QUESTION: Why does WLC use the word “cross” to refer to the way Yahushua died? The cross comes from pure paganism and is a symbol of the sun god! It would seem the word “stake” or even “tree” would be better than “cross” which was always a pagan symbol. Referring to the “cross” when it is so pagan is offensive and seems to venerate it.
ANSWER: It is true that the cross is a pagan symbol. People were crucified in a variety of ways. Some crosses were in the shape of an X. Others were a T or the more traditional †, and still others were stakes: I. Sometimes, if the executioners were in a hurry or had run out of crosses or stakes, people would even be crucified on living trees.
Those who were crucified, hanging between the earth and the heavens, were considered to be an offering to the sun god. They were, quite literally, a human sacrifice to a blood-thirsty pagan god.
The
cross is pagan and it is offensive. That
was the entire point! The fact that
Yahushua would humble Himself to the point of dying on a pagan symbol, an
offering, is the very thing that reveals the immense love of the Father and the
Son for a people that did not love Them.
The offensiveness of the cross was acknowledged by Paul when he stated:
For since, in the wisdom of Yah, the world through wisdom did not know Yah, it pleased Yahuwah through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Yahushua crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Yahushua the power of Yahuwah and the wisdom of Yahuwah. Because the foolishness of Yahuwah is wiser than men, and the weakness of Yahuwah is stronger than men. (See 1 Corinthians 1:21-25.)
The entire point of Yahushua's death on this grossly pagan symbol was to reveal the offensiveness of sin and what Satan would do if he had the opportunity: he would kill Yahuwah Himself.
There is nothing wrong with referring to the cross as a “stake” or a “tree.” Scripture itself refers to being crucified as “hanging upon a tree.” (See Acts 10:39.) However, to do so for the express purpose of avoiding the pagan symbolism of the cross, is missing the entire point! The offensiveness of the sinless Son of Yahuwah, being offered as a human sacrifice to the sun god, Satan, is to emphasize upon sin-darkened minds the extreme offensiveness of sin.
Paul actually emphasized Yahushua's manner of death when he wrote:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Yahushua, who, being in the form of Yah, did not consider it robbery to be equal with Yahuwah, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (See Philippians 2:5-8.)
This passage shows the depths to which the Messiah was willing to humble Himself - clear down to death, "even the death of the cross!" The word "even" emphasizes the form of death. Death by crucifixion was not only "excruciating" (the very word "excruciating" comes from the root word "crucifixion") but it WAS pagan: it was an offering to the sun god! Some sources link the cross to Tammuz, others to Saturn.
WLC does not “venerate” (or show respect to) the cross as a sacred object. It is indeed pagan. But if the cross is so completely “sanitized” as to remove every last vestige of paganism, the entire point of having the Saviour die on a pagan cross is lost. Yahushua could have died in any number of other ways. The infinite wisdom of the Almighty decreed that it should be by a pagan method of execution.
Paul, the scholar who knew the law of Moses so well, quoted from Deuteronomy 21:23 when explaining why Yahushua had to die on a pagan cross:
Yahushua has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. (See Galatians 3:13.)
The sinless Lamb of Yahuwah came to save sinners by becoming sin for them. This was the entire point of the plan of salvation!
For he [Yahuwah] hath made him [Yahushua] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of . . . [Yahuwah] in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV)
Just before the children of Israel entered the Promised Land, their rebellious accusations against Yahuwah were punished when He “sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” (Numbers 21:6, KJV)
When the people cried unto Moses for help:
Moses prayed for the people. And . . . [Yahuwah] said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. (Numbers 21:7-8, KJV)
Yahushua Himself explained the spiritual lesson of this acted-out parable in the Wilderness when He told Nicodemus:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For . . . [Yahuwah] so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For . . . [Yahuwah] sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:14-17, KJV)
Let no one lessen the impact of the sacrifice which Divine Love has made in saving sinners by glossing over the Saviour’s death on the cross, sanitizing it of all paganism.