A Crucified Savior is King of All?

If you recognize the picture here you’ve likely done some study into the earliest generations surrounding the Christian Religion in the world. The picture is from around AD 200 from Italy depicting a mockery of the idea of Jesus being a Savior who was crucified. A man worshipping this crucified man with the head of a donkey is being mocked. It’s not exactly a work by Raphael but it gets the point across. More details below. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness to a lot of people. To believe in many miracles is. It is humbling to read the Bible and to bow one’s head to it.
But the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the answer to the sin and death of this present world. Adam, the first man—with his wife—sinned, and plunged creation into separation with God. But God, having decreed it all, has promised he will renew his creation. Cf. Romans 8:20-21. Man has lived in this fallen intermediate period of existence since. Through Christ’s earthly life the promise to fix it all is now nearly done. The next phase of God’s revealed plan to erase our sin and the death and suffering married to it will be Christ’s return to earth, a final judgment, and then that new heavens and new earth will arrive.
Back to this picture. Everett Ferguson writes: “The popular ridicule of Christianity is seen in the graffito scratched on a stone in a guardroom on Palatine Hill near the Circus Maximus in Rome. The figure of a man with the head of an ass is shown hanging on a cross. Nearby another man raises his hand in a gesture of adoration, and the inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” Jews had been charged with worshiping an ass; this calumny was here transferred to Jesus. As repulsive as the picture is to Christians now, it conveys strongly how contemptible the idea of a crucified Lord was to pagan thinking.” (Citation: Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 596.) Paul writes under inspiration: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.” 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 (NASB95). The Cross is the superlative of all of this. The Creator, the King, the only eternal being washing the feet of sinners and making propitiation for them on a Cross?! Get outta here with that nonsense!  
I hope Alexamenos got it though. (We know nothing of him at all outside of this by the way). Reader, Christianity is accessible to everyone. From the most august to the least esteemed. From the brightest to the dullest. The world mocks God, but according to the passage above, God will mock and shame the world who denies his wisdom in the Resurrection of Jesus. Consider one other passage with me today if you would please: “…God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” Note the varying reactions: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” Acts 17:30b-32. This was preached in Athens Greece within sight of the Acropolis with the Parthenon to Athena and the other false gods and goddesses atop it. Greece! Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, and then Paul (the only one inspired) with a message of crucified King that turns the tables on all Greek religion.
Reader, let me be frank. If you’re not going to be in hell for your sins, just like back throughout Greece where Paul ministered the seeming foolishness of Christ crucified, it’ll be because the triune God, by the Cross of Jesus, has saved you. Be like Alexamenos. Yes, others will mock you. Trust me I know. But repent and believe the good news. You won’t be disappointed. Worship Jesus. The Cross wasn’t the end of the story. He is risen, and he is most highly exalted. Again, be like Alexamenos, get in on the ground floor now. And may God richly reward your wisdom in doing so!