Nearly two thousand years ago, the world’s most powerful empire advertised its consummate contempt for the cross. Rome exempted its citizens from crucifixion, except in grave cases of treason. The Roman statesman, Cicero, condemned the cross as crudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicum (“a most cruel and disgusting punishment”).
In his defense of the elderly Senator Rabirus, who was charged with murder, Cicero insisted that “the very word ‘cross’ should be removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears.”
Nearly two thousand years later, in an epochal U-turn, the world’s most powerful empire amplified its unalloyed allegiance to the cross. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service — arguably the biggest event of its kind in U.S. history — preachers and politicians exalted Cicero’s crudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicum as the sole instrument of salvation for all humanity.
Almost every speaker asserted with unswerving assurance that Charlie is in heaven not because he was a great man who had done great deeds, but because, two millennia ago, a Jew had suffered a Roman execution on a cross. In that gruesome death, the man from Galilee did something inconceivable. He took the punishment for all Charlie’s sins upon Himself, giving Himself as a substitute, ransom, and atoning sacrifice for Charlie. Jesus Christ died in place of Charlie Kirk so that Charlie Kirk could live in Heaven with God forever.
The Gospel Is of “First Importance”
Dr. Frank Turek, one of my favorite apologists and Kirk’s mentor, put it most succinctly: “Charlie is not in Heaven because he sacrificed his life for Jesus. He is in Heaven because Jesus sacrificed His life for Charlie.”
As a priest and evangelist, I have spent much of my life proclaiming this message to Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Sikhs in India and to agnostics and atheists in the West. I know from long experience that “the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1Corinthians 1:18). I know I am frequently tempted to be “ashamed of the Gospel” (Romans 1:16) and to substitute the message of the cross with an “-ism” (Catholicism or Protestantism) or ideology or membership in a denomination or social justice or good works instead of preaching the cross.
Again and again, I have to remind myself not to major on minors but to preach what Paul himself considered the core of Jesus’s message: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1Corinthians 15:3-4). Imagine my joy when I saw that preachers and politicians at Charlie’s memorial service were hammering away at what Paul considered to be of “first importance” — not just Jesus’s crucifixion, but His death for our sins.
The New Testament has one word for this message: “Gospel” (good news). My mentor, the great Anglican preacher and theologian John Stott, emphasized this, writing: “The Gospel is not good advice to men, but good news about Christ; not an invitation to us to do anything, but a declaration of what God has done; not a demand, but an offer.” Stott was quick to remind his listeners that we are not saved by our good works but unto good works, and that while our good works do not justify us before God, our good works offer evidence of our faith and so justify us before men — hence there is no contradiction between Paul and James.
We got five hours of hot Gospel at Charlie’s memorial service.
The Gospel Is “According to the Scripture”
Rob McCoy, Charlie’s pastor and head of TPUSA Faith, opened the service, categorically refuting the concept of a works-based Christianity. “There is no effort that will bring us back into the presence of a righteous God. You see, the wages of sin is death.” McCoy then preached the atonement: “His blood was poured out because blood must be shed for the remission of sins, and His death upon that cross was sufficient for all the world’s sins, but only efficient for those who, like Charlie, would receive Him as their Savior.”
Speakers at the memorial service not only abided by Paul’s dictum on the “first importance” of Christ dying for our sins, but also stressed that the Gospel has to be according to the Scriptures. “Have you noticed that a lot of preachers don’t want to talk about what’s in the Bible if it’s counter to the social gospel?” renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson reminded the audience. Even Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was compelled to cite Scripture, saying: “Charlie was fearless. But where did his fearlessness come from? The answer lies in Corinthians.” She then recited 2 Corinthians 5:6-7.
As a biblical scholar, I was thrilled to discover that the diverse speakers at the event displayed an astonishing unanimity in understanding what the Gospel constitutes. I would perhaps regard this as central to Charlie’s memorial service because I get frustrated when many Christian leaders use the word “Gospel” without understanding what it really means. Worse, as a Vatican correspondent, I notice how they often use it as a cipher to promote a “Christ of good causes.”
In the field of New Testament scholarship, C. H. Dodd’s groundbreaking The Apostolic Preaching and its Development (1936) demonstrated that the evangelistic preaching of the early Church held to a fixed pattern, and there was a specific and broadly identifiable content to the Gospel proclamation. Most importantly, it was all about Jesus: Jesus as God’s Messiah (Christos) who fulfills the Hebrew Scriptures and becomes the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:5 who “was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
The Gospel Is Christ Imputing His Righteousness to Us
But there’s more to the Gospel than the Messiah bearing our sins and acquitting us as righteous before the judgment seat of God. Isaiah 53:11 goes on to declare that Yahweh’s servant will not only “bear their iniquities” but also “make many to be accounted righteous.” It is this aspect of the Gospel that becomes the hallmark of Pauline preaching. “For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” writes Paul (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Some of the leading Church Fathers described this glorious transaction as the “Great Exchange.” The second-century Epistle to Diognetus asks: “In whom was it possible for us, the lawless and ungodly, to be justified, except in the Son of God alone? O sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous person, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”
“The great exchange between Christ and sinners — debts for wealth, death for immortality, unrighteousness for righteousness, condemnation for justification, slavery for freedom — is the core of biblical soteriology,” writes Prof Michael Horton in his two-volume work Justification.
Erika Kirk undoubtedly shared her husband’s unshakeable confidence in the unadulterated Gospel: “We affirm that a person is saved only by faith, through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ at the cross,” the Statement of Faith on her website affirms. “Charlie loved his Savior with all of his heart, and he wanted every one of you to know Him. He wanted everyone to know that if they confess the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, then they will be saved. Believe me when I say this: nobody’s ever too young to know the Gospel,” she said in her first public message after Charlie was killed.
Living in the capital of what was once the world’s greatest empire, one of the exhibits I take my visiting friends to see is a graffito discovered on the Palatine Hill in second-century Rome. It is the first surviving picture of the crucifixion. A crude drawing depicts, stretched on a cross, a man with the head of a donkey. To the left stands another man, with one arm raised in worship. Scribbled underneath are the words ALEXAMENOS CEBETE THEON (Alexamenos worships God). Imperial Rome ridiculed the God on the cross as donkey worship.
“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God,” wrote Paul (1 Corinthians 1:27-30).
I don’t know about you, friend, but like Charlie Kirk, “I will cling to the old, rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown.”
Canon Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
