Why He Did Not Choose His Own Death

But we must answer in advance what others too might say. For perhaps someone might even put it this way: if his death had to take place before all, with witnesses, so that the story of his resurrection too might be believed, it would at least have been better for him to devise a glorious death for himself, if only to escape the shame of the cross. But had he done even this, he would have given grounds for suspicion against himself, that he did not have power over every death, but only over the death devised for him. And so, all the same, there would again have been an excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. So death came to his body not from himself, but from the plots of his enemies, so that whatever death they offered the Savior, this he might do away with completely. [a]

A noble wrestler, great in skill and courage, does not pick his opponents for himself, or he might raise the suspicion that he is afraid of some of them. He leaves the choice to the spectators, especially if they happen to be his enemies, so that whomever they match him against, he may throw, and be believed to be stronger than them all. In the same way the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, Christ, did not devise a death for his own body, so as not to seem afraid of some other death. Instead he accepted and endured on the cross a death inflicted by others, above all by his enemies, a death they thought dreadful, shameful and not to be faced. And so, when this death too was destroyed, he himself might be believed to be the Life, and the power of death might be brought utterly to nothing. So something surprising and astonishing has happened: the death they meant to inflict as a disgrace became in fact a monument of victory over death itself. That is why he did not suffer the death of John, by having his head cut off, nor was he sawn in two like Isaiah. Even in death he was to keep his body undivided and perfectly whole, and give no excuse to those who would divide the church.