The Cross’s Vulgarity and the Resurrection’s Victory

A few blocks from the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, a piece of plaster is mounted on a wall in the Palatine Museum. The plaster appears blank at first glance, and you might wonder why the fragment has been so carefully affixed to the wall. But then you look closer, and you notice a bit of crude graffiti gouged into the surface.

This obscene etching from the late second or early third century AD depicts a man with the head of a donkey hanging from a cross with his posterior exposed. At the foot of the cross, a man wearing the sleeveless tunic of a slave prays with an outstretched hand. Three words have been scratched around the praying figure; the misspelled Greek clause can be translated into English as “Alexamenos worships God.”

The aim of the unknown graffiti artist seems to have been to mock an enslaved person named Alexamenos, who had devoted himself to Jesus. This artifact stands as a silent reminder of how shocking the reports about Jesus seemed to ancient Romans. Followers of this new way had devoted their lives to a deity who endured a death reserved for traitors and slaves. The word “crucify” was a vulgarity in ancient Rome, spoken sparingly in polite company. The Jewish historian Josephus referred to crucifixion as “that most wretched of deaths.”

Nevertheless, Christians persisted in praising a crucified God. Even more embarrassing from their neighbors’ perspective, the Christian deity apparently didn’t leave his body behind and ascend to the realm of the gods after he died, which is what any self-respecting deity would surely do. Instead, according to the Christians, the same scarred body that died was raised to life and transformed into the first sign of God’s new creation.

Message That Conquered an Empire

Despite making such distasteful claims, the movement multiplied. By the end of the first century, the news that a crucified Jew had returned to life had spread across the Roman Empire from Syria to Spain, and four written retellings of his life were circulating in the empire’s largest cities. Despite sporadic local persecutions, the communities that devoted themselves to Jesus kept gaining adherents.

After failing in their attempts to crush Christian communities through a series of empire-wide persecutions in the late third and early fourth centuries, the emperors finally gave up their efforts to force Christians to sacrifice to the venerable gods of Rome.

By the end of the first century, the news that a crucified Jew had returned to life had spread from Syria to Spain.

Looking back on this remarkable sequence of events, Augustine of Hippo saw evidence that the resurrection had really happened. He wrote,

Now, we have three incredible things, and yet all three have come to pass: First, it is incredible that Christ rose in the flesh and ascended with his flesh into heaven. Second, it is incredible that the world has come to believe something so incredible. Third, it is incredible that a few unknown men, with no standing and no education, were able to persuade the world . . . of something so incredible. Of these three incredible things, the people we are debating refuse to believe the first, they are compelled to grant the second, but they cannot explain how the second happened unless they believe the third. (author’s translation)

For Augustine, the church’s spread in the aftermath of the crucifixion provided evidence for the truth of the resurrection. Unless the first witnesses actually saw death reversed, it seems almost impossible they’d have persisted in their proclamation about a crucified man.

“The founders of the other great world religions died peacefully, surrounded by their followers and the knowledge that their movement was growing,” Tim Keller once pointed out. “In contrast, Jesus died in disgrace, betrayed, denied, and abandoned by everyone.” Unlike Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama, who spent many years training their disciples, Jesus taught his disciples for only three years or so. Unlike Muhammad, Jesus died in humiliation, with no armies, no wealth, and no heirs. Yet the message of his death and resurrection eventually conquered an empire.

Longing That Calls You to Faith

Much of this evidence for believing in Jesus’s resurrection is historical, but one piece of evidence isn’t so much historical as personal. Whether or not you think Jesus’s resurrection happened, there’s a longing for resurrection inside you. You yearn for a world where all things are made right and new. You long for a realm where death no longer reigns. You may not want Jesus. Like the vulgar “artist” behind the Alexamenos Graffito, you may think the idea of a crucified God is absurd. But you want resurrection.

Perhaps these yearnings are merely empty fantasies and wishful thinking. But what if they aren’t? What if you were made with a longing for life that never ends? If so, maybe your aching for eternity isn’t a defect in your mind but a part of your design. If you disbelieve the resurrection, or if you’re not sure what to think about a man returning from the dead, my encouragement to you is to read the four New Testament Gospels with an open mind. Consider Jesus’s claims, and hear this invitation Augustine spoke to his fifth-century congregation in North Africa:

Jesus . . . promised us his life, but what he actually did is even more unbelievable; he paid us his death in advance. [It is as if Jesus said,] “I’m inviting you to my life, where nobody dies, where life is truly happy, . . . to the region of the angels, to the friendship of the Father and the Holy Spirit, to the everlasting supper, to be my brothers and sisters. . . . I’m inviting you to my life.”

By suffering the punishment for sin in our place, the crucified Christ made a way for you and me to have fellowship with him through faith. Through his resurrection, the same Christ opened the door for us to share in his eternal life. Will you at least consider the possibility that all this might be true?

Victory That Changes the World

If Jesus has truly been raised from the dead, every victory has been won. The kingdom yet to come has burst into our present world, and that present-yet-future kingdom is every believer’s true home. Jesus’s resurrection guarantees the renovation of the world. That’s why we’re not those without hope, or hoping in hope alone. Resurrection shows that this world isn’t our home. Because every wrong will be made right, you can forgive, trusting that God will deal with every sin and abuse of his creation in his time and in his way.

Through his resurrection, Christ opened the door for us to share in his eternal life.

Since Jesus has been revealed as the risen King of all creation, you can be set free from placing your hope in earthly political allegiances. Because your future home is guaranteed to be a place of perfect peace and justice, you can commit yourself to practicing peace and justice in the present. As Esau McCaulley says, “If the resurrection is true, and the Christian stakes his or her entire existence on its truthfulness, then our peaceful witness testifies to a new and better way of being human that transcends the endless cycle of violence.”

If Jesus left behind an empty tomb—and there’s good evidence he did—that changes everything. What will the resurrection change for you?