Every year, for the last several years, there are people in the Philippines who have had themselves crucified on crosses. They do this to show their religious devotion to the Lord and try to earn a place in heaven and favor with God by going through this excruciating pain. The earnest penitent is actually nailed to a cross and is left on the cross for several hours before being taken down and taken to the hospital to have their wounds taken care of. One woman has done this for five years in a row. Newspaper reporters and photographers come, and this event gets international coverage. Some people are greatly impressed by these people's willingness to identify with the death of the Lord Jesus in this way.
However, this is only a media event and does not atone for sin in any way. Only the sinless Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, can deal with sin. “He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:26). Our identification with Him is not in making useless sacrifices ourselves, but in accepting the fact that His sacrifice was for me. We show this publicly in our baptism when we indicate that when Christ died, I died. When Christ was buried, I was buried. When Christ rose from the dead, I rose from the dead, and now “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).