Sometimes it’s thought that the suffering and death of Jesus Christ was a defeat that God then overturned in His resurrection. But that is not the case. Jesus was not defeated in His death. He won! The resurrection continued and magnified the victory. But Christ’s anguish and death preceding it were vital components of that victory—coming exactly as He and the Father had planned, on the exact day, and with Him succeeding in resisting sin until the moment He died, overcoming the devil, so that He could be the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God to redeem humanity from sin and death.
Moreover, something else to examine more closely is that the portrayal of Jesus’ suffering and death in the Gospels shows the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus in what many now understand to be a reversal of their greatest honor bestowed on high generals and during the empire only emperors—the Roman triumph (“triumph” here referring to a specific Roman processional ceremony rather than the modern generic usage of a big win or celebration of victory).
Indeed, while Roman emperors declared their lordship and divinity in various ways, none was more dramatic and direct than the imperial triumph. Yet God was turning the soldiers’ mockery on its head. For, as we will see, the New Testament presents Jesus’ path to His crucifixion as a far greater triumph than imperial glory—the ultimate exaltation that put to shame earthly powers and the demonic forces behind them!
The rise of the imperial triumph
The Roman triumph was a massive victory parade presenting spoils of conquest with key steps that honored and recognized the raising of the one being honored to divine glory or godhood. It developed from earlier Etruscan and Greek ceremonies calling for a manifestation of Dionysus, the supposed dying and rising god triumphant over men (a corrupt element of ancient false religion that, through demonic influence, counterfeited the foretold death and resurrection of the true Messiah).