The Crucifixion Quotes

“From beginning to end, the Holy Scriptures testify that the predicament of fallen humanity is so serious, so grave, so irremediable from within, that nothing short of divine intervention can rectify it.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Here is an important distinction with far-reaching implications for Christian behavior. The deeds of Christians in this present time — however insignificant they may seem, however “vain” they may appear to those who value worldly success — are already being built into God’s advancing kingdom.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Resurrection in and of itself was not unheard of; after all, gods who died and rose again were ubiquitous in the ancient Near East. 22 The unique feature of the Christian proclamation is the shocking claim that God is fully acting, not only in Jesus’ resurrected life, but especially in Jesus’ death on the cross. To say the same thing in another way, the death of Jesus in and of itself would not be anything remarkable. What is remarkable is that the Creator of the universe is shown forth in this gruesome death.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Perhaps the strongest statement we can make about the resurrection in this book about the crucifixion is that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we would never have heard of him.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Justice for everyone is an alarming thought because it raises the possibility that it might come upon oneself after all. As the author of Ephesians puts it, “by nature” we are all “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The Son of God did not come to make good people better but to give life to the dead.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He did not need to have his mind changed. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God’s side, by God’s initiative, from inside human flesh — the human flesh of the Son.44 The divine hostility, or wrath of God, has always been an aspect of his love.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Sentimental, overly “spiritualized” love is not capable of the sustained, unconditional agape of Christ shown on the cross. Only from the perspective of the crucifixion can the true nature of Christian love be seen, over against all that the world calls “love.” The one thing needful, according to Paul, is that the Christian community should position itself rightly, at the juncture where the cross calls all present arrangements into question with a corresponding call for endurance and faith.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“If our preaching does not intersect with the times, we are fleeing the call to take up the cross. We can learn from the example of Dostoevsky, who in The Brothers Karamazov used material that he read in the newspapers to give a human face to the problem of evil.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance. The resurrection is not a set piece. It is not an isolated demonstration of divine dazzlement. It is not to be detached from its abhorrent first act. The resurrection is, precisely, the vindication of a man who was crucified. Without the cross at the center of the Christian proclamation, the Jesus story can be treated as just another story about a charismatic spiritual figure. It is the crucifixion that marks out Christianity as something definitively different in the history of religion. It is in the crucifixion that the nature of God is truly revealed. Since the resurrection is God's mighty transhistorical Yes to the historically crucified Son, we can assert that the crucifixion is the most important historical event that has ever happened. The resurrection, being a transhistorical event planted within history, does not cancel out the contradiction and shame of the cross in this present life; rather, the resurrection ratifies the cross as the way "until he comes.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Why did Christ “give himself up for us”? To whom was this “offering” made? What did this “sacrifice” accomplish, if anything? When we contemplate Jesus on the cross on Good Friday, what do we see? There is no dramatic rescue scene in view. Jesus does not seem to be taking anyone’s place. There is no obvious reason for his being where he is. All indications are that he is suffering a penalty for something he did not do; that much is clear. But what would lead us to conclude that he was being punished on behalf of someone else? Why does Jesus need to be sacrificed in the first place, and why, in the words of the familiar verse from Ephesians, is he being sacrificed for us?”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Only God can execute a regime change in which the tyrannical Powers are displaced and overthrown. This is the story of the purpose of God, “which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The imagery of rescue and victory places the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness into another context altogether, where they are brought in under the heading of God acting to make right what has been wrong (rectification). Then, and only then, can the whole complex of ideas and images be located where it belongs, on the battlefield of Christ against the Powers. This is the overarching panorama against which to place the imagery of the Great Assize, or Last Judgment.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“begin to see that when we say God will “justify” rather than merely “acquit,” the action has a reconstituting force — hence the insufficiency of the courtroom metaphor “to acquit.” God’s righteousness is the same thing as his justice, and his justice is powerfully at work justifying, which does not mean excusing, passing over, or even “forgiving and forgetting,” but actively making right that which is wrong.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“By becoming one of the poor who was deprived of his rights, by dying as one of those robbed of justice, God's Son submitted to the utmost extremity of humiliation, entering into total solidarity with those who are without help.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“If sin is not exposed, named, and renounced, then there has been no justice and God is dishonored.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The action of God’s grace precedes our consciousness of sin, so that we perceive the depth of our own participation in sin’s bondage simultaneously with the recognition of the unconditional love of Christ, which is perfect freedom. We recognize that love, moreover, not from the depths of the hell we were bent on creating for ourselves, but from the perspective of the heaven that God is preparing for us. In the victorious presence of the crucified and risen One, the whole company of the redeemed will throw off every bond and join in a celebration of mutual love and joy where no one will be a wallflower and everyone will be able to dance like Fred Astaire and Michael Jackson combined. Thus “Lord of the Dance” is truly an apt title for the risen Christ and for the kingdom of God: “The Great Dance . . . has begun from before always. . . . The dance which we dance is at the center and for the dance all things were made. Blessed be He!”10”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The truest way to receive the gospel of Christ crucified is to cultivate a deep appreciation of the way the biblical motifs interact with each other and enlarge one another.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The use of the term “the crucifixion” for the execution of Jesus shows that it still retains a privileged status. When we speak of “the crucifixion,” even in this secular age, many people will know what is meant. There is something in the strange death of the man identified as Son of God that continues to command special attention. This death, this execution, above and beyond all others, continues to have universal reverberations. Of no other death in human history can this be said. The cross of Jesus stands alone in this regard; it is sui generis.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptations to pervert it into injustice” (Exclusion and Embrace, 123).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“If we think of Christian theology and ethics purely in terms of forgiveness, we will have neglected a central aspect of God’s own character and will be in no position to understand the cross in its fullest dimension.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The New Testament writings all presuppose that the fallen human race and the equally fallen created order are sick unto death beyond human resourcefulness.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Although people feel blessed in the presence of a holy man who wants the world to be right and people to be happy, the holy man cannot make that happen.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Gross injustice demonstrates a basic premise: in our world, something is terribly wrong and cries out to be put right.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“If guilt is defined only as a feeling of unworthiness, then obviously only a minority would qualify; but sin includes the real situation of all human beings before God whether they know it or not.”22”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Although in the present day, “evil” has become the preferred word, Sin and Death with their captive the Law are, for the apostle Paul, the sum of all evil.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The true “punishment” for sin, Paul is suggesting here (and Paul conspicuously never uses the word “punish”), is Sin itself.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Few outside academia would know that the incongruities so frequently cited today as proof of the Bible’s unreliability were noted many centuries ago by such as Origen and Calvin.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Christologies on a spectrum showing the extent to which they allow the human weakness or the divine power of Jesus to become apparent, Mark would be at one end and John at the other, and in between Matthew would be closer to Mark and Luke closer to John. Yet the portrayal of Jesus in John and in Luke is not the same. The Johannine Jesus does not manifest the forgiveness and healing bestowed by the Lukan Jesus; the Lukan Jesus does not exhibit the hauteur and the power evident in the Johannine Jesus. 41”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Indeed, “theory” is a poor word to choose when seeking to understand the testimony of the Bible. 14 The Old and New Testaments do not present theories at any time. 15 Instead, we find stories, images, metaphors, symbols, sagas, sermons, songs, letters, poems. It would be hard to find writing that is less theoretical.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ