Jesus: not only a teacher, but the Savior of the world

If I ask: What is the most important teaching of Jesus, many answer that the main teaching of Jesus is the one commandment to love God and neighbor. Jesus said, and the Church teaches, that all the other commandments are summed up in those two. Furthermore, in his discourse on the final judgment, Jesus explained that the judgment would be about helping our neighbor in need: whether we fed the hungry, lodged the migrant, cared for the sick. For many, Jesus is a teacher who taught us to do good, to treat our fellow men as we want to be treated, to live righteously. That is true, but I think it is incomplete.

I can also ask: What was the most important work of Jesus? When I ask about the most important work of Jesus and not about the most important teaching of Jesus, perhaps someone will answer that the most important work of Jesus was to teach us to love one another. But what the Gospel proclaims and what the Church celebrates as Jesus’ most important work was his death for our sins and his resurrection from the dead. That is the core of the Gospel; that was Jesus’ primary mission. His moral teaching is important, but secondary and subordinate to his main work.

Today St. Paul says it with all forcefulness and clarity:

“I remind you of the Gospel which I preached to you and which you accepted, and in which you stand. This Gospel will save you, if you keep it as I preached it. Otherwise, you will have believed in vain.”

What is the content of the Gospel that St. Paul preached?

“I conveyed to them, first of all, what I myself received: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say; that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day, as the Scriptures say; that he appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve.”

For St. Paul, our salvation does not lie in keeping the commandments that Jesus taught (although keeping those commandments has its importance and its place). Our salvation depends, first of all, on our accepting and believing that Jesus died for our sins and was buried, that he rose from the dead and that the apostles were witnesses of his resurrection. This teaching, Paul says, he himself received – it is understood that he received it from the Church. Although the risen Christ had also appeared to him, he received the faith of the Church when he was baptized in Damascus, after having seen the risen Christ.

The most important work of Jesus was his death and resurrection, an expression of God’s love for us. For this reason, the most important celebration of the Church is Holy Week and, specifically, the Easter Triduum. In those days we commemorate this event in which God expressed his love for us, a love from which our faith and our salvation arise. Jesus is a moral teacher, to be sure; but he is, first and foremost, a savior who saves us from sin and death. To forget, corner or misrepresent this faith leads us to perdition, says St. Paul.

Let’s examine this in more detail

Christ died crucified in Jerusalem in the time of Pontius Pilate, as if he were an evildoer. That is the historical fact that everyone could verify. It is also a historical fact that he was buried. That this death was for the forgiveness of sins, as the Scriptures teach, and that this is how God showed us his love, is the interpretation of faith.

That was the interpretation Jesus himself gave in anticipation of his death when, at the Last Supper, he took bread and said:

“This is my Body, which is given for you. This is my Blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, which will be shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

In what sense and in what way does the blood of Christ shed on the cross serve for the forgiveness of our sins?

Inasmuch as he, the Son of God made man, as one of us, was in solidarity with us and took upon himself on the cross the atonement due for our sins, mistakes and errors, so that he enabled us to receive from God, who loves us freely, the forgiveness of our sins.

Because, in order for there to be forgiveness, the sinner must recognize his sin and take upon himself part of the suffering, of the damage, of the harm he caused to others with his bad decisions. But Christ did this for us on the cross, and in this way exempted us from personal atonement, because he bore the sin of the world and thus enabled us to receive forgiveness freely.

Christ was buried as proof that his death was real, not apparent or fictitious.

And what does it mean that on the third day he rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures, and appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve?

It is a fact attested by the Gospels that, on the third day after his death and burial, the body of Jesus was not found. The women around him went to mourn at his tomb and found it open and empty. They thought that someone had stolen the body. They were frightened and distressed. But they, then Peter, then the Twelve, and then many others – up to five hundred, says St. Paul – saw him alive: Christ appeared to them.

Jesus Christ, in his humanity, showed that he was alive after death. His existence was no longer like the one he had before death. He was the same, but he appeared and disappeared, made himself present in closed rooms and allowed himself to be touched. He seemed the same or changed his countenance.

And in the end, those first disciples and those of us who have come after them have witnessed to our own day that Jesus Christ, Son of God made man like us, inaugurated a new mode of human existence: life with a risen body in God and from God forever.

When we believe this and are baptized and eat his Body in the Eucharist, we are united to him and we too can share the victory over death to live in God from now on and forever. That is the salvation that Christ brought to the world.

What about the commandments?

They are the consequence of this salvation. If God’s forgiveness heals our freedom, we need a light and a guide so that our freedom makes constructive decisions and is not lost again in bad actions.

The commandments educate our freedom to choose the good, to live as children of God and to thank God, with our good works, for the mercy he has shown us. This is the faith that saves us too, if we place our lives under its light.

Msgr. Mario Alberto Molina, OAR