This is one of my favorite images of Christ and the cross. It is not a historically accurate photo of what happened on Good Friday. Jesus didn’t climb a ladder to get onto the cross. But this image tells that Jesus was the active one, the agent, in the atonement that took place between God and man at the cross. He was not overtaken by a tragic turn of events, but he undertook to turn the course of history to reconciliation with the Father. He carried out in the flesh a plan he and his Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit had worked out long before.
I wrote more about this image in an earlier blog post back in 2006.