The Centrality of the Cross
W. Holman Hunt (1827-1910) spent 3 years in the Holy Land, and painted 'The Shadow of Death' in Jerusalem. Inside of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth, Jesus lifts His eyes toward heaven and as he raises His arms, a dark shadow in the form of a cross is cast on the back wall. Though the idea is historically fictitious, it is also theologically true. From Jesus' youth, indeed even from His birth, the cross cast its shadow ahead of Him. His death was central to His mission. Moreover, the church has always reconized this.
From John R.W. Stott's, The Cross of Christ, InterVarsity Press, 1986, p. 17Jesus's Coming Death
Jesus prepared the disciples for his death by teaching them about it in advance. These prophecies grew in detail: at first, merely Jesus' death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21); next, his betrayal (Matthew 17:22); third, the involvement of the Gentiles in His mocking, flogging and specifically his crucifixion (Matthew 20:18-19); and finally the date (Matthew 26:2).The Cross
The Christians' choice of a cross as the symbol of their faith is most surprising when we remember the horror with which crucifixion was regarded in the ancient world. We can understand why Paul's 'message of the cross' was to many of his listeners 'foolishness', even 'madness' (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23). How could any sane person worship as a god a dead man who had been justly condemned as a criminal and subjected to the most humiliating form of execution? ...Crucifixion seems to have been invented by 'barbarians' on the edge of the known world, and taken over from them by both Greeks and Romans. ...If the Romans regarded crucifixion with horror, so did the Jews, though for a different reason. They made no distinction between a 'tree' and a 'cross' and so between a hanging and a crucifixion. They therefore automatically applied to crucified criminals the terrible statement of the law that 'anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse' (Deuteronomy 21:23) They could not bring themselves to believe that God's Messiah would die under this curse, strung up on a tree.
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The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christrians stubbornly refused, in spite of the ridicule, to discard it in favour of something less offensive, can have only one explanation. It means that the centrality of the cross originated in the mind of Jesus Himself. It was out of loyality to Him that His followers clung so doggedly to this sign.
(The Cross of Christ, p. 23-25)
Painting can be seen at the Manchester City Art Galleries.