For Paul, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was at the centre of preaching. We need to remember that the dreadful sight of crucified men hanging from the large cross-posts, on which they had been nailed, was not uncommon to people in the Roman empire. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for criminals, intended to deter other potential wrongdoers from being a nuisance to the authorities, so when Paul spoke of the cross he was speaking of something which was not an unfamiliar spectacle of the times.

Paul believed that the self-evident horror of the sinless Son of God hanging in agony on the cross-posts until he died was sufficient to shock those to whom Paul preached into realization of what sin meant without further elaboration from Paul. 'For when I was with you, I made up my mind to forget everything except Jesus Christ and especially his death on the cross .... I did not use big words and great learning' (1 Corinthians 2: 1-2). 1 Corinthians 1:23 reminds us of the revolution in Paul's understanding after his conversion: 'As for us, we proclaim the crucified Christ, a message that is offensive to the Jews and nonsense to the Gentiles.' Paul believed that Jesus Christ had died on behalf of all mankind (1 Corinthians 8: 11; I Thessalonians 5: 10; Romans 14: 15; Romans 3:23-24). It was the death of Jesus Christ which achieved reconciliation between man and God (Romans 5: 10, Ephesians 2: 13. Colossians 1:20). Paul understood the death of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice and in 1 Corinthians 5:7 says this, 'Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed'. At the Last Supper, of which the first written account is in 1 Corinthians 11 :23-25, it was made clear that Jesus was giving his body, that is, sacrificing himself, on behalf of mankind at the time that the great Jewish festival of the Passover was being celebrated. On the night of the rescue of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, through the power of God, their first-born sons were saved from death by the blood of the sacrificed lamb, sprinkled on the doorposts of their houses. Every subsequent Passover festival was a commemoration by the Jews of what God, their Saviour, had done for them. Another aspect of Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice is connected with the sacrifices offered for the removal of sin by the Jews. Paul understood the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ and his death as the supreme sacrifice, the divinely planned means of atonement for the sin of mankind. 2 Corinthians 5 :21 says, 'Christ was without sin but for our sake, God made him share our sin in order that in union with him, we might share the righteousness of God.' Romans 3:25 says, 'God offered him so that by his death he should become the means by which people's sins are forgiven through their faith in him'. 'We were God's enemies but he made us his friends through the death of his Son' (Romans 5: 1 0). Paul interprets Christ's death as a vicarious act of expiation, reflecting the interpretation by Jesus of his work in terms of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, according to the gospels.

Christ did not refuse total identification with sinful man, and refuse to accept the cross on which the sin of man nailed him. This shows, as nothing else could, the dreadful nature of the sin from Christ was saving mankind. Nothing can be sharper in contrast be the dreadfulness of sin and death, as seen on the cross of Calvary the marvel of the victory over sin and death, in the Resurrection.

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