The brief passage we hear this Sunday as the first reading is an excerpt from a lengthy testimony that the prophet Isaiah offers about the Servant of the Lord. This entire passage is proclaimed as the first reading in the Good Friday liturgy, which gives us an orientation for today’s reflection. The Lord wanted to crush his servant with suffering. When he gives his life as atonement, through the labors of his soul he will see the light and be satisfied. By his sufferings, my servant will justify many, bearing their crimes.
In these dramatic words of the prophet Isaiah, the early apostles found light to understand the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. But Jesus Christ himself also offered an interpretation of his future death in the words with which he concluded today’s Gospel passage: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many”. Jesus interprets his life as service to others and emphasizes, as the supreme service, his death on the cross for the redemption of all.
I want to highlight some expressions from both passages: “He laid down his life as an atonement” when the Lord crushed him with suffering. The servant “justified many by bearing their crimes”. The Son of Man came to serve and “laid down his life for the redemption of all.” In what sense did Jesus Christ bear our crimes and sins? Why did God send his Son to this world to undergo so much suffering and tribulation? These questions plunge us into the depths of God’s designs and, although we can offer some answer or light with the help of the Holy Scriptures, we can never fully comprehend the greatness of God’s love revealed in the death of Christ, nor why that love came at the price of the horrible passion and crucifixion of the Son of God. Still less can we know if that was the only way God had to bring about our salvation. It was. To speculate on other possible ways would be to pretend to teach God how he should have acted, which might even be blasphemous.
In what sense did Jesus Christ bear our crimes and sins? Why did God send his Son to this world to undergo so much suffering and tribulation?
It is good to recall the words of St. Paul at the end of chapter 11 of the Letter to the Romans: “What an abyss of riches and wisdom and knowledge there is in God! How unfathomable are his designs and inscrutable are his ways! Indeed, who has known the thought of the Lord? who was his counselor? who has first given to him, that he should have the right to the reward? For all things come from him, and are through him and for him; to him be glory forever! Amen” (Rom 11:33-35).
With these caveats, let us try, then, to explain as far as we can the meaning of Christ’s death. The New Testament repeats that it was necessary for the Son of God to suffer on the cross. The phrase “it was necessary” is understood in the sense that this was God’s will. Christ himself, in the prayer in the garden, when he asks to be freed from the passion and death, ends up submitting himself to the will of God: “Not my will, however, but yours be done”. Trying to penetrate the unfathomable designs of God is beyond us. However, we can understand how it was that Jesus’ disciples came to understand that his death had a redemptive meaning for the forgiveness of sins.
For Jesus’ immediate disciples, his death on the cross left them desolate, disillusioned and frustrated. But Jesus’ appearances on the first day of the week, which showed them that he was alive with God, compelled them to look for a positive meaning to his death. This was not a failure, but a design of God for our good. If the resurrection was God’s work, the death on the cross must also be God’s work. Jesus Christ himself opened the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures that referred to his future death on the cross (cf. Lk 24:25-27, 44-48), passages like today’s first reading.
Another source of interpretation was the atoning sacrifices offered in the Temple, especially on the day of atonement. Some goats took upon themselves the sins of the people, and when they were sacrificed, they took the sin with them. Certainly, irrational animals cannot carry human sin, and for that reason those sacrifices had no effect. But they were like a supplication that anticipated the sacrifice of someone who would bear the sins of humanity and, with his death, would take them away from us.
The conviction that the death of Christ makes possible the forgiveness of the sins of humanity has its origin in Jesus himself. At the Last Supper, Jesus declared that the cup of wine that was distributed among his disciples was the new covenant in his blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ statement in the Gospel that he has come to serve by dying for the redemption of many is another such source. The word “redemption” has its origin in the regime of slavery and meant, in the first place, the act by which a slave regained his freedom because someone paid for him. Christ has redeemed us from slavery to Satan and sin, to which we were subject. But Jesus has not paid Satan any ransom, nor by his suffering has he appeased the wrath of an offended God.
The Son of God, by becoming one of us, was in solidarity with us, and as a member of the human race accepted to bear upon himself, through the suffering of the passion and death on the cross, the suffering and damage caused by our sins.
Christ redeemed us in another way. He removed from our shoulders a demand for atonement that we could not settle. In what way? In order to receive forgiveness, every guilty person must first assume some of the suffering he or she has caused by his or her offensive or criminal actions. The penitentiary system works with this logic: whoever has committed a crime must “pay” before society, that is, he must suffer in his person some of the harm he caused to others with his crimes. Then he can be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. The Son of God, in becoming one of us, was in solidarity with us, and as a member of the human race accepted to bear upon himself, through the suffering of the passion and death on the cross, the suffering and harm caused by our sins. He underwent in his divine flesh the suffering that had to fall upon us to enable us for God’s forgiveness. In this way, he established the covenant for the forgiveness of sins that enables us to receive God’s forgiveness freely. The only requirement that remains on our part is the recognition of guilt, repentance and the purpose of amendment and correction.
He is, therefore, the Lamb who takes away and takes upon himself the sin of the world, as St. John the Baptist proclaims (Jn 1:29). This is his great service and the dramatic expression of his love for us. Let us value the blood of Christ, the price of our ransom, and let us be grateful with a sincere heart for so great a love for us.