Crucification Not an English Word

As you read the above title, you read a word that doesn’t seem to appear in the English language, that is, crucification.  No one used crucification in the history of theology either.  Men used the concept of crucification, but not the word itself.

You have the English words crucify, crucified, and crucifixion.  You find those in a dictionary.  However, the words “mortification” and “vivification” do occur, which are in the spirit of crucification.  I’m still going to use “crucification,” because no one has a word to represent a separate doctrine, that is a definite unique feature of salvation in scripture.

Crucifixion and Crucification

Crucifixion is a kind of death.  Someone dies physically on a cross.  Apparently either the Assyrians or the Babylonians invented crucifixion as a means of execution, but the Persians then used it regularly.  It finally got to the Romans, who are most famous in history for crucifixion.  When Jesus died on the cross, it was Roman crucifixion.  The Lord Jesus made the cross a symbol and then the Apostle Paul took it further in Romans and Galatians.

If I say, the doctrine of crucifixion, that doesn’t mean anything.  If I say, the doctrine of mortification, that means something.  However, is it the same as, bear with me, a doctrine of crucification?  I use that “word” because crucification as a doctrine is different than mortification, as I see it in scripture.  Both crucification and mortification involve death, but mean something significantly different.  You can see that by the usage of “crucified” and “mortify” in the New Testament.

“Crucified,” “Mortify,” and “Dead”

“Crucified”

Galatians 5:24 says,

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

To clarify and summarize everything that he said in Galatians 5, Paul wrote Galatians 5:24.  He had written earlier in Galatians something similar in 2:20:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

The only other place you see this is again by Paul in Romans 6:6:

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

We should add Galatians 6:14, because it fits here too:

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

Paul uses the word “crucified” (sustauroo or stauroo).  The word “cross” is the noun, stauros.  Galatians 5:24 is aorist active.  Galatians 2:20 is perfect passive.  Romans 6:6 is aorist passive.  Galatians 6:14 is perfect passive.  All four of these verbs mean completed action in the past.  The active is the subject doing something.  The passive is the subject having something done to it.  The perfect means completed action, yet with ongoing results.

“Mortify”

Before I dive back into crucification, that non-word in the English language, consider the references that mention mortification.

Romans 8:13, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”

Colossians 3:5, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Those are the only two times “mortify” appears in the King James Version.  They are actually two different Greek words.  Romans 8:13 is thanatoo, which is present indicative active, continuous action.  Colossians 3:5 is nekroo, which is aorist imperative active.  That is aorist, which is not continuous action.  However, both Romans 8:13 and Colossians 3:5 describe something occurring post-justification, that is, after the point of someone’s conversion.

“Dead”

The New Testament also uses the word “dead” in the verb form, describing a completed condition at the moment of justification.  For instance, Romans 6:2 says:

God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Peter also writes in 1 Peter 2:24:

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Both of those are the Greek word, apothnesko, and both aorist indicative active.  They are again completed action.

Crucification and Mortification, Different

From all the scriptural data, crucification and mortification are different.  Crucification occurs at the moment of salvation.  It’s completed then.  One could also say that it occurred at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, since Paul uses the language, “crucified with Christ.”  Crucification occurred with Christ at His crucifixion and occurred at the moment of conversion.

On the other hand, mortification occurs after conversion or after justification.  It keeps occurring.  Mortification will not stop in the life of a believer until his glorification.  He keeps putting to death the deeds of his body and his members until he sees Jesus.

Maybe you’re already asking some good questions like these:  “Why does someone need to keep putting to death something that is already dead?  If I am crucified, past tense and completed action, why more ongoing putting to death of apparently the same thing?  If true believers are dead indeed unto sin at the moment of conversion, why does God require further putting to death or mortification?”

What Is Crucification?

The questions of the previous paragraph are good questions and they relate to the doctrine of crucification.

Jesus died by crucifixion.  Crucifixion is a particular kind of death, a slow death.  This helps those in Galatia and Rome to understand why they still struggle with sin.  Jesus hung on the cross for hours.

The flesh is crucified at the moment of conversion, the instance of justification, but he necessarily keeps dying a slow death of crucifixion.  As a result, he must continue dying.  He becomes more and more dead to the flesh and its affections and lusts and to the world.  He becomes more alive then as well.  The latter is the doctrine of vivification.

Judicial Death and Ethical Death

Galatians 5:24 says true believers at the moment of their conversion “have crucified the flesh.”  Thomas Ross is the only one in church history that I read who refers to Romans 6:6:  “the body dominated by sin when the Christian was still unconverted, has been judicially destroyed.”  That language, judicially destroyed, I believe Ross coins.  Ross writes:

Judicial and Ethical Destruction

The “body of sin,” the body dominated by sin when the Christian was still unconverted, has been judicially destroyed.  This destruction is associated with positional sanctification.  In terms of progressive sanctification, the flesh, the ethically sinful “body of sin,” has received its death blow, and its ultimate destruction at glorification is certain, as a man who is on a cross is certain of ultimate death, although he still can struggle and fight within certain limits.

The flesh within the believer is certain of utter destruction at death or the return of Christ, but during this life, although crucified and growing weaker, it can still influence the Christian to sin. These remnants of sin in the believer are to be mortified, put to death, to bring the legal and judicial truth and the ultimate certainty of glorification closer to practical reality in this life.

Glorification

This crucifixion with Christ in the believer has the result “that the body of sin might be destroyed.” This destruction, judicially completed at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, and positionally and legally declared for the believer at the moment of his regeneration, will take place ultimately at glorification, when the remnants of sin in the Christian are entirely removed, finally and completely destroyed.

However, the beginnings of this utter destruction are already set in motion, even as the crucifixion of the old man with Christ, which took place legally at the time of the Savior’s own crucifixion and begins experientially in the life of the elect at the point of their regeneration, progressively removes the life and strength from the old man, the body of sin.

Negative Mortification and Positive Vivification

The negative aspects of the progressive mortification of sin in this life, is the converse to the vivification, the progressive cleansing, sanctification of the believer, and growth of the new man, produced by the Triune God and especially the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures. This vivification culminates in glorification, when the Christian will be entirely without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:26-27).

I broke his one paragraph into five paragraphs, which are still hard to read.  I encourage you to read it again to get a grasp of (what I’m calling) “crucification” versus mortification.  Crucification, mortification, and vivification are all three necessary.

The Slow Death of Crucifixion

Strong

Augustus Strong agrees with this position on crucification, that it is a slow death.  He wrote in his Systematic Theology:

The Christian is “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20), but the crucified man does not die at once.  Yet he is as good as dead.  Even after the old man is crucified, we are still to mortify him or put him to death (Rom. 8:13, Col. 3:5).

Fraser

James Fraser in his The Scripture Doctrine of Sanctification wrote speaking of Romans 6:6:

The expression . . . is not, that the old man is put to death.  Persons may live a considerable while, yea, some days on the cross.  Crucifixion is not a state of death, but a state of pain, and torment, tending to death.

Fraser also saw Paul for a specific purpose use “crucified” rather than “put to death.”  “Crucified” is a slow death akin to the reality of sanctification.  It could harmonize with the completed action of “crucified” and the ongoing action of “mortify.”  He never called a separate doctrine.  I am.

Henry

Matthew Henry in his commentary through the Bible on Romans 6 wrote:

The death of the cross was a slow death; the body, after it was nailed to the cross, gave many a throe and many a struggle: but it was a sure death, long in expiring, but expired at last; such is the mortification of sin in believers. It was a cursed death, Galatians 3:13. Sin dies as a malefactor, devoted to destruction; it is an accursed thing. Though it be a slow death, yet this must needs hasten it that it is an old man that is crucified; not in the prime of its strength, but decaying: that which waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

Ross differentiates what occurs when one has crucified the flesh with mortification by characterizing the former as “judicial” and the latter as “ethical.”  This is a good differentiation.

Evidence of Crucification

As a part of crucification in Galatians 5:24, Paul says “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”  Let’s call “affections” in this case, “feelings,” and “lusts,” “desires.”  “Feelings” and “desires” come along with “the flesh.”  A believer does not operate characteristically, habitually, or as a lifestyle according to his feelings and desires.

A believer crucified “feelings” and “desires” when he became “Christ’s.”  He does not function according to his feelings and desires, but Christ’s will, because he is Christ’s.  In Galatians, Paul says he “walks in the Spirit.”  He no longer fulfills the lusts of the flesh, which produce the works of the flesh.

The crucifixion of the flesh at the point of conversion is reality.  How does someone know it occurred?  He doesn’t see the works of the flesh in his life in a characteristic or habitual way or as a lifestyle.  He sees instead fruit of the Spirit.

In addition, someone with a crucified flesh will continue mortifying his members and the deeds of his body.  He will not allow sin to reign in his mortal body (Rom 6:12).  He lives in the Spirit.