Every theme developed in the Judeo-Christian scriptures began in the Torah. When the Apostles were recording the life and teachings of Messiah and themselves in what would become the New Testament, they referred often to the Torah, which the Jews should have known intimately enough to grasp the revelatory concepts introduced by Messiah in His incarnation and by His Spirit. So the Torah is a good place to start in researching the significance of the cross in God’s plan for our salvation. This post will look at the cross as a “pole”, cut of course from a “tree”. You will soon see why.

In Numbers 21:4-9 we read the story of the “Bronze Serpent on a Pole”, by which God offered escape from the certain death that awaited the Israelites because of their sin against God and His servant Moshe (Moses). Verse 9 says, “So Moshe made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole (as God had instructed him); and so it was that, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”

Although the serpent and staff have become the symbol for medical restoration of physical health, the greater eternal significance of that story would have been lost to us, had not Yeshua revealed in John 3:14-15, “Just as Moshe lifted up the serpent in the desert, so (I) the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Now, how did Moshe lift up the serpent? On a pole … commonly depicted (as in the 2014 Messianic Jewish Family Bible, Tree of Life Version) as a pole with a cross-beam near the top – in other words, a cross. That pole, by Yeshua’s own choice of words, was the implement on which He would pay the price for our sin and purchase for us eternal life!

I guarantee you, that pole was cut from a tree. But these first two scriptures cited above only begin to show some of the significance of the cross of Yeshua HaMashiach /Jesus the Christ. My next post will elaborate on the “tree” references, but already we can see the cross signifying the deliverance from the deathly consequnces of our sins, which Messiah effected for us by allowing Himself to be “lifted up” on that pole on Golgotha – to be crucified on a cross so that we could inherit His eternal life.

“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame.”  You may know that timeless 1913 hymn by George Bennard; and you may share his sentiment as I do, “But I love that old cross where the Deaest and Best for a world of lost sinners (including me) was slain.”

Recently I was challenged to defend the positive symbolism of the cross – that it is no longer just a reminder of the suffering and shame  inflicted on countless persons by the Romans in the time of Messiah’s incarnation. On the contrary, I maintain that the cross on which Messiah Yeshua was crucified stands apart from all other crosses, and the replicas of that empty cross can be legitimately used to symbolize the atonement, redemption, salvation and victory over death which Messiah purchased by His sacrifice, for “whosoever will” avail himself/herself of that blood-bought victory.

To back up this claim for my own assurance, I had to refresh my memory of many scriptures which have impressed Christians over the centuries with the positive symbolism of an empty cross. In the next few posts I will share on the scriptures I reviewed, noting that a “cross” consists of a stake or pole, derived from a tree, on which has been fixed a cross-bar.  All of those words crop up in different translations and expositions of these scriptures.