Why Was Christ Crucified? Part 2

Last time I had a look at one of the reasons Christ was crucified, that is, because he became a curse and as it was written in the law, ‘Cursed is every one who hangs on a tree’.

There is another reason that I’d like to consider today. Christ’s crucifixion was the largest altar to ever exist. We spend too long looking at the cross as ‘a cross’. It was a tree. It was wood. It was on a ‘mountain’ that our Lord was to die upon. The cross was the timber, and He was the Lamb of God come to take away the sins of the world.

When you look at the altar in Scripture, you’ll notice in particular with the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon that there is an expanding concept. In the Tabernacle, the brazen altar was 5 x 5 cubits. In the Temple of Solomon, the altar was 20 x 20 cubits. I believe one of the reasons for this was God telling us there’s something very important about the altar (you see the same with the brazen laver). Now we come to Calvary, the ultimate fulfillment of the altar, here we find the actual Lamb being laid upon the wood which is upon a mountain. What was roughly 8 x 8 feet now is a mountain!

What other means of death involved timber in such a way? Thus we see in Calvary, the world’s largest altar with blood that has the power to free every person who ever lived from the curse of sin.