CHAPTER THE SECOND.THE BLOODY SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS

5. Jesus Christ the Representative Head of the Human Race

1 . In the sacrifices of the Old Law irrational creatures objects of possession and enjoyment belonging to the animal or vegetable kingdom were substituted for man and offered to God in place of human life. Such a substitution was imperfect, inefficacious and, consequently, inadequate. The blood of animals could not atone for sin or relieve man of its debt; but rather kept up “the remembrance of unatoned sin continually alive in those who offered these sacrifices” (Heb. 10. 3, 4), thus awakening the desire of the promised Sacrifice which would, in an incomparably more exalted way, take man’s place with God and offer a perfect atonement for the guilt of all sin. This vicarious sacrifice the God-Man, Jesus Christ, offered, inasmuch as He, the Head of the human race, gave His life by a bloody death to present to God not merely a strictly equivalent or fully sufficient, but even a superabundant and overflowing satisfaction for the sins of all mankind.

2. Jesus Christ answered for us and represented us before God, that is, He performed all that God demanded in order to grant us pardon and restore us to grace, and He indeed performed it for us, that is, in our stead. Hence that which we were obliged to do and yet unable to accomplish, Jesus Christ, as our substitute, performed for us; He appeased the Divine Justice and Majesty. The fruits of His sacrifice were to redound to our benefit; His satisfaction and merits He wished to make over to us, to present them to us that we, being released from sin and its punishment, should also be enriched with the gifts of grace.

It was in order to become, in the most perfect manner imaginable, our substitute or Representative, and to satisfy and merit for us, that the Son of God assumed human nature by being born of our race. According to the flesh He was truly, though indeed in a supernatural manner, of our race; He was one of us, He was our Brother. As Christ “gave Himself a redemption for all” (1 Tim. 2, 6), He did not give Himself for strangers, but for His own, for His brethren. “O wonderful exchange,” exclaims the Church; “the Creator of mankind takes a body animated by a soul, and deigns to be born of the Virgin; and proceeding as man, supernaturally conceived, He imparts to us His divine being!” From this it follows that Jesus is the spiritual, supernatural Head of mankind; this constitutes the mystical body, for which Christ, the Head, offered satisfaction and gained merit. Christ is the second Adam; as such He superabundantly repaired what the first Adam had destroyed and corrupted. “Therefore as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, to all men unto justification of life” (Rom. V. 18), that is, as the sin of Adam has come by inheritance upon all his posterity, because God established him the head of the human family, so, in like manner, the merits and satisfaction of Christ are beneficial to all, because in the order of grace God placed Him at the head of the human race.

3. This consoling truth of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is frequently alluded to in the writings of the Old and New Testaments; it is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion.

How clearly does the Prophet behold and announce (Is. 53, 12) the vicarious sacrifice of the sufferings and life of the coming Redeemer! He calls Christ “the man of sorrows,” and says of Him that “He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows,” and that “He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins,” and this because “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all”. Our Lord voluntarily and with generous love subjected Himself to these torments and to death, in order to make satisfaction for us; hence the prophet adds: “He was offered because it was His own will.” The fruit of Christ’s propitiatory sufferings consists in this, that “by His bruises we are healed.”

The Prince of the Apostles had these prophetic words in view when he exhorted the Christians to endure even unjustly inflicted sufferings in silence and with cheerful resignation, looking up to Christ who suffered not only innocently and patiently, but, moreover, in our stead, that is, on account of our sins. “Christ,” thus he writes, “who His own self bore our sins in His body upon the tree (of the Cross), that we, being dead to sin, should live to justice” (1 Peter 2. 24). Christ the Apostle would say perfectly innocent and sinless, laid the burden of our sins upon Himself and effaced them, inasmuch as He, by the sacrifice of His death on the Cross, atoned and satisfied for them. This expiatory and healing power of the blood of Christ should urge and strengthen us to live hereafter entirely unto justice and holiness of life.

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (Gal. 3, 13), that is, the innocent Lamb of God took upon Himself the burden and punishment of sin in order to free us from it. “But God commendeth His charity toward us, because when as yet we were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5, 8). “In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us” (1 John 3, 16). “Christ died for all; that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them” (2 Cor. 5, 15). The excess of divine love is truly shown in this, that the eternal, the only-begotten Son of God, the King of glory, died the most painful death of the Cross, in order to rescue us poor sinners from the abyss of misery and eternal damnation.

4. This is that “great mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the spirit, appeared unto angels, hath been preached unto the gentiles, is taken up to glory” (1 Tim. 3, 16). O adorable mystery what unmerited, incomprehensible favor and mercy of God radiates towards us in this marvelous decree and work of the redemption! God’s justice required a perfect, an infinite satisfaction and His mercy gave us the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who as our Mediator offered this satisfaction for us. “God who spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how hath He not also, with Him, given us all things?” (Rom. 8. 32.) Thus hath “God, whose mercies are without number and whose goodness is an inexhaustible treasure,” Himself bestowed on us this great atoning sacrifice, which in return He deigned to accept from us Let us, then, gratefully acknowledge this with the Beloved Disciple: “In this is charity, not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4, 10). Still more powerfully should we be penetrated with the desire to return love for love and with most joyful thanksgiving, when we, with full right, apply personally to ourselves what has been done for all ; when we so consider the great benefit of redemption as if it had been conferred on ourselves only, as the Apostle so simply and so touchingly expresses it: “And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I now live in the flesh; I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself for me” (Gal. 2, 20) . Thus every one may and should exclaim: Christ has loved me, and for the love of me, has sacrificed His blood and life for me, for my sins; for our Savior in the Garden of Olives and on the Cross had each one of us present to His mind and in His heart, for each one of us He suffered and died, as though each one of us had been alone in the world. This thought should inflame and inspire our heart to make every sacrifice in the service of God.

6. The High priesthood of Jesus Christ

As the Representative of the whole human race, Jesus Christ rendered to the offended majesty of God a satisfaction equaling and far exceeding the guilt, in order to take away the sin which was the cause of the separation and enmity existing between heaven and earth. Hence, as mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2, 5), He established peace, consummated the work of reconciliation, and that too, by the Cross, that is, by the bloody death of the Cross, inasmuch as He offered Himself and His life as a propitiatory sacrifice. Christ’s death on the Cross is, therefore, a sacrifice in the strictest sense of the word truly a death offered in sacrifice and truly a victim. It follows from this that, as Christ during His mortal life on earth exercised the priestly office, i.e., as He really and truly offered sacrifice, He must also be really and truly a priest; for only a priest can and may offer sacrifice. A closer consideration of the priesthood of Christ will prepare the way to a clearer understanding of the Sacrifice of the Cross.

1. Jesus Christ is “the great High priest” (Hebr. 4, 14) for the whole human race. The truth and dignity of the priesthood of Christ is circumstantially and diversely set forth by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews (Chap. 4 10). In what do the essence of the priestly office, the vocation and the mission of the priest consist? “For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Heb. 5. 1). Accordingly, the priest is destined and qualified to be a mediator between

God and the people; consequently, to render to the Divine Majesty by...