It wasn’t God on the cross

I had an opportunity to present a paper at the Unitarian Christian Alliance (UCA) UK Conference in July 2024 which you can watch on the UCA YouTube channel. I had chosen a topic that explores how the Bible presents the death of Jesus, specifically looking for whether there were any scriptures that may demonstrate that the biblical authors believed that it was God on the cross.

My talk’s title lays out my conclusion fairly bluntly(!) – It wasn’t God on the cross. My main objective was to show that there isn’t a single passage in any biblical text that presents the person on the cross as God. I hope my systematic presentation is helpful to those exploring this idea or perhaps coming across the biblical data for the first time.

The full data I refer to in the presentation is available here.

It wasn’t God on the cross – Precisely articulating Christianity in a secular world

My paper was inspired in part by reading Glen Scrivener’s great little book The Air we Breathe and other related recent titles. In this book, Scrivener effectively demonstrates how Christianity changed the world from the cruel Roman empire to a society where, at least in some measure, certain Christian values are taken for granted. Scrivener correctly identifies the cross of Christ as the centrepiece event that turned everything upside down. He writes that, “the cross came down from violent powers on high to crush the contemptible and maintain the “just” order of the empire – in fact, of the cosmos. To look upon a victim of crucifixion was to see a man at rock bottom. And then Christians came along and said, “We see something else”. Their claim was the most revolutionary imaginable: that God himself had hung on a cross.” ^[1]

I agree that the cross of Jesus turned everything on its head. But, as my presentation shows, there is no hint within the New Testament that the first Christians believed that God was on the cross. The perfect man, God’s son and anointed king, was humiliated and shamed, and yet Christians claimed that he was raised and vindicated, and king of the world. That their king was prepared to suffer shame to save all people, great or small, was sufficient and powerful to bring about the revolution in hearts and minds of the Western world. There is no need to posit that it was God on the cross. As you can hear in the video, I argue that this is imprecise, unnecessary and contradictory to the biblical claims.

Is God on the cross? Questions I’ve received

After my presentation, I received several questions in the room and I’ve also had some online interaction about the content of my paper. I have included some additional thoughts below about three passages that I didn’t either refer to at all or glossed over very briefly. These passages are additional scriptures that could be interpreted to indicate that the biblical authors believed that God was on the cross.

Zechariah 12:10 – Is God pierced?

I received this question in the room. Trinitarians will often turn to this passage and where it is quoted in the New Testament to claim that Jesus is God because he fulfills this prophecy. Here is the passage from Zechariah.

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

The New Testament refers to this passage twice, firstly in John:

“But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.” (John 19:33-37).

And also in Revelation:

“…and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood [6] and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. [7] Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” (Revelation 1:5-7).

I don’t believe this counts as a convincing “God on the cross” verse for several reasons:

• Firstly, the text is not 100% certain within this verse. It could be that the people of Israel will look on “me”, i.e. God, but not all the manuscript evidence points to this.
• Secondly, if it is the genuine reading, the initial recipients of Zechariah’s message would almost certainly have understood this as metaphorical or representative. For example, Hill’s Tyndale commentary states: “Given the larger context of Zechariah’s message, his audience probably understood the statement both figuratively as a reference to the rejection of YHWH’s prophets by their ancestors (cf. Zech. 1:4; 7:11–12), and literally to one or more of God’s servants (whether prophets, priests or royalty) recently murdered by the Davidic and priestly leadership of Judah.” ^[2]
• Jesus is to be a subsequent fulfillment of this passage, as claimed by the New Testament. But fulfillment of prophetic texts doesn’t automatically mean that the one who fulfills a scripture is the exact individual originally referred to. John the Baptist wasn’t literally Elijah (Malachi 4:5, Matthew 11:14).
• Jesus is presented in the New Testament as a representative of God, (his agent, or one who manifests the Father), and this is nowhere more obvious than the writings of John, (e.g. John 14:8-9). Furthermore, those who receive Jesus, receive the one who sent him, (Matthew 10:40, John 13:20). Therefore it follows, that those who pierce Jesus, also pierce the one who sent him, just as the rejection of God’s prophets in Zechariah’s time period were a metaphorical piercing of God.
• Finally, John quotes this verse from Zechariah after emphasising the charge against Jesus of claiming to be king, (John 19:1, 13-15, 19-22), and the son of God, (John 19:7). If he wanted to use this citation to demonstrate that he believed that the man on the cross was also God, he has not made that very clear at all. It is better to apply Zechariah 12:10 to Jesus as God’s appointed prophet (and unique son) suffering at the hands of the Jewish rulers whilst simultaneously representing the metaphorical piercing that God’s people are inflicting on him through rejecting his own son.

Revelation 2:8 – The first and the last who died

Neither is this the best contextual interpretation, for the following reasons:

• Jesus and “God” are distinguished from verse one of this book. God gave the revelation to Jesus Christ, who passed it on via an angel to John (Revelation 1:1-2). Therefore Jesus is immediately seen as a different individual to the one called “God”.
• Reading further, it turns out that “God” in Revelation is actually the God of Jesus. So not only is Jesus distinguished from God in the text, his Father is specially called his God, (Revelation 1:6).
• The Alpha and Omega in Revelation 1:8, who is “the Lord God”, is the same individual who is the God of Jesus and his Father. This means that the Father of Jesus is the Lord God. This is again a very clear distinction between God almighty and his son, Jesus Christ.
• Jesus is indeed described as “the first and the last” (Revelation 1:17-18) but the meaning of this is clarified. He is the “firstborn from the dead” (Revelation 1:5). It is an expression of the unique and fully effective death and resurrection that Jesus has experienced through the shedding of his blood, since he is the one who holds the keys to death and Hades.
• The distinction between Jesus, who died and shed his blood, and God, who never dies, is consistently upheld in the rest of the book. Jesus again refers to his “God”, e.g. Revelation 3:12, and the lamb that enters the vision in chapter 5 is the one that has been slain, who is always distinguished from God who is seated on the throne.

Acts 20:28 – The blood of God?

Talk of the blood of Jesus leads us on to a final passage which I addressed very briefly in my paper. Acts 20:28, in some versions, suggests that God obtained the church “with his own blood”. Is this, finally, a single verse that allows us to say that it was “God on the cross”?

This is in part a translation question, which I’m not qualified to judge. Essentially, this phrase could be “his [i.e. God’s] own blood” or “the blood of his own”. If the former, it would be a striking and peculiar anomaly in the sea of evidence that I’ve gone through in my paper. If the latter, it would be an elliptical reference to Jesus, i.e. the blood of his own son.

In my paper I simply referred to the NET Bible translation (“blood of his own Son”) and supporting note.^[3] Whilst I’m not qualified to comment on translation matters, I can look at the number of times in the Bible that the blood of the cross effected forgiveness of salvation, (how it works, whether a transaction or metaphor, is another story entirely), and decide whether there is any hint of the blood ever being from God himself. This is in itself a whole new topic, but suffice to say there is nowhere else in the Bible that could possibly refer to the blood of God. Indeed, the blood of Christ is regularly described in verses where Jesus is specifically distinguished from God, (e.g. Romans 3:25, Romans 5:9, Ephesians 2:12-13, Hebrews 9:14, Revelation 5:9). It therefore seems extremely tenuous to suggest that this one verse, the translation of which is far from certain, can overturn the mountain of evidence that is within the rest of the New Testament.

Conclusion – It wasn’t God on the cross

I hope that this presentation is useful for those seeking to understand the Biblical evidence and working out what it means for their Christian faith. We don’t need to be bogged down with imprecise and unbiblical creeds or language of fourth century speculation. Jesus Christ, and him crucified, is the power of God which can transform hearts and minds.

Related content

• Our podcast episode on the relevance of Christianity for today explored the themes that are discussed in Scrivener’s book, as well as the work of Tom Holland in Dominion.
• Within the presentation, I referred to our podcast on Philippians 2.
• For more about the UCA conference, listen to our discussion with Mark Cain and Dale Tuggy.

^[1] Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress and equality, (The Good Book Company, 2022), 37

^[2] Hill, Andrew E. 2012. Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary. Edited by David G. Firth. Vol. 28. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press.

^[3] “Grk “with the blood of his own.” The genitive construction could be taken in two ways: (1) as an attributive genitive (second attributive position) meaning “his own blood”; or (2) as a possessive genitive, “with the blood of his own.” In this case the referent is the Son, and the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity”. Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005).