Cross or Stake? How did Jesus REALLY die?
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In the cult I grew up in, it was taught that Jesus didn't die on a cross, but what they called a torture stake or an upright pole or beam. The claim they made about this and all their other unusual doctrines is that they were in pursuit of actual biblical truth. But of course, I discovered after leaving that truth had little or nothing to do with what they taught and believed. They just wanted to look different from other religions in every way possible so they could create an us versus them mentality, which is what all cults do. But that said, there is some legitimate scholarly debate and there is I mean, let's be honest, there is a lack of clear description of what Jesus actually died on both in the Bible and in some contradicting uh evidence from the early first and second centuries. And since my last video covered whether or not it's appropriate to use a cross as a Christian symbol, in this video I wanted to cover what the Bible and what early Christian testimony reveals about the manner of Christ's death and whether or not that's actually important.
You ready? Well, then picture the scene with me for a moment. It's terrible and tragic. A Friday morning outside the walls of Jerusalem around 33 AD. The air is thick with dust and the sounds of a bustling city preparing for the Passover. Roman soldiers are barking orders as they force a bloodied man to carry a heavy wooden beam through the narrow streets. His back is torn, torn apart from the brutal scourging he's received, and blood drips onto the stone pathway as he stumbles under the weight of what he's carrying.
This is Jesus of Nazareth making his way to Golgtha, the place of the skull, where he'll be executed in the most humiliating and painful way the Romans know how. When they reach the execution site, they throw him down onto the wooden instrument they'll use to kill him. nails are driven through his wrists and feet. And then this wooden structure is raised up with Jesus hanging on it, struggling for every breath as his body weight pulls against the metal, piercing his flesh.
Now, what might surprise you is that when the gospel writer sat down to record this earthshaking, all important event, they didn't use a word that specifically tells us what the shape of the execution device was. They used Greek words that were actually pretty general terms. Their primary word they used was staros. That's from Matthew 27:40, Mark chapter 15 30, Luke 23 26, and throughout John's account. Now, if we went back to ancient Greek literature from before Christ, star simply meant an upright stake or pole. It could be used for anything from a fence post to a pointed stake that was used to impale somebody. It didn't necessarily mean what we think of as a cross with a cross beam.
The gospel writers also used another word, Sylon. You'll find that one in Acts 5:30, Acts 10:39, Galatians 3:13, and 1 Peter 2 24. Xylon basically means wood or tree. It could refer to living trees, to timber, or pretty much any wooden object. It was very generic. But now, here's where it gets interesting. While the specific words for the execution device are vague, the New Testament actually gives us several clues about how Jesus was positioned and what happened to his body.
Let's look at these hints that suggest something more complex than just a simple upright pole. First, there's the matter of the nails. Nails plural. In John 20 25, Thomas says, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, plural, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, plural, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." I know I made it obvious, but he said nails the nails plural in his hands. more than one. This suggests multiple nails were used to attach Jesus to an execution device.
If it had been a simple upright stake, you would expect only one nail to be put through his hands or through his wrist. He wouldn't need two. There's another compelling clue in John 21:18.
There, Jesus is telling Peter how he's going to die. And he says, "When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go." John adds in verse 19 that he said to show by what death he would glorify God. The phrase, "Stretch out your hands," strongly suggests crucifixion involving arms extended outward, not hanging straight down from a simple upright pole. You wouldn't describe that as stretching out your hands. And that's probably the most telling clue we have about the positioning. But there's also the matter of the sign that was placed above Jesus' head.
All four gospels mention this. Matthew 27:37 says, "And they put up over his head the charge against him, which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews." Now, a sign could certainly be placed above someone on an upright pole. So, it does not eliminate that as an option. What the detail does likely eliminate is that Jesus did not die on a T-shaped cross because that was also used at the time by the Romans for execution. Jesus couldn't have died on a T-shaped cross according to that little detail because if it was a T, there wouldn't have been any room above his head for a sign. So, the sign placement suggests that it either was an upright pole or what's called a Latin cross where the vertical beam extends above the horizontal beam.
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Your struggles become opportunities for divine light to shine through. Available in hard coverver, paperback, Kindle, and audio book. The link to the book is in the video description. May God bless your journey along his path for you. There's another compelling piece of evidence that you may not have thought about. The Romans designed crucifixion to be as slow and torturous as possible. Death typically occurs through asphyxiation as the victim's body weight made it harder and harder to breathe.
But here's the thing. If someone were hung on a simple upright pole without any support, they would die from suffocation very fast, probably within an hour. Some people say it would only take minutes because of the weight of the body hanging down and putting pressure on the lungs so you couldn't breathe. That is not what the Romans wanted. They wanted the agony to last for hours, sometimes even for days. They wanted it to be a public spectacle to warn other people away from breaking their laws. So they often use a cross beam.
That cross beam provided just enough body support to keep the victim alive longer. They even sometimes added a small seat or ledge partway down the cross. It wasn't intended for comfort. It was put there to prolong the suffering by preventing early death from asphixxiation.
That's why Roman soldiers would break the legs of crucified victims to speed up the death as we see in John 19:32. Once the legs were broken, the victims couldn't push themselves up on that ledge anymore to breathe, and they die quickly from suffocation. The fact that they had to break the legs to hasten the death shows that the normal crucifixion setup was designed to keep people alive a lot longer. As gruesome as that is, if Jesus had been on a simple upright stake, it's very unlikely he would have survived the 6 hours that the gospels describe, especially given what he went through the night before. absolutely no sleep, total exhaustion, being scourged, having his back ripped apart, his head cut open from the crown of thorns. It's just highly unlikely that he would have made it for six hours hanging on an upright pole given that a person would normally die of asphyxiation within an hour or so.
under that particular setup. The Romans goal of prolonged public torture makes much more sense with a cross that provided some body sport. So, while the words of the execution device itself are vague, these contextual clues, especially the reference to multiple nails, Peter's future death involving stretched out hands, and the Roman practice of prolonging death through body support, all that suggests that the New Testament writers understood Jesus to have been executed in a position with extended arms on a crossshaped structure. put the sign above his head that ments that that bean must have kept going beyond his head which gives us the Latin cross. But this has been debated. You've got the cult I came out of. Jehovah's Witnesses are the strongest uh advocates of the upright pole.
They argue that Jesus died on that upright stake and not a cross because of the original meaning of the word staros. It they say it wasn't a cross shape. that cross shape came later because of pagan influences whereas others maintain that historical evidence supports the traditional cross shape. Well, what does the historical record tell us? It's actually pretty interesting when you dig into it. The earliest Christian writers who lived just after the apostles consistently describe Jesus execution device as having a crossbeam. The Epistle of Barnabas written sometime between 70 and 135 AD compares the shape to the Greek letter Tao which looks exactly like our capital T.
The letter towel had a numerical value of 300 and early Christians saw that as being symbolic. Justin Martyr who wrote around 150 AD he also describes the cross as having the shape of the Greek town. Clement of Alexandria, Tertalian, and other early church fathers consistently refer to Jesus being executed on a cross-shaped instrument without stretched arms. Now, of course, the towel is problematic because, as I've already said, the sign being above Jesus' head, it's more indicative of the Latin cross than the towel or the T. But it definitely shows that all of the early writers thought of Jesus having died on something that had a cross beam and not an upright pole. Archaeological evidence from the first century, it's limited, but we what we do have is telling. In 1968, archaeologists found the remains of a man of a man who was crucified around the same time of Jesus.
A nail was still lodged in his ankle bone and the position suggests he was attached to a crossshaped structure. Roman writers like Cynica described crucifixion as involving outstretched arms which wouldn't make sense on a simple upright pole. There's even a piece of graffiti from around 200 A and it mockingly shows a man worshiping a crucified figure with a donkey's head. The figure is clearly shown on a cross with a horizontal cross beam. This is how Romans understood crucifixion.
But here's where I want to challenge all of us. We can get so caught up in these historical details that we miss the force for the trees. Yes, it's intellectually interesting to explore what shaped the execution device was. It's good scholarship to examine the evidence, but at the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves, does it really matter? I mean, think about it this way. If someone came up to you and said, I want to accept Jesus as my savior, but first I need to know, was it a cross or was it a stake? I mean, what would you tell them?
Would you say, "Well, hold on there, my friend. Let's settle this historical question and then maybe we can talk about salvation." Obviously not. Salvation doesn't depend on getting the shape of the execution instrument correct. It depends on understanding why Jesus died and what his death accomplished. How he died wasn't very important. It was just the way Romans executed people at the time.
Had Jesus been born in a different surrounding in a different community, had Rome not chosen that particular execution device, Jesus may have died in any other manner of of torture or execution, but he didn't. The device isn't important. It's why he died and what he accomplished that's what matters. So, let's look at what scripture actually emphasizes about Jesus' death. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15:es 3 and 4, Paul writes, "For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures." Notice what Paul considers first of all importance. Christ died for our sins.
That's the crucial point. In Romans chapter 3 23-2, we read, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood." The emphasis isn't on the instrument of death. It's on the blood that was shed and the atonement that was made. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5 21, Paul explains, "For him who knew no sin, he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." The focus is on the substitution. Jesus taking our sin and giving us his righteousness.
Think about the thief hanging next to him. In Luke 23:42, he says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Kean's responds in verse 43 so famously, assuredly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise. That thief's salvation didn't depend on having the right theological understanding of execution methods or knowing the Greek vocabulary for crucifixion. He simply recognized who Jesus was and called out to him in faith. That was enough.
Here's what I think happens when we get too focused on the secondary issues. We can inadvertently communicate that Christianity is about getting all the details right rather than about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We can make people think they need to pass some kind of historical knowledge test before they can be saved. But look at what Jesus himself said about his death. In John 3:16, it says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." The shape of the execution device isn't mentioned because it's not the point. In John 12:32, Jesus says, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."
The gospel writer adds in verse 33, "But he said this signifying by what kind of death he should die." Jesus is talking about being lifted up. Whether that's on a cross or a stake, the important thing is that he was lifted up to die for us. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying historical accuracy doesn't matter at all. It's valuable to study these things. Sure, it helps us understand the cultural context and the reality of what Jesus went through, but we need to keep these things in perspective.
The cross, whether it had a cross beam or not, was an instrument of torture and shame. It was the Roman Empire's way of saying, "This is what happens to people who challenge our authority. This is what we do to criminals and rebels." It was designed to be humiliating, to strip away dignity, to serve as a warning to other people. But God took this symbol of defeat, and here's the point, and turned it into a symbol of victory. He took this instrument of death and made it the means of giving life to the entire world. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved, it is the power of God."
Whether Jesus died on a traditional cross or an upright stake, the theological significance remains exactly the same. He died to reconcile us to God. He conquered sin and death. He rose again in victory. He offers us eternal life and transformation. Through his death and resurrection, we're brought into union with God and given the hope of sharing in his divine life. So, where does that leave us?
I think it leaves us with a healthy perspective on what's essential and what's secondary. It's okay to be curious about historical facts. It's fine to study and learn and even have different opinions about those things, but we shouldn't let those questions become stumbling blocks to faith or tests of orthodoxy.
If you meet someone who believes Jesus died on a stake rather than a cross, or someone who believes it was a cross rather than a stake, don't let that become a barrier to fellowship. Both of you can agree on what really matters, that Jesus died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Here's what I want us to take away from this. The power of Jesus sacrifice doesn't depend on the shape of the wood he died on. It depends on the love that put him there and the power that raised him up. Whether it was two pieces of wood or one, whether it looked like a tea or an I, Jesus willingly gave his life to reconcile us to God. The early church understood this.
They were far more concerned with living out the implications of Jesus' death and resurrection than they were with debating the exact details of how it happened. They knew that Jesus died for their sins and that was enough to transform their lives in their world. So, let's follow their example. Let's be people who are passionate about the gospel, not just passionate about winning historical arguments. Let's be known for our love, not for our ability to prove points about ancient execution methods. And when people ask us about these kinds of questions, whether it's about the cross versus the stake or any other secondary issue, let's respond with both humility and clarity. We can say, you know, that's an interesting question, and the evidence definitely seems to suggest a cross more than a pole.
But let me tell you what I know for certain. Jesus loves you and died to save you because that's what matters. That's what changes everything. Not the shape of the wood, but the love of the one who hung on it. The Apostle Paul, who wrote about more about the meaning of Jesus' death than anybody else, put it perfectly in Galatians 6:14.
But far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Paul's boasting wasn't in his ability to describe the execution device accurately. It was in what Jesus accomplished on that device.
Let this be our prayer. Aba Father, help us to keep our focus on what truly matters. Whether Jesus died on a cross or a stake, we know he died for our sins and rose again for our salvation. Help us not to get caught up in debates that distract from the gospel, but to be faithful witnesses to your love and grace. May people see in us not a desire to win arguments, but a desire to share the life-changing news you have made a way for sinners like us to come home to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
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