The Cross as Political Act

Today's Scripture

Philippians 2:8-11 — "And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Colossians 2:15 — "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him."

Mark 10:45 — "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

The Big Idea

The cross was Rome's billboard, designed to advertise what happens to anyone who defies the empire. God took that exact billboard and used it to announce the defeat of every dark power — not by out-fighting evil but by absorbing it. At the cross, losing was the winning move.

Reflection

Rome's billboard

Today the cross is the most recognizable symbol on earth. It sits on steeples, hangs on necklaces, appears on flags. We have to work hard to feel what it meant in the first century, because in the first century it was not a symbol at all. It was a death machine — and more than that, an advertisement. Rome reserved crucifixion for slaves and rebels, and staged it in public, beside busy roads, precisely so everyone would get the message: this is what happens when you challenge Caesar.

Even the paperwork was political. Mark 15:26 records the charge nailed above Jesus's head: "And the inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.'" Jesus was not executed for teaching people to be nice. He was executed on a political charge, by a political power, using that power's most political weapon.

The Roman statesman Cicero said crucifixion was so obscene that a decent citizen should not even speak the word. It happened outside the city walls, at eye level, beside busy roads, so travelers had to walk past the empire's argument on their way to market. Nobody in that world wore a cross on a chain. It would have been like wearing a tiny electric chair.

So here is the question today: what was God doing while the empire ran its billboard? Martin Luther said there are two ways to look for God in this scene, and only one of them is honest:

"A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." — Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation

A "theologian of glory" is Luther's name for the instinct in all of us that expects God to show up where things are winning — in success, strength, and applause. The cross humiliates that instinct. God's greatest act happened in the place that looked most God-forsaken. If you want to know what God is really like, Luther says, do not look at the throne room. Look at the gallows — and call the thing what it is.

This matters for politics more than it first appears. Every movement is tempted to believe God is wherever the crowds and the winning are. The cross says his deepest work may be happening exactly where everything looks lost.

The King who climbed down

The Philippians hymn traces the strangest career path in history. He "was in the form of God" — the top, the absolute top — yet "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant... he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8). Every rung of the ladder, downward, on purpose. The phrase "even death on a cross" is the bottom rung: not just death, but the slave's death, the rebel's death.

Jesus had already told his disciples that this was the whole point. When James and John lobbied for cabinet positions in the coming kingdom, he sat the Twelve down: "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... But it shall not be so among you... For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45). A ransom is the price paid to set a captive free. The world's rulers spend other people's lives to keep their power. This King spends his own life to buy his people back.

Stop and feel how strange that is. We grade power by how many people serve you — the bigger the staff, the bigger the boss. By that math, the towel and basin at the Last Supper, and the cross the next afternoon, are career suicide. Jesus calls them glory. Either he was confused about how the world works, or we are.

Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon on the strangeness of this King, taking his text from Revelation, where John hears about a conquering Lion and turns around to see "a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain" (Revelation 5:5-6). The Lion is the Lamb. Edwards put it this way:

"There is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ." — Jonathan Edwards, "The Excellency of Christ"

That is an old-fashioned way of saying: things that never go together meet in Jesus. Infinite highness and deep humility. Total justice and total mercy. Majesty that washes feet. The cross is not a contradiction of his kingship. It is his kingship, fully displayed.

The day the powers were disarmed

Now look at what Paul claims actually happened on that hill. Colossians 2:15 — "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." The word picture is a Roman triumph: the victory parade where a conquering general marched his defeated, disarmed enemies through the capital for all to see. Paul takes Rome's own parade language and flips it. On the cross, the apparent captive was the conqueror, and the powers — Rome's might, religious corruption, and the darker spiritual forces behind them both — were the ones stripped and led through the streets.

Jesus saw it coming and said so: "Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:31-32). "Lifted up" — onto a cross. The moment evil threw everything it had at him was the moment its arsenal was emptied. Paul admits this looks ridiculous: "the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God... For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). Paul is not embarrassed by the scandal; he leans into it. God deliberately chose the method no campaign manager would ever choose, so that no one could mistake whose power was doing the saving.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison cell, staked his hope on exactly this upside-down power:

"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

A god who only worked through strength could only be found in palaces. The true God let himself be pushed to a cross — which means he can be found in hospital rooms, prison cells, and every place that looks like losing. C.S. Lewis described the strategy of it:

"Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The rightful king landed in disguise — a manger, a workshop, a donkey, a cross — and broke the occupation from the inside.

What the cross actually paid

But be careful here. If we say only that the cross was a political victory, we have still made it too small. The deepest enemy defeated that day was not Rome. It was the guilt and sin that hold every human heart hostage, the rebellion inside us that no election can fix. Isaiah 53:5 — "But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed."

John Stott spent a lifetime studying the cross and boiled its logic down to one sentence:

"The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man." — John Stott, The Cross of Christ

Sin is us climbing onto God's throne. Salvation is God climbing onto our cross. He took the sentence we earned — "the chastisement that brought us peace" — so that we could take the welcome he earned.

This is why the cross can never be reduced to a political symbol for any side. It is not a mascot; it is a substitution. Before it says anything about empires, it says something about you: you were the rebel it was built for, and you are the one the King died to ransom. And then comes the great "therefore" of Philippians 2:9: "Therefore God has highly exalted him." The servant is now the Sovereign. Every knee will bow — every president, every emperor, every power that ever ran a billboard.

This is why Christians can engage a frightening world without panic. The decisive battle is already over, and it was won by love that absorbed evil rather than copied it. Isaac Watts looked at this scene and wrote the only sane response:

"Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." — Isaac Watts, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

Not "demands my vote" or "demands my outrage." Demands my soul, my life, my all — gladly given, because he gave his first.

Going Deeper

Today, when you face a conflict — a sharp text message, an argument at home, someone taking credit for your work — pause and ask one question: what would it look like to win this the way Jesus won? Not by surrendering the truth, but by absorbing a cost instead of inflicting one: the first apology, the unreturned insult, the quiet act of service. Try it once today. You will be practicing, in miniature, the power that disarmed the rulers and authorities.