Daily Devotionals

Messiah executed on a stake as a criminal! To Jews this is an obstacle, and to Greeks it is nonsense (1 Corinthians 1:23).

For the Jewish mind, the tzlav (cross) has become a symbol of the Church's contempt for the Jewish people. But long before that happened, Rabbi Sha'ul (Saul; i.e., Paul) said that the tzlav is an obstacle for Jews and nonsense for Greeks (i.e., Gentiles). Sha'ul was right. It's an absurd idea to everyone—Jews as well as Gentiles—that the Son of God should die on a tzlav. To die a hero, admired by everybody, is one thing, but to die hanging on a tree in dishonor and agony is a different matter.

A piece of third-century graffiti on the Palatine Hill in Rome shows a young man who is looking at a tzlav upon which hangs a man whose head has been substituted with the head of a donkey. Underneath is scrawled the words, "Alexamenos worships his God." Someone who knew this Alexamenos was ridiculing his faith in the crucified and suffering Messiah. At the same place, another inscription in a different handwriting says, "Alexamenos is faithful."

Whether the response is ridicule or encouragement, we have been called to proclaim Messiah's crucifixion, the atoning sacrifice for sin. Let us do it with boldness and love.

...contemplate the tzlav of Yeshua and what he suffered for me, that I may be strong enough to suffer for his sake.

KK