By Mallory Mattingly
Watching THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST transformed former MLB All-Star Jack Wilson’s whole relationship with Jesus.
“…You know, you grow up, and you’re going to Sunday school, and you hear the stories, and He gets put up on the cross, like you read that, and it’s kind of like that general thought process,” Wilson said on Sports Spectrum’s “Get in the Game” podcast. “And then you see it on the film, like, what you see in PASSION OF THE CHRIST, and that changes everything.”
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“I don’t think I’ve ever been so glued to a movie, and especially, too, it’s in subtitles,” the shortstop added. “I didn’t want to go see it. I’m like, ‘Man, I gotta read the whole time…’ So I’m watching this, and they’re talking in, I think it’s Arabic back then, or whatever language they were using, but it was just the coolest experience. And then when you see what He went through for us, and you see, like, specifically what the scripture says, and what…Mel Gibson did from the scripture to put it on screen to see it, I think that changed every thought process.”
Before Wilson saw the movie, he thought he knew what Jesus went through on the day He died. But the athlete didn’t truly understand Christ’s sacrifice.
“You see what had happened, and I think that changed my whole thought process,” Wilson explained. “It’s like, not only did He die for us, He got tortured for us, and He knew it was coming, and He could have prevented it.”
Wilson left the movie theater with a completely “different” mindset than what he walked in with.
“I had faith, and then I had faith, like it changed everything,” he said.
The next day, Wilson called his team chaplain and headed to the beach to be baptized.
It was in that moment that he realized, “I have to make some serious changes, because now I’ve done this, I’ve committed this.”
Related: How THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST Continues to Inspire
Wilson has since retired from baseball and now gets to watch his son, Jacob, do what he loves at the same level.
Jacob just won the AL Rookie of the Month award for his outstanding play in May.
“J Willy strikes again. Congrats to Jacob Wilson on winning AL Rookie of the Month!” the Oakland Athletics wrote on X.
J Willy strikes again 😮💨
Congrats to Jacob Wilson on winning AL Rookie of the Month! pic.twitter.com/cSJgXuBOIT
— Athletics (@Athletics) June 3, 2025
We never know how God will draw people to him. For Wilson, Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST helped him truly understand what Jesus went through on the cross, and he left a changed person.
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