“For their saying, ‘We slew the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.’ Yet they did not slay him neither crucified him. It only appeared so unto them.” (The Qur’an, 4:157).
Never before had the world seen such a strange happening, neither has it seen anything like it since: a good man was hanged on a cross where he bore the curse of God. And yet he lived!
It was never Allah’s intention that the cross should become the emblem of idolatry that so many people make of it. Those who make an idol of the cross and bow down to it, or hang it on their walls or set it up on steeples, or wear it around their necks, misunderstand the meaning of the cross. Allah never intended that wars should be fought under the symbol of the cross, or that it should become an emblem of imperialism or injustice. Satan has become a very clever enemy, and has perverted a necessary truth about Allah in order to blind people.
What does the cross mean?
Long ago, the great Musa declared to all mankind that anyone who is hanged on a tree (or a cross) is under the curse of God; and everybody believed it:
If a man guilty of a capital offence is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. (Deuteronomy 21:22, 23)
Everybody knows how bitterly the Jews hated Jesus. He declared that he was the manifestation of I AM who had led Israel out of Egyptian bondage; he declared also that he had existed before the time of our “father” Abraham. This made the Jews so angry that they took up stones to kill him. (John 8:57-59) They sent spies hoping to catch him making some little mistake that they could use as an excuse to condemn him. No man has ever been hated as was Jesus. In fact, the nature of the opposition he had to meet was itself a miracle, and says something important to us. It was human sin blossoming out after thousands of years into its full fruit — “enmity against God.”
This ultimate opposition came when the high priest of Israel angrily confronted him with a direct question: “In the name of the living God I now put you on oath: tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
Jesus answered straightforwardly, yes. This does not mean that he claimed that God had slept with a woman and produced him in that manner, for that would be a blasphemous thing. But it meant that he claimed to be born of a virgin, the only man in all history born in this way, and that he stood in an intimate relationship to God, a relationship unique for all time. (In everyday speech we use the term “son of” in a metaphorical sense. In Arabic, ibn al haram means a bad man; we speak of “sons of thunder.” The term “son” here means like.)
The Jews were so angry that they decided on the spot, “‘He is guilty and must die.’ Then they spat in his face and beat him; and those who slapped him said, ‘Prophesy for us, Messiah! Guess who hit you!’” (Matthew 26:63-68)
Why This Hatred?
The world today shudders with horror at the cruel things that terrorists do to innocent people. But the hatred and cruelty shown to Jesus is the strangest the world has ever seen, because it was directed against a man who was utterly good and loving, a man who worked miracles of healing, who spoke only words of divine wisdom, and who gave every evidence of divine appointment and divine character. Why this mysterious hatred against Allah’s “Word”?
He was the one of whom the honoured Qur’an speaks thus:
And the angel said, “0 Mary, Lo! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from him whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the hereafter and one of those brought near unto Allah.” (The Qur’an, 3:44)
The secret of the priests’ enmity comes out in the open in the story of their second attempt to stone him. He had said, “‘I and the Father are one.’” They were so enraged that they lost their sense of self-control and balanced judgment. They picked up stones to kill him.
Calmly and courageously he faced the crowd and asked simply, “‘I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’”
This question caught them off guard for a moment. Then they replied: “‘We are not stoning you for any of these, … but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.’” (John 10:30-33)
Could he have been right when he made that claim?
One thing is sure and certain: the hatred shown by his enemies was not inspired by Allah! It could have only one other source: Iblis himself.
And why did Satan hate him so? Why does he hate him who is Allah’s “Word”? Satan’s age-long hatred of Allah was coming out in the open at last.
Could it be that Allah was indeed revealing himself in a form that humans could understand? Could Satan see something the Jewish priests could not see? Did he recognize in Jesus the author of faith, the One who had appeared to Abraham, the One typified by that “tremendous Victim” offered to “ransom” Abraham’s son and all his descendants?
His character shines brightest under the abuse he suffered at the hands of wicked, sneering, murderous people. When accused and maligned and lied about, he meekly remained silent. Any other good man, under such pressure, would call down Heaven’s curses on his tormentors. When one of his own disciples faltered in human weakness and denied him, we read, Jesus only looked at him sadly, the disappointment showing in his face, but he expressed no reproach. Even when another of his disciples, a traitor, betrayed him with a hypocritical kiss, he did not get angry, but said, “ ‘Friend, why have you come?’” (Matthew 26:50) While the two thieves crucified with him were screaming and shouting obscenities at the soldiers, Jesus prayed for his murderers: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they. do.” (Luke 23:34)
These are not the credentials of any ordinary man. No other human being had ever shown such divine love. As he hung on the cross, stripped naked and despised by the people, he never lost his patience. Something dreadfully mysterious was happening. No other man in all history had suffered like this!
Two astounding things had met in a head-on collision: (a) The mysterious hatred of Satan for God, a hatred manifested in the murderous actions of Jesus’ enemies; and (b) the marvelous love of Allah grappling with that hatred hand to hand at the cross. It was a battle between Allah and Satan.
The whole world was represented in the guilt of the unjust condemnation of Jesus: the Jews, who instigated it; the European Romans, who in cowardice would go along with the crime; and the great crowds of onlookers who would do nothing to save an innocent man. Even his own disciples, who had the best opportunity of anyone to know who he was, turned tail and ran for their lives, leaving him to suffer alone. Not one soul came forward to defend him in his hour of need! No one even offered him a drink of water in his agony.
The only one to give him any help was Simon of Cyrene, an African who carried his heavy cross for him when he fainted beneath its weight. And even he was forced to do so by the Roman soldiers.
The tree to which Jesus was nailed was only a wooden cross; the real cross, which is timeless, was the collision of Satan’s will against God’s will, which took place on that same Mount Moriah where Abraham had once been called to offer up his beloved son.
The Holy Injil reveals the truth: that hatred was an outburst of “enmity against God,” (Romans 8:7) like a slumbering volcano bursting forth in sudden eruption. Long before the red-hot lava and sulphurous flames shoot upwards from the fiery mountain, the fires are smouldering underneath. So “enmity against God” has been the subterranean hatred which has smouldered in human hearts since sin began. It has produced endless wars and quarrels. Allah permitted it to be unmasked at the cross so all could see it clearly.
This passionate human rage was vented on Jesus. His enemies discerned beneath his meek and lowly exterior the inward evidence that he was akin to Allah, and this was why they hated him so. Of course, they didn’t realize it, but they were nonetheless guilty. This tells us something significant about the nature and character of the man they crucified! Supernatural hatred required a supernatural victim!
The Deep Meaning of the Cross
Ever since the prophet Musa had declared that anyone who is hanged on a tree is “under God’s curse,” death on the cross was regarded as something worse than death itself. If a judge sentenced a criminal to die by having a sword thrust through his heart, he could still have something to be happy about: he could pray to Allah and beg forgiveness and die with the assurance of a place in Paradise. Even if the judge sentenced him to die by stoning, he could still believe that Allah would hear his dying prayer.
But if the judge said, “I sentence you to die on a tree,” the poor wretch was doomed according to popular belief. Allah will never hear him pray, for he is “under God’s curse.” This is how the world understood the prophet Musa’s words. Such a condemned person was forever accursed, and therefore a human write-off, lost.
It doesn’t help to say that this was not fair. The great Musa said it, and everybody believed it. There was a reason for it. (Actually, only the vilest of hardened criminals were ever executed this way.) It was an anticipation of the cross of Jesus.
So bitter was the Jews’ hatred of Jesus, that when the Roman governor Pilate asked them what they wanted done with him, they cried out, “‘Crucify him!’”
“‘Why? What crime has he committed?’
“But they shouted all the louder, ‘Crucify him!’”
The pagan Roman governor had more sense of justice than had the Jews. “‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said, ‘It is your responsibility!’
“All the people answered, ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:22-25) Those words were written by an eyewitness, John, nearly 2 000 years ago. He heard the very words. And the words of ancient manuscripts of the Holy Injil are among the most accurately preserveed of any in the world.
It is difficult not to recognize that the answer of the Jews has indeed been fulfilled in the terrible destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the dissolution of their nation, and their almost unbelievable sufferings ever since. To recognize this fact is not anti-Semitism. It has always been wrong to try to punish innocent people for wrongs their ancestors did. And the Jewish leaders who hated Jesus were no worse than all other sinful humans. In fact, the Holy Injil teaches that all share the guilt.
Was it actually the Son of God whom they rejected? Not one person was ever able to bring against him a charge of sin of any kind. Only this: he claimed to be the Son of God. This alone.
If they had thought him to be a mere lunatic, they would have recommended imprisonment or banishment. If they had thought him to be an ordinary criminal, they would have recommended death by the sword or stoning. But death by the cross? Why were they so anxious to put a man who claimed to be the Son of God under the “curse” of God?
And did he actually bear the curse of God? According to Holy Scripture, there are two kinds of death: the ordinary thing which all mortal men suffer; and a second kind, the strange thing known as “the second death.” (Revelation 2:11; 20:14) The first death is not the truly terrible one, for Scripture and the Qur’an call it a “sleep,” from which there is an awakening at the resurrection. Countless people have died this “sleep,” and there is hope and comfort that humans know and feel in such a death.
The Mysterious “Second Death”
But the “second death” is the real thing, the death of hopelessness and utter despair from which there is to be no resurrection. This will be the fate of all who are eventually lost. It is the sentence of complete, unrelieved condemnation. It is the inward feeling that burns like fire in every cell of one’s being, the sense of the hiding of Allah’s face, that one is ostracized from his great universe, and from him, utterly friendless, alone, cast into outer darkness for ever and ever. The burden of lonely guilt I weighs down the soul of the condemned person with an indescribable pain and sorrow.
This is how Allah permitted Jesus to feel on the cross. This is why he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) This was the ultimate step that divine love took in coming down lower and still lower, toward “the death of the cross,” the most awful that Satan and his fiends could invent.
This kind of love comes from the heart of Allah alone. It is the divine evidence that Allah sent Jesus as his representative, to pay the penalty of the broken law of Allah, and to redeem the world.
Only by permitting Jesus to endure this experience was it possible for Allah to untie that knot of sinful self-love, pride, and hatred that Satan had tied on mankind when he rebelled against Allah’s great government. The human race became alienated from Allah, captives to sin and evil. Jesus endured the curse “of the cross,” the most astonishing thing that had ever happened on earth; it has attracted the attention and wonder of the whole world. It can never be hidden or suppressed.
Best of all, it has changed human beings, transforming them from selfish, proud, godless people into humble, pure, loving, true believers who are surrendered to Allah. To have faith in Jesus means to appreciate what he did, and who he was when he did it; and it is to feel a heart appreciation that he took upon himself the world’s “enmity against God.” Thus he conquered it for ever. He stood in for Allah, taking his place as his representtative, taking the blow that was meant for God. This was the greatest thing that ever happened, the “day” that Abraham “saw” by faith and rejoiced in.
Jesus’ sacrifice of himself on the cross builds a bridge between alienated man and God, so that the alienation that has stretched like a yawning gulf of darkness between Allah and man is bridged for ever. This made an “atonement,” or at-one-ment. This is how he was that “tremendous Victim” that Allah provided for Abraham’s son; and Abraham knew it. He was not so naïve as to imagine that a ram’s blood could “ransom” his precious son! Jesus was that “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” (Revelation 13:8) the true Victim who made the infinite sacrifice of himself on Mt. Moriah.
This was Abraham’s faith, for he saw Jesus’ day and “was glad.” (John 8:56) It is the faith of every spiritual child of Abraham, who sees himself as Abraham’s beloved, doomed to die on the altar on Mt. Moriah — Abraham’s son symbolizes every one of us. We are all alike ransomed by a divine sacrifice!
Why It Was Necessary for Jesus to Die
Scripture does not represent Jesus as a weakling captured by a mob and executed by them. All the soldiers in the world could not have tied his hands if he had not willingly submitted; all the nails in the world could not have held him to a tree if he had chosen to “come down from the cross.” No Roman spear could have pierced his body if he had not permitted it.
Did Jesus actually suffer and die on the cross, or did it only seem so? Did Allah rescue him and permit someone else to take his place there? These are important questions.
If Allah rescued him, there was no “tremendous Victim” to “ransom” Abraham’s son, for a mere man’s blood can never be an adequate ransom for such a descendant of Abraham.
And if Allah rescued Jesus from the hatred of his enemies, he would also be guilty of contradicting his own true character of love that is willing to step down to the lowest level in order to “ransom” Abraham’s descendants. Any love that merely pretends to go all the way, but deceptively stops short of the complete sacrifice, becomes a lie, a trick. Allah can never be guilty of such a thing.
And Jesus would never dare to claim a lie, for after his death he said to doubting Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” (John 20:27) The gaping wound caused by the Roman soldier’s spear in his heart would have caused instant death if he had not already been dead. Jesus claimed to be resurrected from the dead.
Further, if Allah rescued his representative, the Word, that would mean that he played himself into the hands of the murderous Jewish priests and the Roman soldiers. The reason is this: they taunted Jesus, saying: “‘ If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’” And the unbelieving thief who was also crucified railed at him: “‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” And the people laughed at him, saying: “‘He saved others, … but he can’t save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.’” (Luke 23:37, 39; Mark 15:31, 32) These were the taunts of unbelievers who completely misunderstood what was happening. Allah would not demean himself to bargain with people like that. To yield to their taunts and accept their challenge would mean yielding to them the victory of unbelief.
While it is true that Allah “ransomed” Abraham’s son, no substitute was provided for the ram offered in his place. That ram truly died; and “the tremendous Victim” whom the ram symbolized also truly died. Otherwise there could have been no genuine ransom. It would have been a make-believe, a magic trick.
Speaking of the Messiah, the holy prophet Isaiah says: “He hath poured out his soul unto death.” (Isaiah 53:12) The book of Hebrews in the Holy Injil says that “in the days of his flesh” Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.” (Hebrews 5:7) But this does not mean that Allah did not let him die, for we read also in Hebrews that Allah “brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus .” (Hebrews 13:20) Allah saved him by permitting him to die as a “tremendous Victim” and then raising him up from death.
If divine love will manoeuvre deceptively in order to save itself, then it is the same as our natural human love, and it ceases to be divine and can no longer be genuine heavenly love. In that case, God’s character would be no different from our own, and to worship him would be the same as worshipping ourselves. And that would be gross idolatry all over again — the very thing that Abraham protested against.
Those who crucified Jesus spoke more truth than they realized: Jesus could not save himself, because he would not. His love would not let him do so. This was in fact the greatest proof that he was the true Messiah, the true “Victim” symbolized by all the blood sacrifices that believers had offered for thousands of years. And in saying such things, the Jews unwittingly condemned themselves as they stood before that cross, for in rejecting Christ as a sacrifice, they rejected what Abraham and all the prophets had believed in for thousands of years.
The honoured Qur’an says of the Jews: “For their saying, ‘We slew the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.’ Yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him. It only appeared so to them.” (The Qur’an, 4:157) These words do not contradict the Injil. Rightly understood, they are a proof that what the eyewitness apostles of Jesus reported is true. These words do not say that Jesus did not die; they say that it was not the Jews or the Romans who actually killed him.
Jesus said: “‘I lay down my life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority [power, ability] to lay it down and authority [power, ability] to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.’” (John 10:17, 18)
He said the same to the Roman governor, Pilate, who said to him: “‘Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?’
“Jesus answered, ‘You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.’” (John 19:10, 11)
The honoured Qur’an states that Jesus did actually die: “When Allah said, ‘Jesus, I will cause you to die and cause you to ascend to Me, and will cleanse you of those who disbelieve and will set your followers above those who disbelieve until the resurrection day.’” (The Qur’an, 3:54) The crucifixion was not the “power” of men — they only imagined so. It was their will, yes; but they had no authority unless Allah had permitted it.
In another passage the Qur’an quotes Jesus as predicting his death: “‘Peace be upon me, the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive. ’ That is Jesus, son of Mary, the word of truth concerning which they are doubting.” (The Qur’an, 19:33, 34) Thus it is clear that the passage, “They slew him not nor crucified, but it only seemed to them so,” does not intend to question that Jesus died on the cross. “And they [the Jews] planned and Allah planned, and Allah is the best of planners. When Allah said, ‘Jesus, I will take you to Me and will raise you to Me.’” (The Qur’an, 3:54) Allah planned it all, for the salvation of mankind! Will you accept his plan?