A pastor shared his experience of witnessing to a Jewish man. When the minister attempted to share about the death of Jesus on a cross, the man rebuffed him with these words: “Why do I want to believe in someone who is cursed by hanging on a tree?”
The suffering at the cross was a long and lonely endurance of shame for our Savior. Cicero, the great Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer who lived from 106 BC to 43 BC, said of crucifixion: “It was the most cruel and shameful of all punishments. Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen.”