What is it like for the Kingsman to relate to Jesus, the Crucified One?
There’s a kind of silence that falls over a man when he finally stops explaining himself and simply stands still in front of what was done for him. That’s the silence the cross asks for before it asks for anything else. Not immediate application, not a lesson to carry into the week — just a man standing at a hill, looking at what it actually cost, before he’s ready to do anything with it at all. That’s the position the Kingsman gets to stand in when he relates to Jesus as the Crucified One.
Paul told the Corinthians he’d decided to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Not Jesus and His miracles, not Jesus and His wisdom on its own — Jesus and His cross, as if everything else could wait. Crucifixion in the first century was reserved for slaves, rebels, and the lowest of the condemned — a death designed to be as slow and as public as possible, precisely so that everyone watching would learn what happens to people who cross Rome (Philippians 2:8). That He would choose that, for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), is not a detail to move past quickly. Consider it on its own terms — the wisdom the world calls foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18), the peace secured through blood, not negotiation (Colossians 1:20), the debt cancelled and displayed, not hidden (Colossians 2:14), and the boast that has stopped needing an audience (Galatians 6:14).
The Wisdom the World Calls Foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). Paul doesn’t soften the reaction — the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those being saved it’s the power of God. The centre of the Christian message is not a teaching or a technique but a man dying the death of a criminal, and Paul’s answer to anyone embarrassed by that fact is not a better explanation — it’s simply to say that the perishing and the being-saved will never read the same event the same way, and no amount of polish changes which side of that line a man is standing on. The Kingsman feels the pull of that embarrassment too — across a desk, in a group chat, wherever the cross sounds like a strange thing to still believe in. He isn’t there to make it sound cleverer than it is. He’s there because what looks like folly across the table is, to him, the only place power was ever actually found.
The Peace Secured Through Blood (Colossians 1:20). Paul says God was pleased through Him to reconcile all things, making peace by the blood of His cross. Not by a treaty. Not by both sides giving a little ground. Peace, in every other place a man goes looking for it, is a compromise — something worked out, argued into existence, held together by both parties continuing to behave. This peace was not worked out. It was purchased, once, at a cost neither side is still paying, and that changes what kind of peace it actually is. A man who has only ever known the negotiated kind will keep waiting for the other shoe to drop — replaying the argument at two in the morning, rehearsing the apology he thinks might finally close the account. But there is no account left open here to reopen. The peace of the cross does not need the Kingsman to keep it standing. It was never his to keep in the first place.
The Debt Cancelled and Displayed (Colossians 2:14). Paul pictures it almost like a notice pinned up in public — the record of debt that stood against the Kingsman, with all its demands, cancelled and nailed to the cross. There is something almost unbearable about that image if you let it sit for a moment: not a debt quietly forgiven in private, where no one has to know, but a debt read out loud and settled where it could be seen, nailed to the same wood that killed the one who paid it. Most men would rather the quiet version. There’s a folder some men carry in their heads — the years wasted, the people let down, the version of themselves they hope nobody finds — and the instinct is always to keep it filed, half-guarded, in case it’s needed as evidence again one day. Paul says that folder was already opened. Read. Cancelled. Displayed at Calvary for anyone who cared to look, with nothing left in it that still has a claim on the Kingsman’s name.
The Boast That Has Stopped Needing an Audience (Galatians 6:14). Far be it from Paul to boast in anything except the cross of Christ, by which the world was crucified to him, and he to the world. An execution as the one thing worth boasting in — that should stop a reader for longer than it usually does. Every other boast a man has ever made needs a witness to mean anything; it dies the moment nobody’s watching. This one doesn’t need the room at all. It was true before anyone in the room existed, and it will be true after everyone in it has forgotten his name. The Kingsman still feels the tug of the old kind — wanting the credit noticed, wanting the room to register what it cost him. But there is nothing left in that market he actually needs to buy. What was settled at the cross doesn’t require renewal by applause.
Relating to the King as the Crucified One has so many great merits to help the Kingsman stay unashamed of a message the world calls foolish, secure in a peace he did not negotiate and cannot lose, free from a debt already read out and cancelled, and released from an audience his boasting no longer needs.
That’s what it means to relate to Jesus as the Crucified One in the life of the Kingsman.
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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