In the ancient world, crosses communicated to everyone that the violent, the brutally ambitious, and the merciless reign over the earth. Crosses were not just the way people died. Crosses were instruments of slavery. Crosses announced the rule of death and evil, dysfunction and despair. But this is no longer the case.

Because of a single man, the cross is no longer an icon of death but a symbol of everlasting life. The cross is no longer the tool of a dysfunctional world but the sign that this world is being remade. The cross is no longer a picture of oppression, of despair, of duress; the cross no longer screams out that God is absent or that death is the future of all.

Because of Jesus, the cross has a different message.

The cross now announces that all that was once sick can be restored, that evil will not have the last word, that God has not abandoned us like so much trash but that he is near in a fundamentally new way. Above all, the cross will never again be the sign that the wicked rule the world, for the cross displays that only this kind of man is worthy of a title like “king.”