Texas company Little Pencil, LLC will launch a new, provocative ad campaign this week to draw people to Christ.
Dubbed "Death Row Jesus," the digital ad features Jesus Christ receiving the death penalty while the other inmates are set free. The unique advertisement symbolises Jesus' sacrifice for the world's sins, and will launch on Wednesday, KCBD.com reports.
Little Pencil founder David L Miller further explained his video's message.
"When people think about Jesus, they don't think about Him being on death row, but if you think about what He did when He was on earth, that's really the experience He had," he told KCBD.
"We communicate very directly that Christ became the worst criminal in history when He took our mistakes on Himself. The second message is we are all equally undeserving of God's grace.
"That's the message of the Bible really, is that there is no one position better than another to receive his grace and forgiveness, yet he offers it for free."
"Death Row Jesus" is the second campaign launched by Little Pencil. The first was "Tattoo Jesus," featuring God's Son as a tattoo artist. He removed his clients' negative tattoos – "depressed," "addicted," "faithless," – and replaced them with positive ones – "confident, "freedom," "brave."
The Christian marketing firm wanted to show the "Tattoo Jesus" ad during the Lubbock Independent School District's (LISD) high school football games, but the district rejected the request. Little Pencil filed a lawsuit alleging freedom of speech violations, but a federal judge ruled in favour of the district on May 29. Miller, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, appealed the decision.
"We're really standing up for not just my rights, but free speech is about defending anyone's rights whether I agree with their speech or not; that's the essence of the constitution," Miller said.
The controversy only increased the popularity of the ad, and Miller hopes the "Death Row Jesus" campaign will be even more successful.
"Corporations spend an enormous amount of money marketing whatever their product is and there is nothing wrong with that," he said. "We just think in this case we have a much better product and one that's everlasting, life-changing and so it's certainly worthy of whatever we invest in it."
