The dominant idea today is that Jesus’ death on the cross was “God’s eternal plan,” the very purpose of the Incarnation and the absolute centre of salvation. This view is especially promoted by the apostle Paul, who calls the “crucified Christ” the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) and declares: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
But one fundamental question must be asked:
Was the cross truly God’s plan, or was it the free decision of human beings who rejected the Anointed One?
This is not a theoretical question. The answer completely changes the meaning of the entire biblical story:
- If the death of Jesus was planned from eternity, then God bears ultimate responsibility, and the cross becomes a willed and justified “means.”
- If, however, the death was the free choice of men, then the cross is not divine wisdom, but a crime, exactly as the biblical prophecies and Jesus’ own words present it.
The Gospels portray the final confrontation between the Anointed One sent by God and a world that refused Him. At the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus is acclaimed:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38).
This is the exact fulfilment of Zechariah 9:9:
“Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey…”
That was God’s will: that the Anointed One be recognised, welcomed, followed.
That was humanity’s opportunity: to accept or reject Him.
Yet instead of acceptance, God’s Anointed is arrested, tried, mocked, and crucified. The authors of this act are not only the Romans, but above all the religious leaders of Israel, who openly declare:
“We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die” (John 19:7)
and
“We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).
This is not wisdom. It is the deliberate choice to reject the Anointed One. It is humanity’s decision not to accept the Truth.
Then Paul steps in and proclaims that this very crucifixion, this very rejection of the Anointed One, is God’s supreme wisdom:
“We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called… the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24).
With this statement Paul completely inverts the meaning of the event. What the Gospels present as a moral failure and crisis becomes, in Paul, the very centre of God’s eternal plan. He turns the idea into a theological axiom: whoever accepts this “wisdom” is enlightened; whoever does not is blind or foolish.
This is not a theology of freedom and truth, but a theology of paradox modelled on Hellenistic philosophy, in which truth is the opposite of what appears to be.
In this study we will therefore examine:
- What the actual prophecies say about the Anointed One and what God expected from the world.
- What Jesus Himself said about His mission, the world’s response, and the meaning of the cross.
- How Paul reinterpreted the cross as the supreme revelation.
- Which philosophical technique Paul used to transform a crime into “eternal wisdom.”
- What consequences this theology has had on the authentic message of the Anointed One.
The goal is not polemic, but clarity. The reader must see plainly what happened, what each party actually said, and how the Pauline system that still dominates Christianity today was constructed.