Jesus carried the crossbeam on his shoulders, not the whole cross; he was nailed to crossbeam, hoisted on the upright timber and nailed his feet to the wood using one long nail. [1] Simon of Cyrene carried the crossbeam to Jesus from the gates to Golgotha. [2]
The fact of the cross became the very center of subsequent Christianity; but it is not the central truth of the religion which may be derived from the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. [3]
Although Jesus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; notwithstanding that these ideas of atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, it is a fact that Urantia has become known among other neighboring inhabited planets as the “World of the Cross”. Jesus lived and died for a whole universe, not just for the races of this one world. [4]
The cross of Jesus portrays the full measure of the supreme devotion of the true shepherd for even the unworthy members of his flock. Jesus’ death on the cross exemplifies a love which is sufficiently strong and divine to forgive sin and swallow up all evil-doing. [5]
On other worlds, as well as on Urantia, this sublime spectacle of the death of the human Jesus on the cross of Golgotha has stirred the emotions of mortals, while it has aroused the highest devotion of the angels. [6]
We know that the death on the cross was not to effect man’s reconciliation to God but to stimulate man’s realization of the Father’s eternal love and his Son’s unending mercy, and to broadcast these universal truths to a whole universe. [7]
The triumph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Jesus’ attitude toward those who assailed him. He made the cross an eternal symbol of the triumph of love over hate and the victory of truth over evil when he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. [8]
The cross does stand as the token of the highest form of unselfish service, the supreme devotion of the full bestowal of a righteous life in the service of wholehearted ministry. [9]