For Christians, the cross is not some abstract symbol of nonviolence. The cross is the jagged slab of wood to which Roman soldiers spiked Jesus of Nazareth whom we follow and worship.
But why was he crucified? Was it merely because he came to die as a sacrifice for our sin? Or was it merely that he lived such an exemplary, loving life of concern for the poor and weak that he died a martyr to peace, justice, and love? Why did Jesus end up on the cross?
To answer that question, we must recall the historical context into which Jesus stepped and then reflect on what his life and message looked like in that historical setting.
Quite apart from the question of political freedom and independence for which the Jews eagerly yearned, Roman rule was hardly benign. Herod the Great, who ruled as a client king of Rome until 4 B.C., turned large portions of Palestine into personal estates worked by tenants -- an oppressive arrangement depicted in Jesus' parables.
After A.D. 6, when Judea became a directly-governed Roman province, governors were often oppressive. Pilate, according to a contemporary, was "of hard disposition, brutal and pitiless." His administration was full of "corruption, violence, robbery, brutality, extortion, and execution without trial." Tax collectors exacted heavy taxation. And there was the ongoing danger that Jewish religious life would be violated -- witness for instance Emperor Caligula's attempt to set up his statue in the temple in A.D. 41.
It is hardly surprising that apocalyptic, messianic expectation was widespread and intense in the first century A.D. Almost everyone longed for the dawning of the new age when the messiah would come to end the rule of the foreign oppressors.
Given the common assumption of all messianic expectation that the messiah would end Roman rule, the Romans naturally took a dim view of messianic speculation. They viewed the succession of messianic pretenders who appeared in the first century A.D. as dangerous political enemies guilty of treason against Roman rule.
And they had good reason to be worried. When Herod the Great died, three different messianic pretenders provoked armed rebellion. The Roman governor of Syria came to Jerusalem and crucified 2,000 rebels. Judas, who was probably a founder of the Zealots a few years later, attacked an arsenal of Herod three miles from Jesus' home town of Nazareth.
In A.D. 6, when Judea became a Roman province, an underground organization of violent revolutionaries emerged. Full of ardent zeal for the law and intense eschatological expectation, the deeply religious Zealots believed that God would intervene to usher in the new age if they could provoke a popular rebellion against Rome. According to the Zealots, slaying the godless was a religious duty.
To be sure, not all Jews of the time favored armed rebellion. The Sadducees and high priestly aristocracy preferred to collaborate with the foreign oppressors. The clan of Annas, which held the office of high priest almost all of the time between A.D. 6 and 41, used some of the vast sums earned from their monopoly on the sale of animals for temple sacrifices to offer huge bribes to the Roman governors. The moderate Pharisees also opposed rebellion, and the Essenes preferred to retreat into the Judean caves to wait quietly for the eschatological day of the Lord.
In the maelstrom of oppression, violence, and intense messianic expectation, the Jewish population apparently saw only three possibilities: armed, revolutionary resistance; more or less opportunistic accommodation to the establishment; and patient, passive endurance. Jesus of Nazareth began to proclaim and incarnate a fourth possibility -- the way of suffering servanthood.
At the heart of Jesus' message was the announcement that the messianic age of eschatological expectation was beginning in his life and ministry ("Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" -- Luke 4:21).
Not surprisingly, the good citizens of Nazareth took deep offense when Jesus insisted that the blessings of the messianic age would be available to everyone -- even hated foreigners and enemies. Furthermore, at the center of Jesus' conception of the new messianic age was the special concern for the poor, the release of captives, and liberation of the oppressed called for in the Jubilee. The new age which he saw himself inaugurating had specific economic and social content.
The eschatological Jubilee was central to Jesus' thought and work. In the sermon in Luke 6:20ff, Jesus pronounced a blessing on the poor and hungry and promised that, in the new age, they would be satisfied. Conversely, the rich and full would experience a woeful reversal (vs. 24-25). Drawing on Deuteronomy 15, he commanded his followers to live by the standards of the dawning messianic age and make loans expecting nothing in return (v. 35). This command is echoed in the Lord's Prayer where he taught his disciples to ask God to forgive their sins as they forgave everyone who had debts or loans owed to them (Luke 11:4).
Jesus' cleansing of the temple fits perfectly into this inauguration of the messianic Jubilee. Outraged that the wealthy, priestly aristocracy was collecting huge sums from their monopolistic sale of animals for sacrifice, Jesus called their economic practices robbery ("My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers" -- Luke 19:46). And he drove them out.
This was not an armed attack on the temple but rather an exemplary demonstration against the misuse of the sanctuary to enrich the leading priestly families. It is hardly surprising that the Sadducees and priestly aristocracy considered a person who announced and acted out such a radical call for socio-economic change to be highly dangerous. Hence they moved promptly to destroy him (Luke 19:47).
Within a few days, they had him arrested and turned over to the Roman governor as a dangerous revolutionary. One reason Jesus got crucified, then, was that he began to live out the kind of radical socio-economic reordering expected when the messiah would inaugurate the Jubilee.
But it would be a gross distortion to suggest that Jesus was crucified merely because he offended the wealthy establishment with radical socio-economic proposals. He called people to live out the vision of the Jubilee precisely because the messianic age had begun in his own person and work.
Jesus also claimed the authority to forgive sins, which, as the Jewish bystanders immediately recognized, was a prerogative of God alone (Mark 2:6-7). And at his trial, when they asked him if he was the messiah, the Son of God, he said "I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). It is hardly surprising that monotheistic Jews charged him with blasphemy.
The Roman rulers, however, reserved for themselves the authority to mete out capital punishment. Hence the Jewish authorities could not execute Jesus, even though the Torah prescribed death for blasphemy. But since messianic pretenders were a clear political danger to Roman imperialism, Pilate was willing to crucify Jesus on the political charge that he claimed to be the king of the Jews.
Jesus of Nazareth was not the only messianic pretender crucified in the first century. But he differed from the others in at least two decisive ways. In the first place, something very unusual happened on the third day after his crucifixion. In the second place, his methods contrasted radically with all the others. He chose to implement his messianic kingdom with suffering servanthood rather than a violent sword.
Jesus' decision to use nonviolent means is visible at every crucial point in his career. At his temptation, when Satan offered him all the political and military power of the world (Luke 4:5-8), Jesus faced and decisively rejected the Zealot option of violent means to establish the messianic kingdom. At Caesarea Philippi, when Peter confessed that Jesus was the messiah, he quickly hastened to explain that as the messianic Son of Man, he would have to suffer and even die. And when Peter rejected that picture of a suffering messiah, Jesus harshly denounced him as an agent of that satanic one who had already tempted him with the Zealot option (Mark 8:27-34).
In the triumphal entry (Luke 19:28-40), Jesus consciously chose to fulfill the eschatological prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, precisely because it depicted a humble, peaceful messianic figure riding not on a war horse, but on an ass. The vision from Zechariah of a peaceful king who would "command peace to the nations" corresponded to Jesus' transformed picture of the messiah.
In the final crisis, he persisted in his rejection of the sword. He rebuked Peter for attacking those who came to arrest him (Luke 33:49-50). And he informed Pilate that his kingdom was not of the world in one specific regard -- namely that his followers did not use violence (John 18:36). Obviously he did not mean that the messianic kingdom he had inaugurated had nothing to do with the earth. That would have contradicted his central announcement of the eschatological Jubilee which he expected his followers to begin living. But he did mean that he would not establish his kingdom by the sword.
But Jesus not only lived the way of nonviolence. He also taught it. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-48 and parallel) contains the most important text.
To a people so oppressed by foreign conquerors that, repeatedly over the previous two centuries, they had resorted to violent rebellion, Jesus gave the unprecedented command: "Love your enemies." New Testament scholar Martin Hengel believes that Jesus probably formulated his command to love one's enemies in conscious contrast to the teaching and practice of the Zealots. Thus Jesus was pointedly rejecting one currently attractive political method in favor of a radically different approach.
Jesus' command to love one's enemies is in direct contrast to currently widespread views that Jesus summarizes in v. 43: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" The first part of this verse is a direct quotation from Leviticus 19:18. As Leviticus 19:17 and the history of subsequent interpretation in the post-exilic period demonstrate, the neighbor that one was obligated to love was normally understood to be a fellow Israelite. Thus love for neighbor had clear ethnic and religious limitations.
A different attitude was permissible toward Gentiles. The Old Testament did not command or sanction hatred of the enemy. But Jewish contemporaries of Jesus did. The Zealots believed that "slaying of the godless enemy out of zeal for God's cause was a fundamental commandment, true to the rabbinic maxim: 'Whoever spills the blood of one of the godless is like one who offers a sacrifice.' " And the Qumran community's manual of discipline urged people to "love all the sons of light ... and ... hate all the sons of darkness."
Jesus' way is entirely different. For the followers of Jesus, neighbor love must extend beyond the limited circle of the people of Israel, beyond the limited circle of the new people of God. All people everywhere are neighbors to Jesus' followers and, therefore, are to be actively loved. And that love extends to enemies -- even violent, oppressive foreign conquerors.
It is exegetically impossible to follow Luther's two kingdom analysis and restrict the application of these verses on love of enemies to some personal sphere, denying their application to violence in the public sphere. As Edward Schweitzer says in his commentary on Matthew, "There is not the slightest hint of any realm where the disciple is not bound by the words of Jesus."
In the preceding verses, Jesus had discussed issues that clearly pertained to the public sphere of the legal system and the authorized demands of the Roman rulers. Jesus rejected the basic legal principle from the Torah that it was right to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (v. 38), thus placing his own personal authority above that of Moses. Jesus here was not dealing with some admonitions for private interpersonal relationships; he was dealing with a fundamental principle of Jewish and other Near Eastern legal systems.
Instead of retaliation to a corresponding degree against someone who had caused damage, Jesus commanded a loving response that would even submit to further damage and suffering rather than exact equal pain or loss from the unfair, guilty aggressor. Verse 40 ("If anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well") speaks of how one should respond in the public arena of the judicial system. And v. 44 ("If anyone force you to go one mile, go with him two miles") speaks of how to respond to Roman rulers who demand forced labor.
The verb translated as "force" is a technical term used to refer to the requisition of services by civil and military authorities. Josephus used the word to speak of compulsory carrying of military supplies. The Roman rulers could and did demand that civilians in conquered lands perform such services upon demand. Thus they were able to demand that Simon of Cyrene carry Jesus' cross (27:32). Not surprisingly, the Zealots urged Jews to refuse this kind of forced labor. Jesus, however, rejects that angry, violent Zealot response to the oppressors' unjust demands.
But Jesus was not advocating a passive, resigned attitude toward oppressors. Certainly nothing in the text suggests that Jesus approved the unfair, insulting slap on the cheek or the demand for forced labor. But Jesus' response was to call on the oppressed to take command of their situation in a way that transcended the old age's normal categories of friends and enemies.
The members of Jesus' new messianic kingdom were to love opponents, even oppressive, persecuting enemies, so deeply that they could wholeheartedly pray for their well-being and truly love them as persons. The radical, costly character of Jesus' call for love toward enemies certainly tempts us to weaken decisively Jesus' message by labelling it an impossible ideal, relegating it to the millennium or limiting its application to personal relationships. But that is to misread both the text and the concrete historical context in which Jesus lived and spoke.
In his original setting, Jesus advocated love toward enemies as his specific political response to centuries of violence and to the contemporary Zealots' call for violent revolution. And he spoke as one who claimed to be the messiah of Israel. His messianic kingdom was already breaking into the present; therefore his disciples should and could live out the values of the new age.
To be sure, he did not say that one should practice loving nonviolence because it would always instantly transform enemies into bosom friends. The cross stands as a harsh reminder that love for enemies does not always work -- at least in the short run. Jesus grounds his call to love enemies in the very nature of God. God loves his enemies. Instead of promptly destroying sinners, he continues lovingly to shower the good gifts of creation upon them. Since that is the way God is, those who want to be his sons and daughters must do likewise.
Then Jesus died on a cross. He suffered the most despicable death possible. Paul's quotation from the Torah, "Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree" (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13), expressed the Jewish viewpoint. As for the brutally efficient Romans, they knew how to put down political threats. They regularly crucified political criminals, especially the constant stream of rebellious Jewish messianic pretenders.
It was the resurrection which convinced the discouraged disciples that, in spite of the cross, Jesus' claims and his announcement of the messianic kingdom were still valid. Jewish eschatological expectation looked for a general resurrection at the beginning of the new age. As the early Christians reflected on Jesus' resurrection, they realized that one instance of this eschatological resurrection had actually occurred in the old age.
Thus they referred to Jesus' resurrection as the first fruits (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) of that final, general resurrection. Jesus' resurrection then was decisive evidence that the new age had truly invaded the old. Jesus of Nazareth was now called Jesus Christ (Jesus the Messiah) because his resurrection was irrefutable evidence that his messianic claims were valid.
Not until we understand that Jesus Christ, the crucified one, is Lord, do we begin to penetrate to the full meaning of the cross. The crucified criminal hanging limp on the middle cross was the eternal Word who in the beginning was with God and indeed was God, but for our sakes became flesh and dwelt among us. The crucified one was he "who had always been God by nature [but] did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave" (Philippians 2:6-7). Only when we grasp that that is who the crucified one was do we begin to fathom the depth of Jesus' teaching that God's way of dealing with enemies is the way of suffering love.
The cross is the ultimate demonstration that God deals with his enemies through suffering love; Paul provides the clearest theological expression of this: "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us ... While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Romans 5:8, 10).
Jesus' vicarious cross for sinners is the foundation and deepest expression of Jesus' command to love one's enemies. We are enemies in the sense both that sinful persons are hostile to God and also that the just, holy Creator hates sin (Romans 1:18). For those who know the law, failure to obey it results in a divine curse. But Christ redeemed us from that curse by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:10-14). Jesus' blood on the cross was an expiation (Romans 5:18) for us sinful enemies of God, because the one who knew no sin was made sin for us on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus' vicarious death for sinful enemies of God lies at the very heart of our commitment to nonviolence. Because the incarnate one knew that God was loving and merciful even toward the worst of sinners, he associated with sinners, forgave their sins, and completed his mission of dying for the sins of the world. And it was precisely the same understanding of God that prompted him to command his followers to love their enemies.
Because the one hanging limp on the cross was the Word who became flesh, we know for sure both that a just God mercifully accepts us sinful enemies and also that he wants us to go and treat all our enemies in the same merciful, self-sacrificial way.
Since Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies, and then died as the incarnate Son to demonstrate that God reconciles his enemies by suffering love, any rejection of the nonviolent way in human relations involves a heretical doctrine of the atonement. If God in Christ reconciled his enemies by suffering servanthood, then those who want to follow Christ faithfully dare not treat their enemies in any other way.
It is a tragedy of our time that many of those who appropriate the biblical understanding of Christ's vicarious cross fail to see its direct implications for the problem of war and violence. And it is equally tragic that some of those who most emphasize pacifism and nonviolence fail to ground it in Christ's vicarious atonement. It is a serious heresy of the atonement to base one's nonviolence in the weak sentimentality of the lowly Nazarene viewed merely as a noble martyr to truth and peace rather than in the vicarious cross of the Word who became flesh.
The cross is much more than Christ's witness to the weakness and folly of the sword, although it certainly is that. In fact it is that precisely because the incarnate Word's vicarious death for our sins is the ultimate demonstration that the sovereign of the universe is a merciful father who reconciles his enemies through self-sacrificial love.
Given this understanding of Jesus as the unique Son of God, and his cross as the demonstration of God's method of dealing with enemies, it is hardly surprising that the New Testament writers regularly urged Christians to pattern their lives after Jesus' cross. Certainly the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world was a unique element of his cross that could never be repeated. But that fact never prevented the New Testament authors from discerning in the cross a decisive ethical clue for the Christian's approach to opponents and enemies, indeed even friends, spouses, and fellow members of Christ's body.
In every strand of New Testament literature, and with reference to every kind of situation (whether family, church, state, or employment), the way of the cross applies. Jesus' cross, where he practiced what he had preached about love for one's enemies, becomes the Christian norm for every area of life. Only if one holds biblical authority so irrelevant that one can ignore explicit, regularly repeated scriptural teaching; only if one so disregards Christ's atonement that one rejects God's way of dealing with enemies; only then can we forsake the cross for the sword.
To be sure, church history is a sad story of Christians doing precisely that. After the first three centuries, when almost all Christians refused to participate in warfare, Christians repeatedly invented ways to justify violence.
And each of us, if we think honestly about the costly implications of suffering servanthood, will understand within ourselves how temptingly plausible it is to consider Jesus' nonviolent way an impossible ideal, a Utopian vision practiced only in the millennium, or some idealistic teaching intended only for personal relationships.
But if one recalls Jesus' historical context, one simply cannot assert that that is what Jesus himself meant. Claiming to be their messiah, he came to an oppressed people ready to use violence to drive out their oppressors. But he advocated love for enemies as God's method for ushering in the coming kingdom. And he submitted to Roman crucifixion to reconcile his enemies.
If, as unbelievers of both past and present assert, the cross is the last word about Jesus of Nazareth, then his call to suffering servanthood was indeed a noble but ultimately Utopian dream that responsible realists should ignore.
But if, as Christians claim, the grave could not hold him, then his messianic kingdom has truly begun and the way of the cross is the way of the risen sovereign of this whole glorious universe.
Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.
Ronald Sider was a member of Jubilee Fellowship in Philadelphia when this article appeared. He was also associate professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Copyright ® 1979 by Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683.
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