by Jules Gomes, Mere Matchlight
“The great exchange between Christ and sinners … is the core of biblical soteriology”
Nearly two thousand years ago, the world’s most powerful empire advertised its consummate contempt for the cross. The Roman statesman, Cicero, condemned the cross as crudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicum (“a most cruel and disgusting punishment”).
In his defence of the elderly Senator Rabirus, who was charged with murder, Cicero insisted that “the very word ‘cross’ should be removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears.”
Rome exempted its citizens from crucifixion, except in grave cases of treason.
Nearly two thousand years later, in an epochal U-turn, the world’s most powerful empire amplified its unalloyed allegiance to the cross. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service — arguably the biggest event of its kind in U.S. history — preachers and politicians exalted Cicero’s crudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicum as the sole instrument of salvation for all humanity.
Almost every speaker asserted with unswerving assurance that Charlie is in heaven not because he was a great man who had done great deeds, but because, two millennia ago, a Jew had suffered a Roman execution on a cross. In that gruesome death, the man from Galilee did something inconceivable. He took the punishment for all Charlie’s sins upon Himself, giving Himself as a substitute, ransom, and atoning sacrifice for Charlie.
Jesus Christ died in place of Charlie Kirk so that Charlie Kirk could live in Heaven with God forever.