Cathal BarryCathal Barry examines the Church’s teaching that Jesus’s death freed humanity from sin
Jesus’ violent death was not the result of chance in an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, according to the Church, but part of the mystery of God’s plan. As St Peter explains to the Jews of Jerusalem in his first sermon on Pentecost: “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). This Biblical language does not mean that those who handed him over were merely passive players in a scenario written in advance by God (Acts 3:13).
The Church teaches that, to God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. Therefore, when he establishes his eternal plan, the Catechism states, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28).
The Scriptures, according to the Church, had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of Jesus as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free humanity from the slavery of sin.
Confession
Citing a confession of faith that he himself had “received”, St Paul professes that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3). In particular, Jesus’ redemptive death fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering Servant (Is 53:7-8 and Acts 8:32-35). Indeed, Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God’s suffering Servant (Mt 20:28). After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles (24:25-27, 44-45).
Consequently, St Peter can formulate the apostolic faith in the divine plan of salvation in this way: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers… with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake” (1 Pt 1:18-20). By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
Jesus, according to the Catechism, “did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned”.
However, the Church teaches that, in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34). Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all”, so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom 8:32, 5:10).