by Ramesh Richard

It did to me at 50, what it did to me at 5 when I first heard my mother describe the Cross—entering the story of my Savior with tears, thanks, and eventually personal trust. This movie refreshed that childhood experience. The crustiness of adulthood had managed to cover up the intensity of Cross. The brutal movie overwhelmed, disarmed, and renewed me all at the same time, at all different levels. Here is my stumbling attempt to present my immediate response with grateful mind and heart.

“The Passion of the Christ” Movie:

• Humanizes the Lord Jesus: We tend to “humanize” God and “gnosticize” Christ—both basic theological errors! I have discussed the historicity of the resurrection elsewhere, but this movie powerfully presented the earthiness of Christ’s suffering. He wasn’t floating above and around the Cross in ghost-like distance—He experienced temptation and death.

• De-sanitizes the Cross: Every physical reminder of the Cross, whether on steeple or necklace—they told me of 33,000 cross-designs in Ethiopia—moves it hence from accessorized ornament to atrocious instrument of death, torture, and … salvation.

• Exclusivizes Christ’s salvation: Getting people into heaven in any other way than by the ontological and epistemological necessity of the Lord Jesus Christ faces huge biblical, theological, and existential questions: “If God could have brought people to Himself in any other way than this one, wouldn’t He have thought one up? If they could come to heaven without personally recognizing Christ’s provision, why would Christ personally have to go through this dastardly means?”

• Scandalizes human sin: My first public comments were heartfelt: “I don’t know how I can sin any more with rationalization.” I had overlooked how outrageously my slightest sin offends the Judge of all the earth—the reason He chose the parallel outrageous act of the Cross. Wrongdoing in any form, by believer or non-believer, joins a cosmic rebellion and requires a divine death strategy to solve it and save me.

• Magnifies God’s grace: I felt unworthy of divine favor through out the film. The Cross seemed to evidence divine “stupidity.” I would have been open to serve hell out to prevent the Son of God taking my place. Except, He knows hell better than I do. Indeed God’s grace was the reason that He groveled with the Father to forgive the nature and scope of my sins, about which I am grossly ignorant. The Cross definitely awakens God’s grace in my innermost being.

• Crushes my pride: I wish I could have deserved a small bit of what He went through to execute his eternal initiative on my behalf. A survey of the Cross helps me, like one hymn writer points out, to “pour contempt on all my pride.” We are uniformly small before His provision. The Cross grates against my littlest pride and yet engulfs me with gratitude—the sure plug to drain pride.

• Compels our service: “His sacrifice was not for us only, but also for the whole world” says an eyewitness. Yes, upon my embrace of His provision, he rescues me from eternal lostness. Since, he paid for the sins of the whole world, I carry a sacred oughtness, an obligation to present the foolishness of the Cross everywhere.

To this list I could add a heightened awareness of human worth, spiritual warfare, and begin a solution to the problem of evil in the Cross-event. Jesus’ piercing love, through the one glazed, dazed, bloody eye, peered out from the screen and pierced me. His passion for me also elicits my own soul’s passion for Him. It demands my soul, my life, my all…and yours!