Occasionally, I receive an unexpected email from someone with a theological or scriptural question, or one perhaps dealing with Benedictine spirituality. Obviously, I don’t have all the answers, but I respond as well as I can. While clearing out some of my electronic folders recently, I ran across the following query, submitted maybe six or seven years ago. I thought the exchange was worth sharing (identifying information excluded, of course).
Q: I have a hard time understanding HOW Jesus’ sacrifice saved us. I understand that he died for us to restore our grace—so did he have to pay some sort of “debt”? To whom was it paid? To himself, the devil, or someone else? If there was no debt to pay, did he simply want to set an example of how a perfect, sinless human being should behave in unity with God? I've done some thinking and research on this topic and I'm still struggling to understand.
A: A very good question—and not easy to answer. That is OK. Christian faith is not a matter of having all the answers but of pondering and living the mystery each day. The former is impossible, and such illusions can lead to idolatry. The latter is possible through the grace of Christ given us through the Holy Spirit by God the Father. Hopefully, our faith grows just a little each day. Complete understanding comes only in the life to come.
As for the specific question: Many, many scholars and theologians far more learned than I have explored this complex issue for hundreds of years and have written mountains of volumes on the topic without exhausting it. (Again, it is a mystery we strive to ponder and live each day.) That said, I will try my best.
First, yes, Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice for us, to save us from our sins. Jesus literally means “God saves.” As the angel told Joseph before the birth of Jesus, “He will save his people from their sins.”
Yes, many centuries after the Fall in the garden of Eden, humanity had an enormous (impossibly large!) debt to pay. Jesus paid it – to God the Father (certainly not to the devil). But that still gets kind of tricky. Jesus is one with God the Father and the Holy Spirit within the Holy Trinity. Yet we worship ONE God in three persons. This is why the Incarnation is central to our faith. The beginning of the Gospel of John is worth meditating on in this respect:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
The glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.
-- John 1:1, 14
And yes, Jesus was also setting an example of how an obedient human being should act in union with God. In all three synoptic gospels, Jesus says that anyone who wants to be his disciple must deny his/her sinful self, pick up his/her own cross, and follow him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. See also Philippians 2:1-11.
All that is true. But there is so much more. What Jesus did goes far beyond all that. Consistent and intense study of, and prayer with, Scripture should, over time, help connect the dots. As a whole, Scripture (both Old and New testaments) tells a story of God’s immense love for humanity, humanity’s rejection of that love born of pride, God’s repeated attempts to win humanity back through various means, and finally God himself coming in the Flesh to save us from within humanity itself. That last phrase is key. The Incarnation – the Word made Flesh – is the key to it all. Without it, humanity was doomed.
The sacrifice of Jesus – who was both fully human and fully divine – restored what had been broken and disfigured by our first parents. His obedience reversed the curse, so to speak, of our first parents’ disobedience and pride. He is the new Adam. Reading Romans 5 may help here.
Theologians have written that God became man so that man might become divine. Originally, humanity was created by God to be partners in paradise with him. We messed that up, horribly (just look at the world we live in!). The only way for that connection or relationship to be restored was for God to come among us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Which brings us to his sacrifice on the cross. This sacrifice, yes, was about atonement for our individual sins, but that is only a small part of it. Really, what he did was restore us to divine life in our relationship with God. Jesus is Life. With the Fall came death, pain, struggle, division, alienation, and all the rest. The only way out of that pit was impossibly difficult: Humanity had to assent and obey, but only God could save them and help them do that! Hence, God came among us in Jesus Christ, fully human and divine. He is the complete package, so to speak.
What Jesus did on the cross can, in a way, be likened to how a vaccine works in the world of medicine. A vaccine works by taking innocuous remnants of a particular virus and injecting them into the human body. There, they provoke the body’s immune system to fight against any future invasion of the real virus. So, the virus is turned against itself. The disease becomes the cure.
This is what Jesus did on the cross by his death and resurrection. He is like a vaccine that turned sin against itself and destroyed death. He tricked Satan, who thought he had killed God. In truth, God defeated Satan once and for all. God, by becoming man in Christ, swallowed up all of humanity’s brokenness and sin, nailed it to the cross, killed it, and then restored us to Eternal Life.
It must be said, however, that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross does not let us off the hook. He has won the victory for us, but we must accept this grace, cooperate with it, and live the faith we have received. Like Jesus said, we must deny our old ways, pick up our own cross, and follow the way he leads. First, we must believe, then we must put that faith into practice. Faith must be active. We must become the Word made Flesh by uniting ourselves to Christ each day (through Scripture, the sacraments, prayer, worship, the practice of the virtues, serving one another, etc.).
In this light, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was not merely a one-and-done historical event. It is an ongoing mystical phenomenon that we are all caught up in as members of the Body of Christ to the present day—one that will be finally and fully realized at the Second Coming.
Keep pondering and living the mystery!
