14th August 2025

The crucifixion of Jesus stands at the centre of the gospel we are to proclaim (1 Corinthians 15:1-2). It is of first importance; it is the crux (Latin for cross ¹) of the Christian message, and the Nicene Creed makes historical claims about Jesus’s death and provides theological interpretations of those claims. First, an important theological interpretation of Jesus’s death:

For our sake Jesus was crucified – We can be sure of how Jesus saw his death from his words at the Last Supper. He indicated that his death, voluntarily adopted, would be for his hearers, providing forgiveness for sins, with his blood sealing a covenant rescue from death (Matthew 26:26-28; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). As T.F. Torrance put it, ‘God in Christ has substituted himself for us in making our sin and death his own so that we may partake of his divine life and righteousness’ (emphasis mine). ² 

The Creed then turns to the historical evidence for Jesus’s death.

Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate and suffered death – Jesus’s death by crucifixion is well-attested. It’s mentioned not only in the Gospels (Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:17-42), but in secular writings too. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote, ‘Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man…He was [the] Christ; and…Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us…condemned him to the cross…’ ³ Referring to the Great fire of Rome (64 AD) the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, ‘…Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class…called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty [crucifixion] during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus…’ ⁴ 

This evidence led John-Dominic Crossan, a scholar in the sceptic Jesus Seminar, to conclude, ‘That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.’ ⁵   But what happened to his body? The Creed says,

Jesus was buried – Crucifixion victims were usually thrown to the dogs in a shallow grave, but there is good evidence to support that Jesus was buried in a tomb. First, the New Testament asserts that Jesus was buried in the tomb of a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43-46). He is unlikely to be a person that Christians made up, since he would be a well-known individual and it would have been embarrassing to recount that Jesus’s disciples fled the scene, and a Jewish leader claimed the body. Second, it was women who saw the tomb where Jesus was laid (v.47) and came to the tomb to discover that Jesus was risen (Mark 16:1-3). As women were not regarded as reliable witnesses in that culture, it’s inconceivable that Christians would have concocted the story. And third, the response from the Jewish leaders admits Jesus was missing from a known tomb (Matthew 28:11-15). The Jewish leaders were not reporting that Jesus was disposed of in some unknown way; rather, they admitted that he was buried in the tomb and that the body was missing. They just tried to explain away the resurrection.

So, the Creed affirms that Christian belief operates on both a historical and a theological level. Historically, there are events about Jesus we can check out like other events in history, and there are theological reasons for these events that make what Jesus did really matter in our lives.

¹ Crux – Etymology, Origin & Meaning  
² Torrance, T.F.  The Trinitarian Faith, p 161.
³ Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 63-64.
⁴ Tacitus, Annales, Historiae, Chapter 15, paragraph 44
⁵ John-Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p 145.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead 
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:  
wordoflife@gracecom.church