(19) All these things the Savior thought
fit to do, so that, recognizing His bodily acts as works of God,
men who were blind to His presence in creation might regain knowledge
of the Father. For, as I said before, who that saw His authority
over evil spirits and their response to it could doubt that He
was, indeed, the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the
very creation broke silence at His behest and, marvelous to relate,
confessed with one voice before the cross, that monument of victory,
that He Who suffered thereon in the body was not man only, but
Son of God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth
quaked, the mountains were rent asunder, all men were stricken
with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross was God,
and that all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by
its fear to the presence of its Master.
Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His
works. We must Next
consider the end of His earthly life and
the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center
of our faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it,
too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God
and Son of God.
(20) We have dealt as far as circumstances
and our own understanding permit with the reason for His bodily
manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to
incorruption was proper to none other than the Savior Himself,
Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing; that only
the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image
in men, that none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals
immortality, and that only the Word Who orders all things and
is alone the Father's true and sole-begotten Son could teach
men about Him and abolish the worship of idols. But beyond all
this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as
I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second
reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved
His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf
of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all,
to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal
transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier
than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits
of the resurrection.
You must not be surprised if we repeat ourselves in dealing with
this subject. We are speaking of the good pleasure of God and
of the things which He in His loving wisdom thought fit to do,
and it is better to put the same thing in several ways than to
run the risk of leaving something out. The body of the Word,
then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely
formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies,
liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from
this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it.
Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once:
the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because
the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act
utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all,
so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as
I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body,
that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering
for the sake of all through His union with it,
" might bring to nought Him that had
the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them
who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death."[1]
(21) Have no fears then. Now that
the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe
in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment
of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end;
and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has
been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies
in God's good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a
better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not
perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death
having been brought to nought by the grace of the Savior. That
is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection,
says:
"This corruptible must put on incorruption
and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible
shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put
on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that
is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where
is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"[2]
"Well then," some people may say, "if the essential
thing was that He should surrender His body to death in place
of all, why did He not do so as Man privately, without going
to the length of public crucifixion? Surely it would have been
more suitable for Him to have laid aside His body with honor
than to endure so shameful a death." But look at this argument
closely, and see how merely human it is, whereas what the Savior
did was truly divine and worthy of His Godhead for several reasons.
The first is this. The death of men under ordinary circumstances
is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially
impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out
they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is
the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He
had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked
as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though
He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself
Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because
the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting
His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He
fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken
and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again,
you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?"
Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had
taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede
the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for
His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did
He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered, because
that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger
because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though
He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose
in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than
the Life Himself.
(22) Someone else might say, perhaps,
that it would have been better for the Lord to have avoided the
designs of the Jews against Him, and so to have guarded His body
from death altogether. But see how unfitting this also would
have been for Him. Just as it would not have been fitting for
Him to give His body to death by His own hand, being Word and
being Life, so also it was not consonant with Himself that He
should avoid the death inflicted by others. Rather, He pursued
it to the uttermost, and in pursuance of His nature neither laid
aside His body of His own accord nor escaped the plotting Jews.
And this action showed no limitation or weakness in the Word;
for He both waited for death in order to make an end of it, and
hastened to accomplish it as an offering on behalf of all. Moreover,
as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish,
not His own, He did not lay aside His body by an individual act
of dying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but
He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to
destroy it in His own body.
There are some further considerations which enable one to understand
why the Lord's body had such an end. The supreme object of His
coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This
was to be the monument to His victory over death, the assurance
to all that He had Himself conquered corruption and that their
own bodies also would eventually be incorrupt; and it was in
token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that
He kept His body incorrupt. But there again, if His body had
fallen sick and the Word had left it in that condition, how unfitting
it would have been! Should He Who healed the bodies of others
neglect to keep His own in health? How would His miracles of
healing be believed, if this were so? Surely people would either
laugh at Him as unable to dispel disease or else consider Him
lacking in proper human feeling because He could do so, but did
not.
(23) Then, again, suppose without any
illness He had just concealed His body somewhere, and then suddenly
reappeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would
have been regarded merely as a teller of tales, and because there
was no witness of His death, nobody would believe His resurrection.
Death had to precede resurrection, for there could be no resurrection
without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the
resurrection without any proof or evidence to support it. Again,
why should He die a secret death, when He proclaimed the fact
of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and
heal the man blind from birth and change water into wine, all
publicly, in order to convince men that He was the Word, and
not also declare publicly that incorruptibility of His mortal
body, so that He might Himself be believed to be the Life? And
how could His disciples have had boldness in speaking of the
resurrection unless they could state it as a fact that He had
first died? Or how could their hearers be expected to believe
their assertion, unless they themselves also had witnessed His
death? For if the Pharisees at the time refused to believe and
forced others to deny also, though the things had happened before
their very eyes, how many excuses for unbelief would they have
contrived, if it had taken place secretly? Or how could the end
of death and the victory over it have been declared, had not
the Lord thus challenged it before the sight of all, and by the
incorruption of His body proved that henceforward it was annulled
and void?
(24) There are some other possible objections
that must be answered. Some might urge that, even granting the
necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection,
it would surely have been better for Him to have arranged an
honorable death for Himself, and so to have avoided the ignominy
of the cross. But even this would have given ground for suspicion
that His power over death was limited to the particular kind
of death which He chose for Himself; and that again would furnish
excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body,
therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that
the Savior might utterly abolish death in whatever form they
offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does
not himself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought
that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators
choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that
he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate
his superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. He, the Life
of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his
own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind.
No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by
others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to
them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and
He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He
might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death
be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox
has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict
on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument
to death's defeat. Therefore it is also, that He neither endured
the death of John, who was beheaded, nor was He sawn asunder,
like Isaiah: even in death He preserved His body whole and undivided,
so that there should be no excuse hereafter for those who would
divide the Church.
(25) So much for the objections of those
outside the Church. But if any honest Christian wants to know
why He suffered death on the cross and not in some other way,
we answer thus: in no other way was it expedient for us, indeed
the Lord offered for our sakes the one death that was supremely
good. He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could
He "become a curse"[3] otherwise than by accepting
the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it is written
"Cursed is every one that hangeth
on tree."[4] Again,
the death of the Lord is the ransom of all, and by it "the middle wall of partition"[5] is broken down and the call
of the Gentiles comes about. How could He have called us if He
had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a man
dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness
of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was that He might
draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the
other, and join both together in Himself. Even so, He foretold
the manner of His redeeming death,
"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
men unto Myself."[6]
Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our
race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other
evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls
from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying
to follow it. The apostle refers to this when he says,
"According to the prince of the power
of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience."[7]
But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to purify the
air and to make "a way" for us up
to heaven, as the apostle says, "through
the veil, that is to say, His flesh."[8]
This had to be done through death, and by what other kind of
death could it be done, save by a death in the air, that is,
on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and natural it was
that the Lord should suffer thus; for being thus "lifted
up," He cleansed the air from all the evil influences of
the enemy. "I beheld Satan as lightning
falling,"[9] He
says; and thus He re-opened the road
to heaven, saying again,
"Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up,
ye everlasting doors."[10]
For it was not the Word Himself Who needed an opening of the
gates, He being Lord of all, nor was any of His works closed
to their Maker. No, it was we who needed it, we whom He Himself
upbore in His own body--that body which He first offered to death
on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven.