition that stereotyped all the Jews as a wicked people under
God’s curse for killing Christ.
Summing up, this historical survey of the Passion Plays has
shown that the dramatization of Christ’s Passion during the past
seven centuries has served to promote fundamental Catholic
beliefs and piety. Unfortunately, these beliefs grossly
misrepresent the biblical view of God’s nature, the meaning of
Christ’s suffering and death, the role of Mary in our salvation, the
use of images in worship, and the responsibility of the Jews for
Christ’s death. The next chapter takes a closer look at these
Catholic theological beliefs that are embedded in the Passion
Plays, especially in Gibson’s movie.

39
 ENDNOTES

1. John Dominic Crossan, “Hymn to a Savage God,” in the

symposium Jesus and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
The film, the Gospels and the Claims of History (New York,
2004), p. 12.
2. John Dominic Crossan notes that “this film managed to breach
every single one of the Criteria for the evaluation of
Dramatizations of the Passion issued by the US National
Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988.” Ibid., p. 21.
3. Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1944 (New
York, 1954), p. 457; dated July 5, 1942.
4. “The Passion of Mel Gibson,” by Terry Mattingly, Scripps
Howard News Service, January 21, 2004; also Christianity Today
2, 23, 2004.
5. Sermon 62, Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, trans.
Gillian R. Evans (New York, 1987), p. 250.
6. Peter Damiani, Opusculum 43 chap. 5 (PL 145, 683); see also
Felix Vernet, Medieval Spirituality (St. Louis, 1930), p. 91.

7. Gerard S. Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth,

Faith (New York, 1995), p. 170.
8. David Van Biema, “Why It’s So Bloody,” Time (March 1,
2004), p. 66.
9. Gerard S. Sloyan, note 7, p. 135.
10. John O’Malley, S. J., “A Movie, a Mystic, and a Spiritual
Tradition,” America (March 15, 2004).
11. Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century
Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago University Press,
1984), p. 3.
12. David Van Biema, “Why It’s So Bloody,” Time (March 1,
2004), p. 66.

40
13. Gerard S. Sloyan, note 7, p.176.
14. David Van Biema, note 12, p. 66.
15. Gerard Sloyan (note 7), p. 177.
16. Gerards S. Sloyan (note 7), p. 179; see also Richard
Kieckhefer, “Radical Tendencies in the Flagellant Movement of
the Mid-Fourteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies 4 (1974), pp.157-176.
17. “The Passion of Mel Gibson,” by Terry Mattingly, Scripps
Howard News Service, January 21, 2004; also Christianity Today
(February 23, 2004).
18. Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Dolorous Passion of Our
Lord Jesus Christ (New York, 1904), p. 105.
19. The Dolorous Passion, pp. 183-189.
20. Ty Burr, “‘Passion of the Christ’ Is a Graphic Profession of
Mel Gibson’s Faith, Globe (February 24, 2004).
21. Eugene J. Fisher, “Passion Plays from a Christian Point of
View,” http://www.passionplayusa.net/dialog.htm.
22. Spielleitung Christian Stückl, The Passion Play of the
Community of Oberammergau (Germany: Oberammergau, 1990),
p. 16.
23. Samuel Weintraub, “Passion Plays in the United States,”
http://www.passionplayusa.net/antismtsm.htm.
24. Cited by Eugene J. Fisher, in “Passion Plays from a Christian
Point of View,” http://www.passionplayusa.net/dialog.htm.
25. Eugene J. Fisher, in “Passion Plays from a Christian Point of
View,” http://www.passionplayusa.net.
26. Alexis P. Rubin, Editor, Scattered Among the Nations—
Documents Affecting Jewish History 49-1975 (Northvale, New
Jersey, 1995), p. 302.
27. NOSTRA AETATE: Declaration on the Relation of the
Church to Non-Christian Religion, Proclaimed by His Holiness
Pope Paul VI, October 28, 1965, paragraph 4.
28. Allan Gould, What Did They Think of the Jews? (Portland,
Oregon, 1997), p. 24.

41
29. Ibid., p. 25.
30. Richard Nilsen, “Fear of the ‘Passion,’” The Arizona
Republic (February 22, 2004).
31. Anne Sarzin, “Passion Plays that Inspired Violence in Rome,”
The University of Sydneys News (February 24, 2000).

32. Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism (New York,

1962), vol. 2, p. 307.
33. Criteria for Evaluating “Passion Plays,” www.nccbuscc.org.
34. James Harris, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and
Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor, 1994),
p. 252.
35. Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1944 (New
York, 1954), p. 457; dated 5 July 1942.
36. Gordon R. Mork, “Christ’s Passion on Stage—The
Traditional Melodrama of Deicide,” Journal of Religion and Film
(February 2004), vol. 8, p. 9.
37. Patrick Barkham, “Religious Hatred Flourishes on the Web,”
The Guardian (May 11, 2004), p. 12.
38. http://www.angrywhitefemale.net/mel-gibson.html.

42
 Chapter 2

THE THEOLOGY
OF THE PASSION PLAYS

The spiritual dimension of the Christian life is largely dependent

upon its intellectual content. What we comprehend with our
minds we seek to experience in our religious life. A healthy
religious life is largely dependant on a correct understanding of
Bible teachings. Diligent study of the Bible has kept many
Christians from being blown away by every wind of doctrine.
However, today the tendency is to seek meaning and spiritual
renewal not through the study of the Bible, but through subjective
experiences.

Our society values emotions over cognition or action. We hear

people say, “I need to experience this movie or this play to revive
my faith.” “Let us get away from the study of doctrines and
experience Christ.” “I am not bothered by the biblical and
theological errors found in Gibson’s movie on The Passion of the
Christ, because the film moves me to accept Christ anyway.”
The problem with this reasoning is the failure to recognize that
being moved by Christ’s brutal sufferings is not the same as being
His disciple. A religious experience based on faulty theology is
like physical health built on junk food. If we feed our body
unhealthy food, we live an unhealthy life, which ultimately leads
to a premature death. Similarly, if we fill our mind with unbiblical
teachings and manipulated emotional experiences, our religious
life will be unhealthy and superstitious, ultimately causing us to
lose eternal life.

43
In surveying the historical origin and development of the Passion
Plays during the past seven centuries, we noted some of the
unbiblical Catholic beliefs that have inspired the staging of such
plays. The average viewers of a Passion Play or of Gibson’s
movie may not realize that what they see today is not a mere
reenactment of the final events of Christ’s life as described in the
Gospels, but the outgrowth of centuries of superstitious Catholic
beliefs, largely based on popular myths rather than on biblical
teachings. The popular acceptance of such superstitious beliefs
has fostered an idolatrous piety designed to placate a punitive
God by imitating Christ’s suffering and by appealing to the
meritorious intercession of Mary and the saints.
To bring into sharper focus the major unbiblical beliefs and
practices embedded in Passion Plays such as Gibson’s movie, in
this chapter we will discuss more fully the theological
significance of six major teachings that have emerged in our
historical survey. Our focus will be not on the historical origin
and development of these teachings—already surveyed in the
previous chapter—but on their theological significance. The
intent is to help truth-seekers better understand the theological
import of the deceptive teachings that have been blindly embraced
by millions of sincere Christians through the centuries. Six
deceptive, unbiblical teachings will be considered:

1. The Devotion to Christ’s Passion

2. The Passion and the Catholic Mass
3. The Satisfaction Views of the Atonement
4. The Co-Redemptive Role of Mary
5. The Portrayal and Impersonation of Christ
6. The “Christian” Theology of Anti-Semitism

THE DEVOTION TO CHRIST’S PASSION

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In tracing the origin of the Passion Plays, we found that the
devotion to Christ’s Passion, especially to His wounds, played a
major role in staging dramatic portrayals of Christ’s suffering and
death. Bernard of Clairvaux, and especially Francis of Assisi,
contributed in a significant way to the promotion of a popular
piety based on devotion to and imitation of Christ’s physical
suffering. Francis claimed to have received the stigmata—the
very wounds of Christ. The belief in suffering like Christ as a sure
way to glory gave rise to the Passion Plays which focus on
Christ’s physical sufferings.

The fundamental problem with the mystical devotion to Christ’s

physical sufferings, especially to His wounds, is the morbid and
idolatrous veneration of Christ’s human body, rather than
obedience to His teachings and dependence upon His heavenly
intercessory ministry. Historically, devout believers have focused
on Christ’s physical wounds as having merit of their own, largely
ignoring His incarnation, teaching ministry, Resurrection,
Ascension, and heavenly ministry. They have looked primarily at
the suffering Christ on the Cross, while ignoring the glorified
Christ interceding for them in the heavenly sanctuary.
Lay people have sought salvation by imitating the physical
sufferings of Christ as portrayed in the Passion Plays. This belief
has led people to whip themselves and wound their bodies in
order to atone for their sins and to placate the wrath of God. This
practice still continues today in many Catholic countries. The
notion that believers can atone for their sins, by imitating Christ’s
physical suffering, ultimately makes salvation a human
achievement rather than a divine gift of grace. For these poor
souls, Christ’s suffering and death have served at best as an
example for them to follow in order to become their own
redeemers.

45
Jesus’ call to follow Him by taking up His cross (Mark 8:34) is
not a summons to self-flagellation, but to self-denial and self-
control. This entails overcoming sinful habits by His enabling
grace, and being willing “to suffer persecution for the cross of
Christ” (Gal 6:12). The suffering of the Christian life derives not
from self-inflicted bruises or wounds, but from living in
accordance with the moral principles Christ has revealed.
A Christian who lives an upright, moral lifestyle can often
become the object of ridicule, rejection, and persecution in a
society where biblical moral teachings are largely rejected. It was
the witnessing for Christ that sometimes resulted in martyrdom in
the early church. In Greek, the same word is used for being a
witness (marturia) and for being a martyr (martureo). The reason
is that in New Testament times, witnessing for Christ by refusing
to worship the emperor and to participate in pagan amusements
and lifestyle often resulted in martyrdom.

THE PASSION AND THE CATHOLIC MASS

The devotion to Christ’s Passion derives from the Catholic view

of the Mass as a small-scale Passion Play. In fact, the Mass has
been rightly called “The Animated Crucifx.”1 According to
Catholic teachings, the celebration of the Mass is a reenactment of
Christ’s suffering and death. The Mass is a re-crucifixion of our
Lord daily. Each time the Mass is offered, the sacrifice of Christ
is repeated. When the priest consecrates the bread and wine
(Eucharist), the elements are transformed into the physical body
and blood of Jesus, which are offered to God as a repetition of
Christ’s sacrifice for sinners. Thus the priest has the power to
repeat Christ’s sacrifice every time the Mass is celebrated.
The Catholic belief in the salvific value of the reenactment of
Christ’s sacrifice at the Mass, dramatized through Passion Plays,
has led people to believe that they can appropriate the redemptive

46
value of Christ’s suffering and death by imitating and
participating in the Savior’s suffering. Such a belief gained
prominence in the thirteenth century when Europe was ravaged by
multiple calamities, wars, and diseases like the Black Plague,
which claimed over twenty million lives. These calamities were
seen by many as divine punishment for human rebellion.
To atone for their sins and to ward off the wrath of God, many
sincere people sought various ways to imitate Christ’s sufferings
by acting out His Passion, whipping themselves, and inflicting
bruises and wounds on their bodies. By imitating Christ’s
sufferings, they hoped to atone for their sins and to placate God’s
wrath. The outcome of this superstitious piety was not only
spiritual pride, as people displayed their self-inflicted wounds, but
also a denial of the biblical teachings regarding the all-sufficiency
of Christ’s sacrifice (Heb 9:24-26).

The Detrimental Impact of the Mass. It is impossible to

estimate the detrimental impact of the Mass on popular beliefs
and piety. The notion that Christ must be sacrificed again and
again at the altar, in order to meet the demands of divine justice
turns God into an exacting, sadistic Being who can only be
satisfied by the never-ending suffering of His Son and of His
followers. This gross misrepresentation of God has done
incalculable damage to the Christian faith by fostering a religion
of fear rather than of love.

It was the fear of the wrath of God, believed to be manifested in

the multiple calamities threatening human lives, that led sincere
Christians, like the villagers of Oberammergau, to stage Passion
Plays in order to placate an angry God, who threatened to destroy
their village with a plague. But nowhere does the Bible teach that
God’s anger needs to be placated by staging the suffering of His
Son or by parading the self-inflicted wounds of His followers.
The Bible teaches that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world

47
unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath
committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). What
God has accomplished through the perfect life and death of His
Son is sufficient for our salvation. There is no need for priests or
actors to reenact Christ’s sacrifice at the altar or in Passion Plays.
Since Christ has “become a merciful and faithful high priest in the
service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people” (Heb
2:17), there is no need to placate God’s wrath by staging Passion
Plays or displaying self-inflicted wounds.

THE SATISFACTION VIEWS OF THE ATONEMENT

Extreme Suffering to Satisfy Divine Justice. The central element

of both classical Passion Plays and of Gibson’s movie is the
relentless brutal whipping and flaying of Jesus’ body until He is
reduced to a bloody heap of shredded flesh. The gory scenes of
graphic violence in Gibson’s movie are not his artistic invention,
but his fundamental theological belief that in order to satisfy
divine justice and pay the debt of humankind’s sins, Christ had to
suffer in His body and mind the equivalent of the punishment for
all the sins of humanity. We noted earlier that this belief has been
promoted by mystics like Anne Emmerich, whose writings have
inspired the script of The Passion. The graphic images of the
brutal torture of Christ will cling to the mind of millions of
viewers, intruding upon their prayer life, for better or worse, for
many years to come.

The notion that God had to be satisfied or appeased for countless

human sins by subjecting His own Son (and His followers) to
unspeakable torment is revolting to thinking Christians. In his
1965 Gifford Lectures, published under the title, The Divine
Flame, Alister Hardy asks whether Jesus Himself would be a
Christian if He were alive today. “I very much doubt,” he replies.
“I feel certain that he would not have preached to us of a God

48
who would be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of a tortured
body.”2

“This sadistic picture of God,” notes Catholic Professor Philip

Cunningham, “is hardly compatible with the God proclaimed by
Jesus as the one who seeks for the lost sheep, who welcomes back
the prodigal son before he can even express remorse, or who
causes the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike. One wonders
why it is necessary to communicate God’s love by scenes of
unremitting torture. None of the Gospel writers felt obliged to go
into such gory details and yet they have communicated God’s
love for two millennia. Is it a sign of some cultural pathology that
some people are looking forward to the feeling of being actually
present at the scourging and crucifixion?”3

This rhetorical question highlights a major “cultural pathology” of

our society. Watching the torture and beheading of captured
Americans has become such a popular form of entertainment, that
thousands of websites are making money by selling video or
DVD recordings of such gruesome events. Hollywood knows
very well that blood sells. Thus, practically every film that it
produces, it is well spiced with blood and violence. Such scenes,
however, communicate hate rather than love. This helps us to
understand why God has chosen to reveal His love to us by
focusing on Christ’s sacrificial death, rather than on His bloody
torture.

Satisfying the Devil. During the course of Christian history,

different theologians have attempted to explain what demands
need to be satisfied by Christ’s sufferings and death in order for
God to forgive penitent sinners. The early Greek theologians
represented Christ’s suffering and death as primarily a
“satisfaction” to the devil, in the sense of being the ransom price
demanded by him to release sinners from his captivity.4

49
The fundamental problem with the “ransom to the devil” theory is
that it attributes to the devil rights which God is obliged to satisfy.
The notion of Christ’s suffering and death as a necessary
transaction to satisfy the devil’s claims over humankind can be
rightly dubbed as “intolerable, monstrous, and profane.”5 The
devil has no rights over humanity which God is obliged to satisfy.
It is hard to believe that this outrageous theory was very popular
for many centuries.

Satisfying the Law. The early Latin theologians tried to explain

Christ’s suffering and death as a satisfaction of the claims of
God’s law. God loves sinners and is eager to save them, but He
cannot do it by violating the law which condemns wrongdoers.
The violation of the law entails terrible consequences. Thus,
Christ’s sufferings and death were necessary to satisfy the
demands of God’s law.

There is scriptural support for the law-language, for Paul goes as

far as to affirm that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law, having become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). Nevertheless, we
need to be aware of the danger of portraying God as prisoner of
His own laws, and thus forced to inflict horrible sufferings and
death upon Christ in order to satisfy the demands of His law.
Disobedience to God’s moral laws brings condemnation not
because God is obligated to enforce His own laws, but because
He is the law’s creator.. In God, the law is not an external code,
but an internal expression of His own moral being. Whatever is
due to the law is due to God Himself, because the law is alive in
Him.

Satisfying God’s Honor and Justice. A new approach to the

satisfaction view of the atonement, which relates more directly to
the theology of the Passion Plays, was developed in the eleventh
century by Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109).

50
In his epoch-making book Cur Deus Homo? (that is, Why God
Became Man), he explains Christ’s suffering and death as a
satisfaction of God’s offended honor. Anselm portrays God
according to the feudal mentality of his time, in which feudal
lords demanded honor and severely punished their inferior
subjects for violating the code of conduct expected of them.
Anselm reasoned that since sinners cannot repay what they owe to
God for dishonoring Him, it was necessary for Christ, the God-
man, to make reparation to the offended honor of God.
Anselm must be credited for recognizing the extreme gravity of
sin, the holiness of God who cannot condone any violation of His
honor, and the unique capacity of Christ, as the God-man, to meet
the demands of divine justice. Unfortunately, his feudal mentality
took him beyond the boundaries of biblical revelation by
speculating that Christ had to suffer the exact equivalent of the
punishment due for all of humankind’s sins.

Similarly, the Reformers’ emphasis on justification led them to

stress the need for Christ to satisfy the demands of divine justice
through the severity of His suffering and death. In his Institutes,
Calvin wrote that it was necessary for Christ “to undergo the
severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his
just judgment.”6

The mystics embraced and expanded this satisfaction view of the

atonement by emphasizing the extreme sufferings Christ had to
bear in order to meet the demands of divine justice for all of
humankind’s sins. This view is graphically portrayed in Passion
Plays such as Gibson’s movie, in which Christ is relentlessly and
brutally tortured to death in order to meet the demands of divine
justice.

God Satisfying Himself. The notion that Christ had to suffer

exceedingly more than any human being in order to satisfy the

51
demands of God’s law for all human sin presents God as a
sadistic, exacting, and punitive Judge bound by a law outside
Himself—a law that controls His actions. To satisfy the demands
of His law for the sins of humanity, God was forced to compel
Christ to suffer brutal torture unto death.

The problem with such a view of the atonement—popularized by

mystical literature and portrayed in Passion Plays—is the failure
to recognize that the necessity of satisfaction arises not from the
punitive nature of God, or from an external law to which God is
subjected, but from the law within God Himself, the law of His
immutable character. The law which God must satisfy is the law
of His own Being.

It is true that the Bible speaks of the Lord laying upon the
Suffering Servant all our iniquities (Is 53:6), of sending His Son
to atone for our sins (1 John 4:9-11; Acts 2:23), and of making
“him . . . to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21). But none of these texts
implies that Christ was an unwilling victim of God’s harsh
justice. God was active in and through Christ’s suffering and
death.

John Stott rightly remarks that “We must not speak of God
punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set
them over against each other as if they acted independently of
each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must
never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the
object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were
subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners. .
. . The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to
bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvation He was
reluctant to bestow.”7

52
The unity between God and Christ in the work of salvation is
expressed in some of Paul’s great statements about reconciliation.
For example, in referring to the work of new creation, Paul says,
“all this is from God,” who “in Christ was reconciling the world
to himself” (2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:19-20; 2:9). Both the Father and
the Son were active together in the work of reconciliation. This
unity makes it possible for Paul to speak of “the church of God
which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28, NKJV).
Though God Himself did not die on the Cross, His blood is
mentioned because God was in Christ throughout the ordeal of the
Cross.

The Cross was not a legal transaction in which a meek Christ

suffers the harsh punishment imposed by a punitive Father for the
sins of humanity. It was not the exact equivalent of the
punishment of all of humankind’s sins; nor was it a securing of
our salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant God.
Instead, the Cross reveals how the righteous and loving Father
was willing through His Son to become flesh and suffer the
punishment of our sins in order to redeem us without
compromising His own character. “The biblical gospel of
atonement is of God satisfying Himself by substituting Himself
for us.”8

Passion Plays Distort the Atonement. The biblical vision of God

and Christ actively working together in the work of reconciliation
is missing in the Passion Plays. What is portrayed instead is Jesus
as a helpless victim being brutally tortured to death in order to
satisfy the demands of a harsh and punitive God. In Gibson’s
movie, the sadistic nature of God is reflected not only in the
relentless brutality of the torture inflicted upon Christ’s body
throughout the movie to satisfy the demands of His justice, but
also in the cruel punishment of the thief on the Cross. After Jesus
prayed, “Forgive them, Father, for they don’t know what they do”

53
(Luke 23:34), a crow swoops down and devours the eyes of the
impenitent thief.

There is a clear contrast between Jesus asking for forgiveness for

the thief and God sending a crow to devour the thief’s eyes. Such
a contrast creates a false dichotomy between a forgiving,
compassionate Christ and a vengeful, merciless God. This
dichotomy is unbiblical, because Christ is not an independent
third person, but the eternal Son of God who is one with the
Father in creation, redemption, and final restoration.
The problem with the drama of the Cross as portrayed in Passion
Plays such as Gibson’s movie is the role played by too many
independent actors. There is God, the punitive Judge; Christ, the
innocent victim; Mary, the compassionate mother, who supports
her Son, participating with Him in the ordeal of the Cross; the
guilty party, the Jewish leaders, and the mob clamoring for
Christ’s death. Such a construct reflects a defective Christology,
because Christ is not an independent third person, but the eternal
Son of God, united with the Father in creation, redemption, and
final restoration.

A Punitive God Calls for a Compassionate Mary. The notion

of God as a harsh, demanding, punitive Judge, whose justice can
only be satisfied through the cruel suffering and death of His Son,
paved the way for the intercessory role of Mary and the saints.
Their role is to soften God’s heart, making Him more willing to
forgive and save His erring children. This explains why Mary
plays a prominent role in the Passion Plays and in popular
Catholic piety. As the mother of God’s Son, she is in a unique
position to intercede with God on behalf of sinners.
The notion of God as a harsh, punitive judge, who can be
influenced by mediation of third parties like Mary and the saints,
is foreign to the Bible, where we read: “For there is one God, and
there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ

54
Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). In the biblical drama of the Cross, there are
not four actors, but only two—ourselves, the sinners, on the one
hand, and God in Christ on the other. This truth is expressed in
those New Testament passages which speak of Christ’s death as
the death of God’s Son: “God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son” (John 3:16); God “did not spare his own Son but gave
him up for us all” (Rom 8:32); “We were reconciled to God by
the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10). Texts such as these indicate
that in giving His Son, God gave Himself. There is no separation
between the two.

Through the person of His Son, God Himself bore the punishment
which He Himself inflicted. As R. W. Dale puts it: “The
mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for
God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering.”9 This
marvelous truth is lost in Passion Plays, where the focus is on the
brutal sufferings borne by Christ to satisfy the demands of God’s
justice. By distancing the role of the Father from that of the Son
in the drama of redemption, Passion Plays promote the need for
the intercessory role of Mary and the saints to procure salvation
from a mean and reluctant Father. This popular Catholic belief is
foreign to Scripture and destroys the unity of the Father and the
Son acting together in redeeming humankind. This unity is
missing in The Passion, where Gibson is so obsessed with the
scourging and crushing of Christ to satisfy the demands of divine
justice that he fails to explore the spiritual meanings of the final
hours. He falls into the danger of altering the message of God’s
redeeming love into one of hate.

THE CO-REDEMPTIVE ROLE OF MARY

In Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ is largely seen through

The Passion of Mary. From Gethsemane to Golgotha, the
sufferings of Christ are revealed through the anguish of Mary. She

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sustains her Son and shares in His suffering throughout the ordeal.
How can we explain the prominent co-redemptive role of Mary
throughout Gibson’s movie? In the Passion narratives of the
Gospels, Mary is mentioned only once, when Jesus entrusts her to
the care of John, saying: “Woman, behold your son,” and to John,
“Behold your mother” (John 19:26-27).

The explanation is to be found not in Gibson’s fertile imagination,

but in the medieval Catholic notion of God as a harsh, punitive
Being who demands full satisfaction for humankind’s sins. This
misconception of God promoted not only the devotion to Christ’s
suffering, but also the veneration of Mary as a partner in the
suffering of her Son for our salvation. Catholics believe that Mary
is in a unique position to intercede for sinners, because she is the
human mother of the Son of God who suffered with Him for our
salvation. Being a compassionate, loving mother, Mary can soften
the heart of God, moving Him to forgive penitent sinners. This
belief has inspired the popular devotion to the “Sacred Heart of
Mary.”

Many devout Catholics display in their homes the image of Mary

with her radiant heart enlarged and constantly illuminated by a
candle-like bulb. This practice represents the Catholic belief in
the co-redemptive role of Mary that motivated Gibson to highlight
her role throughout the film, sustaining her Son from Gethsemane
to Golgotha. During the procession to the Cross, Mary is present
at each of the falls of Jesus, and at one point she goes directly to
Him and encourages Him, saying: “I am here.”

As a reaction to the Catholic exaltation of Mary, Protestants have

tended to downplay the role of Mary, reducing her to an ordinary
woman who fulfilled her motherly role in bringing Jesus into the
world and training Him for His mission. Protestants have failed to
give due credit to Mary. They tend to ignore that she was an

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extraordinary woman of profound faith and transparent sincerity
who “found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). She must have done a
superb job in bringing up her Son in a dysfunctional family with
several children of her older husband.

Catholics Honor Mary’s Role in Our Salvation. Catholics

venerate Mary, not only because she is the human mother of
Jesus, but also they also believe that she plays a vital role in our
salvation. This belief is expressed in the prayers offered to Mary,
especially during the Masses celebrated at Lent. The Collection of
Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary explains that “The Mass in
celebration of Christ’s saving passion [at Lent] also honors the
part played by the Blessed Virgin in achieving our salvation.
When Mary became the mother of Christ ‘by the power of the
Holy Spirit,’ she became by a further gift of divine love ‘a partner
in His passion,’ a mother suffering with Him. The prayers of the
Mass recall the plan of salvation, by which God joined the
suffering of the mother with the suffering of her Son, and decreed
that ‘the new Eve should stand by the cross of the new Adam.’”10

Catholics believe that Mary participates in our Redemption by

undoing the disobedience of Eve. “As Eve indirectly contributed
to the Fall of Man, so Mary indirectly contributes to our
Redemption. As Eve gave Adam the instrument of the Fall (the
forbidden fruit) so Mary gave Jesus the instrument of the
Redemption (His Body). . . . Because a woman was involved
(indirectly) in the Fall, God wanted the sins of the first man and
woman to be reversed, not by a Man alone, but by a woman as
well. . . . Mary participates in our Redemption in three ways: she
obeyed God and so brought the Redeemer into the world, she
united her sufferings to His on the Cross, and she participates in
the distribution of the graces of salvation.”11 Being a traditional
Catholic, Mel Gibson is true to the Catholic belief that Mary is a
co-redeemer and proudly calls her “a tremendous co-redemptrix

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and mediatrix.”12 With great subtlety Gibson portrays Mary as a
participant in Christ’s suffering and death for our salvation.

Two Unbiblical Assumptions. The Catholic belief in the present

participation of Mary in our redemption as mediator and
intercessor is based on two unbiblical assumptions. The first,
already mentioned, is that she suffered with her Son throughout
the ordeal of the Cross. Consequently, as a partner in Christ’s
suffering, Mary is supposed to have the right to share in Christ’s
intercession and glorification in heaven.

The second unbiblical Catholic assumption is that Mary ascended

to heaven, body and soul, so that she might be close to her Son
and intercede before the Father on behalf of the church. The new
Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly teaches that “The
Most Blessed Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life
was completed, was taken up body and soul into the glory of
heaven, where she already shares in the glory of her Son’s
Resurrection, anticipating the resurrection of all members of His
Body.”13 The Catechism continues: “We believe that the Holy
Mother of God, the new Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in
heaven to exercise her maternal role on behalf of the members of
Christ.”14

The Prominent Role of Mary in The Passion. The fundamental

Catholic belief that Mary participates in our Redemption, because
she shared in the earthly suffering of her Son at the Cross, is fully
reflected in her portrayal in Passion Plays. Gibson’s movie
provides a good example of Mary’s prominent role as a partner
with Christ in the redemption.

In The Passion Mary lends vital support to her Son throughout

His trial, scourging, and crucifixion. In accordance with Catholic

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belief, had she been absent, Christ would not have been able to
offer Himself as the sacrifice for humankind. This heresy is taught
especially by mystic writers like Ann Catherine Emmerich who
presents Mary as co-redemptrix, that is, co-redeemer. She writes:
“The Blessed Virgin was ever united to her Divine Son by interior
spiritual communications; she was, therefore, fully aware of all
that happened to him—she suffered with him, and joined in his
continual prayer for his murderers.”15

Mary’s role as co-redeemer is clearly evident throughout the

movie. An ordinary mother would have screamed at seeing her
son brutalized. But Mary, though heartbroken, understands and
consents to the ordeal her Son must undergo. “So be it,” she says
at one point; and again, “It has begun.” At the foot of the Cross,
she says to her Son: “Let me die with you.”
In the Gospels’ narrative, Mary appears only once in the Gospel
of John, when Jesus on the Cross, pointing to John, says to His
mother: “Woman, behold your son!” (John 19:26). By contrast, in
Gibson’s movie, Mary is present every step of the way, acting as
His coach from Gethsemane to Golgotha. The message is that
Jesus made it to the Hill because Mother Mary infused some
mystical power through the meeting of their eyes whenever Christ
had no strength to go on. In keeping with traditional Catholic
theology, we witness Christ’s suffering and death in Gibson’s
movie through Mary’s eyes.
Mary is dressed like a medieval nun, rather than a first-century
Jewish woman. She is present in the Garden to comfort her Son
when she meets Peter on the streets after his denial of Christ.
Peter in distress looks Mary in the face and falls on his knees,
calling Mary “Mother.” John also calls Mary “Mother.” The
assumption is that Mary was already accepted by the disciples as
their spiritual Mother. Such an appellation, foreign to the Bible,
reflects the traditional Catholic veneration of Mary as “Mother of
God,” not just Christ’s human mother.

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Peter confesses his sin to Mary and asks for her forgiveness. Mary
is ready to absolve Peter for his sin, but he jumps up and says,
“No, I am not worthy.” The source for this scene is The Dolorous
Passion where Peter, after his denial, rushes out to Mary,
exclaiming in a dejected tone: “O, Mother, speak not to me—thy
Son is suffering more than words can express: speak not to me!
They have condemned Him to death, and I have denied him three
times.”16 The Catholic view of the intercessory role of Mary is
loud and clear.

Mary and Claudia. The prominent role of Mary is evident also

during the scourging, when Pilate’s wife, Claudia, gives Mary
fine cloths that she later used to mop up Jesus’ blood. Again the
source is not the Bible but The Dolorous Passion, which says: “I
saw Claudia Procles, the wife of Pilate, send some large pieces of
linen to the Mother of God. I know not whether she thought that
Jesus would be set free, and that his Mother would then require
linen to dress his wounds, or whether this compassionate lady was
aware of the use which would be made of her present. . . . I soon
after saw Mary and Magdalen approach the pillar where Jesus had
been scourged; . . . they knelt down on the ground near the pillar,
and wiped up the sacred blood with the linen which Claudia
Procles had sent.”17 This scene is vividly portrayed in Gibson’s
movie, but it is totally absent in the Gospels. Incidentally, during
the Middle Ages, the cloths stained with Jesus’ blood became
holy relics venerated by devout Catholics.

Mary appeals to Claudia, urging her to pressure the Roman

soldiers to protect her Son against the angry Jewish crowd.
Claudia aligns herself with Mary by influencing her husband on
behalf of Christ. But Pilate’s efforts are too little and too late.
Again, the interaction between Mary and Claudia is foreign to the
Bible, deriving instead from The Dolorous Passion.
Mary’s prominent role can be seen also in Christ’s journey along

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the Via Dolorosa on the way to Golgotha, known in Catholic
tradition as the “14 Stations of the Cross.” When the Roman
soldiers inquire of her identity, they are told, “She is the mother
of the Galilean . . . do not impede her.” During this journey,
Christ stops and falls several times because He has no strength
left to go on. At those points, Mary is always near Christ and acts
as His comforter and coach.

Mary and Jesus at the Cross. When Jesus hangs on the Cross
with His lacerated body covered with blood, Mary embraces His
bloody feet and her face is splattered with blood. What a powerful
Catholic message in showing Mary as a co-partner in our
Redemption! The message is clear: both Jesus and Mary have
paid the price of our Redemption.

After Jesus expires on the Cross, Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary
Magdalene, and John are shown taking Jesus’ body down from
the Cross. Even more telling is the picture of Mary cradling
Christ’s bloody body and holding His head in her arms, in the
same position as Michelangelo’s Pietà. This unbiblical picture has
a powerful message. It shows in a most appealing way the
Catholic belief that Mary participated in Christ’s sacrifice by
offering her Son for our salvation.

The involvement of Mary in taking down Christ’s body and

preparing it for burial is clearly contradicted by the Gospels
where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took down Christ’s
body from the Cross and “bound it in linen cloths with spices, as
is the burial custom of the Jews” (John 19:40). There is no
allusion to Mary or to the other devout women handling the body
of Jesus at the Cross.

The exalted role of Mary in Passion Plays is a pure fabrication of

Catholic mystics, who have been eager to glorify the intercessory

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role of Mary at the expense of the centrality of Christ’s atoning
sacrifice. Today the exaltation of Mary as a partner with Christ in
our Redemption is effectively promoted also by the Marian
messages coming from apparition sites which have received the
Catholic Church’s approval. For example, one Marian message
from Our Lady of Akita to Sister Agnes Sasagawa says: “I alone
am able still to save you from the calamities which approach.
Those who place their confidence in me will be saved.”18
A similar message from Mary to St. Bridget of Sweden says: “I
boldly assert that His suffering became my suffering, because His
heart was mine. And just as Adam and Eve sold the world for an
apple, so in a certain sense my Son and I redeemed the world with
one heart.”19

Intercession Is an Exclusive Prerogative of Christ.

Historically, Protestants have strongly rejected the Catholic belief
in Mary as a partner with Christ in our Redemption. They have
condemned such belief as a fundamental Catholic heresy that
obscures the centrality and uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice and
mediation. By attributing to Mary and the saints an intercessory
ministry in heaven on behalf of penitent sinners on earth, the
Catholic Church has developed an idolatrous religion
that offers salvation through a variety of persons. The result is
that many devout Catholics offer more prayers to Mary and the
saints than to the Father or the Son. A major reason is their
misconception of God as a stern and punitive Being difficult to
approach directly by sinners. By contrast, Mary, as the “Mother of
God” and co-redeemer, stands in a favorable position to intercede
before God in heaven on behalf of penitent sinners on earth.
The Bible is abundantly clear that only Christ ascended to heaven
to minister in the heavenly sanctuary as our intercessor and
mediator. “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice
for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb 10:12).
Contrary to the Old Testament levitical ministry in which “priests

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were many in number” (Heb 7:23), Christ is the only priest and
intercessor in heaven. “Consequently he is able for all time to
save those who draw near to God through him, since he always
lives to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25). The Bible
consistently presents Christ as the sole High Priest, Mediator, and
Intercessor, ministering in the heavenly sanctuary on our behalf
(Eph 4:5; Heb 4:14, 16; 7:23-25; 9:24; 10:11-12; 1 John 2:1).
There are no allusions in the Bible to Mary or the saints
interceding in heaven on behalf of sinners on earth. Intercession is
an exclusive prerogative of Christ, our Savior. To elevate Mary to
a co-redemptive role with Christ is to attribute divine qualities
and attributes to a mortal human being. The ultimate result is the
widespread idolatrous worship of Mary—a worship condemned
by the first and second commandments, which enjoin us to
worship God exclusively: “You shall have no other gods before
me” (Ex 20:3).

Growing Acceptance of Mary as Co-Redeemer. An increasing

number of Protestants are embracing the Catholic belief in the co-
redemptive role of Mary. Several factors are contributing to this
development. For example, feminist theologians are promoting
Mary as the female counterpart of God, thus attributing to her
divine attributes and prerogatives.
Another factor is the reemergence of the Goddess within the New
Age Movement and eastern religions. In her book The Goddess
Re-Awakening, Beatrice Bruteau notes that “the presence of the
Goddess herself has never departed from her holy place in our
consciousness, and now, as we enter what many feel to be a ‘new
age,’ we sense that the Goddess is somehow making her way back
to us. But in just what guise is so far unclear.”20
A more immediate contributing factor to the acceptance of Mary
as co-redeemer is the subtle way in which Mary participates in the
suffering of her Son throughout The Passion. In many ways
Gibson’s movie portrays the Passion of Mary as much as the

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Passion of Christ. In an interview with Christianity Today,
Gibson himself expressed his amazement that evangelical
Christians are so receptive to what he calls Mary’s “tremendous
co-redemptrix and mediatrix” role.21 He said: “I have been
actually amazed at the way I would say the evangelical audience
has—hands down—responded to this film more than any other
Christian group. What makes it so amazing is that the film is so
Marian.”22 The influence of The Passion in leading many
Evangelicals to accept Mary as a co-redeemer may prove to be
one of the greatest Catholic evangelistic accomplishments of our
times.

Unbiblical Role of Mary. The Catholic exaltation of Mary as a

partner with her Son in our redemption is clearly contradicted by
Scripture. In the Gospels’ accounts of the Passion, Mary appears
only once at the Cross when Christ entrusts her to the care of
John, saying, “Woman, behold your son!” (John 19:26). Such an
impersonal address hardly supports the mystical interaction
between Jesus and Mary present in Passion Plays. Such an
interaction obscures the relationship between the Father and the
Son, making salvation more an accomplishment of mother Mary
and her Son than that of the Father and the Son.
In the Gospels the important interaction is between the Father and
the Son, not between Mary and her Son: “My Father, if it is
possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but
as thou wilt” (Matt 26:39). And again: “My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). These pronouncements
reveal the distinctive relationship that exists between Christ and
the Father. Christ came, not to work together with His mother for
our salvation, but to do the will of His Father: “Lo, I have come to
do thy will” (Heb 10:9). The Cross reveals, not Mary offering her
Son for our salvation, but the Father willing through His Son to
become flesh and suffer the punishment of our sins in order to
redeem us without compromising His own character.

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Evangelicals Are Embracing the Catholic View of Mary. The
exaltation of Mary as co-redeemer of humankind, mediating
Christ’s grace, is effectively promoted by Passion Plays and
Marian messages. These are posing a serious threat to Evangelical
Christianity. Many well-meaning Evangelicals are
enthusiastically embracing the Catholic view of Mary’s role in
our salvation, without realizing the magnitude of the threat that
such teaching poses to the centrality and uniqueness of Christ’s
sacrifice and mediation.

The problem we are facing today is that many people are largely
biblically alliterate and image-oriented, with the entertainment
media functionally operating as their biblical authority. In other
words, many Christians are influenced far more by what they see
in the movies than by what they read in the Bible. The reason is
that people spend far more time watching movies than reading
their Bibles. A religious movie like The Passion will soon become
the Gospel for many people.

A woman sent me an email saying that she was grateful that

Gibson’s movie brought out the “facts” of the Passion missed by
the Gospels. She felt that the Gospels largely ignore the
contribution that Mary made to our salvation. She was glad that
“The Passion has set the record straight.” Is this sound reasoning?
Do we test the accuracy of The Passion by the Gospels, or do we
rewrite the Gospels according to a fictional religious movie? It is
important to remember that God has chosen to reveal His will for
our lives, not through drama and plays, but through the Written
Word.

The few references to Mary in the Gospels indicate that God

chose her to bring His Son into the world because she was an
extraordinary godly woman. She must have loved her Son deeply
and devoted herself unreservedly to His upbringing. She must

65
have faced most difficult challenges in training her Son in a home
made up of an older husband with stepbrothers and sisters. Her
dedication to her Son is evident in the fact that she followed Him
all the way to the Cross, feeling in her heart the brutal suffering of
her Son such as only a mother can feel.
Mary was a vessel used by God, and she deserves our respect. But
to exalt Mary as a partner with Christ in our salvation, interceding
in heaven on our behalf, is making a mortal human being into an
immortal divine being. It means elevating the human mother of
Jesus into the divine “Mother of God,” as the Catholics worship
her. The result is the worship of Mary which the Bible clearly
condemns as idolatry. “You shall have no other gods before me”
(Ex 20:3).

THE PORTRAYAL AND

IMPERSONATION OF CHRIST

Thousands of pastors and theologians were invited to an exclusive

screening of Gibson’s movie The Passion prior to its release.
Their reactions were mostly very positive. James Dobson calls
The Passion “a film that must be seen.”23 Greg Laurie of Harvest
Crusades said: “I believe The Passion of the Christ may well be
one of the most powerful evangelistic tools of the last 100
years.”24 Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Community
Church, stated: “The film is brilliant, biblical, a masterpiece.”25
Billy Graham himself is on record for saying: “Every time I
preach or speak about the Cross, the things I saw on the screen
will be on my heart and mind.”26

The Passion and the Second Commandment. What struck me

in reading the comments of leading pastors is the fact that none of
them mentions how the impersonation of Christ by a movie actor
relates to the Second Commandment which states: “You shall not
make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that

66
is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve
them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to
thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments”
(Ex 20:4-6).

The question of the biblical legitimacy of dramatizing in a movie

the final hours of Christ’s agony and death is never addressed in
the reviews that I have read. The comments of movie critics and
church leaders focus primarily on the artistic qualities, as well as
the biblical and historical accuracy of the film. The problem is
that a movie about Christ’s agony and death may be artistically
brilliant but biblically flawed, because, as we shall see, any
attempt to impersonate the Divine Son of God, reducing Him to a
mere mortal human being, violates the intent of the Second
Commandment, as understood in Scripture and history.

Historically, Protestants have interpreted the Second

Commandment as a prohibition against making images or
representations of the three Persons of the Trinity for the purpose
of worship. For example, in response to the question, “Are images
then not at all to be made?” the Heidelberg Catechism responds:
“God cannot and should not be pictured in any way. As for
creatures, although they may indeed be portrayed, God forbids
making or having any likeness of them in order to worship them
or to use them to serve him.”27

The Reformers took a firm stand against visual representations of

members of the Godhead and removed all paintings and statues
from churches. Crucifixes with the contorted bloody body of the
crucified Christ were replaced in Protestant churches with empty
crosses. The focus of worship shifted from the Images-oriented

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worship to Word-oriented worship, that is, from veneration of
images and relics to the proclamation of the Word.
In recent times, changes have taken place in the use of images for
worship. A growing number of Evangelical churches are adopting
the Catholic tradition of placing images of Christ and crucifixes
with His contorted body in their churches. The reasoning is that
the Second Commandment prohibits only the making of images
to be used in the church for worship. However, pictures or even
religious movies like The Passion, shown in churches to educate
the laity, are supposedly permitted by the Second Commandment,
because they are not used as aids to worship.

The Meaning of the Second Commandment. The distinction

between the liturgical and educational uses of pictures of God in
the church is artificial and can hardly be supported by the Second
Commandment. There is a progression between the First and
Second Commandments. The First Commandment calls us to
reject all other gods and to worship Yahweh as the only true God:
“You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2). The Second
Commandment builds upon the First by warning against wrong
and incorrect ways of worship by means of visual or material
objectification of God.

The meaning of the Second Commandment is clearer in its

expanded version found in Deuteronomy 4:15-19, where Moses
reminds the Israelites of the veiled appearance of God at Sinai:
“You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at
Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully,
so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an
idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or
woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the
air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in
the water below. And when you look to the sky and see the sun,
the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed

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into bowing down to them and worshipping things the Lord your
God has appointed to all nations under heaven” (Deut 4:15-19;
emphasis supplied).

The fundamental reason given for warning the Israelites against

making images of the Lord in the semblance of people, animals,
or celestial lights is precisely because they saw “no form” of the
Lord when He spoke to them. It is important to note that in the
Old Testament God manifested His glory, not His face. On Mount
Sinai God’s face was hidden by a cloud. In the sanctuary His
presence was manifested as the shekinah glory between the
cherubim, but there was no visual portrayal of God. Respect for
the holiness of God precluded any attempt to represent the divine
Beings of the Godhead. Even sacred objects such as the Ark of
the Covenant, located in the Most Holy Place (symbol of God’s
throne), could not be touched or looked into by ordinary people.
We read in 1 Samuel 6:19 that God slew 70 men of Beth-shemesh
because they dared to look into the ark of the Lord: “And he slew
some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked into the
ark of the Lord; he slew seventy men of them. . . . Then the men
of Beth-shemesh said: ‘Who is able to stand before the Lord, this
holy God?’” (1 Sam 6:19-20). Later on when the ark was carried
on a new cart to Jerusalem, “Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of
God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of
the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there
because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there besides
the ark of God” (2 Sam 6:6-7).

No Visual Representation of the Deity in Bible Times. These

tragic episodes teach us an important lesson. No human being can
afford to treat lightly what is associated with God. The ark was
the place where God manifested His presence (Shekinah). Thus,
to treat it casually was sacrilegious. God’s people understood this

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important truth. No pictures of God appeared in the Temple,
Synagogue, or early Christian Churches.

In the catacombs Christ is represented not by pictures, but by

symbols like the fish, the anchor, the Jonah’s cycle as symbol of
Christ’s Resurrection, or the Good Shepherd. The reason is that
early Christians understood that pictorial and visible
representations of the three Persons of the Trinity violate the
prohibition of the Second Commandment against the use of
images to worship God.

In our visual society, it is difficult to accept the biblical principle

that objectifying God by means of pictures, statues, drama,
Passion Plays, or religious movies violates the intent of the
Second Commandment. Christians today may not recognize that
God is not a consumer product for our society to reproduce, use,
and market. Paul explained to the Athenians, who were
surrounded by countless artistic representations of gods in stone
and images, that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold,
or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of
man” (Acts 17:29; emphasis supplied). The Apostle explains that
“God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of
heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he
served by human hands” (Acts 17:24-25).

God has chosen to reveal to us not His outward appearance, but

His character. Yet, in spite of God’s precautions not to reveal His
“form,” the history of the Israelites is replete with attempts to
objectify God and worship Him through idols that could be seen
and touched. The downfall and rejection of the Jews as God’s
people is causally related in the Bible to the abandonment of the
worship of the invisible God and the adoption of the worship of
visible gods, often called balim.

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Is it Biblically Correct to Portray or Impersonate Christ? Is
the biblical prohibition against making visual representations of
God the Father applicable to the Son as well? The answer of some
Christian leaders is “NO!” They reason that the Second
Commandment cannot be applied to Christ, because, contrary to
the Father who did not reveal His “form,” Christ took upon
Himself a human form and lived like a man upon this earth.
Consequently, nothing is thought to be wrong in portraying the
human side of Christ through pictures or drama.
Bian Godawa argues that “The Passion of the Christ is a narrative
depiction of Christ’s humanity, not of His divinity. “28
Consequently The Passion’s dramatization of the last 12 hours of
Christ’s suffering and death does not violate the Second
Commandment, because what is portrayed is the human side of
Christ’s person.

There are several problems with this reasoning. First, the human
side of Christ cannot be artistically portrayed in isolation from
His divine nature, because Jesus was not simply a man nor simply
a God, but the God-man. The divine and human natures were not
split, but mysteriously blended together in Christ. As stated in the
classic definition of the Chalcedonian Creed, the two natures in
Christ were united “without confusion, without change, without
division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no
way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each
nature being preserved and coming together to form one person
and subsistence.”

The New Testament tells us that Christ is “the image of the

invisible God” (Col 1:15). “He reflects the glory of God and bears
the very stamp of His nature” (Heb 1:3). Jesus Himself said that
“he who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The fact
that in Christ the divine and human natures were mysteriously
united makes it impossible for any artist or actor to capture the

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totality of Christ’s personality. How can any artist portray such
divine traits of Christ’s nature as His creative and restorative
power, His wisdom, His immortal nature, and His power to lay
down His life and to take it up again (John 10:17)?
Can Images of the Deity Be Used as Aids to Worship?
Any portrayal of the human Christ must be regarded as an artistic
creation based on the pure imagination of an artist, who creates
his own Christ. Since no artist has seen the real Christ and no
artist can grasp the mysterious union of the divine and human
natures in Him, any portrayal of the Lord in canvas, stone, or
drama must be seen as a distortion of the real Christ. Perhaps this
explains why the movie Ben Hur exercised retraints in depicting
Christ—showing only His hands, His back, and shadow, but
never His face. Apparently the producer understood that Christ
was no ordinary human being. The mystery of His divine and
human natures could not and should not be legitimately portrayed.
These comments should not be taken as an outright condemnation
of any visual representations of Christ. Some plain pictures of
Christ’s healings or teachings can be used for illustrating
important truths about Jesus, but they should never be seen as
factual representations of the real Christ. More important still,
pictures of Christ should never be used as icons for worship,
designed to help believers form mental images of the God whom
they wish to worship. We cannot expect God to bless the use of
images of Himself in worship when He enjoins us not to make
them in the first place.

In Catholic worship, the pictures or statues of Jesus or of Mary

are mass-produced as icons for worship purposes. They are aids to
worship in the sense that the believer kneels and prays before
them in order to form a mental image of the real Christ or Mary
that they are worshipping. Scripture condemns as idolatry the use
of visual images to conceptualize God in prayer or preaching.
Paul explains that idolatry involves exchanging the glory of the

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immortal God for images of mortal beings: “Claiming to be wise,
they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for images resembling mortal man” (Rom 1:22-23).
The historic Protestant confessions recognize that the idolatry
condemned by the Second Commandment includes the use of
images as aids in forming a mental image of God in worship. For
example, the Westminster Larger Catechism states: “The sins
forbidden in the Second Commandment are: . . . the making of
any representation of God, of all, or of any of the three Persons,
either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or
likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God
in it or by it.”29

The biblical prohibition against the use of visual representations

of the three Persons of the Trinity to form mental images in
worship raises questions about the endorsement of The Passion by
“name-brand” preachers like Billy Graham. In an interview Dr.
Graham stated: “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the
things I saw on the screen [of The Passion] will be on my heart
and mind.”30 If a preacher like Billy Graham will be permanently
influenced by Gibson’s “animated crucifix”—as The Passion is
rightly called—will not millions of average Christians unfamiliar
with the Gospels’ narrative “exchange the glory of the immortal
God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom 1:23)?
Dr. Graham could have easily said: “Every time I preach or speak
about the Cross, the things the Word of God and the Spirit have
taught me will be in my heart and mind.” The fact is that now his
preaching of the Cross will be permanently influenced by the
crucified Christ of Gibson’s movie. This shows that people today,
like the Israelites of old, are not satisfied to worship God in “spirit
and in truth” (John 4:24) according to the all-sufficient Word, but
long and yearn for a tangible God whom they can see and
experience.

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Nobody Knows What Christ Looked Like. This leads us to
consider a second reason why visual representation or dramatic
impersonation of Christ cannot be biblically justified: any
representation of Christ is a misrepresentation, because nobody
knows what the Savior looked like. In His wisdom Christ chose to
leave no physical imprint of Himself. Popular church pictures and
movies portray Christ as a robust, handsome, tall man with blue
eyes, long flowing hair, and a light complexion. They are inspired
by the pious imagination of gifted artists who are conditioned by
popular conceptions rather than by biblical and historical sources.

For example, Jim Caviezel, who plays Christ in The Passion,

hardly looks like a first-century Jew. A typical Jew was of
medium height with a semitic nose, pointed beard, and black,
cropped hair. The archeological wall painting showing the arrival
of a group of Palestinians in Egypt suggests what the Jews looked
like.31 It is a known fact that ordinary Jewish men did not wear
long hair as did Caviezel. The only exception was when a Jew
took a voluntary and temporary Nazarite vow to dedicate himself
to the Lord by abstaining from grape products (Num 6:3-4),
avoiding ritual defilement (Num 6:6), and leaving his hair uncut
until the close of the specified period (Num 6:5, 13-21).
But Jesus was not a Nazarite. He wore short hair like the Jewish
men of His time. Paul explains that the length of the hair
distinguished a man from a woman. In the Jewish culture of the
time, women wore long hair and men short hair. The reason given
by Paul is that “for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him”
(1 Cor 11:14). Thus, Caviezel with his long hair looks more like
yesterday’s hippies than the New Testament Jewish Christ.
Furthermore, most likely Jesus was not as attractive as movie star
Caviezel. None of the Evangelists comment on the beauty of
Christ’s physical appearance, presumably because what attracted
people to the Savior was His character, rather than His
appearance. Isaiah says: “He had no form or comeliness that we

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should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is
53:2). If the real picture of Christ were available today for people
to see, most likely many Christians would be disappointed by His
unappealing appearance.

People were attracted to Christ not because He was a handsome

and strong Super Man who could carry a heavy cross of about 400
pounds, after being whipped for 10 minutes with a cat-o’-nine-
tails that tore out His flesh and drained His blood. Instead, what
attracted people to Christ were the nobility of His character and
His penetrating teachings that reached the depth of their souls.
Even His opponents admitted, “No man ever spoke like this man”
(John 7:46).

The biblical Christ is not the invincible Survivor of The Passion,

but the Divine Son of God, who took upon Himself our human
limitations and was “made like his brethren in every respect, so
that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the
service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people” (Heb
2:17).

Images of Christ Go Beyond Scripture.

The problem with artistic representations of Christ is that the

images or drama often go beyond Scripture. Few Christians are
capable of or willing to recognize this fact. For example, we noted
earlier that respected Evangelical leaders claim that Gibson’s
brutal reenactment of the Passion is true to the Gospels. Gibson
himself stated in an interview with the New Yorker magazine: “I
wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done
before. I didn’t want to see Jesus looking really pretty. I wanted to
mess up one of his eyes, destroy it.”32

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Is this what being true to the Gospels means to Gibson and to
Evangelical leaders? Do any of the Gospels portray Christ with a
“destroyed eye” and with his body skinned alive as shown in The
Passion? It is noteworthy that the Gospel of Mark makes no
mention of blood in the entire passion narrative. The Gospels’
accounts of Jesus’ flogging and crucifixion are as minimal as they
could be. They all tell us essentially the same thing: “Having
scourged Jesus, [Pilate] delivered him to be crucified,” . . . “And
when they came to a place which is called The Skull, there they
crucified him” (see Matt 27:26, 33; Mark 15:20, 22; Luke 23:25,
33). A few verses later, Jesus is dead. This is the whole brief,
sober, and cryptic account of Jesus’ sufferings and death.
The Gospel writers do not linger over the details of Christ’s brutal
suffering to stir emotions or to promote the Catholic view of
suffering as a way of salvation. The reason is that the Evangelists
were not mentally unbalanced Catholic mystics obsessed with
intensifying Christ’s suffering to satisfy what they believed to be
the exacting demands of a punitive God. Instead, the Gospel
writers were balanced men who learned at the feet of Jesus how to
follow their Master, not by inflicting physical suffering on their
bodies (self-flagellation), but by living in accordance with His
teachings.

There is a world of difference between the blood and gore of

Gibson’s movie and the brief Gospels’ story of the betrayal,
arrest, condemnation, and crucifixion which is told without
recourse to blood and gore. Surely it was bloody, but the
Evangelists chose not to dwell upon that. Instead they focus on
Christ’s perfect life, atoning death, and glorious Resurrection.
Gibson took 124 minutes to flagellate Jesus, throw Him off a
bridge, bleed Him, slash Him, and nail Him on the Cross, but less
than 2 minutes to show a fleeting resurrection. This imbalance
reflects a Catholic sense of proportions which is tied to the ritual

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of the Mass as a perpetual reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice. Such
a view is foreign to the Bible.

The point of these observations is that often popular

representations or dramatic impersonations of Christ turn out to
be gross misrepresentations of the real meaning of Christ’s life,
suffering, and death. Christians who depend upon such
misrepresentations to conceptualize and worship the Lord end up
developing a superstitious faith based on the fear of a punitive
God. A healthy faith is based on mental images inspired by the
Word and apprehended through the eyes of faith. Such images
help us to conceptualize God, not as a harsh, punitive Being who
brutalizes His Son to meet the rigorous demands of His justice,
but as a merciful God who satisfied the demands of His justice by
substituting Himself for us.

Images and Plays Upstage Preaching. The use of images,

drama, plays, and religious movies during the worship service
upstages the preaching, which is God’s chosen means for
communicating the faith and nurturing the spiritual life of His
people. The Apostle Paul explains: “faith comes from what is
heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom
10:17). This means that saving faith comes through the reading,
preaching, and hearing of the Word of God, and not through
statues, plays, or religious movies. It is not surprising that Karl
Barth observes that “speaking about God is commanded hundreds
of times in the Bible but setting up images is forbidden and barred
expressis verbis [by explicit words].”33

In theory God could use a movie to engender faith, but the reality
is that He has chosen preaching instead to communicate the
Gospel. As Paul puts it: “It pleased God through the folly of what
we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21). Preaching
seemed foolish in Paul’s time, when people responded more

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readily to dramatic plays staged in amphitheaters visible
throughout the Roman world. Preaching may seem even more
foolish today in our mass-media society that values theatrics far
more than preaching.

Church growth experts tell us that preaching is old-fashioned and

no longer appeals to Generation Y (born in the 80’s) or
Generation X (born between 1964 and1982). To reach these new
generations, experts say, preaching must be replaced with more
effective means such as drama, movies, plays, and upbeat music.

Word-worship Versus Image-Worship. The problem with this

reasoning is the failure to recognize that God has chosen to use
methods that may appear to be old-fashioned and foolish to save
people. Just as the message of Christ crucified appears to be a
foolish way to save people, so the means of communicating the
Gospel through preaching appears to be foolish as well.

From a human perspective, preaching may seem old-fashioned

and ineffective compared to the extraordinary appeal of drama.
But we must not forget that salvation is the work of God in the
human heart, accomplished through the proclamation of the
Word, rather than the staging of dramatic visual representations.
Church history teaches us that when the preaching of the Word
was gradually replaced by a visual worship consisting of the
staging of the Mass, Passion Plays, veneration of images, relics,
processions, and pilgrimages to holy shrines, the apostasy of the
church set in, ushering in what is known as the Dark Ages. The
movement today in the Evangelical world from Word-worship to
Image-worship could well represent a repetition of the past
downfall of the church and of the ancient Israelites.
Most people think that seeing is believing. If they could only see
Christ, then they might believe in Him. But the New Testament
teaches otherwise. It talks about faith as coming from hearing, not

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seeing. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). The temptation to worship a
visible and objectified Christ leads to idolatry. This can be seen in
dominant Catholic countries, where the only Christ that devout
Catholics know and worship is the One they touch, kiss, see, and
often wear as jewelry. Statues, crucifixes, and pictures of the
bleeding Savior abound in devout Catholic homes. So, instead of
worshipping the invisible Lord in Spirit and Truth, they worship
idols that they can see, touch, and feel.

God’s Precautions to Prevent the Objectification of Christ

We can hardly blame God for the human attempts to objectify the
three members of the Godhead through movies, statues, paintings,
images, crucifixes, and religious jewelry. Christ took utmost
precaution to prevent human beings from materializing and
objectifying His spiritual nature. When this second Person of the
Godhead became a human being for about thirty-three years, He
refrained from leaving on this earth a single material mark that
can be authenticated as His own.

Christ did not build or own a house; He did not write books or
own a library; He did not leave the exact date of His birth or of
His death; He did not leave descendants. He left an empty tomb,
but even this place is still disputed. He left no “thing” of Himself,
but only the assurance of His spiritual presence: “Lo, I am with
you always, to the close of the age” (Matt 28:20).
Why did Christ pass through this world in this mysterious
fashion, leaving no physical footprints, visual images, or material
traces of Himself? Why did the Godhead miss the golden
opportunity provided by the incarnation to leave permanent
material evidence and reminders of the Savior’s appearance, life,
suffering, and death on this planet? Furthermore, why do the
Gospel writers minimize the suffering of Christ’s final hours?
Why is the “blood” factor, which is so prominent in Gibson’s

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movie, largely missing in the narrative of the Passion? Is this not
clear evidence of God’s concern to protect humankind from the
constant temptation to reduce a spiritual relationship into a “thing-
worship”?

In surveying the history of the Passion Plays in chapter 1, we

noted how the visual staging of Christ’s cruel sufferings and death
inspired many people to imitate the physical suffering of Christ
by wounding their bodies and carrying crosses. By focusing on
the physical suffering of the dying Christ, they failed to see with
the eyes of faith the triumphant Lord in heaven at the right hand
of God.

The Sabbath Discourages Visual-Oriented Worship

It was because of this concern that God chose the Sabbath—a day
rather than an object—as the symbol of a divine-human covenant
relationship (Ezek 20:12; Ex 31:13). Being time, a mystery that
defies human attempts to shape it into a physical idol, the Sabbath
provides constant protection against a physical, visual-oriented
worship, and is a fitting reminder of the spiritual nature of the
covenant relationship between God and His people.
If Gibson were to accept the message of the Sabbath regarding the
spiritual nature of God and of our relationship with Him, he
would soon realize that his reenactment of Christ’s Passion,
though well-intentioned, tempts sincere Christians to worship a
visible movie-Christ, rather than the mystery-Christ of divine
revelation.

The only Christ that many people will come to know is the
Caviezel-Christ they have seen in the movie being tortured to
death so as to satisfy the rigorous demands of a punitive God.
Such a gory and bloody mental image of Christ distorts the
Gospel story in which the focus is not on the lacerated, bloody
body of Jesus but on His exemplary life, compassionate ministry,

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profound teachings, perfect sacrifice for sin, and glorious
resurrection. Such mental images, inspired by the Gospels,
provide the legitimate basis for worshipping our Savior in “Spirit
and Truth.”

No Drama, Passion Plays, or Pictures in the Early Church

The early Christians respected the Second Commandment by
shunning any visual representation of the Deity in their places of
worship. During the first four centuries, Christians did not use
pictures of Jesus or Passion Plays for their worship or evangelistic
outreach, despite the fact that they lived in a highly visual Greco-
Roman culture. Pagan temples with statues of gods littered the
countryside. Mystery religions like Mithraism, Cybele, and Isis
had their own Passion Plays. A popular play was known as the
taurobolium (bloodbath). It replicated the death and resurrection
of the god Attis by killing a bull and covering a new believer with
his blood.

The primitive church did not adopt pagan religious visual

practices for communicating the Gospel. In accordance with the
Second Commandment, the early church did not allow pictorial
representations of the three Persons of the Trinity to be used.
Their worship was Word-centered, not Image-centered.
The situation gradually changed as Gentile Christians brought
into the church their pagan beliefs and practices. Soon pictures,
statues, and plays became commonplace. During the Middle
Ages, Passion Plays were staged first in churches, then in church
yards, and finally in special outdoor amphitheaters. They have
become important tourist attractions in several countries. In the
year 2000, the Oberammergau Passion Play in Upper Bavaria,
Germany, drew over half a million pilgrims from many parts of
the world. In North America also there are popular Passion Plays
in such places as Eureka Springs, Arkansas; Black Hills, South
Dakota; and Lake Wales, Florida. At the local level, numerous

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churches and Christians school are staging Passion Plays.

The Temptation to Worship a Visible Christ. At the time of the

Reformation, Protestants overwhelmingly rejected the use of
images, statues, relics, and Passion Plays in the church as a
violation of the Second Commandment. Rather than using icons,
they relied on the preaching of the Word to save souls. As a result
the Gospel made significant advances.

This does not mean that we should follow the example of the
Reformers by eliminating all pictures of Christ. Plain pictures of
Christ’s life, teachings, and miracles can be used as illustrations
without becoming objects of adoration. The problem arises when
pictures are produced and used as icons for worship. In most
cases, they portray and foster unbiblical teachings. For example,
pictures of the Cross or crucifixes with Christ’s contorted body
hanging on the Cross and covered with blood are still widely used
today in Catholic countries to promote the devotion to Christ’s
Passion. Devout Catholics wear, kiss, hold, touch, and pray
toward such images to express their devotion to the suffering
Savior. In these instances, pictures encourage an idolatrous form
of worship.

The sad reality is that many Evangelicals have become so

conditioned by the entertainment industry that they are more and
more drifting toward the Catholic system of worship with images,
drama, Passion Plays, and religious movies. The highly Catholic
portrayal of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion in The Passion is
contributing significantly to the Evangelical acceptance of a
visible Lord that dominates in Catholic worship. By accepting the
use of images that were once rejected as signs of papal authority,
Evangelicals are running the risk today of returning to the

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Medieval false worship which the Reformers fought hard to
reform.

THE “CHRISTIAN” THEOLOGY OF ANTI-SEMITISM

The drama of the trial, suffering, and crucifixion of Jesus is

central to the Christian message of salvation through Christ’s
atoning sacrifice. The interpretation of the role of the Jews in this
drama has been the foundation of the “Christian” theology of
contempt toward the Jews.

Throughout the centuries and still today many believe that the
roots of Christian anti-Semitism are to be found in the Gospels
themselves. The popular assumption is that the Gospels are
overwhelmingly hostile toward the Jews, blaming them
collectively for the death of Christ. For example, Ken Spiro
writes: “The negative role that the Jews play in the Passion served
to create a solid foundation on which later Christian anti-
Semitism would be built.”34

Spiro continues: “Probably, the most damning of all accusations

appears in John 8:44: ‘You are the children of your father, the
Devil, and you want to follow your father’s desires. From the
beginning he was a murderer.’”35 The companion text often
quoted by those who argue for the collective guilt of the Jews as
“Christ-killers” is Matthew 27:25: “And all the people answered,
‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” Texts such as these
have been used historically to accuse the Jewish people of
deicide, that is, of being “Christ-killers.” Because of this crime,
the Jews are allegedly under a permanent divine curse, which has
doomed them to suffer rejection, persecution, and suppression
during the Christian era until the end of time.
The Passion Plays have served to dramatize the crime of deicide
by portraying the dominant role of the wicked Jews in the

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condemnation and crucifixion of Christ. The mass hysteria
generated by the annual plays enraged the people against the
“Christ-killing Jews.” People accused them of well poisoning,
causing the Black Plague, and ritual murder. These accusations,
as noted in Chapter 1, led to the dehumanization, demonization,
brutalization, expulsion, and murder of countless Jews throughout
Europe. The anti-Semitic climate fostered by the Passion Plays
predisposed many Christians to accept Hitler’s “final solution” to
the Jewish problem as a divine solution.

Are the Roots of Anti-Semitism Found in the Gospels?

The historical use of the Passion narratives to blame the Jews
collectively for the death of Christ raises important questions: Are
the roots of anti-Semitism to be found in the Gospels themselves
or in later religious-historical developments? Are the Passion
Plays true to the Gospels in portraying the Jewish people as being
collectively guilty of murdering Christ? Do the Gospels place the
blame for Christ’s death on all the Jews, including future
generations yet to be born, or on some Jewish leaders and their
followers?

These questions deserve serious consideration, because what is at

stake is the legitimacy of the “Christian” theology of contempt
toward the Jews, effectively dramatized in Passion Plays. This
theology, as noted in Chapter 1, has led to the systematic
suppression, expulsion, and liquidation of millions of Jews during
the course of Christian history. Furthermore, this theology has
contributed in recent times to the development of
dispensationalism—a theological system widely accepted by
Evangelical churches today.

A fundamental tenet of dispensationalism is that God terminated

His dealings with the Jews at the Cross (or Pentecost) because
they rejected and killed Christ and inaugurated the Christian

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dispensation to last until the Rapture. This theological construct
gives preferential treatment to Christians over the Jews. In fact,
soon God is supposed to secretly rapture Christians away from
this earth in order to pour out the seven last plagues on the Jews
and the unconverted people left behind. This scenario is being
popularized today by the movie Left Behind and the series of
books by the same title, which are selling by the millions, faster
than McDonald’s hamburgers.

Were All the Jews Hostile to Christ? Since the roots of anti-
Semitism and dispensationalism are generally traced back to the
role of the Jewish people in Christ’s death, it is imperative to
understand what the Gospels really teach us on this subject. A
superficial reading of a few isolated texts cited earlier, without
attention to their immediate and larger contexts, could lead one to
conclude that the Gospels place the guilt for Christ’s death
collectively on the Jewish people, marking them as a cursed
people for all times. But a closer look at all the relevant texts
reveals that to stereotype all the Jews as Christ’s killers is to
ignore the fact that Jesus, His disciples, and the many people who
believed in Him were all Jews.

To clarify this point, let us look at the use of the phrase “the
Jews” in the Gospel of John. The reason for choosing John’s
Gospel is the prevailing assumption that this Gospel is more anti-
Semitic than the Synoptics, because it uses the inclusive phrase
“the Jews” over 60 times, in place of the terms “Scribes” and
“Pharisees” used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Does the frequent reference to “the Jews” in John’s Gospel make
this Gospel particularly anti-Semitic? The answer is “NO!”
because the phrase is used with three different connotations. First,
the phrase “the Jews” is used to designate the Jewish people in
general without any negative value attached to it. For example,
when Jesus wept by the grave of Lazarus, we are told that “The

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Jews said, ‘see how he loved him’” (John 11:36). In this instance,
“the Jews” are the people surrounding Jesus who were moved by
His show of affection for Lazarus. There is no indication that this
group of Jews hated Jesus.

Second, the phrase “the Jews” is used in John to denote the people
who believed in Christ. For example, Nicodemus is described as
“a ruler of the Jews” who believed in Christ (John 3:1). At the
resurrection of Lazarus we are told that “Many of the Jews
therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did,
believed in him” (John 11:45). Shortly we shall see that the
growing popularity of Jesus among the Jewish people was seen by
some religious leaders as a threat to their authority.
Third, the phrase “the Jews” is frequently used to denote “the
leaders of the Jews” who were scheming to kill Christ. Here are
some examples. “The Jews took up stones again to stone him”
(John 10:31). “The Jews sought all the more to kill him, because
he not only broke the sabbath, but also called God his own Father,
making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). Again, “The Jews
cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend’”
(John 19:12).

Taken out of their context, these statements could be interpreted

as descriptive of the determination of the whole Jewish nation to
kill Jesus. However, such an interpretation ignores two things.
First, the immediate context indicates that “the Jews” in question
were those present at the incidents described, not the Jewish
people as a whole.

Christ’s Popularity Was a Threat to Jewish Leaders

Second, in the larger context of John’s Gospel, “the Jews,” as
noted earlier, also include the people who believed in Christ and
followed Him. In fact, their numbers must have been significant,
because we are told that “the chief priests planned to put Lazarus

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also to death, because on account of him many of the Jews were
going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:10-11). This text
highlights the contrast between the chief priests and “many of the
Jews.” On the one hand there are the chief priests scheming to kill
not only Jesus but also Lazarus, because their authority was
threatened by the increasing number of Christ’s followers. But, on
the other hand, there are “many of the Jews” going away from the
priests because they believed in Jesus. Such a split in the Jewish
community hardly indicates that all Jews were hostile toward
Christ.

The Gospels suggest that Christ’s growing popularity among the

common Jewish people threatened the authority of the religious
leaders. This is clear in the deliberation of the council held after
the resurrection of Lazarus. The “chief priests and the Pharisees”
said: “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If
we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him” (John
11:47-48).

For the religious leaders, the issue was the survival of their own
authority. If all the people came to believe in Jesus, their authority
would be rejected. For them, it was a question of survival. Either
they protected their authority over the people by eliminating
Christ, or Christ would soon become so popular with the people
that their authority would be ultimately rejected. In their thinking
the only solution was to find ways to kill Christ before all the
Jews accepted Him and rejected them.

The Jews Were Divided in their Attitude Toward Christ. This

scenario suggests that the Jews were divided in their attitude
toward Christ. Some believed in Him and some rejected Him. The
latter group supported the religious leaders in their efforts to kill
Him. John mentions this division in the context of the reaction of
the people to Christ’s speech about the Good Shepherd. “There

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was a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of
them said, ‘He has a demon, and he is mad; why listen to him?’
Others said, ‘These are not the sayings of one who has a demon.
Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?’” (John 10:19-21;
emphasis supplied).

The division in the attitude of the Jews toward Christ discredits

the claim that all the Jews were collectively antagonistic to Christ
and supported their leaders in their plans to kill Him. The fact is
that Jesus enjoyed considerable support, especially among the
common people. John tells us that “many even of the authorities
believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess
it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue” (John 12:42;
emphasis supplied). It is difficult to estimate the percentage of the
Jews who were for Christ and of those who were against Him,
because poll-taling was unknown in those days. But there
appeared to have been a significant number of Jews who followed
and supported Jesus all the way to the Cross.

Luke tells us that many of Christ’s supporters followed Him all

the way to Golgotha: “And there followed him a great multitude
of the people, and of the women who bewailed and lamented
him” (Luke 23:27; emphasis supplied). This multitude of Jews
witnessed with great anguish Christ’s crucifixion: “And all the
multitude who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what
had taken place, returned home beating their breast” (Luke
23:48).

Luke’s description of a great multitude of Jews following Jesus

all the way to the Cross, expressing their grief by bewailing and
beating their breasts for the crime committed in torturing and
crucifying Jesus, hardly supports the contention that all the Jews
were hostile to Christ and called for His death. In his informative
chapter on “The Jewish Leaders,” Alan F. Segal, Professor of

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Religion and Jewish Studies at Columbia University, notes that a
careful study of “the relevant texts in the Gospels shows that a
relatively small and elite group of people, a group among the
Temple priests and elders, was out to get Jesus.”36

Paul Rejects the Notion that the Jews Are a Cursed People
The division among the Jews in their attitude toward Christ,
which we find in the Gospels, is present also in the rest of the
New Testament. For example, Paul rejects the notion that the
whole Jewish people are cursed by God for their role in Christ’s
death. He writes: “I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no
means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a
member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people
whom he foreknew” (Rom 11:1-2).

To support his point, the Apostle explains that as in the time of

Elijah when there were “seven thousand men who had not bowed
the knee to Baal, so too at the present time there is a remnant,
chosen by grace” (Rom 11:4-5). The presence of a “remnant” of
believing Jews indicates to Paul that God has not rejected the
Jews as a cursed people, replacing them with Gentile believers.
To clarify this point, he uses the effective imagery of the olive
tree. The broken branches of the olive tree represent the
unbelieving Jews who have been replaced by the wild branches of
the Gentiles. The latter “were grafted in their place to share the
richness of the olive tree” (Rom 11:17).

For Paul, the olive tree, representing the Jewish people, is not
uprooted because of their role in Christ’s death, but rather is
pruned and restructured through the engrafting of Gentile
branches. Gentile Christians live from the root and trunk of the
Jewish people (Rom 11:17-18). By means of this expressive
imagery, Paul describes the unity and continuity that exists in
God’s redemptive plan for the Jews and Gentiles.

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The olive tree imagery leaves no room for the replacement
theology of dispensationalism. The Jews are not a cursed people
replaced by Christians, but are part of God’s plan for the salvation
of Jews and Gentiles. Paul explains this mystery, saying, “I want
you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come
upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in,
and so all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:25-26). In Paul’s vision,
God does not have two plans or dispensations—one for the
Gentile Christians raptured to heaven and one for the Jews
condemned to suffer the seven last plagues for killing Christ. This
dispensational scenario, popular among Evangelicals, is foreign to
the Bible. Paul envisions the ingathering of the Gentiles who join
believing Jews, so that both of them will be saved.
Summing up, the New Testament offers us a balanced picture of
the Jews. On the one hand, it places the responsibility for Christ’s
death on a relatively small group of Jewish religious leaders and
their followers, who pushed for the condemnation and execution
of Jesus. But, on the other hand, the New Testament
acknowledges that a significant number of Jews who believed in
Christ followed Him to the Cross, lamented His death, and
responded by the thousands on the day of Pentecost and
afterwards to the messianic proclamation (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 21:20).

The Origin of Anti-Semitism. The balanced portrayal of the

Jews in the Passion narratives of the Gospels, was gradually
replaced by the one-sided picture of the Jews as a wicked people,
collectively guilty of killing Christ. The development of this
“Christian” theology of contempt for the Jews was a gradual
process. Two major factors contributed to this development: the
conflict between the church and the synagogue and the Roman
suppression of Jewish revolts, which resulted in the outlawing the
Jewish religion and the Sabbath.

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The conversion of Gentiles to the Christian faith engendered
considerable hostility on the part of the Jews, who felt threatened
by the Christian growth. Paul compares the Jewish hostility
toward Christians to that endured by Christ during His Passion.
Speaking of the Jews, he says that they “killed both the Lord
Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and
oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that
they may be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their
sins” (1 Thess 2:15-16).

In this early period, Christian Jews like Paul spoke of “the Jews
who killed the Lord Jesus,” without meaning to charge all the
Jews collectively of deicide. The phrase was restricted to one
particular group of Jews, namely, those Jewish leaders and their
supporters who pushed for the condemnation and crucifixion of
Christ. We noted earlier that Paul speaks of a partial hardening of
Israel (Rom 11:25), which he compares to the breaking off of
some branches from the olive tree of Israel.
But, by the beginning of the second century, the growing conflict
between the church and synagogue influenced the inclusive use of
the phrase “the Jews” as descriptive of all the Jews. The fact that
Jewish Christians were expelled from synagogues led them to
abandon the use of the term “Jews” to describe themselves. Thus,
ethnic Jewish Christians distanced themselves from the Jews by
gradually identifying themselves solely as Christians.

The Development of a “Christian” Theology of Anti-Semitism

The development of anti-Semitism was precipitated by the anti-
Jewish and anti-Sabbath legislation promulgated by Emperor
Hadrian in A.D. 135. I investigated the Hadrianic anti-Jewish
legislation in my doctoral dissertation From Sabbath to Sunday. I
learned that after suppressing the second major Palestinian Jewish
revolt in A.D. 135—called the Barkokeba revolt after its leader—
Hadrian not only destroyed the city of Jerusalem and prohibited

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the Jews from entering the city, but he also outlawed categorically
the practice of the Jewish religion in general and of Sabbath
keeping in particular. These measures were designed to suppress
the Jewish religion, which was seen as the cause of all the
uprisings.
At this critical time when the Jewish religion in general and the
Sabbath in particular were outlawed by Roman legislation, some
Christian leaders began to develop a theology of contempt toward
the Jews. This consisted in defaming the Jews as a people and in
emptying Jewish beliefs and practices of any historical
significance.

For example, Justin Martyr (about 100-165), a leader of the

Church of Rome, defames the Jews as murderers of the prophets
and Christ: “Your hand is still lifted to do evil, because, although
you have slain Christ, you do not repent; on the contrary, you hate
and whenever you have the power kill us.”37
Religious institutions such as the circumcision and the Sabbath
were declared by Justin to be signs of Jewish depravity, imposed
by God solely on the Jews to distinguish them from other nations.
The purpose of these signs was to mark the Jews for the
punishment they so well deserve for their wickedness. “It was by
reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other
precepts, God imposed upon you the observance of the Sabbath as
a mark.”38

The “Christian” Vituperation of the Jews. The verbal attack

against the Jews continued unabated during the first millennium
of the Christian era. For example, in 386 John Chrysostom, the
Patriarch of Constantinople, delivered a series of eight brutally
harsh sermons against the Jews. Among other things he says:
“The Jews are the most worthless of men—they are lecherous,
greedy, rapacious—they are perfidious murderers of Christians,
they worship the devil, their religion is a sickness . . . The Jews

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are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no
expiation, no indulgence, no pardon. Christians may never cease
vengeance. The Jews must live in servitude forever. It is
incumbent on all Christians to hate the Jews.”39
In a similar vein, Gregory of Nyssa (A.D. 330-395), Bishop of
Nyssa and a most influential theologian of the fourth century,
vituperates the Jews, saying: “Slayers of the Lord, murderers of
the prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show
contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of the father’s faith,
advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men
whose minds are in darkness, leaven of the Pharisees, assembly of
demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners and haters of
righteousness.”40

Catholic Professor Gerard S. Sloyan concludes his survey of the

treatment of the Jews in the Christian literature of the first sixth
centuries, saying: “It came to be assumed very early in the
patristic age that every member of subsequent generations of Jews
concurred in this wicked deed [of killing Christ]. There was, of
course, no evidence for this assumption, but it was thought that
their failure to become Christians proved it. . . . The Jews began a
centuries-long history of being stigmatized as the killers of Christ
on the Cross, when in fact they would have repudiated to a person
the small number of Jews in power who had a part in the deed.”41

Anti-Semitism in the Second Millennium

The notion of the Jews as “Christ-killers,” which developed
during the first millennium, gained greater prominence in the
second millennium. During the first millennium the Christian
hostility toward the Jews was at the simmering stage, consisting
mostly of verbal attacks. The situation changed dramatically with
the dawning of the second millennium. Physical acts of violence
against the Jews became commonplace.
To understand this new development, we need to look at two

93
contributing factors. First, the continued existence of the Jews
became an irritant situation to many Christians. For a thousand
years Christians had been taught that the Jews had failed in their
mission. By refusing to accept Christ as their Messiah, and worse,
by conspiring to have Him killed, they were rejected by God and
replaced with the “new chosen people.”

By this line of reasoning there was no longer any purpose for the
Jews in the world. They should have disappeared like so many
mightier nations. Yet more than 1,000 years after the death of
Christ, the Jews were still widely dispersed, and at times strong
and prosperous. To give some sort of an answer to this problem,
some Christian theologians developed the notion that the Jews
have been doomed by God to wander the earth to bear witness
until the end of time of the divine curse that rests upon them for
killing Christ. This theology inspired fanatical Christians to prove
God right by murdering countless Jews throughout Europe.

The Devotion to Christ’s Sufferings. A second major

contributing factor to the new wave of anti-Semitism during the
early part of the second millennium is the new religious revival in
the Christian world which historians call the “New Piety.” The
focus of the New Piety, as noted in Chapter 1, was the devotion to
Christ’s suffering and a desire to suffer with Him in His Passion
as a way of salvation. The devotion to the Passion inspired the
staging of Passion Plays which portrayed the role of the Jews in
the trial, scourging, torture, and crucifixion of Jesus. By imitating
the sufferings of Christ’s Passion, believers sought to placate
God, whom they believed to be responsible for the catastrophes
and tragedies that were ravaging Europe at that time.
The portrayal of the Jews in the Passion Plays as collectively
guilty for Christ’s death inflamed the people who left their annual
Plays raging against the “Christ-killing Jews,” accusing them of
well poisoning, causing the Black Plague, and ritual murder.

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These accusations led to the dehumanization, demonization,
brutalization, expulsion, and murder of countless Jews throughout
Europe.

The Problem of the Passion Plays The problem with Passion

Plays is the one-sided and collective portrayal of the Jews as a
sadistic and bloodthirsty people determined to see Christ killed at
any cost. A good example is Mel Gibson’s movie on The Passion.
The Jews appear throughout the movie as mean and sadistic, with
angry faces and bad teeth. There are no scenes in the movie of the
multitudes of Christ’s supporters following Him to Golgotha and
expressing their grief by beating their breast.Why did Gibson
leave these scenes out? Apparently because Gibson was
determined to follow the pre-Vatican II tradition that blamed the
Jews collectively for the death of Christ.

Gibson focuses exclusively on the wicked, sinister-looking Jewish

leaders who always stand in the front row of the crowd. These
terrible Jews show no compassion for the lacerated body of Jesus
made worse at every passing moment by the relentless blows. The
only time the Jews express grief is when they see their Temple
collapsing as a result of the earthquake that accompanied Christ’s
death. This scene is one of the many unbiblical and unhistorical
episodes, seemingly designed to show God’s rejection of the
Jews.

In a penetrating analysis of the portrayal of the Jews in The

Passion, Professor Alan Segal rightly observes: “No one can miss
that The Passion uses the Jewish leaders badly to express the evil
undercurrent of the film. . . . They are the only power to arrest
Jesus in the garden, whereas the Gospels also include the Romans
(John 18:3). They throw the shackled Jesus off a bridge on his
way to the high priest. They mistreat Jesus throughout the film.
When Mary Magdalene entreats the Romans to help Jesus, they

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answer by saying, ‘They are trying to hide their crime from you.’
Agents of the high priest bribe a crowd to demand Jesus’ death.
The Jews are present at the scourging as well as at the crucifixion.
Furthermore, Satan is constantly depicted as present among them.
Even Jewish children turn into devils to torture Judas before he
hangs himself. An aide of Pilate tells him that the Pharisees hate
Jesus. Pilate criticizes the Jewish abuse of Jesus by asking the
question: ‘Do you always punish your prisoners before they are
judged?’ Pilate tells his wife that he fears that the Jewish high
priest will lead a revolt against Rome if he does not yield to
Jewish demands to have Jesus killed.”42

Segal continues by pointing out that “none of the aforementioned

depictions of the Jews in Mel Gibson’s film—from the arrest of
Jesus to the leaders’ mistreatment of Jesus, to the bribe to whip up
the crowd, to the presence of Satan among them, to the presence
of the elders at the crucifixion—none of them are present in the
New Testament. In spite of Gibson’s frequent claims that his film
is true to the Bible, in these crucial places it is not. Every one of
these Jewish actions depicted in the film is not in the Gospels.”43
Did Gibson Intend to Be True to the Gospels?
Had Gibson wanted to be true to the Gospels, he could have
portrayed the clandestine arrest of Jesus at night, because the
chief priests were afraid of a popular uprising by the multitude of
people who supported Jesus. We read in Mark 14:2 that “the chief
priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth .
. . lest there be a tumult of the people.” Gibson could have
respected John 11:48 by portraying Caiaphas expressing fear that
the Romans might destroy the Temple rather than depicting Pilate
as fearing that Caiaphas would incite a revolt.
Gibson could have followed the account of Mark 15:15 and
Matthew 27:26 where Jesus is scourged after Pilate’s
condemnation as part of the Roman crucifixion procedure.
Instead, Gibson chose to have Pilate order the scourging of Jesus

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before the condemnation in order to show that nothing could
change the determination of the wicked Jews to demand Christ’s
death. The intent of this rearrangement of the time of the
scourging is designed to show that the Jews were so bloodthirsty
that nothing could change their minds.

Had Gibson wanted to be true to the Gospels, he would not have

portrayed Pilate saying to Caiaphas: “Do you always punish your
prisoners before they are judged?” The intent of these unbiblical
words is to portray the Jews as a lawless people who take the law
into their own hands. What they did to Christ is part of their well-
known wicked nature. Again, he would not have had Pilate say
the following words not found in any Gospel: “Isn’t this
scourging enough?” “It is you who want him crucified, not I.”
These unbiblical words are designed to heighten the responsibility
of the Jewish people for Christ’s death.
More important still, had Gibson wanted to be true to the
Gospels’ picture of the Jews, he would have depicted “a great
multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and
lamented him” (Luke 23:27) on the way to Golgotha. He would
also have shown in the movie “all the multitude who assembled to
see the sight [of the crucifixion], and when they saw what had
taken place, returned home beating their breast” (Luke 23:48).
Why Did Gibson Ignore the Multitude of Jews Who Followed
Christ to the Cross?

Why did Gibson choose to ignore the scenes of the multitude of

the Jews grieving over Jesus’ death? Why did he choose to have
Christ’s body taken down from the Cross by John and Mary,
instead of following the biblical account which speaks of Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking care of Christ’s body (John
19:38-39)? Why did Gibson choose to disregard those episodes of
the Passion that depict the positive response of many Jews to
Christ? The answer to these questions is simple. Gibson was

97
determined to follow the pre-Vatican II Catholic tradition that
stereotypes all the Jews as a wicked people under God’s curse for
killing Christ.

To create his own cinematic version of The Passion, Gibson relied

primarily on Anne Catherine Emmerich’s The Dolorous Passion
of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The following chapter examines
Gibson’s dependency upon The Dolorous Passion. We shall see
that her hateful depiction of the Jews as Christ-killers is totally
inappropriate for a confessing twenty-first-century Christian
community that has largely recognized that Christ’s death cannot
be blamed on all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor
upon the Jews of later generations.

Gibson’s hateful depiction of the Jews, as Segal aptly puts it, “is
not just a blemish on an otherwise wonderful film: it takes a film
which was capable of being a milestone of spirituality in its
depiction of Jesus’ sufferings and turns it into a moral tragedy.
The screenwriter and the producer were conscious of the [untrue]
depiction and must bear responsibility for this issue. To go
beyond the Gospels in the depiction of the opposition of the Jews
is to say that one is supplying part of the anti-Jewish polemic
from one’s own imagination. . . . The charge of anti-Semitism
against this film ought to be taken very seriously.”44
A Summation. Our study of the origin and development of the
“Christian” theology of contempt for the Jews can be summed up
in four major points. First, contrary to prevailing assumptions, the
roots of anti-Semitism cannot be legitimately found in the New
Testament. The Gospels’ writers and Paul place the responsibility
for Christ’s death on a relatively small group of Jewish religious
leaders and their followers, who pushed for the condemnation and
execution of Jesus. They acknowledge that a significant number
of Jews believed in Christ, followed Him to the Cross, lamented
His death, and responded by the thousands on the day of

98
Pentecost and afterwards to the messianic proclamation (Acts
2:41; 4:4; 21:20).

Second, the origin of “Christian” anti-Semitism can be traced to

the post-apostolic period as a result of two major factors: the first
is the conflict between the church and the synagogue, and the
second is the Roman suppression of Jewish revolts, which
resulted in the outlaw of the Jewish religion in general and of the
Sabbath in particular.

When the Roman government attempted to suppress the Jewish

religion, Christian leaders launched a twofold attack against the
Jews: they defamed the Jews as a people, and they emptied
Jewish beliefs and practices of any historical significance. The
vituperation of the Jews continued unabated during the first
millennium of the Christian era, though it consisted mostly of
verbal attacks.

Third, with the dawning of the second millennium, a new wave of

anti-Semitism erupted, spurred by a new religious piety which
was characterized by the devotion to Christ’s suffering as a way
of salvation. The devotion to Christ’s Passion inspired the staging
of Passion Plays which portrayed the Jews as collectively guilty
for Christ’s death. The Plays inflamed the people against the
“Christ-killing Jews.” The result was the brutalization, expulsion,
and murder of countless Jews throughout Europe.
Fourth, Gibson’s movie on The Passion follows the traditional
script of the Passion Plays, where the Jews are portrayed as a
sadistic and bloodthirsty people, collectively guilty of Christ’s
death. We have found that Gibson intentionally chose to disregard
the positive response of many Jews to Christ. The reason is his
commitment to the pre-Vatican II Catholic tradition that
stereotyped all the Jews as a wicked people, under God’s curse
for killing Christ.

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Gibson’s one-sided and hateful depiction of the Jews, as Prof.
Segal perceptively observes, “takes a film which was capable of
being a milestone of spirituality in its depiction of Jesus’
sufferings and turns it into a moral tragedy.”44 Gibson’s hateful
depiction of the Jews as Christ-killers is totally inappropriate for a
confessing twenty-first-century Christian community that has
long recognized that Christ was killed by sinners in general, not
exclusively by the Jewish people.

CONCLUSION

Our survey of the theology of the Passion Plays has shown that
six major unbiblical beliefs have been embedded in the portrayal
of Christ’s Passion during the past seven centuries. These beliefs
represent fundamental Catholic teachings, which historically
Protestants have largely rejected. This conclusion briefly
summarizes these beliefs.

First, Passion Plays reveal the Catholic devotion to Christ’s

physical sufferings, especially His wounds, promoted by Bernard
of Clairveaux, and especially Francis of Assisi. This devotion
contributed in a significant way to the staging of Passion Plays
which focus on Christ’s physical sufferings. These plays inspired
devout believers to seek salvation by imitating the physical
sufferings of Christ by whipping themselves and wounding their
bodies in order to atone for their sins and placate the wrath of
God. The notion that believers can atone for their sins, by
imitating Christ’s physical suffering, ultimately makes salvation a
human achievement, rather than a gift of divine grace.
Second, Passion Plays have popularized the Catholic view of the
Mass, which is a small-scale Passion Play. According to Catholic
teachings, the celebration of the Mass is a reenactment of Christ’s
suffering and death. Each time the Mass is offered, the sacrifice of
Christ is repeated on behalf of penitent believers. By staging the

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suffering and crucifixion of Christ, Passion Plays offered to the
people an animated Mass.

The notion that Christ must be sacrificed again and again at the
altar and in Passion Plays, in order to meet the demands of divine
justice, negates the all-sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. The Bible
clearly teaches that there is no need to repeat Christ’s sacrifice,
because “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Heb
9:28).
Third, Passion Plays have promoted the belief that in order to
satisfy the rigorous demands of a punitive, exacting God, Christ
had to suffer in His body and mind the equivalent of the
punishment for all the sins of humanity. The relentless brutal
whipping and flaying of Jesus’ body in Gibson’s movie reflects
this fundamental satisfaction view of Christ’s atonement.
This view ignores the fact that the Cross was not a legal
transaction in which a meek Christ suffered the harsh punishment
imposed by a punitive Father for the sins of humankind, but a
revelation of how the righteous and loving Father was willing
through His Son to become flesh and suffer the punishment of our
sins in order to redeem us without compromising His own
character.

Fourth, Passion Plays emphasize the prominent role of Mary as a

partner in Christ’s suffering for our salvation. From Gethsemane
to Golgotha, the sufferings of Christ are revealed through the
anguish of Mary. She sustains her Son and shares in His suffering
throughout the ordeal.

This fundamental Catholic belief obscures the centrality and

uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice and mediation. By attributing to
Mary a co-redemptive role on behalf of penitent sinners, the
Catholic Church has developed an idolatrous religion that offers
salvation through a variety of persons. The result is that many

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devout Catholics offer more prayers to Mary and the saints than to
the Father or the Son.

Fifth, Passion Plays impersonate the divine Son of God, reducing

Him to a mere human being, whom people worship as the real
Christ. This practice is condemned by the Second Commandment
which warns against a wrong form of worship by means of a
visual or material objectification of God. This warning is ignored,
especially in dominant Catholic countries, where the only Christ
devout Catholics know and worship is the One they touch, kiss,
see, and often wear as jewelry. Statues, crucifixes, and pictures of
the bleeding Savior abound in devout Catholic homes. Instead of
worshipping the invisible Lord in Spirit and Truth, they worship
idols that they can see and touch.

Many Evangelicals have become so conditioned by the

entertainment industry that they are shifting from a Word-
centered to an Image-centered style of worship with images,
drama, Passion Plays, and religious movies. By accepting the use
of images that were once rejected as signs of papal authority,
Evangelicals are running the risk today of returning to the
Medieval false worship which the Reformers fought hard to
reform.

Sixth, Passion Plays have historically portrayed the Jews as

collectively guilty for Christ’s death. The Plays inflamed the
people against the “Christ-killing Jews.” The result was the
brutalization, expulsion, and murder of countless Jews throughout
Europe.

Gibson’s movie on The Passion follows the traditional script of

the Passion Plays, where the Jews are portrayed as a sadistic and
bloodthirsty people collectively guilty of Christ’s death. The
hateful depiction of the Jews as Christ-killers is totally

102
inappropriate for a confessing twenty-first-century Christian
community that has long recognized that Christ was killed by
sinners in general, not exclusively by the Jewish people.
In summation, the theology of the Passion Play represents the
outgrowth of centuries of Catholic superstitious beliefs, largely
based on popular myths rather than on biblical teachings. The
popular acceptance of such superstitious beliefs has fostered an
idolatrous piety designed to placate a punitive God by imitating
Christ’s suffering and by appealing to the meritorious intercession
of Mary and the saints.

The subtle ways in which Catholic superstitious beliefs are

embedded in Passion Plays, like Gibson’s movie, are leading
many unsuspecting Evangelicals to accept as biblical truths what
in reality are Catholic heresies. Our safeguard is to test what we
see portrayed in religious movies by what we read in the revealed
Word of God. Our faith and worship should be Word-centered,
not Image-centered.

ENDNOTES

1. “The Animated Crucifix,”

http://www.letgodbetrue.com/TodaysWorld/passion.htm.
2. Alister Hardy, The Divine Flame (Oxford, 1966), p. 218.
3. Philip A. Cunningham, “Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A
Challenge to Catholic Teaching,”
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-
elements/texts/reviews/gibson_ cunningham.htm.
4. For a historical survey of the different theories of the
atonement, see H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of
Redemption (London, 1952); Robert Mackintosh, Historic

103
Theories of the Atonement (London, 1920).
5. R. W. Dale, Atonement (New York, 1894), p. 277.
6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Allen,
translator (Philadelphia, 1930), pp. ii, xvi.10.
7. John R. W. Storr, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove,
Illinois, 1986), p. 151.
8. Ibid., p. 160.
9. R. W. Dale, note 4, p. 393.
10. Excerpts from the Introductory Commentary to the Mass,
Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Volume 1
(Sacramentary, Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1992), p. 65.
11.“Is Mary the ‘Coredemptrix’?”
http://home.nyc.rr.com/mysticalrose/marian14.html.
12. “Mel, Mary, and Mothers,” Christianity Today (March 2004),
p. 25.
13. Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, 1997), p. 276,
paragraph 974.
14. Ibid., p. 276, paragraph 975.
15. Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Dolorous Passion of Our
Lord Jesus Christ from the Meditations of Anne Catherine
Emmerich (Rockford, Illinois, 1983), p. 172.
16. The Dolorous Passion, p. 174.
17. The Dolorous Passion, p. 211.
18. Teiji Yasuda, O.S.V., English version by John M. Haffert,
Akita: The Tears and Message of Mary (Asbury, NJ, 1989), p. 78.
19. Thomas Petrisko, Call of the Ages (Santa Barbara, CA, 1995),
p. 247.
20. Beatrice Bruteau, compiled by Shirley Nicholson, The
Goddess Re-Awakening (Wheaton, IL, 1994), p. 68.
21. “Mel, Mary, and Mothers,” Christianity Today (March 2004),
p. 25.
22. Ibid.
23. Quotations taken from Ron Gleason, “The 2nd
Commandment and ‘The Passion of the Christ,’”

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http://www.christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTI
D23682%7CCHID125043%7CCIID 1716514,00.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibd.
26. Ibid.
27. The Heidelberg Catechism (Question 97).
28. Bian Godawa,“The Passion of the Christ,”
http://www.christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTI
D23682%7CCHID125043% 7CCIID1712182,00.
29. Westminster Larger Catechism, Answer 109.
30. “What Others Are Saying,” www.passionchrist.org.
31. SDA Dictionary, end sheet, explanation on p. xxiv.
32. New Yorker (September, 2003), p. 21.
33. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Edited by Geoffrey W.
Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh,1970), I/1:134.
34. Ken Spiro, “The Passion: A Historical Perspective,”
http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/The_Passion_A_Hist
orical_Perspective.asp.
35. Ibid.
36. Alan F. Segal, “The Jewish Leaders,” in the symposium Jesus
and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The film, the
Gospels and the Claims of History, Edited by Kathleen E. Corley
and Robert L. Webb (New York, 2004), p. 98.
37. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho chapter 133; for a
discussion of the texts, see Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath
to Sunday (Rome, 1977), pp. 227-229.
38. Justin, Dialogue 21,1, Falls, Justin’s Writings, pp. 172-178.
39. Allan Gould, Editor, What Did They Think of the Jews? (New
York, 1997), p. 24.
40. Ibid., p.25.
41. Gerard S. Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus. History, Myth,
Faith (Minneapolis, 1995), pp. 96-7.
42. Allan F. Segan (note 36), p. 91.

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43. Ibid., p. 92.
44. Ibid. Emphasis supplied.

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 Chapter 3

THE SCOURGING AND

CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS

It seems to be a mark of our age that we do not believe something

to be realistic unless it is brutal. Judged by the graphic portrayal
of the relentless brutal torture inflicted on Christ’s body, The
Passion is very realistic. It achieves Gibson’s goal of showing
what real scourging and crucifixion must have been like. In an
interview with Peter J. Boyer of the New Yorker, Gibson said: “I
wanted to bring you there. I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That
has never been done before. I didn’t want to see Jesus looking
really pretty, I wanted to mess up one of his eyes, destroy it.”

Since there is nothing said in the Gospels about Jesus’ eye

being destroyed, did Gibson succeed in making the movie
absolutely true to the Gospels, as “has never been done before”?
None of the evangelists depicts Jesus with a destroyed eye. In
fact, their description of Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion are as
minimal as the writers could make it. “Having scourged Jesus,
Pilate delivered him to be crucified.” “When they came to the
place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him.” A
dozen verses later Jesus is dead. This is the extent of the Gospels’
account. By contrast, The Passion portrays for two hours the vivid
and excruciating details of the scourging, flogging, and
crucifixion of Christ.

Excessive and Relentless Brutality

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 A common criticism of many reviewers is the excessive
and relentless brutality of The Passion that goes far beyond the
succinct accounts of the Gospels. Apparently it was not difficult
for Gibson to brutalize Jesus’ body, because he is a master of
cinematic violence. Newsday says that “the film shows that the
Braveheart star and director is skilled at depicting violence . . .
with grisly, horrific details of Christ’s physical mutilation and
torment.”

Jeff Strickler writes in the Star Tribune: “As much as ‘The

Passion of the Christ’ has been ballyhooed as a religious film, it
is, above all, a Mel Gibson movie. Sure, the Oscar-winning
director of Braveheart slips in a little dogma [too much in my
view], but what he really lays on your face is brutality. Blood
splatters. Skin rips open. Eyes swell shut. Gibson’s thesis is that
Jesus suffered for people’s sins, and his focus is on the
suffering.”42 Surprisingly, the words “suffering” and “passion”
(pathein in Greek) do not occur in the Gospels, because the focus
is not on the intensity of Christ’s suffering, but on the nobility of
Christ’s sacrificial death.

Similar criticisms of the excessive brutality of The Passion

have appeared in major newspapers. Writing for the New York
Times, A. O. Scott notes that “The Passion of the Christ is so
relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus’ final hours that this
film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed
more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it. Mr. Gibson has
constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that is also, in the
end, a depressing one.”

Ty Burr writes in the Boston Globe: “A profoundly

medieval movie, Yes. Brutal almost beyond powers of
description, Yes. More obsessed with capturing every holy drop
of martyr’s blood and sacred goblet of flesh than with any

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message of Christian love, Yes. More than anything, The Passion
of the Christ seems to be exactly the movie Mel Gibson wanted to
make as an abiding profession of his traditionalist Catholic faith.
On that score it is a success.”

I fully agree with Burr. Gibson has done a masterful job in

producing a brutal and gory reenactment of Christ’s Passion in
full accordance with his traditional Catholic faith. To bring into
sharper focus the contrast between the Gospels’ accounts of
Christ’s sufferings and death and the exaggerated brutality of
Gibson’s movie, we will compare what these two sources have to
say regarding five major episodes:

1. The Physical Abuse of Jesus at the Arrest

2. The Mocking of Jesus before the High Priest

3. The Scourging of Jesus before Pilate

4. The Procession to Calvary

5. The Crucifixion Scene

These five episodes are the most brutal and shocking parts
of the movie. Since the brutality portrayed in the movie is largely
derived from Emmerich’s The Dolorous Passion, the text of the
latter will be compared with the Gospels’ account. The influence
of The Dolorous Passion on Gibson’s movie cannot be
overestimated. Anyone who has a doubt should read the book
alongside the Gospels after having seen the film. It soon becomes
evident that The Dolorous Passion was used by Gibson as the
underlying script for the shooting of the film.

The Physical Abuse of Jesus at the Arrest

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 In The Passion, the abusive treatment of Christ
begins in the opening scene at His arrest in the Garden of
Gethsemane. In the Gospels there is no detailed
description of any binding of Jesus. John only tells us:
“The band of soldiers and their captain and the officers
of the Jews seized him and bound him” (John 18:12). The
other Gospels do not mention any binding at all, but only
that “. . . they laid hands on him and seized him” (Mark
14:46).

But Gibson ignores the Gospels, choosing instead to

portray the detailed description of Christ’s binding given in The
Dolorous Passion. We quoted earlier Emmerich’s description of
how Jesus was tied like a sausage with ropes around his neck,
arms, waist, and legs to allow the soldiers to drag Christ “from
side to side in the most cruel manner.”

The physical abuse of Jesus increased while the temple

soldiers escorted Him to the chief priests. When they reached a
bridge, the soldiers threw Him off a bridge, and it was only His
chain jerking taut that arrested His fall. Such a scene is not found
in the Gospel accounts. Its source is The Dolorous Passion: “I
saw our Lord fall twice before he reached the bridge, and these
falls were caused entirely by the barbarous manner in which the
soldiers dragged him; but when they were half over the bridge
they gave full vent to their brutal inclinations, and struck Jesus
with such violence that they threw him off the bridge into the
water, and scornfully recommended him to quench his thirst there.
If God had not preserved him, he must have been killed by this
fall; he fell first on his knee, and then on his face, but saved
himself a little by stretching out his hands.”

In The Passion, the scene of Christ’s examination before the

chief priest shows common people being awakened in the middle

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of the night and paid to go to witness against Christ. No such
scene is found in the Gospels. Emmerich provided Gibson this
information: “They hastened to all the inns to seek out those
persons whom they knew to be enemies of our Lord, and offered
them bribes in order to secure their appearance. But, with the
exception of a few ridiculous calumnies, which were certain to be
disproved as soon as investigated, nothing tangible could be
brought forward against Jesus.”

In the following chapter Emmerich says: “The customary

prayers and preparations for the celebration of the festival being
completed, the greatest part of the inhabitants of the densely-
populated city of Jerusalem, as also the strangers congregated
there, were plunged in sleep after the fatigues of the day, when,
all at once, the arrest of Jesus was announced, and every one was
aroused, both his friends and foes, and numbers immediately
responded to the summons of the High Priest, and left their
dwellings to assemble at his court.” This scene is foreign to the
Gospels, which tell us that “the chief priests and the whole
council sought false testimony against Jesus that they might put
him to death, but they found none” (Matt 26:59-60; Mark 14:55).

The Mocking of Jesus before the High Priest

The Gospel account of the abusive treatment Christ received

before the Court of Caiaphas is very brief: “They all condemned
him as worthy of death. Then some began to spit at him; they
blindfolded him, and struck him with their fists, and said,
‘Prophesy!’ And the guard took him and beat him” (Mark 14:64-
65; cf. Matt 26:67).

By contrast, The Dolorous Passion describes in

detail the gruesome methods used to torture Christ in the
Court of Caiaphas—methods shown in the movie, but

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absent in the Gospels. “No sooner did Caiaphas, with the
other members of the Council, leave the tribunal than a
crowd of miscreants—the very scum of the people—
surrounded Jesus like a swarm of infuriated wasps, and
began to heap every imaginable insult upon him. Even
during the trial, whilst the witnesses were speaking, the
archers and some others could not restrain their cruel
inclinations, but pulled out handfuls of his hair and
beard, spat upon him, struck him with their fists,
wounded him with sharp-pointed sticks, and even ran
needles into his body; but when Caiaphas left the hall
they set no bounds to their barbarity. They first placed a
crown, made of straw and the bark of trees, upon his
head, and then took it off, saluting him at the same time
with insulting expressions, like the following: ‘Behold
the Son of David wearing the crown of his father.’

“Next they put a crown of reeds upon his head, took off his
robe and scapular, and then threw an old torn mantle, which
scarcely reached his knees, over his shoulders; around his neck
they hung a long iron chain, with an iron ring at each end, studded
with sharp points, which bruised and tore his knees as be walked.
They again pinioned his arms, put a reed into his hand, and
covered his Divine countenance with spittle. They had already
thrown all sorts of filth over his hair, as well as over his chest, and
upon the old mantle. They bound his eyes with a dirty rag, and
struck him, crying out at the same time in loud tones, ‘Prophesy
unto us, O Christ, who is he that struck thee?’ He answered not
one word, but sighed, and prayed inwardly for them.

“After many many insults, they seized the chain which was
hanging on his neck, dragged him towards the room into which
the Council had withdrawn, and with their sticks forced him in,
vociferating at the same time, ‘March forward, thou King of

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Straw! Show thyself to the Council with the insignia of the regal
honor; we have rendered unto thee.’ A large body of councillors,
with Caiaphas at their head, were still in the room, and they
looked with both delight and approbation at the shameful scene
which was enacted, beholding with pleasure the most sacred
ceremonies turned into derision. The pitiless guards covered him
with mud and spittle, and with mock gravity exclaimed, ‘Receive
the prophetic unction—the regal unction.’ Then they impiously
parodied the baptismal ceremonies, and the pious act of Magdalen
in emptying the vase of perfume on his head. ‘How canst thou
presume,’ they exclaimed, ‘to appear before the Council in such a
condition? Thou dost purify others, and thou art not pure thyself;
but we will soon purify thee.’ They fetched a basin of dirty water,
which they poured over his face and shoulders, whilst they bent
their knees before him, and exclaimed, ‘Behold thy precious
unction, behold the spikenard worth three hundred pence; thou
hast been baptized in the pool of Bethsaida.’”

This description of the shameful and relentless physical

abuse that Christ suffered before the Sanhedrin is vividly
portrayed in the Passion, but is absent in the Gospels. Nowhere
do the Gospels speak of the crowd pulling Christ’s hair and beard,
wounding Him with sharp pointed sticks, piercing Him with
needles, dragging Him around with a chain hanging around His
neck, bruising and tearing His knees with a studded chain with
sharp points, and pouring dirty water over His head to mock His
regal unction. The exaggeration of Christ’s physical abuse before
the Sanhedrin serves to support the Catholic view of redemption
through the excessive suffering of Jesus, but it obscures the real
meaning of Christ’s sacrifice for our salvation as presented in the
Gospels.

In the Gospels, after His examination before the chief

priests, Jesus is bound and taken to Pilate (Mark 15:1; John

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18:28). But Gibson follows The Dolorous Passion which
describes Jesus being shackled and imprisoned in a subterranean
prison: “The Jews, having quite exhausted their barbarity, shut
Jesus up in a little vaulted prison, the remains of which subsist to
this day. . . . The enemies of our Lord did not allow him a
moment’s respite, even in this dreary prison, but tied him to a
pillar which stood in the centre, and would not allow him to lean
upon it, although he was so exhausted from ill treatment, the
weight of his chains, and his numerous falls, that he could
scarcely support himself on his swollen and torn feet. Never for a
moment did they cease insulting him; and when the first set were
tired out, others replaced them.”

At this point The Passion portrays Mary kneeling on the

flagstones and pressing her ear to the ground to listen to the
groaning of her Son. Again, the source of this touching scene is
not the Gospels, but probably this account in The Dolorous
Passion: “Mary was with Jesus in spirit, and Jesus was with her;
but this loving Mother wished to hear with her own ears the voice
of her Divine Son. She listened and heard not only his moans, but
also the abusive language of those around him.”52

The Scourging of Jesus before Pilate

The contrast between Gibson’s movie and the Gospels is

most evident in the account of the scourging of Jesus in Pilate’s
judgment hall. In the Gospels the account of the scourging is brief
and sober. They merely state: “. . . having scourged Jesus, he
[Pilate] delivered him to be crucified” (Mark 15:15). “Then Pilate
took Jesus and scourged him” (John 19:1).

The Gospels spend more time describing the

mocking with the crown of thorns before the high priest
(Mark 15:17-20) than they do the scouring! Yet in The

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Passion the scourging seems to go on forever, lasting ten
minutes. It is the most brutal and graphic portrayal of
violence in the movie that has been widely criticized.
The details of how the scourging was carried out are
taken not from the Gospels, but from The Dolorous
Passion.

The whole of chapter 22 of The Dolorous Passion

is devoted to the scourging of Jesus. The chapter
describes in minute details the four scourgings of Jesus
carried out on an alternating basis by six Roman soldiers,
who escalated the torture with their arsenal of
instruments. Since the scourging of Jesus is the
centerpiece of Gibson’s movie, we quote a few
paragraphs which Gibson portrays with unsurpassed
Oscar-winning brutality.

“Pilate was determined to adhere to his resolution of not

condemning our Lord to death, and ordered him to be scourged
according to the manner of the Romans. The guards were
therefore ordered to conduct him through the midst of the furious
multitude to the forum, which they did with the utmost brutality,
at the same time loading him with abuse, and striking him with
their staffs. The pillar where criminals were scourged stood to the
north of Pilate’s palace, near the guard-house, and the
executioners soon arrived, carrying whips, rods, and ropes, which
they tossed down at its base. They were six in number, dark,
swarthy men, somewhat shorter than Jesus; their chests were
covered with a piece of leather, or with some dirty stuff; their
loins were girded, and their hairy, sinewy arms bare. . . .

“These cruel men had many times scourged poor criminals

to death at this pillar. They resembled wild beasts or demons, and
appeared to be half drunk. They struck our Lord with their fists,

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and dragged him by the cords with which he was pinioned,
although he followed them without offering the least resistance,
and, finally, they barbarously knocked him down against the
pillar. . . .

“Jesus trembled and shuddered as he stood before the

pillar, and took off his garments as quickly as he could, but his
hands were bloody and swollen. The only return he made when
his brutal executioners struck and abused him was to pray for
them in the most touching manner: he turned his face once
towards his Mother, who was standing overcome with grief; this
look quite unnerved her: she fainted, and would have fallen, had
not the holy women who were there supported her. . .

“The Holy of holies [was] violently stretched, without a

particle of clothing, on a pillar used for the punishment of the
greatest criminals; and then did two furious ruffians who were
thirsting for his blood begin in the most barbarous manner to
scourge his sacred body from head to foot. The whips or scourges
which they first made use of appeared to me to be made of a
species of flexible white wood, but perhaps they were composed
of the sinews of the ox, or of strips of leather. . . .

“Our loving Lord, the Son of God, true God and true Man,
writhed as a worm under the blows of these barbarians; his mild
but deep groans might be heard from afar; they resounded through
the air, forming a kind of touching accompaniment to the hissing
of the instruments of torture. These groans resembled rather a
touching cry of prayer and supplication, than moans of anguish. . .
.

“Several of the servants of the High Priests went up to the

brutal executioners and gave them money; as also a large jug
filled with a strong bright red liquid, which quite inebriated them,

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and increased their cruelty tenfold towards their innocent Victim.
The two ruffians continued to strike our Lord with unremitting
violence for a quarter of an hour, and were then succeeded by two
others. His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red
marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the
furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews
showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated. . . .

“Then two fresh executioners commenced scourging Jesus

with the greatest possible fury; they made use of a different kind
of rod, a species of thorny stick, covered with knots and splinters.
The blows from these sticks tore his flesh to pieces; his blood
spouted out so as to stain their arms, and he groaned, prayed, and
shuddered.

“[Then] two fresh executioners took the places of the last

mentioned, who were beginning to flag; their scourges were
composed of small chains, or straps covered with iron hooks,
which penetrated to the bone, and tore off large pieces of flesh at
every blow. What word, alas! could describe this terrible—this
heart-rending scene!

“The cruelty of these barbarians was nevertheless not yet

satiated; they untied Jesus, and again fastened him up with his
back turned towards the pillar. As he was totally unable to support
himself in an upright position, they passed cords round his waist,
under his arms, and above his knees, and having bound his hands
tightly into the rings which were placed at the upper part of the
pillar, they recommenced scourging him with even greater fury
than before; and one among them struck him constantly on the
face with a new rod. The body of our Lord was perfectly torn to
shreds, it was but one wound. He looked at his torturers with his
eyes filled with blood, as if entreating mercy; but their brutality

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appeared to increase, and his moans each moment became more
feeble.”

The Gospels Focus on Christ’s Sacrificial Death

The preceding lengthy quotes from The Dolorous Passion

offer a most bloody and gory description of Christ’s scourging,
which Gibson portrays masterfully. However, the Gospels offer
no details about Christ’s scourging, because they are not obsessed
with capturing every holy drop of Christ’s blood and every sacred
goblet of His flesh flayed during the flogging. Their account is
brief, consisting of only one sentence: “Then Pilate took Jesus and
scourged him” (John 19:1).

The inflicting of physical suffering on Christ is the central

action of Gibson’s movie, but is secondary in the Gospels. The
Gospels teach salvation through Christ’s sacrificial death, not
through the intensity of His suffering. We noted in Chapter two
that the notion of salvation through suffering is a fundamental
Catholic belief that originated in the early part of the second
millennium. It is noteworthy that the word “Passion” (pathein) is
never used in the Gospels with reference to Christ’s sufferings,
because the focus is on His sacrificial death for our salvation, not
on the intensity of His sufferings to satisfy the demands of a
punitive God.

In The Passion, the beating, whipping, and ripping of

Christ’s flesh is relentless until He is skinned alive and taken
apart. When the viewer thinks that the flaying of Jesus’ flesh can
get no crueler, it does. In those endless moments when the
soldiers escalate their torture with new instruments, Gibson
proves his Oscar-winning abilities in portraying violence. The
violence of Braveheart becomes Bloodheart in The Passion.

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Gibson seems determined to show only one color from the full
Christian spectrum: blood red.

Why Does Gibson Focus on the Brutal Torture of Jesus?

Why is Gibson dishing out to Christ the kind of

punishment that would kill any SUPER MAN three times over?
The answer is found in the Catholic understanding of redemption
through suffering promoted by The Dolorous Passion. The book
assumes that to satisfy the demands of a punitive God for
humanity’s sins, Christ had to suffer in His body and mind the
equivalent of the punishment for all the sins of humankind.

Gibson’s unrelenting and brutal vision of The Passion

reminds us of the great revivalist Jonathan Edwards who during
the first great awakening tried to trigger mass conversion by
preaching hellfire. His favorite sermon was titled “Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God.” In The Passion, Gibson attempts to
convert millions to his Catholic understanding of redemption by
portraying “God in the Hands of Angry Sinners.” Behind both
visions stands a bloodthirsty Father, more eager to damn and
punish than to save. Such visions may convert some people
through fear, but may also cause many to hate God for His
sadistic and angry character.

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post columnist,

finds “Gibson’s personal interpretation [of the scourging of Jesus]
spectacularly vicious. Three of the Gospels have but a one-line
reference to Jesus’s scourging. The fourth has no reference at all.
In Gibson’s movie this becomes ten minutes of the most
unremitting sadism in the history of film. Why ten? Why not five?
Why not two? Why not zero, as in Luke? Gibson chose 10.”

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 A reason for Gibson’s choice of ten minutes of
brutal flagellation is to be found in the Catholic punitive
view of God reflected in The Dolorous Passion.
According to this view, God demands full satisfaction
for all the sins of humankind through the brutal and
inhuman torture of His Son. We noted in Chapter two
that such a punitive view of God is foreign to Scripture.
In the Bible, the Cross was not a legal transaction in
which a meek Christ suffers the harsh punishment
imposed by a punitive Father for the sins of humanity.
Instead, the Cross reveals how the righteous and loving
Father was willing through His Son to become flesh and
suffer the punishment of our sins in order to redeem us
without compromising His own character.

The Procession to Calvary

Victims to be crucified were required to carry the crossbar,

not the entire cross with pole and crossbar. Most likely Jesus
carried only the horizontal beam, not the entire Cross, as
portrayed in the Passion. The load would have been too heavy for
a man who had been scourged according to the Roman custom.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not mention Jesus carrying the
Cross. They simply say that Jesus was “led away to be crucified”
(Matt 27:31; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:27). Instead they refer to
Simon of Cyrene being required to carry the Cross “behind him,”
according to Luke (Luke 23:26; Matt 27:31-32; Mark 15:20-21).
John 19:17 describes Jesus as carrying His own Cross, without
any mention of Simon of Cyrene.

Gibson follows the text of The Dolorous Passion in

placing the entire Cross on Jesus’ shoulder: “The archers led
Jesus into the middle of the court, the slaves threw down the cross
at his feet, and the two arms were forthwith tied on to the centre

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piece. Jesus knelt down by its side, encircled it with his sacred
arms, and kissed it three times, addressing, at the same time, a
most touching prayer of thanksgiving to his Heavenly Father for
that work of redemption which he had begun. . . . The archers
soon made him rise, and then kneel down again, and almost
without any assistance, place the heavy cross on his right
shoulder, supporting its great weight with his right hand.”

In The Passion Gibson has Simon of Cyrene and Jesus

carrying the cross together. This scene openly contradicts the
Gospels’ account: “And as they led him away, they seized one
Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid
on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus” (Luke 23:26; cf. Mark
15:21; Matt 27:32).

In the Gospels it is clear that Simon carries the Cross for

Jesus by himself while following the totally exhausted Jesus. One
wonders, Why does Gibson misrepresent the Gospel story by
having both Jesus and Simon carry the Cross together? Most
likely it is to promote more effectively the Catholic devotion to
the Passion of Christ. Had Christ been relieved altogether from
carrying the Cross, then His sufferings would have been reduced,
and consequently He would have failed to satisfy the demands of
divine justice for the sins of humankind.

In The Passion Jesus falls seven times during the

procession along the traditional 14 Stations of the Cross. Again
this information is derived not from the Gospels but from The
Dolorous Passion, which describes in great detail the seven falls
of Jesus in chapters 31 to 36. The story of the seven falls of Jesus
is based on medieval legends that have become part of Catholic
religious tradition.

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 Another unbiblical scene described in The
Dolorous Passion and portrayed in the movie is Mary
accompanying Jesus along the Via Dolorosa using side
streets. In The Passion, when the Roman soldiers inquire
of her identity, they are told, “She is the mother of the
Galilean. Do not impede her.” During this journey,
Christ stops and falls seven times because He has no
strength left to go on. At those points, Mary is always
near Christ and acts as His comforter and coach. Through
their eye contact, Mary infuses mystical power on her
Son. At one point she reassures her Son, saying: “I am
here.”

In The Dolorous Passion we read that when Jesus

fell the second time, “Mary was perfectly agonized at
this sight; she forgot all else; she saw neither soldiers
nor executioners; she saw nothing but her dearly-loved
Son; and, springing from the doorway into the midst of
the group who were insulting and abusing him, she threw
herself on her knees by his side and embraced him. The
only words I heard were, ‘Beloved Son!’ and ‘Mother!.’”

The Story of Veronica

The Dolorous Passion incorporates also the medieval

legend of Seraphia, who became known as Veronica, because the
vera icon, that is, the true image of Christ, was imprinted on her
veil. According to the medieval story Vindicta Salvatoris
(Vengeance of the Savior), Veronica had earlier been healed by
Jesus. On the Via Dolorosa she was able to get through the crowd
and wipe the bloody face of Jesus with her long veil, thus
imprinting His face permanently on her veil. Gibson does a
masterful job portraying the legend of Veronica, which is not in
the Gospels.

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 Note the similarities between the movie and The Dolorous
Passion: “Seraphia [the original name of Veronica] had prepared
some excellent aromatic wine, which she piously intended to
present to our Lord to refresh him on his dolorous way to Calvary.
She had been standing in the street for some time, and at last went
back into the house to wait. She was, when I first saw her,
enveloped in a long veil, and holding a little girl of nine years of
age whom she had adopted. . . . Those who were marching at the
head of the procession tried to push her back; but she made her
way through the mob, the soldiers, and the archers, reached Jesus,
fell on her knees before him, and presented the veil, saying at the
same time, ‘Permit me to wipe the face of my Lord.’ Jesus took
the veil in his left hand, wiped his bleeding face, and returned it
with thanks. Seraphia kissed it, and put it under her cloak. The
girl then timidly offered the wine, but the brutal soldiers would
not allow Jesus to drink it.”

Emmerich continues: “No sooner did she reach

her room than she placed the woolen veil on a table, and
fell almost senseless on her knees. A friend who entered
the room a short time after . . . and saw, to his
astonishment, the bloody countenance of our Lord
imprinted upon the veil, a perfect likeness, although
heartrending and painful to look upon. He roused
Seraphia, and pointed to the veil. She again knelt down
before it, and exclaimed through her tears, ‘Now I shall
indeed leave all with a happy heart, for my Lord has
given me a remembrance of himself.’”

This popular legend has a great emotional appeal

for devout Catholics, but it has no biblical basis
whatsoever. It is a purely Catholic legend designed to
promote the veneration of relics and icons. Again,

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Gibson chose to embellish Christ’s Passion by using a
popular Catholic legend foreign to the Gospels.

The Crucifixion Scene

The crucifixion scene in The Passion stands in stark

contrast with the Gospels, because it graphically portrays many
brutal details not found in the Bible. The Gospels simply state: “. .
. they crucified him” (Mark 15:24; Matt 27:35; Luke 23:33; John
19:18). No details are given on how Christ’s crucifixion was
carried out. It is evident that the crucifixion was a most cruel and
brutal means of execution, usually reserved for murderous slaves,
bandits, and insurrectionists. But the Gospels offer us no details
of Christ’s crucifixion. The reason will be discussed shortly.

By contrast, The Dolorous Passion devotes seven chapters

(38 to 45) to a detailed description of each phase of the
crucifixion. For the sake of brevity, we cite only one example,
namely, how the soldiers nailed the hands of Jesus to the Cross.
This example will suffice to show how closely Gibson follows
Emmerich’s account.

“Then seizing his right arm they dragged it to the hole

prepared for the nail, and having tied it tightly down with a cord,
one of them knelt upon his sacred chest, a second held his hand
flat, and a third taking a long thick nail, pressed it on the open
palm of that adorable hand, which had ever been open to bestow
blessings and favors on the ungrateful Jews, and with a great iron
hammer drove it through the flesh, and far into the wood of the
cross. Our Lord uttered one deep but suppressed groan, and his
blood gushed forth and sprinkled the arms of the archers. . . . The
nails were very large, the heads about the size of a crown piece,
and the thickness that of a man’s thumb, while the points came
through at the back of the cross. . . . When the executioners had

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nailed the right hand of our Lord, they perceived that his left hand
did not reach the hole they had bored to receive the nail, therefore
they tied ropes to his left arm, and having steadied their feet
against the cross, pulled the left hand violently until it reached the
place prepared for it.”

Gibson goes even beyond Emmerich’s brutal description of

the long nails that went through Jesus’ hands to the back of the
Cross by portraying the soldiers swinging up the Cross and then
slamming its weight down over the body of Jesus pinioned
underneath. Professor John Crossman offers a vivid description of
this scene from The Passion: “After Jesus is nailed to the Cross, it
is swung up toward us on a beam-bottom and beam-left ends and
then flipped over so that its weight slams down on the top of
Jesus’ pinioned body. He thuds to the ground, dust rises as his
face hits the earth, and the camera moves in for a close-up. The
heavy cross is now upside-down on the top of Jesus and we see
the sharp nails protruding from the back of the crossbar, as in
Emmerich’s book. But in Gibson’s film the soldiers then hammer
the nail-points at the right angles until they are flat to the wood,
the reverberations going through it to the hands and arms of
Jesus.”60 Crushing Christ’s body by slamming it under the weight
of a heavy falling Cross should have been sufficient to kill Christ
on the spot. But for Gibson, Christ is a SUPER MAN who can
survive the most brutal punishment in order to satisfy the exacting
demands of a punitive God.

Is Gibson Faithful to Scripture?

The foregoing examination of selected scenes from the

mocking, scourging, and crucifixion of Jesus is by no means
exhaustive. But the conclusion from the above examples is quite
clear: Gibson’s portrayal of the Passion of Christ is largely based

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not on the Gospels, but on Emmerich’s mystical visions recorded
in The Dolorous Passion.

There is no problem with Gibson choosing extra-biblical

sources as well as using his own creative imagination for his
movie. After all, a film is meant to be a creative artistic
expression, not a documentary. The problem is with Gibson’s
claim regarding the faithfulness of his movie to the Gospels and
history—a claim that is widely accepted as true, even by
respected church leaders. When asked: “How do you find the
balance between staying true to the Scripture and your creative
interpretation?” Gibson replied, as noted earlier: “Wow, the
Scripture are the Scripture—I mean they’re unchangeable,
although many people try to change them. And I think that my
first duty is to be as faithful as possible in telling the story so that
it doesn’t contradict Scriptures.”

Gibson’s claim to be “as faithful as possible” to Scripture

is openly contradicted by his extensive use of The Dolorous
Passion—a book based on mystical visions and Catholic legends
which are foreign to the Bible. We have found that Anne
Emmerich alters substantially the Passion story of the Gospels in
order to be faithful to traditional Catholic beliefs and legends. To
her credit, we noted earlier that she did not regard her visions “as
being of any historical value.”

Unfortunately, many viewers lack the knowledge

necessary to evaluate Gibson’s claims and therefore take at face
value his statements about the movie, especially since respected
church leaders fully support them. It is our hope that this study
provides the needed information to help the viewing public to
distinguish between the Passion of Christ according to the
Gospels and the Passion of Christ according to Mel Gibson.

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Why the Gospels Do Not Describe the Brutal of Christ’s
Scourging and Crucifixion?

The most striking difference between The Passion

and the Gospels is found in the presentation of Christ’s
suffering and death. While the Evangelists mention the
scourging and the crucifixion with very few words—
“Having scourged Jesus, Pilate delivered him to be
crucified” (Matthew, Mark, and Luke)—Gibson spends
two solid hours portraying with jarring details the
relentless torture of Jesus from Gethsemane to Golgotha.

Why did the Evangelists and the Christians of the first

millennium not linger over the brutal physical sufferings of Jesus?
Were they ashamed of the Cross, an emblem of the shameful
execution of criminals? Hardly so. Paul speaks boldly about
Cross: “Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14). Were they squeamish about the bloody
details of the scourging and execution of the Savior? Hardly so.
Luke, regarded as the most elegant New Testament writer,
describes Judas’ death in most graphic details: “Falling headlong
he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out” (Acts
1:18).

The Evangelists handled the events of the Passion so

discreetly not because they viewed them as embarrassing or
unimportant. After all, the Gospel story builds toward them.
Rather, the reason is to be found in their theological
understanding of the Cross. Simply stated, for them the Cross
meant sacrificial death, not brutal suffering. They understood that
Christ paid the penalty of our sins not through the intensity of His
sufferings, but through His perfect sacrificial death. He came not
to suffer for our salvation, but “to give his life a ransom for many”
(Mark 10:45; Matt 20:28; emphasis supplied). He “has appeared

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at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”
(Heb 9:26; emphasis supplied). The suffering which Christ
experienced through His life, especially at the Cross, qualified
Him to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins (Heb 5:8-9).

The focus on Christ’s sacrificial death, rather than on the

intensity of His suffering, is also found in Christian literature and
iconography of the first millennium. During this period, the
depiction of the scourging and crucifixion shows little blood.
Unlike Gibson, painters and writers follow the Gospels
in rendering the Passion with restraint. The depictions
are not without drama. Mary and John stand at the foot
of the Cross reeling in grief, but Jesus does not express
His agony. He is serene, almost regal. His body is not
brutalized and torn to shreds, because, as already stated,
the Cross was seen as the symbol of Christ’s perfect
sacrifice for our redemption.

From Sacrificial Death to Brutal Sufferings

A change came about in the eleventh century when a new

understanding developed of the meaning of the Cross. It was a
change from a sacrificial death to a brutal suffering view of the
Cross. Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), in his
epochal book Cur Deus Homo?, that is, Why God Became Man,
explains that to meet the demands of divine justice, Christ had to
suffer in His mind and body the exact equivalent of the
punishment due for all of humankind’s sins.

The mystics embraced and expanded this satisfaction view

of the atonement by emphasizing the exceeding sufferings Christ
had to bear in order to meet the demands of a punitive God for
humankind’s sins. This view has served as the wellspring of
Christian art and devotion for centuries. It gave rise to that strand

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of devotion that emphasizes imitation of Christ’s suffering as a
way of salvation. It has inspired the late Renaissance painting of
the Crucifixion with the contorted bleeding body of Christ, the
meditations of mystics, and Bach’s glorious setting of “O Sacred
Head, Sore Wounded.” Gibson’s movie follows this old Catholic
tradition that focuses on Christ’s brutal suffering to satisfy the
demands of a punitive God for humankind’s sins.

Scripture Focuses on Christ’s Death, not Suffering

The writers of the Gospels chose to describe Jesus’ Passion

differently from Gibson. They describe Jesus’ sufferings in the
briefest terms, as if drawing about it a veil of modesty. What is
important for them is not that Jesus suffered intensively for our
sins, but that He died vicariously for our sins. According to the
Gospels, Christ came, not to save us through the intensity of His
sufferings, but “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45;
Matt 20:28).

Paul summarizes the Good News he had preached to the

Corinthians in this way: “For I delivered unto you first of all that
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according
to the scriptures” (1 Cor 1:3; emphasis supplied). “He has
reconciled us in his body of flesh by his death” (Col 1:22). By
partaking of the sacred emblems of the bread and wine, believers
“proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). The
emphasis of the apostolic proclamation is on Christ’s vicarious
death, because He saved us through His sacrificial,
substitutionary death, not through the intensity of His sufferings.

We noted in Chapter one that a shift occurred in the

thirteenth century from the proclamation of Christ’s death to the
imitation of Christ’s sufferings. The outcome of this shift was the
development of the unbiblical belief characterized by salvation

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through sufferings. By imitating Christ’s sufferings in their own
body, people were taught that they could share in Christ’s
redemptive sufferings.

A good example is Anne Emmerich, who courted suffering

to atone for her sins and the sins of others. In the biographical
introduction to The Dolorous Passion, we are told that “A great
portion of her illnesses and sufferings came from taking upon
herself the sufferings of others. Sometimes she asked for the
illness of a person who did not bear it patiently, and relieved him
of the whole or of a part of his sufferings, by taking them upon
herself; sometimes, wishing to expiate a sin or put an end to
some suffering, she gave herself up into the hands of
God, and he, accepting her sacrifice, permitted her thus,
in union with the merits of his passion, to expiate the sin
by suffering some illness corresponding to it. She had
consequently to bear, not only her own maladies, but
those also of others—to suffer in expiation of the sins of
her brethren, and of the faults and negligence of certain
portions of the Christian community—and, finally, to
endure many and various sufferings in satisfaction for
the souls of purgatory. . . . For sufferings to be really
meritorious we must patiently and gratefully accept
unsuitable remedies and comforts, and all other
additional trials.”

The notion of expiating through sufferings one’s own sins

as well as the sins of others is a fundamental Catholic belief
which is nowhere to be found in Scripture. The new Catechism of
the Catholic Church explains that through suffering the believer
experiences “union with the passion of Christ. By the grace of this
sacrament [of anointing the sick] the sick person receives the
strength and the gift of uniting himself more closely to Christ’s
Passion. . . . Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a

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new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of
Jesus.”

This Catholic belief in salvation through sufferings

inspired countless devout Christians, like Anne Emmerich, to bear
courageously their sickness and even self-inflicted wounds in
order to atone for their sins and the sins of others. The lesson of
history is clear. By shifting the focus from Christ’s sacrificial
death to the intensity of His sufferings, the true meaning of the
Cross was obscured, and a human system of salvation through
personal sufferings has resulted.

CONCLUSION

We began this investigation of Gibson’s portrayal of The

Passion of the Christ by noting his claims concerning the
“accuracy” of the movie, namely, that it faithfully depicts the four
Gospel accounts of Jesus’ final hours. Being a movie—an
expression of artistic creation—Gibson was not obliged to be
faithful to the Gospels. He was free to use extra-biblical sources
to portray Christ’s Passion according to his own Catholic
traditions.

However, if viewers are led to believe, on the basis of

Gibson’s claims and with the endorsement of popular preachers,
that The Passion is faithful to Scripture and history—a claim that
we have found to be untrue—then it is imperative to help people
understand what is biblical and what is unbiblical in the movie.
This is the overall purpose of this chapter and of this book. We
wish to provide the tools to help viewers understand the
difference between the Passion according to Mel Gibson and the
Passion according to the Gospels.

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 The basic outline of The Passion is true to the Gospels: the
arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, the examination by the High
Priest, the trial before Pilate, the scourging, and the crucifixion.
These aspects of the film are true to the Gospels and history.

But, much of the film does not represent accurately either

the Gospels or history. In crucial areas of the story, The Passion
departs from the Gospels’ narratives. Moreover, several Catholic
beliefs embedded in The Passion: the brutal sufferings of Jesus to
satisfy the demands of a punitive God, the Catholic devotion to
Christ’s physical sufferings, the Catholic view of the Mass as a
reenactment of Christ’s suffering and death, the prominent role of
Mary as a partner in Christ’s redemption, and the collective guilt
of the Jews for Christ’s death. The last belief was repudiated by
the Catholic Church at Vatican II, but is evident throughout the
movie.

Summing up, Gibson is a traditionalist Catholic who has

produced a Catholic film with a Catholic message. The movie is
offering an unprecedented evangelistic opportunity to the Catholic
Church. The Catholic Passion Outreach rightly affirms: “The
Passion of The Christ offers an unprecedented cultural
opportunity for you to spread, strengthen, and share the Catholic
faith with your family and friends. Unlike any other, this movie
will inspire hearts and change minds.”

The viewing public must be made aware that The Passion of

the Christ tells the story of Jesus’ sufferings and death according
to Catholic traditional beliefs. Numerous scenes, like the story of
Veronica and the seven falls of Jesus on the way to Golgotha,
derive from Catholic legends and superstitions. Most moviegoers
do not generally make distinctions between biblical truths and
unbiblical legends when viewing a film like The Passion, because
they respond to the movie emotionally rather than rationally.

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 It is my hope that this study may help truth-seekers to
recognize and appreciate the distinction between The Passion of
Christ according to Mel Gibson and The Passion of Christ
according to the Gospels.

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 Chapter 4

THE CROSS OF CHRIST

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, has sparked fresh interest
for the Cross of Christ. Since the release of the movie, thousands
of articles and books on the meaning of Christ’s sufferings and
death, have been published or posted on websites. Both
professional Bible scholars and lay Bible students have been
inspired by the movie to take a fresh look at the meaning of the
Cross of Christ for twenty-first century Christians. Irrespective of
how one may feels about the movie, Gibson must be credited for
causing many people to reconsider the fundamental question:
Why was it necessary for Christ to suffer and die for our
salvation?

This question is especially relevant today when the presence of

sin and the need of a Savior are largely dismissed as outmoded
concepts. No psychology text book ever mentions “sin” or “divine
grace” as factors influencing human behavior. Our humanistic
society has reached the point when social customs have displaced
the law of God, social mores have replaced biblical morals, moral
relativism has substituted biblical moral absolutes, and belief in
human progress has taken the place of faith in divine redemption.
Throughout its history the Christian church has taught that our
fundamental human problem is sin and the Cross of Christ
provides the only hope to solve the sin problem. Today, however,
the concept of “sin” is regarded by many as an outmoded
holdover from the days of simplistic religious beliefs.
Sin implies some form of disobedience against an absolute moral
law that governs the relationship between human beings and God.

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But, many people today question the existence of such
relationship. By accepting Darwinistic teachings regarding the
accidental and materialistic human nature, many no longer see the
need for believing in an absolute moral law that governs our
relationship with God and fellow-beings.

The problem with the materialistic evolutionary view of human

nature, is that it has not succeeded in eliminating the awareness
that there is something transcendent about our human nature,
something that transcends our physical bodies. We recognize that
there is within ourselves a moral nature that expresses itself
through our conscience. We know when we say or do something
which is wrong or when others do wrong things.
Despite the contemporary dismissal of the reality of sin, guilt
remains a constant reality in the human psyche. Psychologist Karl
Menninger writes: “I believe there is a general sentiment that sin
is still with us, by us, and in us—somewhere. We are made
vaguely uneasy by this consciousness, this persistent sense of
guilt, and we try to relieve it in various ways. We project the
blame on others, we ascribe the responsibility to a group, we offer
up scapegoat sacrifices, we perform or partake in dumb-show
rituals of penitence and atonement. There is rarely a peccavi [a
confession: I have sinned], but there is a feeling.”1

This is a phenomenon of our times. Many live under the burden of

guilt, fully aware that they acted against the moral directives of
their conscience, yet they dismiss the notion of sin and of the
existence of a moral law that stands outside them and above them.
They try all sorts of ways to rid themselves of guilt feelings, only
to recognize that human remedies do not work. The reason we
cannot clear our consciences of guilt feelings is because as Paul
explains, the principles of God’s law are written in the human
heart (Rom 2:15).

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The message of the Scripture is that the solution to the human
problem of guilt and sin is to be found not in human devices, but
in God’s initiative to enter into human time and flesh to liberate
us from the bondage of sin through the sacrificial death of His
Son. The message of the Cross is that God has been willing to
make the ultimate sacrifice of dying on the Cross in the Person of
His Son to pay the penalty of our sins and restore our broken
relationship.

Objectives of this Chapter. This chapter investigates the reasons

for Christ’s death, its achievements, and its benefits for our life
today. Trying to understand these vital aspects of Christ’s death,
is not easy. The reason is that the Bible does not give us a
systematic explanation of the meaning of Christ’s death. Trying to
piece together the scattered references to Christ’s death into one
meaningful explanation, is like attempting to assemble a puzzle
without the picture of the puzzle on the cover of the box. This
chapter attempts to develop an accurate picture of the scope of
Christ’s death by taking in consideration the relevant biblical
references.

For the sake of clarity this chapter is divided into the following
three major parts:

1. The Centrality of the Cross

2. The Necessity of the Cross
3. The Achievements of the Cross

THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

Religious and political movements usually have a visual symbol

to represent their history or beliefs. Modern Judaism has adopted
the so-called Star of David, that represent God covenant with
David about the perpetual duration of his throne and the coming

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of the Messiah out of his descendants. Islam is symbolized by a
Crescent, which depicts a phase of the moon. It is a symbol of the
expansion and sovereignty of the Moslem conquest.
The Lotus Flower is associated with Buddhism. Sometimes
Buddha is depicted as enthroned in a fully open lotus flower. Its
wheel shape is supposed to represent the emergence of beauty and
harmony out of muddy water and chaos. In 1917 the Soviet
government adopted a crossed hammer and sickle to represent the
union of factory and field workers. The Swastika was adopted
early in the twentieth century by a German group as the symbol of
the Aryan race. Hitler took it over and made it the symbol of Nazi
racial bigotry.

The Cross is the Symbol of Christianity Christianity is no

exception in having a visual symbol. The Cross in time became
the universally emblem of the Christian belief in salvation
through Christ’s atoning sacrifice. At first Christians avoided
using the Cross as the visual symbol of their faith, though they
boldly spoke about the Cross (1 Cor 1:23; Gal 6:14). Being the
object of wild accusations and persecutions, the avoided
associating their faith in Christ with the Cross, because it was the
shameful symbol of execution of common criminals. Thus, on the
walls and ceilings of the catacombs, the earliest Christians used
such noncommittal paintings as the peacock (symbol of
immortality), the dove (symbol of the Holy Spirit), a palm branch
(symbol of victory), and especially the fish. Only Christians knew
that the Greek word for fish, ichthus, was an acronym for Iesus
Christos Theou Huios Soter, that is, “Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Savior.”

During the second century Christians began painting such biblical

themes as Noah’s ark, the Jonah cycle, the Good Shepherd, the
three Hebrews in the fiery furnace, and the rising of Lazarus. All

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of these pictures were intended to represents aspects of Christ’s
redemptive mission. Eventually, Christians chose the Cross as the
best pictorial symbol of their Christian faith in redemption
through Christ’s sacrificial death.

There were a wide range of emblems suitable to express the

Christian faith. They could have chosen the manger as symbol of
the incarnation, the empty tomb as symbol of the resurrection, the
dove as symbol of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the throne as
symbol of Christ’s sovereignty. Instead, they chose a simple
Cross, because it effectively represented the core of the Christian
belief in redemption through Christ’s sacrificial death. The
crucifix with Christ’s contorted body attached to it, “does not
appear to have been used before the sixth century.”2

The Christians’ choice of a Cross to represent their faith, is most

surprising when we remember that the cross was the most cruel
method of execution, reserved for slaves and foreigners, who had
been convicted as murderers or insurrectionists. The crucifixion
was so shameful that Romans citizens were exempted from it. The
early enemies of Christianity capitalized on the shame of the
crucifixion to ridicule the Christian claim that Christ saved
mankind by dying on the Cross.

A fitting example is a graffito from the second century,

discovered on Palatine Hill in Rome. It is a crude caricature of
Christ’s crucifixion. It depicts a man stretched on a cross with the
head of a donkey. On the left stands another man with one arm
raised in worship. Underneath are scribbled these uneven words:
ALEXAMENOS CEBETE THEON—”Alexamenos worships
God.” The accusation that Christians worshipped a donkey,
reveals the Romans’ contempt for the Christian worship of a
crucified Savior.

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The fact that the Cross became the symbol of the Christian faith,
in spite of its shame and ridicule, shows that the early Christian
understood that the sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross, was the
foundation and core of their faith. They were not prepared to
exchange it for something less offensive. They firmly clung to it,
because it was the symbol of their loyalty to their Savior and
acceptance of His sacrificial death for their redemption.
Christ’s Death is the Central Theme of the Scripture
Christ’s death is the central theme of the Scripture. Walking on
the way to Emmaus with two of His disciples on the evening of
His Resurrection, Jesus gave them what must have been one of
the most exciting Bible study of all time. “Beginning with Moses
and the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the
things concerning himself” (Luke 24:26). Jesus explained to them
how the prophets wrote about His death, without knowing who
He was and when He would come.

The whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament was a

symbolic portrayal of the sacrificial death of Jesus for mankind’s
sins. Similarly, the Passover lamb sacrificed by each believing
Jewish family, celebrated not only the deliverance from the
Egyptian bondage, but also the future Messianic redemption from
the bondage of sin. As Paul puts it: “Christ, our paschal lamb has
been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7).

Christ was the fulfillment of the promise of redemption typified

by the Passover lamb and the sacrificial animals offered at the
Temple on behalf of penitent sinners. John the Baptist understood
the Messianic typology of the sacrificial system. When he saw
Jesus coming toward him at the Jordan river, John the Baptist
said: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world!” (John 1:29).

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Those who in faith offered animal sacrifices in the Old Testament
looked forward to the coming of the Messiah who would redeem
them with His own blood. In the same way, we today look back
by faith to Christ’s sacrificial death. The blood of animal
sacrifices did not save, but faith in what the shed blood
symbolized did. In the same way we are saved, not through the
bread and wine, the symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed
blood, but through the sacrificial death of Jesus represented by
these symbols.

Christ’s Perception of His Mission Already at the age of 12

when Jesus was left behind at the Temple by mistake, He appears
to be conscious of His mission. He told His anxious parents:
“How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be
in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). By speaking of God as “my
Father,” and by expressing His inner compulsion to occupy
Himself with His Father’s affairs, Jesus revealed to be conscious
of His mission at an early age. His Father had sent Him into the
world for a special purpose.

At His baptism and temptation, Jesus revealed His commitment to

fulfill His mission, rather than the Devil’s plan. He was prepared
to go the way of suffering and death, rather than the way of
comfort and acclamation. Later in His ministry three times Christ
attempted to explain to His disciples the so-called “Messianic
secret” regarding His death. The first time is when Jesus and His
disciples were travelling through the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
On the way Jesus “. . . began to teach them that the Son of man
must suffer many things, an be rejected by the elders and the chief
priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise
again. And he said this plainly” (Mark 8:31-32).

Jesus revealed gradually to His disciples His sacrificial death,

because the Jews expected the Messiah to be a revolutionary

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political leader. The second unambiguous reference to His death
occurred when Jesus was passing secretly through Galilee. He
said to the Twelve: “The Son of man will be delivered into the
hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after
three days he will rise” (Mark 9:31). The disciples did not
understand what Jesus meant and “they were greatly distressed”
(Matt 17:22). Probably this was the time when Jesus “set his face
to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). He was determined to fulfill His
mission.

Christ made the third and most explicit prediction of His death on
the way to Jerusalem with His disciples. “And taking the twelve
again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying,
‘Behold, we are going to go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man
will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will
condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they
will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him;
and after three days he will rise” (Mark 10:32-34; cf. Matt 20:17).
Luke adds that “everything that is written of the Son of man by
the prophets will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31-34).
The most impressive aspect of these three predictions is Christ’s
determination to fulfill His mission. He must suffer, be rejected,
and die, so that everything written in the Scripture must be
fulfilled. It is evident that Christ understood that the purpose of
His coming in this world was to accomplish the redemption of
mankind through His death, as predicted by the prophets.
John omits the three precise predictions about Christ’s death, yet
he bears witness to the same event, by his seven references to
Jesus’ “hour” (John 2:4; 7:8; 7:25; 8:12; 12:20-28; 13:1; 17:1).
He says that “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of
this world to the Father” (John 13:1), and lifting up His eyes to
heaven, Jesus said: “Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son
that the Son may glorify thee” (John 17:1). In these statements
Christ speaks of His death as the moment of His glorification by

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His Father. This vision of the Cross differs radically from
Gibson’s movie where Christ’s brutal suffering and death serves
to meet the demands of a punitive God. In the Bible, as we shall
see, God is not a spectator, but a participant in the death and
glorification of His Son.

The evidence supplied by the Gospel writers indicate that Jesus

knew that He would die a violent but purposeful death. He knew
that he would die because of what the prophets had predicted
about His death and resurrection. There was no fatalism or a
martyr complex in Jesus’ mind. He was determined to fulfill the
revealed purpose of His coming, however painful that may be. He
had come “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10) and “to give
his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44). He set His face
steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, not allowing anything to deter him.
He freely embraced the eternal purpose of His Father for the
salvation of sinners through His own sacrificial death.
Despite the great important of Christ teaching, miracles, and
perfect life, none of these were the fundamental reason for His
coming into this world. As John Stott put is, “What dominated his
mind was not the living but the giving of his life. This final self-
sacrifice was the ‘hour,’ for which he had come into this world.
And the four evangelists, who bear witness to him in the Gospels,
show that they understand this by the disproportionate amount of
space they give to the story of the last few days on earth, his death
and resurrection. It occupies between a third and a quarter of the
three Synoptic Gospels, while John’s Gospel has justly been
described as having two parts, ‘the Book of the Signs’ and ‘the
Book of the Passion,’ since John spends an almost equal amount
of time on each.”3

The Apostles’ Understanding of the Cross The centrality of the

Cross is evident in the preaching and writing of the Apostles.
They frequently emphasize that Christ died and resurrected

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according to the Scripture. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul
summarizes the Gospel, saying: “I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor
15:3).

Paul defines his Gospel as “the message of the Cross” (1 Cor

1:18), his ministry as “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:22),
baptism as initiation “into his death” (Rom 6:3), and the Lord’s
Supper as a proclamation of “the Lord’s death till he comes” (1
Cor 11:26). So convinced was Paul of the centrality of the Cross,
that he decided “to know nothing . . . except Jesus Christ and him
crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).

The testimony of Peter is equally clear. He introduces his first

letter by reminding the readers that they have been sprinkled with
Christ’s blood (1 Pet 1:2). Few verses later he tells his readers:
“you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your
fathers, not with perishable things such a silver or gold, but with
the precious blood of Jesus, like that of a lamb without blemish or
spot” (1 Pet 1:18-19). Later in his epistle Peter explains how
Christ’s suffering and death enable believers to die to sin and live
righteously. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet 2:24).
Hebrews explains to Jewish Christians tempted to relapse into
Judaism, that there is no need to offer the same sacrifices
continuously, because Christ “has appeared once for all at the end
of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb 9:26).
Like Peter, Hebrews mentions the sanctifying power of Christ’s
sacrificial death: “For by a single offering he has perfected for all
times those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:14).
In the Book of Revelation 28 times Jesus is referred to as “the
Lamb,” not so much because of the meekness of His character,

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but rather because He was slained as a sacrificial victim and by
His blood he has set His people free. In chapter 5, one heavenly
choir after another praise the Lamb. The four living creatures and
the twenty four elders, who most likely represent the whole
church of both the Old and New Testaments, sang a new song,
saying: “Worthy are thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation . . .”(Rev 5:9).
In Revelation, Christ as the Lamb, occupies center stage, not only
in worship but also in salvation history. At the end the unbelievers
will try to escape from the wrath of the Lamb while the redeemed
are invited to celebrate the marriage of the Lamb. The lost will
call upon the mountains and rocks, saying: “Fall on us and hide us
from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the
wrath of the Lamb” (Rev 6:16). By contrast, the great multitude
of the redeemed, will shout for joy, saying: “Let us rejoice and
exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come”
(Rev 19:7).

Christ as the Lamb is presented at the side of God, mediating

God’s salvation. He is worthy to serve as our mediator, because
he was slain and by His sacrificial death, He secured our
salvation. By presenting Christ as “the Lamb that was slain” since
the foundation of the world, John is telling us that from eternity
past to eternity future, the center stage belongs to the Lamb of
God who was slained for our salvation.

Conclusion

The centrality of Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross, is the

foundation and center of the Christian faith. We have found that
Christ understood His saving mission, not in terms of living to
teach moral principles, but in terms of dying to save people from
their sins. The apostles clearly understood the centrality of the

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Cross. In their preaching and teaching they proclaimed the
message of the Cross, that is, salvation, not through human
devising, but through “the precious blood of Jesus, like that of a
lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet 1:18-19).
The recognition of the centrality of the Cross, led Christians to
adopt the emblem of the Cross as the symbol of their faith,
because it effectively represented their belief in salvation through
the sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross. Note, however, that the
early Christians adopted a plain cross, not a crucifix with the
bleeding and contorted body of Jesus attached to it. Why? Simply
because they believed that Christ saved us, not through the
intensity of His suffering, as portrayed in Gibson’s movie, but
through His voluntary sacrificial death.
In his book The Cruciality of the Cross, P.T. Forsyth, aptly
observes: “Christ is to us just what the Cross is. All that Christ
was in heaven or on earth, was put on what he did there on the
Cross. . . . Christ, I repeat, is to us just what the Cross is. You do
not understand Christ till you understand His Cross”4 The Cross
is the prism through which we understand Christ, because it
reveals the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ incarnation, perfect life, and
atoning death.

THE NECESSITY OF THE CROSS

The biblical emphasis on the centrality of the Cross as the only

ground on which God forgives sinners, bewilders many people.
Some argue that if God does not pardon sin without requiring the
death of Christ, He must not be an all-powerful God or else He
must be a punitive God, concerned more about enforcing His law
than expressing His love. The latter is the picture of God
portrayed in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, where Christ is
brutalized beyond recognition to meet the demands of justice of a
punitive God.

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Does God need to submit His Son to brutal torture to meet the
demands of His justice? Is redemption in the Bible achieved by
the intensity of Christ’s suffering, as portrayed in Gibson’s movie,
or by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross? Can God forgive
sin out of His pure mercy without the necessity of the Cross?
Since God expects us to forgive those who sin against us, why
doesn’t He practice what He preaches?

God Deals with Sin in Accordance to His Holiness and Justice

These are legitimate questions that need to be addressed. We shall
attempt to answer them in the light of God’s holiness and the
gravity of sin. The analogy between our forgiveness and God’s
forgiveness, ignores the fact that God is not a private, sinful
being. It is true that Christ taught us to pray: “forgive our sins, as
we forgive those who sin against us.” But the point of Christ’s
teaching is that we cannot expect to be forgiven by God if we are
unforgiving toward fellow beings. To argue that God should
forgive us unconditionally, as we are expected to forgive wrong-
doers, means to ignore the elementary fact that we are not God.
John Stott rightly explains: “We are private individuals, and other
people’s misdemeanors are personal injuries. God is not a private
individual, however, nor is sin just a personal injury. On the
contrary, God is himself the maker of the laws we break, and sin
is a rebellion against him.”5

To appreciate the problem of God’s forgiveness, we need to keep

in mind the contrast between God’s perfection and our human
rebellion. The problem God faces in forgiving sin, is reconciling
His loving mercy with His perfect justice. For, although “God is
love,” we need to remember that His love is “holy” and “just;” it
is a love that yearns to forgive sinners, without compromising His
justice and holiness.

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At the Cross, God’s mercy and justice are equally revealed and
reconciled. His mercy is revealed in offering His Son to pay the
full penalty of our transgressions, and His justice is manifested in
taking upon Himself the punishment that we deserve, in order to
offer us the forgiveness that we do not deserve. In the Cross of
Christ “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and
peace kiss each other” (Ps 85:10).

At the Cross, as A. H. Strong puts it, “Mercy is shown not by

trampling upon the claims of justice, but by vicariously satisfying
them.”6 It is important to realize that God exercises all His
attributes in harmony with each other. In His holiness God
demands atonement for sin, while in His mercy He provides it.
God’s attributes are not antagonistic to each other, but work
together in full and complete harmony.
Those who object to the necessity of Christ’s death on the Cross
to atone for our sins, fail to understand that God is merciful and
just at the same time. This is the problem with those who say:
“Why doesn’t God forgive and forget? Shouldn’t God forgive
people who are sorry for their wrong doings and endeavor to
become better persons? Isn’t unreasonable to claim that only the
sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross can remove sin?”

God’s Holiness Requires the Punishment of Sin These

questions ignore that God cannot overlook sin, pretending that it
does not exists, because He is righteous and just. “Righteousness
and justice are the foundation of thy throne” (Ps 89:14). “His
work is perfect; for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness
and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deut 32:4). God’s
ethical absolutes are not philosophical abstractions existing in
ideal realms. They are rooted in God’s very being and thus they
are immutable as God Himself. ”God is light and in him is no
darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God can only do what is right
because His nature is altogether just. The reason human beings

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have a sense of right and wrong, is because they have been
created in God’s image (Gen 1:26) and, thus, have the principles
of God’s law written in their hearts (Rom 2:15).
The just, holy, and righteous nature of God is incompatible with
sin. God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate
wrong” (Hab 1:13; NIV). Consequently our sins effectively
separate us from God. “Your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from
you so that he does not hear’ (Is 59:2).

The Meaning of God’s Wrath. The reaction of God’s holiness to

sin, is frequently described as the “wrath of God.” “For the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth”
(Rom 1:18; cf. John 3:36; Eph 5:6; Col 3:6; Rev 14:10). The
wrath of God in the Bible is not an irrational, capricious,
emotional outburst of anger, an outburst of “seeing red.” Rather, it
is His consistent and necessary reaction to the objective reality of
moral evil. In the words of Leon Morris, God’s wrath is His
“personal divine revulsion to evil,” and “his personal vigorous
opposition to it.”7

Contrary to human wrath, which is usually arbitrary and

uninhibited, divine wrath is principled and controlled. It is free
from personal animosity or vindictiveness. It is always
accompanied by undiminished love for the sinner. God’s wrath in
the Bible is always judicial in the sense that it is the wrath of the
judge who administers justice (Eph 5:6). It is His intense
displeasure and condemnation of sin. It issues not from passion,
but from God’s holiness and righteousness which is the basis of
the administration of the universe.

John Stott rightly observes that “What is common to the biblical

concepts of the holiness and the wrath of God, is the truth that

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they cannot coexist with sin. God’s holiness exposes sin; his
wrath opposes it. So sin cannot approach God and God cannot
tolerate sin.”8 This Biblical understanding of God’s nature is
unpopular today. Most people prefer an easygoing God, tolerant
of their offenses. They want God to be gentle, accommodating,
without any violent reaction. They want to bring God down to
their level and raise themselves up to His, so that ultimately there
is no need for the sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross on their
behalf.

To counteract this misconception of God, it is imperative to

recover the Biblical revelation of God who hates evil, is angered
by it, and refuses to compromise with it. It is essential to
understand that God’s holiness requires that sin be punished. If
God failed to punish sin, then He could not claim to be perfectly
just. His infinite justice demands the punishment of the sinner or
of an appropriate substitute. Frequently the Bible reminds us that
God cannot excuse or overlook sin. “I will not acquit the wicked”
(Ex 23:7). “I will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex 34:7; cf. Num
14:18).

The Gravity of Sin. To appreciate the necessity of the Cross, it is

essential to understand not only God’s holiness, but also the
gravity of sin. The biblical notion of sin has been largely rejected
by our secularized society. Wrongdoers are no longer called
“sinners,” but persons with behavioral disorders to be treated as
sickness rather than sin.

In the Bible, however, sin is not a regrettable lapse from accepted

social standards, but an active rebellion against God. The New
Testament uses five Greek words for sin, which help us to
understand its various aspects. The most common is hamartia,
which signifies “missing the mark.” Adikia signifies
“unrighteousness” or “iniquity.” Poneria means a vicious or

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degenerate kind of evil. Parabasis means “transgression,” the
stepping over a boundary. Anomia is “lawlessness,” “the violation
of a known law.” Each of these terms imply the violation of an
objective standard of conduct.

In the Scripture the objective standard of conduct is God’s law

which expresses His own righteous character. It is the law of
God’s own being, as well as the law that He has implanted in the
human heart (Rom 2:15). Thus, there is a vital correspondence
between the moral principles of God’s character and the moral
principles that should govern our relationship with God and
fellow beings.

The emphasis of Scripture is on the godless self-centeredness of

sin which results in active violation of God’s law. “Every one
who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness: sin is lawlessness” (1
John 3:4). Every sin that we commit reflects a spirit of rebellion
against God. David acknowledges this fact in his confession:
“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is
evil in thy sight, so that thou art justified in thy sentence and
blameless in thy judgment” (Ps 51:4). Emil Brunner sums it up
well, saying: “Sin is defiance, arrogance, the desire to be equal
with God, . . . the assertion of human independence over against
God, . . . the constitution of the autonomous reason, morality, and
culture.”9

Forgiveness through Christ’s Sacrifice The fact that sin is an

act of defiance against God, poses a question: “Could sinners be
forgiven by others means than Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross?” In
theory, God could have saved mankind by other means than the
Cross. But, in practice any other method would not have been
consonant with the exigencies arising from the perfections of His
character which are reflected in His law.

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God’s law necessitated the sacrificial death of Christ, because law
carries with it the penal sanction of death for the transgressors.
These sanctions are immutable and eternal because they reflect
God’s nature and character. God’s holiness causes Him to
condemn sin and His justice requires Him punish sin. And the
penalty for sin prescribed by God’s law is death.” In the day that
you eat of it you shall die” (Gen 2:17). “The soul that sins shall
die” (Ez 18:20). “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). “Sin
when is full-grown brings forth death” (James 1:12). “Since God
is true and cannot lie, these threatening must necessarily be
executed either upon the sinner himself or upon a surety.”10

The Good News is that God in His mercy has offered His own
Son as the “surety” for our salvation. The New Testament
explains the necessity of Christ’s death in terms of the sacrificial
shedding of blood for the remission of sin. For example, Hebrews
affirms: “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of
sin” (Heb 9:22). If the method of salvation depended solely upon
God’s arbitrary decision, then He could have devised a bloodless
redemptive plan. But, God’s decisions are not arbitrary. They are
consonant to His inner Being.

Hebrews explains that not only is the shedding of blood necessary

for the remission of sin, but also that only the blood of Jesus can
accomplish this purpose. “For it is impossible that the blood of
bulls and goats should take away sins” (Heb 10:4). “And every
priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same
sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had
offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the
right hand of God . . . For by a single offering he has perfected for
all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:11-12, 14).

Only Christ’s Death Meets the Demands of Divine Justice If

God could have forgiven sin by a mere act of volition, without

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first demanding the satisfaction of the penalty of sin, then the
whole biblical teaching of remission of sin through Christ’s
sacrificial death, would be totally untrue. Furthermore, the Cross
of Christ would hardly be the supreme demonstration of God’s
love (Rom 5:8; 1 John 4:9,10), if the redemption secured by it,
could have been achieved without it.

If it had been possible for the cup of Christ’s suffering and death
to pass from Him, then surely the Father would have answered
His Son prayer in Gethsemane. The fact that it was not possible,
shows that only the sacrificial death of Jesus could fulfill the
exigencies of divine justice. The ordeal of Calvary reveals the
depth of God’s love for lost sinners. When the Cross is viewed in
this light, then the love of God manifested at Calvary, takes on
new meaning, and fills us with adoring amazement.
Although God is almighty and omniscient, there are certain things
that He cannot do. For example, God cannot lie (Tit 1:2; Heb
6:8); He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim 2:13); He cannot tempt
people to sin (Jam 1:13). He cannot violate the moral principles
that govern His own nature. This means that when God
determined to save human beings from the consequences of sin,
He could only design a plan consistent with His moral law that
envisions death as the punishment for sin.

God’s plan for the salvation of lost sinners, could only be carried
out through the incarnation and sacrificial death of His Son. This
is indicated by the fact that Christ is presented as “The Lamb that
was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev 13:8). Through
this plan of salvation, as Paul puts it, God is able to demonstrate
that “ He himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has
faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).

God is Just in Justifying Penitent Sinners In Romans 3:21-26

Paul explains that by offering His Son as an expiation for our sins,

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God was able “to prove at the present time that he himself is
righteous” in justifying those “who have faith in Jesus.” The
reason is that God acts in harmony with His whole character. On
the one hand He shows His complete abhorrence of sin by
punishing it, while on the other hand He reveals His mercy by
offering to pay its penalty.

The notion of God offering His Son to die for our sins, as an
innocent victim for guilty sinners, is regarded by some as immoral
and unjust. In a human court an innocent person cannot assume
the guilt and punishment of a wrongdoer. This reasoning,
however, ignores two important considerations. First, Christ was
not an unwilling victim. The glory of the Cross is to be seen in the
voluntary nature of Christ’s incarnation, life of suffering, and
sacrificial death. “Though he was in the form of God, did not
count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but . . . humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the
Cross” (Phil 2:7-8). Christ’s sacrifice was voluntary act, not an
imposition.

Second, God is just in justifying penitent sinners (Rom 3:26,

because through Christ’s atoning death, He not only acquits
sinners, but He also empowers them to become righteous. “For as
by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one
man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19;
emphasis supplied). This is something a human judge cannot do.
A judge’s declaration of guilt or innocence does not change the
behavior of the dependent. But the Good News of the Gospel is
that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We could say that from a biblical perspectives, justification

through Christ’s death, entails not only a declaration of acquittal,
but also a transformation into newness of life. “We were buried

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therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might
walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). The new life in Christ, made
possible by accepting His atoning death, prove that God’s plan of
salvation is both just and effective. It accomplishes both the
reconciliation and the transformation of the penitent sinner, or to
use more technical words, the justification and sanctification of
believers.

Conclusion

The necessity of the Cross stems from the holiness of God and the
gravity of sin. God’s holiness requires the punishment of the
sinner or of an appropriate substitute. Christ’s sinless life and
sacrificial death were the only way for sinners to be saved. Jesus
said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to
the Father, but by me” (John 14:7). The Cross serves as a constant
reminder that “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no
other name under heaven given among men by which we must be
saved” (Acts 4:12).

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE CROSS

The heart of the Cross is God in Christ substituting Himself for

the salvation of sinners. We noted that the necessity of the Cross
stems from the holiness of God and the gravity of sin. We need
now to move from the necessity of the Cross to the achievements
of the Cross. Why did God take our place and bear our sins? The
New Testament offers two major answers to this question, which
may be summed up as revelation and salvation. Revelation is the
subjective aspect of Christ’s death, namely, how Christ’s atoning
death reveals God’s love in a way that it can rekindle a loving
response in the heart of sinners. Salvation is the objective aspect
of Christ’s death, namely, how Christ’s atoning death satisfied

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divine justice by dealing with the objective reality of sin. For the
sake of clarity we examine the achievements of the Cross under
these two main categories:

1. The Revelation of God

2. The Salvation of Sinners

1. THE REVELATION OF GOD

God has revealed Himself in various ways, but as Hebrews 1:1-3

points out, through His own Son He has spoken to us in a special
way. This means that Christ’s life, suffering and death offer to us
a unique revelation of God’s love, character, and nature. Being
the culmination of Christ’s life, the Cross is also the supreme
revelation of God’s love. This truth is emphatically stated in the
New Testament.

The Cross is a Supreme Revelation of God’s Love Twice John

affirms that Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross is the supreme
manifestation of true love. “By this we know love, that he laid
down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). For John the true definition of
love is to be found at Calvary, not in a dictionary.
John’s second verse is still more precise. “In this the love of God
was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the
world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that
we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the
expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God’s love is true love
because it was manifested in sending His only Son to die the
death that we deserve “so that we might live through him.”

Paul also writes about the love of God twice in the first part of
Romans 5. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). “God

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shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died
for us” (Rom 5:8). These two texts point to the subjective and
objective aspects of God’s love. Paul says that we know God’s
love objectively because He has proven His love through the
death of His Son, and subjectively because He continuously pours
His love into our hearts through the indwelling of His Spirit.
The Cross is a supreme revelation of God’s love, first because it
tells us that He sent His own Son, not a third party. Second,
because God sent His Son, not merely to teach us or to serve us,
but to die for us—for undeserving sinners like us. The value of a
love-gift is determined by what it costs to the giver and how
deserving is the recipient. In the gift of His Son God gave
everything for those who deserved nothing from Him.
Calvary must be seen as a revelation of the love of both the Father
and the Son, because God initiated and participate in the self-
giving of His Son. As Paul puts it: “All is from God who through
Christ reconciles us to Himself . . . God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:18-19). At Golgotha, the Father
was not a spectator, but a participant in the anguish and suffering
of His Son. Consequently, Christ’s experience of the limitations,
sufferings, agony, and death of human flesh is a supreme
revelation of both the Son and the Father’s love.

The Cross Kindles a Loving Response. The revelation of divine

love through the life, suffering, and death of Christ, is designed to
kindle a loving response in the heart of sinners. The human heart
responds to a genuine manifestation of sacrificial love. Jesus said:
“Greater love has no man than this, that a many lay down his life
for his friends” (John 15:13). The sinner who hears the Good
News of the Savior who died to rescue him from the penalty and
power of sin, is moved to respond by repenting of his sin and
accepting divine forgiveness and salvation.

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Paul emphasizes the compelling power of Christ’s love revealed
at the Cross, saying: “For the love of Christ controls us, because
we are convinced that one has died for all” (2 Cor 2:14). Similarly
John writes: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for
us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John
3:16). Passages such as these clearly emphasize the moral
influence exercised on the human heart by God’s love exhibited at
the Cross.

The “Moral Influence” Theory The unique demonstration of

God’s love at the Cross, has led several theologians during the
history of the Christian church, to find atoning value in the moral
influence of the Cross. To them the efficacy of the Cross lies not
in any objective satisfaction of divine justice through Christ’s
death, but in its subjective inspiration of the Cross to respond to
God’s love by changing our attitudes and actions.

The most famous promoter of the “moral influence” view of the

Cross, was the French theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142). He
was a popular lecturer who attracted large audiences at Notre
Dame, Paris. He strongly disagreed with his contemporary,
Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), on the
reason for Christ’s death. In his epoch-making book Cur Deus
Homo?, that is, Why God Became Man, Anselm explains that
Christ had to suffer in His mind and body the exact equivalent of
the punishment due for all of mankind’s sins, in order to satisfy
the demands of divine justice.

Abelard rejected Anselm’s satisfaction view of Christ’s death,

proposing instead what is known as “the moral influence” view of
the atonement. He wrote: “How cruel and wicked it seems, that
anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the
price for anything, or that it should in any way please him that an
innocent man should be slain—still less that God should consider

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the death of His Son so agreeable that by it he should be
reconciled to the whole world.”11

Instead, Abelard explained the function of Christ’s death in

exclusively subjective terms, namely, as a revelation of divine
love designed to move human hearts to repent and turn to God.
He wrote: “Redemption is the greatest love kindled in us by
Christ’s passion, a love which not only delivers us from the
bondage of sin, but also acquires for us the true freedom of
children, where love instead of fear becomes the ruling
affection.”12

A favorite text that Abelard quoted to support his view, is Luke

7:47, where Jesus, referring to the adulterous woman who
anointed His feet, says: “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are
forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves
little.” Abelard misunderstood this text. He made love the ground
of forgiveness, rather than its result. For him Christ’s death offers
forgiveness by evoking a loving response. When we love Christ
we are forgiven. As Robert Franks put it, “Abelard reduced the
whole process of redemption to one single clear principle,
namely, the manifestation of God’s love to us in Christ, which
awakens an answering love in us.”13

Supporters of the Moral Influence Theory. The moral influence

view of Christ’s death has enjoyed considerable support
throughout the centuries. Peter Lombard, who became Bishop of
Paris in 1159, defended the view in his famous Book of
Sentences. Other proponents of this view were Socinus, a
sixteenth century theologian who also denied the Trinity, and
Friedrich Schleiermacher, regarded as the father of nineteenth
century liberal theology. At present, the moral influence view has
been reproposed by evangelical theologians who find the
substitutionary view of Christ’s death no longer acceptable today.

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In their view the notion of substitution reflects the ancient Roman
court setting, rather than that of a family love relationships.
The new model that is being promoted is that of a family
relationship, where God deals with sinners like parents deal with
disobedient children. In an article in Christianity Today, entitled
“Evangelical Megashift: Why You May not Have Heard About
Wrath, Sin, and Hell Recently,” Robert Brow, a prominent
Canadian theologian, explains that “One of the most obvious
features of new-model evangelicalism is an emphasis on recalling
the warmth of a family relationship when thinking about God. It
prefers to picture God as three persons held together in a
relationship of love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it argues,
made humans in their image with a view to bringing many
children to glory. So instead of being dragged trembling into a
law court, we are to breathe in the atmosphere of a loving
family.”14

According to this new model, as Robert Brow explains, the Cross

is no longer God satisfying the demands of His justice by being
willing to bear through His Son the punishment of our sins, but
“the inevitable cost of loving. God is love, and love always gets
hurt. We can hold back from getting hurt, or we can go through
Gethsemane to accept the sacrifice that is involved in loving.”15

Allegedly sins are forgiven out of the bounty of God’s loving

tolerance, which elicits a loving response from the sinners’ heart.
No substitutionary sacrifice for sinners is necessary.
The Limitations of the “Moral Influence” View of the Cross. The
moral influence theory is correct in affirming that the love of
Christ shines through the Cross and elicits our loving response.

But it is faulty in denying the substitutionary function of Christ’s

death. We know that Christ gave Himself for us, because he loved
us. His love awakens ours. In John’s words, “We love because he

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first loved us” (1 John 4:19). But the question is: How does the
Cross demonstrate Christ’s Love? Did Christ suffer and die
merely to show His love toward us? If that were true, it is hard to
understand why would Christ choose to show love in such a cruel
way.

If a person dashes into a burning building to rescue someone, that

rescue is seen as a demonstration of love, because it was designed
to save a life. But if a person jumps into the burning building
because he wants to be burned to death, that would be a
demonstration of folly, not of love. In the same way Christ’s
death on the Cross can be a demonstration of love, only if he gave
His life in order to rescue us. The Cross can be seen as a proof of
God’s love only when it is a proof of His justice.
Christ death on the Cross must have an objective purpose before it
can have a subjective response. Paul makes this point when he
says: “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that
one died for all, and therefore all died” (2 Cor 5:14; NIV). The
compelling manifestation of Christ’s love rests on the costliness
of the Cross. When we recognize that He died that we might live,
then His love grips our hearts, compelling us to live for Him.
The drawing power and moral influence of the Cross, is one
important function of Christ’s death, which is only valid and
valuable if it is understood as the effect rather than the primary
cause of Christ’s death. The Scripture emphatically states that the
purpose of Christ’s death was to deal directly with the objectively
reality of sin: “He died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1
Cor 15:3). “His blood cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Summing up, the divine revelation of love at the Cross and our
human response to such a revelation is determined by the
recognition that Christ died not merely to show love, but to pay
the penalty of our disobedience. If Christ had sacrificed His life
merely to demonstrate His love toward us, it is hard to understand
why such cruel demonstration was necessary. Love is best

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demonstrated, not by dying for someone, but rather by living for
and serving that person. The Cross must be seen as a revelation of
both divine love and divine justice.
To limit the value and the function of Christ’s death to its moral
influence upon the human heart, is to attribute to the natural
person the capacity to save oneself merely by responding to
God’s love. Such a view ignores both the depravity of human
nature (Rom 3:23) and the need of salvation from sin (Rom 6:23).

Salvation is through divine expiation of human sin and not merely

through a divine revelation of love.

2. THE SALVATION OF SINNERS

Scripture teaches that the sufferings and death of Jesus were not
merely the revelation of His sacrificial love to elicit our loving
response, but also the salvation of sinners through Christ’s
substitutionary sacrifice. When we examine how Christ
accomplished the salvation of sinful people, we find that the
Scripture presents multifaceted images, each designed to help us
understand an important aspect of Christ’s redemptive
accomplishments. No single image could exhaust the many
aspects of the Cross.

For the sake of clarity we will consider five major word-pictures

of salvation which are used in Scripture to illustrate the
achievements of the Cross. The first is propitiation which derives
from the sacrifices offered in the Temple court. The second is
redemption which is taken from the market place. The third is
justification which comes the lawcourt. The fourth is
reconciliation which is inspired by family relationships. The fifth
is intercession which comes from Christ’s heavenly ministry.

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The foundation of all these word-pictures is the substitutionary
nature of Christ’s sacrifice. As John Stott rightly points out: “If
God in Christ did not die in our place, there could be neither
propitiation, not redemption, not justification, nor reconciliation.
In addition, all the images begin their life in the Old Testament,
but are elaborated and enriched in the New, particularly by being
directly related to Christ and His Cross.”16

Christ’s Death as Propitiation The central part of Christ’s

sacrificial death is removal of the guilt of our sins, known as
expiation or propitiation. Paul affirms that the central purpose of
Christ’s shedding of blood is to make “expiation” for our sins:
“Whom God put forward as an expiation [propitiation–KJV] by
his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom 3:25). Similarly, John
declares that Christ is “the expiation [propitiation–KJV] for our
sins” (1 John 2:2).

The English term “expiation” used in the RSV or “propitiation”

used in the KJV, are a translation of the Greek verb hilaskomai
(Heb 2:17), the noun hilasmos (1 John 2:2; 4:10), and the
adjective hilasterion (Rom 3:25; Heb 9:5). The meaning of these
word-pictures derives from the lid of the ark which is called
haphar in Hebrew (Lev 16:20) and hilasterion in Greek (Heb 9:5).
The sin was “covered,” that is, was expiated in the Old Testament
through the sprinkling of the blood upon the mercy seat, which
symbolized forgiveness, atonement, through the satisfaction of
divine justice.

In the New Testament antitype, sin is covered through the

sacrifice of Christ who satisfies divine justice. Perhaps the most
important text in this regard is Romans 3:25 (KJV), where Paul
says that God has set forth Christ as the “hilasterion—mercy seat”
for sinners, designed to propitiate the divine (wrath) displeasure
against sin. By means of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice the guilty

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person is covered in the eyes of God and the guilt is removed. The
sin is dealt so effectively that it is no longer the object of God’s
condemnation.

The RSV translates the hilasterion word-group as “expiation,”

because the translator were uncomfortable with the notion that
Christ’s death “propitiated,” that is, appeased or pacified God’s
wrath. But the New Testament use of hilasterion has nothing to do
with the pagan notion of “placating an angry God” or “appeasing
a vindictive, arbitrary, and capricious God.”17 The text of Romans
3:25 tells us that “God in His merciful will presented Christ as the
propitiation to His holy wrath on human guilt because He
accepted Christ as man’s representative and divine Substitute to
receive His judgment on sin.”18

God’s wrath, as noted earlier, is not an irrational, capricious,

emotional outburst of anger, an outburst of “seeing red.” Rather, it
is His consistent and uncompromising reaction to the objective
reality of moral evil. God’s antagonism against sin is satisfied by
Christ’s “propitiatory sacrifice,” which reconciles to God those
who accept by faith His sacrifice. Expiation and propitiation are
linked together, because expiation deals with sin by clearing the
guilt in such a way that propitiation is effected toward God and
the forgiven sinner is restored to fellowship with God.

Sacrificial Offerings. To understand the propitiatory function of

Christ’s sacrifice, we need to consider the Old Testament
sacrificial system, which typified the redemptive work of Christ
(Col 2:17; Heb 9:23-24; 10:1). The animal sin-offerings were
designed to teach the need of vicarious atonement to expiate sin.
The sin of the penitent Israelite by means of confession (Lev 1:4)
was transferred to a sacrificial animal that died in the place of the
sinner. Through this process the sin was expiated as punishment

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was met and God was propitiated as His displeasure was
terminated.

The vicarious meaning of the animal-sacrifice was highlighted

especially through the ritual of the blood which symbolized the
atonement through a substitutionary life: “The life of the flesh is
in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make
atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement
by reason of the life” (Lev 17:11).

This text makes three important affirmation about blood. First,

blood is the symbol of life. For this reason God forbade to eat
meat which had its “lifeblood” still in it (Gen 9:4; Deut 12:23).
The emphasis is not on the bloody torture of the sacrificial victim,
like in Gibson’s movie where the bloody body of Christ is
reduced into a pulp. Instead, the focus is on the blood shed by the
sacrificial victim for the penitent sinner. Simply stated, in
Scripture blood stands for salvation through sacrificial death, not
through the intensity of suffering, like in The Passion. The
animal-offering was not tortured before being sacrificed, because
atonement for sin was accomplished by the sacrifice of the
innocent victim.

Second, blood makes atonement because the life represented by

the blood is sacrificed in the place of sinner. Thomas Crawford
expresses this truth well: “The text, then, according to its plain
and obvious import, teaches the vicarious nature of the rite of
sacrifice. Life was given for life, the life of the victim for the life
of the offerer, indeed, the life of the innocent victim for the life of
the sinful offerer.”19

Third, blood was provided by God to make atonement. God says:

“I have given it to you.” This means that the sacrificial system
was God-given, not man-made. It was not a human device to

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placate God, but a divine provision to save penitent sinners. The
sacrifices were recognized as divine provisions, not human
meritorious works. They were not intended to make God gracious,
because God Himself provided them in order to be merciful
toward His sinful people, while at the same time meeting the
demands of His justice. Salvation has always been a divine gift of
grace, not a human achievement.

Atonement Through Christ’s Blood. The meaning and function

of blood in the sacrificial system, helps us to understand two
crucial text in Hebrews. The first says: “Under the law almost
everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb 9:22). The second text
says: “For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should
take away sins” (Heb 10:4).

These two texts highlight two important truths. The first text tells
us that there is no forgiveness without blood, because the penalty
of sin has to be met by a substitutionary sacrifice. There had to be
life for life. The second text explains that the blood of animal
sacrifices could not atone for human beings, because, as Jesus
Himself said, a human being has “much more value . . . than a
sheep” (Matt 12:12). Only the “precious blood of Christ” was
valuable enough to atone for the sins of mankind. Old Testament
believers were taught through the shed blood of animal sacrifices
to look forward in faith to “the Lamb of God who takes away the
sins of the world” (John 1:29).

Peter reminds believers that they “were ransomed from the futile
ways inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things such as
silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus, like that of a
lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet 1:18-19). Hebrews explains
more explicitly than any other New Testament book, that Christ’s
perfect sacrifice for sin on the Cross, represents the fulfillment of

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the Old Testament substitutionary sacrifices. Christ “has appeared
once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself” (Heb 9:26; cf. 10:12, 14).

The Bearing of Our Sins. The substitutionary nature of Christ’s

sacrifice is also taught by those Scriptural passages which speak
of our sins being “laid upon” Christ (Is 53:6; cf. 2 Cor 5:21) and
of His “bearing” our sins (Is 53:12; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet. 2:24).
According to Scripture, our sins were imputed to Christ. This
does not mean that Christ bore our sins by becoming morally
guilty, affected by sin. He “knew no sin” (2 Cor 2:21). Christ bore
our sins by assuming the legal obligation of our punishment.
What can be transferred is not subjective moral sinfulness-
guiltiness, but the objective punishment of sin. It is the latter that
was imputed to Christ.

To appreciate this point it is important to recognize that sin may

be considered in terms of its nature, which is transgression
(culpa–guilt) of the law (1 John 3:4), and in terms of its legal
consequences (poena–punishment), which is punishment (Rom
6:23). It is only in the latter sense that Christ bore our sins
vicariously by assuming our liability to punishment. This can be
transferred because punishment is an objective reality which is
not inherent in the person of the sinner. Christ then bore our sin
by accepting their condemnation which is death (Rom 6:23); by
being willing to die “the righteous for the unrighteous that he
might bring us to God” (1 Pet 3:18).

The Prepositions Huper and Anti. The substitutionary meaning

of Christ’s sacrifice is also expressed in those passages which use
the Greek prepositions huper and anti to describe Christ’s work
for sinners. The preposition huper can mean both “in place of”
and “for the benefit of.” The latter meaning is probably found in
passages such as John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this,

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that one lay down his life for (huper) his friends” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:21;
Heb 2:9).

In other passages, however, the preposition huper clearly means

“instead of.” For example, in 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul says: “The
love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has
died for (huper) all. Therefore all have died.” Obviously, Christ’s
death here is substitutionary because it would be nonsense to say
that because “one has died for the benefit of all, therefore all
died.” (See also Gal 3:3; John 11:50; Mark 10:45; 1 Pet. 3:18;
2:22; Heb 4:15). It is only on the assumption that Christ’s death
was substitutionary that Paul could have drawn the immediate
inference “therefore all have died.”

The meaning of substitution is conveyed unequivocally by those

passages which use the preposition anti which clearly means
“instead of” or “in place of.” For example, Christ said: “The son
of man came to give his life a ransom for (anti—in the place of)
many” (Mark 10:45; emphasis supplied; Matt 2:22; 5:38; 20:28).
1 Timothy 2:6 provides an interesting example where both anti
and huper are used in the same text: “Christ Jesus . . . gave
himself as a ransom (antilutron) for (huper) all.” Here the use of
anti together with huper suggests that Christ’s death is a substitute
ransom for the benefit of all. Thus, the Scripture clearly teaches
that Christ endured suffering and death not only for the benefit of,
but also in the place of sinners.

The substitutionary nature of Christ’s sacrifice helps us

understand Paul’s description of Christ’s death as “a fragrant
offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:2; cf. Gen 8:21; Lev 1:9).
“Christ’s self-sacrifice is pleasing to God because this sacrificial
offering took away the barrier between God and sinful man in that
Christ fully bore God’s wrath on man’s sin. Through Christ,

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God’s wrath is not turned into love but is turned away from man
and borne by Himself.”20

The Innocent Cannot Suffer for the Wicked. Some argue that it
is illegal to make an innocent suffer for the guilty. Consequently,
Christ’s death cannot justly be a substitutionary sacrifice of “the
righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Pet 3:18). This objection fails to
recognize that it is not God imposing a vicarious punishment
upon a third party, His Son, but it is God Himself willing to suffer
in and through the person of His Son for sinners: “God was in
Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The
Father did not impose on the Son an ordeal He was reluctant to
bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a forgiveness He was
reluctant to give. “There was no unwillingness in either. On the
contrary, their wills coincided in the perfect self-sacrifice of
love.”21

It is not unjust for a judge to choose to pay himself vicariously the

penalty of someone else’s disobedience. The transference of
penalty from a guilty to an innocent person is unjust in a human
court because there is no human judge who can remove the causes
of disobedience by paying its penalty. However, Christ’s
substitutionary sacrifice not only pays the penalty of sin, but also
breaks the power of sin. (1 John 1:9); it not only declares the
penitent sinner just (justification) but it also enables the sinner to
become just (sanctification).

The Need for Repentance Excludes Substitution. Others object

to the substitutionary view of Christ’s death because God still
expects us to confess and to repent of our sins. If Christ’s sacrifice
vicariously paid the penalty of our sins, then God should release
us altogether from punishment without any preconditions.
This objection ignores that the substitutionary payment is made,
not by a third party, but by God Himself. Christ is both the

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vicarious sacrifice and the judge (Rom 14:10). Consequently, God
has the right to determine upon what basis forgiveness is to be
granted. Christ’s obedience does not make ours unnecessary, but
possible. Thus, Christ has the right to require repentance and faith
as conditions for forgiveness and salvation.
The Father Would Be Unjust in Sacrificing the Son for the Sins of
Mankind. Another objection to the doctrine of vicarious
atonement is that it makes God guilty of injustice because He
would have sacrificed the Son to meet the demands of His own
justice. This objection, like the previous one, ignores that the plan
of redemption was conceived by the triune God and was not an
imposition of the Father upon the Son. Christ voluntarily
undertook to pay the human penalty for sin and to satisfy the
demands of the divine justice: “I lay down my life for the sheep...
for this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life,
that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down
of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power
to take it again.” (John 10:15,17,18).

The objection fails to recognize also that in the drama of the

Cross, the Father is not the Judge punishing His Son, the innocent
victim. Instead, both of Them are mysteriously united in carrying
out our redemption. “God so loved the world that he gave his only
Son” (John 3:16). God “did not spare his own Son” (Rom 8:32).
“We were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10).
In giving His Son, God gave Himself. God is the Judge who in
the person of His Son bore the penalty which He Himself
inflicted. As Robert Dale puts it, “The mysterious unity of the
Father and the Son rendered possible for God at once to endure
and to inflict penal suffering.”22

In order to save us in a way consonant to His justice, God

substituted Himself through Christ for our salvation. The self-
sacrifice of God on the Cross reveals the simultaneous blending

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of justice and mercy. There is nothing unjust in the substitutionary
sacrifice of Christ, because the substitute for the lawbreaker is
none other that the divine Lawgiver Himself.
Moreover, Christ’s sacrifice must be viewed not only in terms of
pain and suffering, but also in terms of gain and glory. It has
resulted in a countless multitude of redeemed praising Him with a
loud voice saying: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” (Rev
5:12). Finally, if Christ’s death was not a substitutionary sacrifice,
His bitter suffering and shameful death would truly be an unjust,
irrational, and cruel exhibition.

Conclusion. Our discussion of the propitiatory function of

Christ’s sacrifice has shown that Christ did not die to placate
God’s anger and persuade Him to forgive sinners. The initiative
was taken by God Himself who put forth His own Son to be a
propitiatory sacrifice. God did not offer an animal or an object,
but Himself in the person of His Son. Thus, God himself in His
loving mercy took the initiative to appease His righteous anger by
bearing it Himself in the person of His own Son who took our
place and died for us. The sacrificial system clearly show that
Christ’s substitutionary death paid the penalty of sin, and averted
God’s wrath “so that God can look on man without displeasure
and man can look on God without fear. Sin is expiated and God is
propitiated.”23 God is both the provider and the recipient of the
propitiation.

Christ’s Death as Redemption In seeking to understand the

achievements of the Cross, we now move from the word-picture
of propitiation associated with the sacrifices in the Temple, to that
of redemption that comes to us from the market place. The term
“redemption” translates the Greek apolutrosis, which derives from
lutron, which was the “ransom” or “price of release” paid in the
market place for the purchase or manumission of a slave.
While propitiation views the Cross from the perspective of divine

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wrath or displeasure satisfied by Christ’s sacrifice, redemption
sees the Cross as the release from the bondage to which sin has
consigned us. It views the work of Christ not simply as
deliverance from the bondage of sin but also in terms of the
ransom price paid for our deliverance.

The meaning of redemption is clarified by Christ’s words: “The

Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his
love as a ransom (lutron) for many” (Matt 20:28; cf. Mark 10:45).
In this declaration Christ explains that His mission was one of
ransom—lutron, which is also translated “redemption.” The
ransom price was His life, and the payment of the ransom price
was substitutionary in nature. The same idea is expressed in
numerous other passages that deal with redemption.24 Leon
Morris warns against reducing the biblical concept of redemption
to cheap deliverance. “The language of redemption is that of
securing release by the payment of a price, and it is this concept
that is applied expressly to the laying down of Jesus’ life and the
shedding of His blood. Jesus shed His blood in order to pay the
price of our ransom. Redemption cannot be reduced to lower
term.”25

In the Old Testament property, animals, persons, and the nation

could be “redeemed” by the payment of a price. The right to
redeem belonged to a “kinsman redeemer.” An impoverished
Israelite compelled to sell himself into slavery could later redeem
himself or be redeemed by a relative (Ex 30:12-16; 13:13; Num
3:40-51; Lev 25:47-55). In either cases the “redemption” was a
costly intervention. Somebody paid the price necessary to free the
person from slavery.

Israel as a nation were redeemed from slavery in Egypt (Ex 6:6;

Deut 7:8; 15:15) and from exile in Babylon (Is 43:1-14; 48:20; Jer
31:11). Redemption always involved the payment of a price and

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Israel’s redemption was no an exception. “I am the Lord, and I
will bring you from under the burden of the Egyptians, and I will
deliver you from bondage, and I will redeem you with an
outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment” (Ex 6:6; cf.
Deut 9:26; Neh 1:10).

In the New Testament the meaning of redemption is expanded to

include two new concepts. First, the plight of those needing
redemption is moral, not material. It is a deliverance, not from
physical or political oppression, but from the spiritual bondage of
sin. Second, the price paid for our redemption is not monetary,
but the precious blood of Jesus. “You were ransom from your
futile ways . . . not with perishable things such as silver or gold,
but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without
blemish or spot” (1 Pet 1:18).

The Scope of Redemption. The scope of Christ’s redemption

through His sacrificial death, includes three areas, all of which are
related to our bondage to sin. First, there is deliverance from the
penalty of sin. Paul explain that Christ “gave himself for us to
redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of
his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Tit 2:14).
In this text Paul describes redemption both as deliverance and
purification. Deliverance from all iniquities is defined by Paul
elsewhere as “the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph 1:7). In
other words, Christ’s death secures our legal acquittal and penal
release from our transgressions of God’s law. “Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal
3:13). The curse of the law is the condemnation it pronounces
upon transgressors (Gal 3:10).

Second, Christ’s redemption delivers believers from the power of

sin. Through His substitutionary death, Jesus not only pays the
penalty of our sins, but also enables us through His Spirit to break

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the grip of sin in our lives. Christ gave Himself “to purify for
himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Tit
2:14). Redemption and purification go together. “Christ loved the
church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,
having cleansed her by the washing of water with his word” (Eph
5:25-26).

Thomas Taylor writes: “Redemption and sanctification are

inseparable companions; none is redeemed who is not purged.
The blood of Christ has this double effect in whomever it is
effectual to salvation; for he is made to us righteousness and
sanctification (1 Cor 1:30).”26

Third, Christ’s redemption reassures us of the final consummation

to be realized at Christ’s glorious coming. That is the “day of
redemption” (Eph 4:30) when we will be made perfect. This
includes “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23) from sin,
sickness, and death. Only then Christ will complete the
redemption of the human and subhuman creation from sin,
sorrow, and death. This show how closely related is the present
redemption accomplished by Jesus on the Cross to the final
consummation of redemption that will take place at the glorious
day of His Coming.

Christ’s Death as Justification Thus far we have considered the

achievements of the Cross as portrayed by the two word-pictures
of propitiation and redemption. These two word-pictures have led
us from the sacrifices in the Temple’s court (propitiation) to the
price paid for the manumission of the slaves in the market place
(redemption). The third word-picture used to describe the
achievements of the Cross is “justification.” This picture takes us
from the market place to a lawcourt, because the word was used
to describe the verdict of a judge who pronounced an accused
person “not guilty.”

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The term “justification” is a translation of the Greek dikaioma,
which means “righteous requirement,” “judicial sentence,” and
“act of righteousness.” It also translates dikaiosis which signifies
“justification,” “vindication,” “acquittal.” The related verb dikaio,
means “to be pronounced and treated as righteous,” “to be
acquitted,” “to be set free, made pure.”27 The basic meaning of
justification is the act of God that declares a penitent sinner
righteous or regards him as righteous. Justification is the opposite
of condemnation (Rom 5:16).

There is a logical progression in the order we are reviewing the

great achievements of the Cross. Propitiation comes first, because
God’s displeasure and condemnation of sin (wrath) must be
appeased by the sacrificial death of Jesus, before salvation can be
extended to human beings. Once the demands of divine justice
have been met, the redemption, that is, the rescue of penitent
sinners takes place at the high price of Christ’s blood. The next
picture justification expands on the divine deliverance by
depicting God as Judge who imputes the righteousness of Christ
to a believer and declares that person to be forgiven of all sins,
thus pronouncing the person righteous in his sight (Acts 13:38-39;
Rom 4:5, 24).

Justification is best understood in the context of a judicial court of

law (Rom 8:33-34). Being sinners we deserve the death
punishment (Rom 6:23). Justification is the act of God as the
universal judge who acquits penitent sinners of their guilt and
declares them as righteous (Rom 5:8). Justification is the opposite
of condemnation. By means of Christ’s righteousness, God
justifies penitent sinners by forgiving their sins and reconciling
them to Himself. In an attempt to better understand Paul’s
teachings on the divine justification of sinners, we will consider
four of his key phrases which relate to the source, ground, means,
and effects of justification.

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The Source of Our Justification. The source of justification is
indicated by the phrase justified freely by his grace: “We are
justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by
Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24; NIV; emphasis supplied). Justification
is an undeserved favor because “None is righteous, no, not one”
(Rom 3:10). Self-justification is utterly impossible because
nobody can declare himself righteous before God (Rom 3:20; Ps
143:2). It is only “God who justifies” (Rom 8:33), and He does it
not because of good works done by penitent sinners, but because
of His grace.

The Ground of our Justification. The ground or the righteous

basis of our justification is expressed by the phrase justified by his
blood: “Since we have been justified by his blood, how much
more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him” (Rom
5:9; emphasis supplied). Justification is not an arbitrary act of
God declaring bad people good, or saying that they are not sinners
after all. Rather, as John Stott aptly observes: “God is
pronouncing them legally righteous, free from any liability to the
broken law, because he himself has borne the penalty of their law-
breaking.”28

The basis of justification is not our obedience, but Christ’s, for

“through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men,
resulting in justification of life . . . By one Man’s obedience many
will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18, 19; KJV). Through Christ’s
obedience, believers are “justified freely by His grace” (Rom
3:24; KJV).

The Means of Our Justification. The means of our justification

is indicated by Paul’s favorite expression justified by faith. “We
maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the
law” (Rom 3:28; emphasis supplied; cf. Rom 5:1; Gal 2:9). The

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reason Paul speaks of faith as the sole means of justification, is
because, as mentioned in the previous verse, he wants to exclude
human boasting. “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On
what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of
faith” (Rom 3:27).

Paul’s statement on justification by faith, has been the object of

endless controversies between Catholic and Protestant
theologians, since the sixteenth century Reformation. What is at
stake is the definition of the nature of faith and of the dynamics of
the process of justification. Before discussing how Catholic and
Protestant theologians have defined their positions, let us mention
the effects of justification.

The Effects of our Justification. The effects of our justification

are described as a restored relationship with Christ. This is
suggested by Paul’s expressions that we are justified in Christ
(Gal 2:16-17; Rom 8:1; 2 Cor 5:21). “We have believed in Christ
Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ . . . But if, in our
endeavor to be justified in Christ, we ourselves were found to be
sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly not!” (Rom 2:16-
17; emphasis supplied).

Being justified in Christ points to a personal relationship with the

Savior that believers can enjoy now. This fact shows that
justification is not purely an external judicial declaration of
acquittal, but an internal union with Christ that brings assurance
of the believer’s acceptance. No matter how sinful one’s past life
may have been, God pardons all our sins and we are no longer
under the condemnation of the law. “There is therefore now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).
The realization that our Savior’s sacrifice forgives our sinful past,
brings healing to our body and mind. It enable us to forget the
dark chapters of our past life, because His forgiving grace has

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taken care of them (Phil 3:13-14). It motivates us to “walk not
according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4).
The reassuring message of justification by faith appears to be a
simple and clear biblical teaching, yet it has been intensity
debated since the Reformation. It is a teaching that has deeply
divided the Catholic from Protestant churches. The limited nature
of this study allows for only a summary statement of the
respective Catholic and Protestant understanding of justification
by faith.

The distinction between the Catholic and Protestant understanding

of justification by faith, revolves around four major questions,
aptly summarized by Avery Dulles: “1) Is justification the action
of God alone, or do we who receive it cooperate by our response
to God’s offer of grace? 2) Does God, when He justifies us,
simply impute to us the merits of Christ, or does He transform us
and make us intrinsically righteous? 3) Do we receive justification
by faith alone, or only by a faith enlivened by love and fruitful in
good works? 4) Is the reward of heavenly life a free gift of God to
believers, or do they merit it by their faithfulness and good
works?”29

The Reformers’ Understanding of Justification by Faith. The

sixteenth-century Reformers were convinced of the central
importance of justification by faith. Luther called it “the principal
article of all Christian doctrine, which maketh true Christians
indeed.”30 Martin Luther developed his answer to the above
questions on the basis of his study of Paul and of his personal
monastic experience. As an Augustinian monk, he sought in vain
to find reassurance of salvation by submitting himself to a
rigorous regiment of fasting and prayer. But in spite of his
rigorous spiritual exercises, he still felt as a condemned sinner in
God’s sight.

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His quest for a gracious God, not a stern judge, led him to
discover in Paul’s writing that justification is by faith, without the
works of the law. To ensure that his German people would
understand the exclusive role of faith, he added the word “alone”
to Romans 3:28: “We hold that a man is justified by faith alone,
apart from works of the law.” This interpretation made him feel
like a new born person, entering Paradise. Out of pastoral concern
for the terrified conscience of people buying indulgences to avoid
the temporal punishment of their sins, Luther developed the
slogan “By grace alone, by faith alone.”

Luther concluded that justification is a divine act, by which he

imputes Christ’s righteousness to a believer, irrespectively of his
cooperation. God declares a person to be forgiven of all sins, thus
pronouncing that person righteous in His sight (Acts 13:38-39;
Rom 4:5, 24). According to Luther we are justified by God’s
grace that freely imputes to us the merits of Christ, apart from our
inner renewal. We receive justification by faith alone, that is, by a
passive faith that accepts God’s provision of salvation, not by an
active faith manifested in obedience to God’s commandments.
The problem with Luther’s interpretation, as we shall see shortly,
is that faith is never alone—it is never passive, because it involves
the mind and the will.

In summation, Luther understood justification by faith as a

declarative and judicial act of God, based on Christ’s
righteousness. It changes the legal standing of a believer from
condemnation to justification (acquittal), but is not dependent
upon a change in the person behavior. This means that a person
can be simultaneously saint and sinner—simul justus et
peccatoris. The problems with the Lutheran (Protestant)
understanding of justification by faith, will be discussed shortly
after describing the Catholic understanding of justification by
faith.

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The Catholic Understanding of Justification by Faith. The
Catholic view of justification by faith was formulated by the
Council of Trent in 1546 A. D. , largely as a response to the
teachings of Luther and Calvin. Since Trent, the official Catholic
views have not substantially changed. The recent study (1986 to
1993) on Church and Justification produced by the Lutheran-
Roman Catholic International Commission, as well as the joint
Catholic-Lutheran declaration, show that fundamental differences
still do exist.

Simply stated, for the Roman Catholic church justification by

grace is not a declarative judicial act of God that imputes Christ’s
righteousness to the believer, but an infusion of grace that enables
believers to produce good works. The latter is a process that
begins at baptism and continues through the whole life as
believers partake of the sacraments and produce good works.
Avery Dulles succinctly summarizes the teachings of Trent,
saying: “The Council taught that although justification is an
unmerited gift, it needs to be freely accepted, so that human
cooperation is involved. Secondly, it taught that justification
consists in an inner renewal brought about by divine grace;
thirdly, that justification does not take place by faith without
hope, charity, and good works; and finally, that the justified, by
performing good works, merit the reward of eternal life.”31
The new Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates the
teachings of the Council of Trent, by affirming that justification is
an infusion of grace bestowed at baptism that enables believers to
conform to God’s righteousness. “Justification is conferred in
Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the
righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power
of his mercy.”32

By linking justification to a person moral condition, the Catholic

church believes that the righteousness received in justification can

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be increased or decreased. If lost, justification can be recovered
by good works such a Penance. The new Catechism of the
Catholic Church explicitly states that those who “since Baptism,
have fallen into grave sin, and have thus lost their baptismal grace
. . . to them the sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to
convert and to recover the grace of justification.”33 Such a view
goes against the popular Protestant belief that once saved, always
saved. Once believers are imputed with Christ’s righteousness and
are declared righteous, allegedly they cannot loose the legal
standing as a forgiven children of God. Unfortunately both
positions misinterpret the biblical view of justification.
Evaluation of the Protestant and Catholic Understanding of
Justification by Faith. A comparison between the Catholic and
Protestant formulations of the doctrine of justification by faith,
reveals the extreme definitions formulated in the crossfire of
controversy by the respective churches. Protestants tend to reduce
God’s justification to an external legal declaration of acquittal
which is not condition by interior renewal. By contrast, Catholics
make justification by faith into a process of moral transformation
that continues throughout one’s life, and if necessary in
Purgatory.

For Protestants Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers,

while for Catholics it is infused by means of baptism and the
other sacraments. For Protestants justification is received by faith
alone, while for Catholics is achieved by faith together with
works of obedience. For Protestant, believers put on righteousness
like a cloak, leaving their character and conduct unchanged, while
for Catholics believers are infused with righteousness which
enable them to become righteous by means of sacraments and
good works.

These series of extreme contrasts between the Protestant and

Catholic positions, serve to highlight how both positions

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misrepresent the biblical truth expressed through the word-picture
of justification by faith. For example, the Reformers’ teaching
that every justified Christian is simul justus et peccator, that is, a
saint and a sinner at the same time, makes justification a phoney
external transaction which leaves people internally unchanged.
Such an understanding of “justification by faith alone” can
become a thinly disguised license to go on sinning.
In their zeal to emphasize the free gift of salvation in opposition
to the Catholic emphasis on good works, Protestants have often
given the impression that obedience to God’s law is not
important, because after all justification is a judicial declaration of
acquittal, not a moral transformation. The separation between
these divine saving activities can only occur in the mind of
speculative theologians, not in the practical experience of
believers. Believers who are justified are also sanctified at the
same time. Note how Paul lumps together regeneration,
sanctification, and justification: “You were washed, you were
sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11).

The fact that Paul mentions the cleansing, the sanctification, and
the justification as saving activities experienced by believers at
the same time, tells us that at the moment of justification,
believers are also sanctified. The reason why “there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1), is not
merely because penitent sinners have been declared “not guilty”
before God’s court, but because “God sent His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin . . . in order that the just
requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:3-4).
Both the legal declaration of justification and the moral
transformation of sanctification, are gifts of divine grace received
by believers at the same time. “The righteousness by which we
are justified is imputed; the righteousness by which we are

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sanctified is imparted. The first is out title to heaven, the second is
our fitness for heaven.”34 Both the imputed and imparted
righteousness of Christ are offered at the same time to those who
accept God’s provision of salvation.

Catholic are right in affirming that justification by faith is not

merely a legal declaration but also a moral transformation. But
they are wrong in claiming that such transformation is triggered
by an infusion of grace that begins at baptism and continues
through life by means of the sacraments and good works. To the
Catholics, justification is ultimately, not a divine gift of grace, but
a human accomplishment by believers who co-joining their works
with faith. This understanding of salvation is reflected in Passion
Plays, like Gibson’s movie. We have seen in chapters 1 and 2
how the Passion Plays have inspired Christians to imitate Christ’s
suffering as a way to earn their own salvation. Salvation is
achieved through penitential suffering, rather than being received
as a divine gift of grace.

Luther’s Understanding of Faith. “Faith” lies at the heart of

Paul’s doctrine of salvation, being often presented as an
indispensable requirement for salvation. The definition of “faith”
lies also at the root of the difference between the Catholic and
Protestant on their understanding of salvation. Trying to capture
the exact Catholic and Protestant understanding of faith is a most
difficult task, because their respective literature hardly offer clear,
unambiguous definitions of faith.

Justification by faith alone was Martin Luther’s great spiritual and

theological breakthrough. To find peace with God he tried
everything from sleeping on hard floors, confessions, prayers, and
fasting to climbing the “Holy Staircase” in Rome while kneeling
in prayer. All these good works proved fruitless.
Finally, Luther found peace when he discovered in the study of

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Paul’s writings that justification is by faith, not by the works of
penance he had been performing. The phrase “justification by
faith alone” became for Luther the key to unlocked the Bible.
What was Luther’s understanding of the justifying faith? The
answer seems to be complete trust in Christ’s forgiving grace. He
wrote: “Justifying faith is a sure trust, by which one believes that
his sins are remitted for Christ’s sake; and they that are justified
are to believe certainly that their sins are remitted.”35 He further
explains: “No previous disposition is necessary to justification;
neither does faith justify because it disposes us, but because it is a
means or instrument by which the promise and grace of God are
laid hold on and received.”36

In his “Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” Luther

wrote: “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of
God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in
it. Such confidence and knowledge of God’s grace makes you
happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all
creatures.”37

Faith and Works. These statements suggests that for Luther

“faith” was absolute trust in Christ’s forgiving grace. It involves
the mind rather than the will, that is, mental acceptance of
Christ’s atoning sacrifice, rather than willingness to obey God’s
commandments. He reached this conclusion because all his works
of penance, never gave him the assurance of salvation. What
Luther failed to realize is that the doctrine of justification by faith,
does not mean that we are saved by faith without works, but that
we are saved by God’s grace without human merits.
“Works” for Paul are the works of the law, that is, acts of
obedience motivated by the desire to gain righteousness. Such
works obviously negate faith, that is, the acceptance of salvation
as a divine gift of grace. For James, however, “works” are not a
means of salvation, but an outward manifestation of genuine faith.

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A professing faith is a practicing faith (James 2:14-26). With
these connotations, the terms “faith” and “works” are fully
compatible.

The two apostles address two different concerns. Paul addresses

the question of the basis of salvation: Is it a human achievement
or a divine gift? James discusses the effect of salvation: It is a
profession or a practice? Both apostles are concerned about the
misuse of the law. Paul addresses the problem of legalism: using
the law as a means of salvation. James discusses the problem of
antinomianism: disregarding the law as irrelevant to salvation.
Understood in their proper contexts, there is no conflict between
Paul and James on the question of faith and works.
For Paul faith is not purely an intellectual acceptance of the
provision of salvation, but a complete commitment to God,
manifested through obedience. Three times Paul states: “neither
circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision,” and each
time he concludes this statement with a different phrase: “but
keeping the commandments of God . . . but faith working through
love . . . but a new creation” (1 Cor 7:19; Gal 5:6; 6:15). The
parallelism suggests that a believer that has been saved by faith, is
not released from the observance of God’s commandments, but
empowered to observe them.

The Catholic View of “Faith” The Catholic understanding of the

saving “faith,” differs substantially from the Protestant one. In
Catholic thought faith occupies a subordinate place. The Council
of Trent admits that faith does play a role during the life process
of justification, but final justification only occurs when a person
receives the infused grace at their water baptism. While in
Protestant teachings faith is the instrumental cause of justification
is faith, in Catholic beliefs baptism operates as the instrument of
justification.

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The new Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “faith is
a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him.”38 Since
Baptism is viewed by the Catholic church as a sacrament
administered by the church, it is through the church that the
believer receives the faith. As stated in the new Catechism, “It is
through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by
Baptism.”39 This means that for the Catholic church faith is a
dispensation of the church, rather than a disposition of the
believer.

The fact that Baptism is administered at birth, when the new born
baby is unable to mentally accept Christ’s forgiving grace, shows
that for Catholics the saving faith is an external infusion of grace,
rather than an internal, intelligent decision.
The initial infusion of grace at baptism is instantaneous but from
that point on grace is a process that works with the believer for
the rest of one’s life to earn salvation.

Faith as Infusion of Grace. The Roman Catholic church sees

grace everywhere. For example, believers by God’s grace must
suffer to pay the penalty of their sins throughout the present life,
and if necessary in Purgatory. The sufferings of Christ portrayed
in Passion Plays like Gibson’s movie, serve as a model for
believers to imitate Christ’s sufferings to atone for their sins.
The Council of Trent is most explicit on this matter: “If anyone
says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is
so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to
every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment
remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory
before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.”40

God’s grace can shorten the stay in Purgatory! God’s grace can
generate more grace through the eating of Christ’s actual body
and drinking of His actual blood at the Catholic eucharist! God’s

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grace enables believers to secure more grace through indulgences,
or by paying for perpetual Masses on behalf of departed relatives
and by praying directly to Mary to ask special favors of the Son!
It is evident that for the Roman Catholic Church salvation or
eternal life can be attained through a combination of grace, faith,
and good works. It is a works-oriented method of salvation that
challenges believers throughout their lives to do “good works”
and to receive the sanctifying grace of the Sacraments, in order to
reach the level of righteousness needed for entry into heaven.
The Catholic combination of grace and good works as the method
of salvation, negates the biblical teaching that salvation is entirely
the free gift of God. By grace God makes available to us through
Christ His provision for our salvation, which we accept by faith,
that is, by trusting in Him, not through our own good works. To
use Paul’s words: “For by grace you have been saved through
faith: and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not
because of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8; cf. Rom
5:1).

Christ’s Death as Reconciliation The fourth word-picture of

salvation that illustrates the achievements of the Cross is
“reconciliation.” This is probably the most popular of the four
word-pictures, because it portrays the restoration of relationships
with family members and friends. Through the previous word-
pictures we have travelled through the Temple court to understand
propitiation, the slave-market to clarify the origin of redemption,
and to the lawcourt to grasp the meaning of justification. Now we
are going home to renew our relationship with family and friends.
Reconciliation expresses the ultimate purpose of the Cross is to
reconcile us to God and fellow beings. The verb katallasso (“to
reconcile”) occurs six times in the New Testament (Rom 5:10; 1
Cor 7:11; 2 Cor 5:18-20) and the noun katallage (“reconciliation”)
four times (Rom 5:11; 11:15; 2 Cor 5:18f). The central idea in all
these occurrences is the termination of the estrangement between

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God and man by the death of Christ: “When we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Rom 5:10).
The message of reconciliation is most relevant today when many
people feel alienated and estranged from their homes, churches,
workplace, and society. To them the message of reconciliation is
Good News. To appreciate the full import of this divine act of
reconciliation, it is important to consider both the divine and
human dimension of this reconciliation.

Divine Dimension. The act of reconciliation is in the first place a

divine and not a human initiative. It is accomplished by God
through Jesus Christ’s atoning death which removes divine
judgment against the sinner: “All things are of God, who has
reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ . . . God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself not imputing their trespasses
unto them” (2 Cor 5:18-19). In Colossians Paul reminds the
believers that it pleased the Father “through him [Christ] to
reconcile to himself all things . . . making peace by the blood of
His cross. And you . . . He has reconciled in His body of flesh by
his death” (Col 1:19-22). Note that reconciliation is the work of
God, initiated by Him and accomplished through the Cross.
Reconciliation is accomplished not by a change in human attitude
toward God but by the objective historical reality of Christ’s
death. Christ is the agent of reconciliation. This is crystal clear in
2 Corinthians 5:18-19, where Paul says: “God . . . through Christ
reconciled us to himself . . . in Christ God was reconciling the
world to himself.” Both statements tell us that God took the
initiative to reconcile and He accomplished it through Christ. The
beneficiaries of reconciliations are both “us” and “the world.”

This show the universal scope of reconciliation.

The cosmic scope of reconciliation is expressed more fully in

Colossians 1:19-20, where the supremacy of Christ is linked to

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His work of reconciliation: “For in him the fullness of God was
pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all
things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood
of the cross.” The ultimate reconciliation will take place at the
end when all the natural order will be liberated “from its bondage
to decay” (Rom 8:21).

God reconciled us to Himself by the death of His Son “while we

were enemies” (Rom 5:10). What this means is that the believers
does not cause but accepts the reconciliation already effected on
the cross. Through the Cross, God reconciled the world unto
Himself by “not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor
5:19) because He has dealt with them in Jesus Christ.
Reconciliation is then a work outside us, initiated by God who
through Christ removes the barrier of sin that separates us from
Him.

Human Dimension. Our response to God’s initiative involves

first of all the acceptance of the reconciliation provided by God:
“We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
we have now received our reconciliation” (Rom 5:11). The
acceptance of God’s act of reconciliation gives joy to the believer
(“we rejoice”), knowing that he has been restored to the Fathers’s
house. We experience “peace,” Paul says, because we “are no
longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God” (Eph 2:12-19).
Accepting God’s provision for our reconciliation means also to
accept the mandate to become the ambassadors of the
reconciliation. Paul explains that not only has God in Christ
reconciled us to Himself, but He has also “entrusted to us the
message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God
making His appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:19-20).

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God finished the work of reconciliation at the Cross, yet it is still
necessary to appeal to people to be reconciled to God. It is
significant to note that God has entrusted to us a message and a
mission. The message is the Good News that God in Christ has
reconciled the world to Himself. The mission is to appeal to
people to come to Christ. John Stott perceptively points out that
“it is not enough to expand a thorough orthodox doctrine of
reconciliation, if we never beg people to come to Christ. Nor is it
right for a sermon to consist of an interminable appeal, which has
not been preceded by an exposition of the gospel. The rule should
be ‘no appeal without a proclamation, and no proclamation
without appeal.”41

It is a remarkable truth that the same God who achieved the

reconciliation through Christ, now is working through us to
announce the message of reconciliation to others. By sharing the
good news of reconciliation, we experience its blessings and
express our gratitude to God for His gracious provision.

Christ’s Death as Intercession The fifth word-picture of

salvation that illustrates the achievements of the Cross is
“intercession.” This word-picture describes Christ’s heavenly
ministry at the right hand to make available to us the benefits of
His redemptive mission. In the previous four word-pictures we
have looked the achievements of the Cross through Christ’s
sacrificial death on earth. Now our eyes are directed heavenward
to catch a glimpse of the benefits of the Cross extended to us on
earth through Christ’s heavenly ministry.

The Inauguration of Christ’s Heavenly Ministry. Christ’s

intercessory ministry in the heavenly sanctuary began at the time
of His ascension to heaven and exaltation to the right hand of
God. Jesus had prophesied at His trial that “from now on the Son
of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God”

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(Luke 22:69). Peter at Pentecost announced the fulfillment of the
exaltation of Jesus, saying: “This Jesus God raised up . . . being
therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received
from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out
this which you se and hear” (Acts 2:33).

It is noteworthy that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at

Pentecost—the most significant even of the Apostolic Church—is
connected with the exaltation of Christ and His installation at the
right hand of God. The installation of Christ to His heavenly
ministry is reflected in those passages which speak of Christ
“sitting” at the right hand of God (Acts 2:34; Eph 1:20; Col 3:1;
Heb 1:3, 13). The sitting signifies not a position of repose, but the
official enthronement to His intercessory ministry. This is
indicated by the fact that Stephen saw “the heaven opened and the
Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56;
Emphasis supplied).

The “standing” position points to Christ’s role as our heavenly

advocate and intercessor before the Father. The meaning of
“sitting” is further clarified in Hebrews 8:1-2 where Christ is
presented as the “high Priest . . . seated at the right hand of the
throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and
the true tent.” These word-pictures of Christ standing or sitting at
God’s right hand signify Christ’s official enthronement in His
heavenly intercessory ministry. The nature of Christ’s ministry is
described in prophetic, kingly, and priestly terms. For the purpose
of our study we will focus only on the priestly ministry of Christ.
Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross, did not terminate His
priestly ministry, because “he holds his priesthood permanently”
(Heb 7:23). Just like in the Old Testament sacrificial system, the
priests, not only offered sacrifices for the people, but also
interceded for them, so Christ continues His ministry of
intercession after having offered Himself for our sins. “He is able

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for all time to save those who draw near to God through him,
since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25).
Christ’s heavenly priestly intercession is based on His sacrifice on
the Cross. This connection is brought out, for example, in 1 John
2:1-2: “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for
our sins, not for ours only but also for the whole world.” Christ’s
death accomplished our salvation, His heavenly intercessory
ministry applies the benefits of the Cross to our lives today.

New Dimension of Christ’s Ministry. When Christ ascended

into heaven, he entered the heavenly sanctuary to present to His
Father his completed sacrifice. Louis Berkhof writes: “Just as the
high priest on the great Day of Atonement entered the Holy of
Holies with the completed sacrifice, to present it to God, so Christ
entered the heavenly Holy Place with His completed, perfect, and
all sufficient sacrifice and offered it to the Father.”42 “Now Christ
appears ‘in the presence of God for us’ (Heb 9:24), and thus
continually embodies before God the sacrifice He made for our
sins. . . . the perpetual presence of the completed sacrifice of
Christ before God contains in itself an element of intercession as a
constant reminder of the perfect atonement of Jesus Christ.”43

The heavenly intercessory ministry of Christ at the right hand of

God, points to the new dimension of Jesus’ Lordship. Wayne
Grudem comments that “After his resurrection, Jesus was given
by God the Father far greater authority over the church and over
the universe. God raised him up and ‘made him sit at his right
hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and
power and dominion and above every name that is named, not
only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put
all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things
for the church’ (Eph. 1:20-22; cf. Matt. 28:18; 1 Cor. 15:25). That
authority over the church and over the universe will be more fully

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recognized by people when Jesus returns to earth in power and
great glory to reign (Matt 26:64; 2 Thess 1:7-10; Rev 19:11-16).
On that day he will be acknowledged as ‘King of kings and Lord
of lords’ (Rev 19:16) and every knee shall bow to him (Phil
2:10).”44

Earthly Sufferings and Heavenly Intercession. The sufferings

that Christ experienced during His life and sacrificial death
qualified Him for His sacerdotal heavenly ministry. The Cross
must be seen as the culmination of Christ’s life of suffering.
There is a tendency to focus on the suffering of the last week of
Christ’s life, or even the last twelve hours, like in the case of Mel
Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Such tendency ignores that
throughout His life Christ suffered pain, fatigue, hunger, and
thirst (Matt 4:2). He suffered temptation at the hands of Satan
(Heb 4:15). He suffered rejection from His people (Matt 11:20-
24). He suffered denial (Luke 22:60) and betrayal (Matt 26:47-56)
from His friends.

What was the purpose and value of the sufferings Christ

experienced in His life and death? While the sufferings of Christ’s
death represent, as noted earlier, the satisfaction of divine justice,
His life of suffering has a broader purpose, which includes two
significant aspects.

Suffering to Become a Perfect Sacrifice for Sin. Twice in

Hebrews the sufferings of Christ are mentioned as a means of
perfecting Him. Hebrews 2:10 says that the Author of our
salvation was made “perfect through suffering” (emphasis
supplied). Later we read that Christ “learned obedience through
what He suffered; and being made perfect He became the source
of eternal salvation” (Heb 5:8-9; emphasis supplied).
Sufferings perfected by Christ by enabling Him, not to overcome
moral imperfection, but to become a perfect Savior for sin. In

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what sense? Through the pain and stress of temptation and
suffering Christ “learned obedience.” He learned what it means to
obey as a human being under the stress and strain of human
limitations and temptations. His perfect life of obedience, in spite
of sufferings, qualified Christ to be a perfect Savior for sin and an
understanding intercessor.

The sufferings which Christ experienced through His life, which

climaxed at the Cross, enabled Him to offer up Himself as the
blameless Lamb who takes away our sins through His once-for-all
sacrifice (Heb 9:28; 10:12). Christ’s obedience, manifested in His
willingness to suffer even unto death rather than disobey,
qualified Him to expiate our sins through the sacrifice of His life.
As sin and death came into the world through the disobedience of
one man, so, Paul explains, “by one man’s obedience many will
be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). It is Christ’s obedience, even
unto death, that gives atoning value to His death.

Suffering to Become a Perfect High Priest. The suffering which

Christ experienced in His life and death qualified Him for His role
of Mediator and High Priest. The priests functioned as mediators
between sinners and God by providing the means of reconciliation
through sacrifices (Heb 8:3; 10:11). Hebrews explains that Christ
can rightfully function as our heavenly High Priest for two
reasons. First, because He was fully man (Heb 2:14,17) who “in
every respect has been tempted as we are” (Heb 4:15). The
experience of suffering and of being tempted enabled Christ to be
a sympathetic High Priest: “We have not a High Priest who is
unable to sympathize with us, but one who in every respect has
been tempted as we are yet without sinning” (Heb 4:15). The
human suffering undeniably gave Christ an experiential
understanding of human woes and temptations.
A second reason why Christ can rightfully function as our High
Priest is because through His suffering and sacrifice, He secured

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our “eternal redemption” (Heb 9:12). Hebrews explains that
Christ has no need “to suffer repeatedly” (Heb 9:26), because His
onetime sacrifice qualifies Him “to appear in the presence of God
on our behalf” (Heb 9:24). There is an unmistakable connection
between the atoning function of Jesus’ suffering and death and
His right to function as our heavenly High Priest. Having suffered
to atone for our sins, Christ “is able for all time to save those who
draw to God through Him since He always lives to make
intercession for them” (Heb 7:25).

What is the nature of Christ’s intercessory work in the heavenly

sanctuary? Obviously, it is not intended to induce God to love us
since the Father shared in the sacrifice of His Son (John 3:16; 2
Cor 5:19). Its function is to represent us before God’s throne in
order to make available to us the gracious provisions of divine
redemption. To appreciate the scope of Christ’s intercessory
work, we shall briefly consider some of its benefits.

Extension of Human Probation. Christ’s intercession extends to

the whole human family by offering physical life and temporal
benefits to all. As Paul explained on Mars Hill: “He Himself gives
to all men life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). It is by
virtue of Christ’s atoning work that the punishment for human
disobedience has been stayed. Ellen White comments: “Whether
man receive or reject Him, He works earnestly for them. He
grants them life and light, striving by His Spirit to win them from
Satan’s service.”45

Sustenance of the Church. Christ’s intercession sustains the

church in her mission to illuminate the world with the good news
of salvation. John the Revelator saw “in the midst of the
lampstand one like a Son of Man” (Rev 1:13). Since the “seven
lampstands are the seven churches” (Rev 1:20), which
symbolically represent the church at large, the standing of Christ

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in the midst of His church points to His sustenance of those who
have accepted Him and who keep their light shining before the
world.

As the earthly priests daily trimmed and filled the lamps to keep
them burning, so Christ in the heavenly counterpart of the holy
place, symbolically ministers daily at the candelabra by sustaining
and strengthening the church. This ministry is accomplished
through the work of the Holy Spirit who is also identified in
Revelation 4:5 with the seven lamps: “Before the throne burn
seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God.” It is
noteworthy that these “seven spirits” are explicitly identified with
the “seven eyes” of the Lamb-Priest: “I saw a lamb standing . . .
with seven eyes, which are the seven spirit of God sent out into all
the earth” (Rev 5:6). Through the Holy Spirit, Christ fully sees
(“seven eyes”) and supplies the needs of His people.
Mediation of Believers’ Forgiveness. Christ’s intercession
mediates repentance and forgiveness of sin to penitent believers.
Peter proclaimed before the council: “God exalted Him [Jesus] at
his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel
and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31). Similarly, John explains:
“My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not
sin; but if any one does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous; He is the expiation for our sins, and
not for our only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John
2:1-2).

Forgiveness involves not merely the cancellation of punishment,

but also the cleansing of believers (1 John 1:9) and their
restoration to full fellowship with God. All of these are provided
through Christ’s continuous ministry in the heavenly sanctuary.
Mediation of Believers’ Prayers. Christ’s intercessory ministry
makes it possible for our prayers to ascend to the Father. In our
human sinfulness we cannot approach our holy God in prayer

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without claiming the merits of Christ. Looking forward to His
heavenly ministry, Jesus promised; “Truly, truly, I say to you, if
you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in my
name” (John 16:23-24).

This dimension of the heavenly ministry of Christ is portrayed in

Revelation 8 by the incense from the golden altar given to an
angel, presumably by the Lamb: “Another angel came and stood
at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense
to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar
before the throne” (Rev 8:3).

It is noteworthy that the “prayers of the saints” ascend to the

throne of God “with” the smoke of the incense” (Rev 8:4). It is
Christ’s merits and intercession represented by the incense, that
makes our worship and prayers acceptable to God. Ellen White
perceptively explain the unique intercessory role of Christ
represented by the incense: “The religious services, the prayers,
the praise, the penitent confession of sin ascend from true
believers as incense to the heavenly sanctuary; but passing
through the corrupt channels of humanity, they are so defiled that
unless purified by blood, they can never be of value before God.
They ascend not in spotless purity, and unless the Intercessor who
is at God’s right hand presents and purifies all by His
righteousness, it is not acceptable to God. All incense from
earthly tabernacles must be moist with the cleansing drops of the
blood of Christ. He holds before the Father the censer of His own
merits, in which there is no taint of earthly corruption. He gathers
into this censer the prayers, the praise, and the confessions of His
people, and with these He puts His own spotless righteousness.
Then, perfumed with the merits of Christ’s propitiation, the
incense comes up before God wholly and entirely acceptable.
Then gracious answers are returned.”46

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Ministration of Angels To Human Beings. The intercessory work
of Christ makes possible the ministry of angels to human beings.
The veil and the curtain covering the tabernacle were inwrought
with cherubims (Ex 26:31), representing the angels surrounding
the throne of God (Dan 7:10; Rev 5:11) and the ministry angels
render to God’s people. Hebrews concludes the first chapter, not
only asserting the superiority of Christ over the angels, but also
asking the question: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth
to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?” (Heb
1:14).

In Revelation 5:6 Christ is represented as a “Lamb standing . . .

with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into
all the earth.” Similarly, in Revelation 1:16,20 Christ is
represented as holding “seven stars” which are interpreted as
typifying “the angels of the seven churches.” This imagery
effectively illustrates the close connection between Christ and the
angels who serve as His messengers to human beings. “Through
Christ,” Ellen White writes, “communication is opened between
God and man. Angels may pass from heaven to earth with
messages of love to fallen man, and to minister unto those who
shall be heirs of salvation. It is through Christ alone that the
heavenly messengers minister to men.”47

This brief survey of Christ’s intercessory ministry in heaven, has

shown its vital importance for our present life and eternal
salvation. As our heavenly High Priest, Christ sustains us,
offering us repentance, forgiveness, and cleansing. He makes our
prayers acceptable to God, and provides us with the invisible, yet
real, assistance of His angels. Such a knowledge of Christ’s
heavenly ministry can make the difference between living without
assurance of divine assistance in this present life and
consequently without hope for the future, and living with the

197
assurance of divine help and grace for our daily life and with hope
for a glorious future.

CONCLUSION

Our study of the Cross of Christ has highlighted the richness of

meaning and function of Christ’s sacrificial death. The various
word-pictures employed to explain the significance and value of
Christ’s death, represent partial attempts to capture its many-sided
dimensions. The total scope of meaning of Christ’s death cannot
be reduced to few conceptual statements, but will always remain
“the mystery of the gospel” (Eph 6:19). The contemplation of this
master will engage our minds through countless ages, constantly
heightening our appreciation for the love of God.
We have found that the Cross has both a subjective and an
objective dimension. Subjectively, through the Cross God
revealed the depth of His love in being willing to offer His Son
for undeserving sinners. Objectively, the Cross reveals how God
dealt with the objective reality of sin, not by minimizing its
gravity, but by revealing its costliness, by assuming its penalty,
thus satisfying divine justice.

We have found that the substitutionary significance of Christ’s

death is central to the New Testament understanding of the Cross.
Christ is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world by
expiating through His substitutionary sacrifice our grievous
disobedience. Thus, at the Cross, divine love was manifested not
through the relaxation of justice, but through the satisfaction of its
demands through the voluntary substitutionary sacrifice of Christ,
who paid the price of human disobedience.

Five major word-pictures are used to explain how God deals with
the objective reality of sin, namely, propitiation, redemption,
justification, reconciliation, and intercession. These word-pictures

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help us appreciate what God did for us and is doing in us.
Christ died to redeem us not only from the penalty of sin (Gal
3:13) but also from the power of sin (Titus 2:14). Redemption is
not only a rescue but also a cure, not only a liberation but also a
transformation. It is important to maintain both of these
dimensions of the Cross in their proper balance. The Cross is not
merely an important doctrine but the very essence of the Gospel.
Paul, recognizing the fundamental value of the Cross, explained:
“I have decided to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ
and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:12).

ENDNOTES

1. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York, 1973),

p. 17.
2. John R. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Illinois,
1986), p. 21.
3. Ibid., p. 32.
4. P. T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (London, 1909), pp.
44-4.
5. John R. Stott (note 2), p. 88.
6. A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia, 1907) , p.
766.
7. Leon Morris, Cross in the New Testament (London, 1965), pp.
190-191.
8. John R. Stott (note 2), p. 106.

9. Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology

(Lutterworth, 1939), p. 129.
10. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg,
NJ, 1994), vol.2, p. 423.
11. “Abekard’s Commentary on Romans 3:19-26,” in A

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Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham. Library of Christian
Classics, ed. Eugene Fairweather (London, 1970), vol. 10. p. 283.
12. Ibid., p. 284.
13. Robert S. Franks, The Work of Christ: A Historical Study of
Christian Doctrine (New York, 1962), p. 146.
14. Robert Brow, “Evangelical Megashift: Why You May not
Have Hard About Wrath, Sin, and Hell Recently,” Christianity
Today (February 19, 1990), p. 12.
15. Robert Brow, “Letters to Surfers: Doesn’t God’s Holiness
Require a Substitutionary Payment to Satisfy the Demands of His
Justice?” in http://www.brow.on.ca/Letters/GodHoliness.htm.
16. John Stott (note 2), p. 168.
17. Raul Dederen, “Atoning Aspects of Christ’s Death,” in The
Sanctuary and the Atonement, eds. Arnold V. Wallen-Kampf and
W. Richard Lesher, (Washington, D. C. 1981), p. 295.
18. Hans K. LaRondelle, Christ our Salvation (Mountain View,
California, 1980), p. 26.
19. Thomas J. Crawford, The Doctrine of the Holy Scripture
Respecting the Atonement (London, 1888), p. 237.
20. Hans K. LaRondelle (note 18), pp. 26, 27.
21. John Stott (note 2), p. 152.
22. Robert W. Dale, The Atonement (London, 1894), p. 393.
23. David F. Wells, The Search for Salvation (London, 1978), p.
29.
24. See Luke 1:68; 2:38; 24:21; Hebrew 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18; Rom
3:24; Eph 1:7; 1 Tim 2:6; Tit 2:14.
25. Leon Morris, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance
(London, 1983), p. 106.
26. Thomas Taylor, Exposition of Titus (Minneapolis, 1980), p.
375.
27. W. E. Vine, an Expository Dictionary of the New Testament
Words (Old Tappan, NJ, 1966), pp. 284-286; William F. Arndt
and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek English Lexicon of the New
Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, 1973),

200
p. 196.
28. John R. Stott (note 2), p. 190.
29. Avery Dulles, “Two Languages of Salvation: The Lutheran–
Catholic Joint Declaration,” First Things (December 199), p. 25.
30. Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians
(1535; Edinborough, 1953), p. 143.

31. Avery Dulles (note 29), p. 26.

32. Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, 1995), p. 536,
paragraph 1991.
33. Ibid., p. 403, paragraph 1446.
34. “Sanctification,” SDA Bible Dictionary, rev ed., p. 979.
35. “Martin Luther’s Eight Statements on Justifying Faith,”
posted in http://grace-for-today.com/54.htm
36. Ibid.
37. “An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” Luther’s
German Bible of 1522 by Martin Luther, 1483-1546, Translated
by Rev. Robert E. Smith from DR. MARTIN LUTHER’S
VERMISCHTE DEUTSCHE SCHRIFTEN, Johann K. Irmischer,
ed. (Erlangen, Germany, 1854), Vol. 63, p. 124.
38. Catechism of the Catholic Church (note 32), p. 47, paragraph
153
39. Ibid., p. 52, paragraph 168.
40. H. J. Schroeder, O. P., The Canons And Decrees Of The
Council Of Trent, (New York, 1978), p. 46, Sixth Session,
Chapter XVI, Canon 30.
41. John R. Stott (note 2), p. 201.
42. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, new combined edition
(Grand Rapids,1938), p. 402.
43. Ibid.
44. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to
Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, 1994), p. 624.
45. Review and Herald, March 12, 1901.
46. The Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary (Washington,

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D. C., 1958), vol. 6, p. 1078.
47. Ellen White, Selected Messages (Washington, D. C., 1958),
vol. 1, p. 280.

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