How the Cross Saves
To understand the Paschal Mystery of Christ, it is essential that we first understand the history of Salvation up to the moment of His Incarnation. In short, Adam and Eve, on behalf of mankind, created in the image and likeness of God, chose to disobey God by utilizing the free will that God had bestowed upon them. After this fall, mankind lived in the dominion of death, which was assured by God should Adam and Eve disobey Him (Gen. 2:17). Respecting the free choice of His creation, God allowed mankind to die and live in the consequences of their choices. Yet, at a moment in history, God chose to come among His people in the Person of the Son, taking on a created human nature so that mankind might be saved. All of Christ’s life is salvific, and because He is fully God, the ultimate explications of His saving acts are beyond our comprehension. However, we are able to come to understand His saving acts by means of various approaches to this mystery: Jesus making satisfaction for sin as a substitute for mankind, Jesus reconciling us to God as a sacrifice, and Jesus recreating us to life.
Speaking of mankind as a whole and yet also as individuals, we owed an infinite debt to God. Seeing as God alone is infinite, only God is capable of paying this debt. As such, God, in the Person of the Son, took on human nature in all things but sin to die for us. In this way, Jesus is a substitute for us, who are incapable of paying such a debt. This debt is paid by the merit of Christ on behalf of all of humanity just at the Angelic Doctor proclaims, “it is evident that whosoever suffers for justice’ sake, provided that he be in a state of grace, merits his salvation thereby, […] [c]onsequently Christ by His Passion merited salvation, not only for Himself, but likewise for all His members” (Aquinas, Summa Theologia, III.48.1. resp.). Thus, Jesus dies for all those united to Him. In the first sense, those united to the nature of ‘human’ in general. In another sense, those united to Him through the Sacraments. God, not capable of death in His Divine Nature, took upon Himself a human nature that was capable of death (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 20.3). One might argue that because it is the human nature of Jesus that undergoes death that this sacrifice is not sufficient, however, Aquinas further clarifies that it is precisely because God has assumed this instance of human nature that the nature of Christ’s humanity is perfectly dignified (ST III.48.ad3). It is precisely because the human nature of Jesus is perfect (a miracle only God Himself is capable of) that He makes satisfaction for all sin.
The death of Jesus as the Paschal Lamb is another essential aspect of the crucifixion; for, the entirety of Salvation history points us to this moment. Just as a sacrifice was made to God as a sign of the contrition of God’s people beginning with Passover, now Jesus, the perfect and unblemished Lamb gives Himself over to suffering and death as a perfect sacrifice for all of time. Jesus in this sense does not just make up for sin, nor is His death simply a sign of the interior disposition of believers, rather, His sacrifice is superabundant, positively reconciling us to God. For, because Jesus is God, that which He does is done in the fullness of caritas. Thus, being a total gift, lacking in nothing, the sacrifice made to save us is superabundant as the Angelic Doctor teaches
us, “by suffering out of love and obedience, Christ gave more to God than was required […] because of the exceeding charity” (ST III.48.2.resp.) This was foreshadowed in the feeding narratives, wherein was an abundance left over, such that we may “have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). This is the very reason why the Sacraments are a full participation in the saving acts of Christ, for St. Paul himself writes the Galatians, “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Gal. 1:24). This is not to say that the saving acts of Christ are lacking in their effects, rather, it points us back to the two essential ways in which Jesus saves us: from original sin, and from personal sin. Seeing as God still respects our free will, it is a call to full participation in the Cross of Christ in the life of the Church through the Sacraments (ST. III.48.1.ad2), most specifically, giving ourselves as sacrifices united to His.
Finally, Christ’s crucifixion recreates all of humanity from death to life. We know from St. Paul that, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), such as to mean that death is a result of sin (Gen. 2:17). Thus, God, being fully just, does not simply ‘reverse’ the punishment of death, as justice requires recompense. Rather, He makes satisfaction for it in Christ, and in doing so, recreates us. This is precisely the point made by St. Athanasius when he pronounced, “recreation was accomplished by the Word who created it in the beginning” (St. Athanasius, 1.2). By means of the superabundant death of Christ, having fulfilled the requirements of justice in His death, He transforms death to life, such that the death of the body is the means by which the righteous join themselves to a death like His (Rom. 6:5) and enter into the Beatific Vision. Now, death is the joy of believers, such that “with an eager spirit [they] challeng[e] it and not flinching from torture, but rather for the sake of Christ preferring instead of this present life, zeal for death” (Athanasius, 29). Because our individual salvation requires our participation, Jesus further recreates us (insofar as we cooperate) by liberating us from personal sin in our lives (ST. III.49.1. resp.). This is to say that, by dying on the cross, Jesus shows us the effects of sin as St. Paul explicates to the Romans, “he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3b-4). St. Paul makes it abundantly clear that our participation is essential, and that Christ saves us by His teaching, and here specifically, by what He does on the Cross while His body hung as a sign for the whole world of the reality of sin and death and of the saving caritas of God.
While we can never fully comprehend the fullness of the Paschal Mystery, weknow that the Cross of Christ saves us in at least three ways: Jesus making satisfaction for sin as a substitute for mankind, Jesus reconciling us to God as a sacrifice, and Jesus recreating us to life. While we cannot know to the fullest extent all that God has done for us, nor fully ‘why’, we can know one thing for certain: that which God does is Supremely fitting.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.