During Lent, we remember Jesus, the One who “…humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross! (Phil. 2:8).” It is sometimes tempting to sanitize and romanticize the cross, but this ancient ritual introduced to Rome by the Phoenicians in the 3rd century BC was no romantic matter. Death on a cross resulted in a brutal and violent death which lasted anywhere from 4-6 hours, and which resulted in, among other things, hemorrhage, asphyxia, dehydration, and cardiac arrest.