Crucified Messiah

In the first century, it must have sounded like a contradiction in terms, like frozen steam or hateful love or upward decline or godly rapist-only far more shocking. For many Jews, the long-expected Messiah had to come in splendor and glory; he had to begin his reign with uncontested power. “Crucified Messiah”: this juxtaposition of words is only a whisker away from blasphemy, since every Jew knows that God himself has declared that everyone who hangs in shame on a tree stands under God’s curse (Duet. 21:23). How could God’s Messiah be under God’s curse? How could God’s Messiah be crucified? To the Jew, the very idea is a “stumbling block” (1:23), the ultimate scandal. That is what Paul himself thought before he was converted. He was outraged that the fellow Jews should honor as Messiah, indeed as God himself, a man whom God had obviously cursed (see Gal. 1:13-14; 3:13)

- D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, 21-22.