The Cross of Christ

Jesus said,

“The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.” Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:22-23)

The Passion of the Christ

Multitudes of Americans have flocked to see The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s graphic depiction of the last hours of the Lord Jesus. This film depicts the sufferings of Jesus in a radical way, and is nearly impossible to watch in its brutality. It is a kind of an icon in film, though interestingly an icon not found in the Orthodox Tradition. As Orthodox, our iconography, as well as our liturgical texts, do not dwell on the physical and psychological sufferings of Christ. Jesus is always depicted dead on the Cross, at peace, in a gesture of complete acceptance of all that happened to Him, and embracing all in the cosmic pronouncement of forgiveness, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Neither does our theology focus on the physical suffering of Jesus as the ultimate “work of Christ.” Rather, the Orthodox Tradition focuses on who Jesus is, as revealed by His work.

While we do not downplay the sufferings of Jesus, we do see them in the context of the whole economy of salvation, as an aspect of our redemption and salvation. It is the Son of God Incarnate who suffered in the flesh, for us and for our salvation, at our hands. As Orthodox, we say, as do all other Christians, “He suffered and died for me, for my sins, because of my sins.” But there is more to be said. His suffering and death, and resurrection from the dead, reveal who He is – and who we are as well. His Passion shows us how to endure suffering and transform it.

The churches of the Roman Catholic tradition – papal, Protestant, evangelical, and charismatic – focus on the suffering of Jesus as the very act of redemption. This focus of the Western confession comes from the theological development of their doctrine of the atonement. This doctrine rests on presuppositions profoundly different from those of the Orthodox Tradition.

The Satisfaction Theory of Atonement

The Western tradition is based largely on the eleventh-century writings of Anselm of Canterbury and his “satisfaction theory of the atonement” – and for many Protestants, also on John Calvin’s penal substitution theory from the sixteenth century. For Anselm, it takes an infinite sacrifice to propitiate (appease) the wrath of God, whose honor was infinitely offended by man’s sin. Thus, it took the Son of God becoming Man to provide that infinite satisfaction, as no other sacrifice could satisfy the wrath of the Father. Anselm, coming from the Orthodox Tradition of the West, was still primarily interested in who Jesus is. However, his new presupposition is that God is infinitely offended. It is God who must be reconciled to man and who must be propitiated.

For the Orthodox, Christ’s death expiates (does away with) the effects of sin that prevent man from knowing God and accepting His forgiveness. Man was alienated from God. For Anselm, it is God who is alienated by man’s sin, who must be propitiated in order to save man, and for whom only the suffering and death of the Son of God can satisfy the debt. For the Orthodox, Christ’s sufferings and death show that Christ truly accepted our nature and all its brokenness, in order to heal it by the Resurrection. We enter into that healing of our nature, and relationship with the Father, by our own acceptance of the Cross. We are purified and illumined through repentance, and made partakers of Christ’s resurrected life through grace. 

For Anselm, the work of Christ culminates in His self-sacrificial suffering and death, propitiating God the Father by the infinite suffering He voluntarily accepted to endure as the Incarnate God, and reconciling God to man by that infinite satisfaction. A legal transaction is made, and man is saved by accepting that justification by faith. He is thereby transferred from the category of the damned to that of the saved. For the Orthodox, Christ reconciled humanity to God, and it is our dynamic relationship with God, our obedience in communion, that is our salvation. This obedience is made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost, uniting us in Christ and fusing our life with the grace of God. Where the Western model is juridical and forensic, the Orthodox model is a dynamic idea of communion.

John Calvin and later Western writers accept the tradition of Anselm as their basic set of presuppositions. Calvin took Anselm’s ideas a step further, and developed a doctrine of atonement that focused on punishment. Jesus’ sufferings constituted an acceptance of God’s punishment for the sins of all mankind, as a substitutionary sacrifice and propitiation of God’s wrath. Christ endured punishment for the sins of all mankind in order to appease the wrath of God, and thus made satisfaction of the debt humanity owed to God. Christ suffered the punishment of God’s cumulative wrath against man’s sin, so that we don’t have to suffer that punishment. He suffered in our place.

This doctrine is reflected in the bloody, tortured images of Christ crucified in agony upon the Cross in the Western tradition, whether in painting, statues, or the move The Passion of the Christ. Christ’s suffering, His agony and death, propitiates the wrathful Father, so that if we believe in it, His suffering becomes a substitute for our punishment and saves us from the wrath of God. This approach makes the Resurrection secondary in importance, and not even necessary.

The Orthodox Approach

As Orthodox Christians, we have an entirely different set of presuppositions about God, about Christ and His suffering and resurrection, and our relationship to them. Christ assumed our suffering, our pain, and our death out of love for us, to abolish death and make all things new. By death He overcame the power of sin, and by obedience overcame sin itself. Punishment does not even enter into the Orthodox understanding of redemption; this comes from Calvin. The idea of satisfaction is also not found in Orthodoxy; this comes from Anselm. God’s infinite mercy and compassion is the focus of our vision, not being “saved from the wrath of God,” as some translations distort the Bible itself to justify the Protestant position.

The Son of God assumed our humanity in order to bring it to its fulfillment. He had to assume our fallenness that He might heal its brokenness. The healing and fulfillment of our humanity is the Resurrection. He suffered and died to show us how to endure suffering, and to give meaning to our own suffering and death. He accepted the Cross, so that we might be able to bear our cross. He fulfilled the Law, and was obedient to the Father to the point of death, showing what obedience is. Jesus revealed to us that God is our loving Father, who suffers all things for the sake of our salvation.

God the Loving Father

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:16-17)

God the Father sent the Son to reconcile us to Himself out of love for us who had fallen into disobedience and corruption. Jesus came and revealed God to us, and reconciled us to Him as our Father. Jesus revealed not a wrathful God who needs to be propitiated, but the merciful and long-suffering Father who awaits the repentance of His rebellious children. He reveals also that the sinful world of the passions must be overcome, because it is death and the rejection of God. Jesus reveals that the source of suffering and of the passions is death. Jesus overcomes the world by overcoming sin and death, by accepting to suffer. He overcomes sin by obedience, restoring man’s communion with the Father in His own humanity, that we might not lose hope By that union with the Father, He overcomes death and is raised from the dead. He gave His mortal body as a ransom to death, and shattered Hades by descending to its depths as God. The death of Jesus was the death of the Incarnate God. His death and resurrection was a cosmic event, universal in scope and radically transforming the nature of creation.

In the tomb with the body,

In Hades with the soul,

In Paradise with the thief

And on the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit

Wast Thou, O Christ, filling all things!

(Orthodox Paschal hymn)

Self-Offering in Obedience

Jesus chose to suffer and die, and to be raised from the dead, out of love for us and for our salvation. He came to earth to assume humanity Himself and heal it. Human beings had fallen into sin and corruption. The Son of God came into the world and became a Man to raise humanity from corruption and death. He came to save man from the effect of sin and the tyranny of the devil. As God Incarnate, He bore in His humanity the accumulated wrath of human anger and rejection of God by all humanity, all the effects of sin and rebellion, in order to overcome them.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of the under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)

Jesus bore the cross of obedience to the point of death. He bore the cross of humility, of self-emptying, not holding on to His equality with God the Father. This self-emptying of all the prerogatives of His divinity, all the qualities of His Divine Nature, was necessary because otherwise He could not be human in every way that we are. Jesus became everything that we are by nature, that He might make us everything that He is by the gift of grace. He reconciled man to God. Man had been alienated from God and persisted in the vanity of rebellion,  and had to be reconciled to the unconditionally loving and forgiving God, who patiently waited for man’s repentance.

Because of the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15), humanity was in bondage to sin, in rebellion against God. By destroying death, Christ destroyed the power of sin. His obedience overcame that rebellion, and in His humanity, he remained in unbroken communion with the Father despite the suffering and despite death. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

Jesus suffered at the hands of the leaders of His own chosen people, and was rejected as He had frequently prophesied, that He might reconcile them all humanity by His own self-offering on the Cross. He had to be rejected, to be killed in order to work salvation and bring about the new covenant. Jesus is the Law Incarnate, the very God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, and the Creator of the universe. He had to be rejected by those under the Law, the people of the old covenant, to bring about the new covenant and to free humanity from the curse of the Law.

Jesus accepted being cursed under the Mosaic Law to show that obedience to God in communion transcends the written Law. He was faithful to the point of death, obedient to the Law, obedient to the will of the Father, that the Law might be fulfilled. He ended His life with the words, “It is finished.” With those words, the Mosaic covenant was brought to a close, and the new covenant of communion with God by grace was sealed in His blood. He forgave those who tortured and murdered Him, not only the soldiers and the Jews, but all humanity, from high on the Cross. Dying, offering Himself to the Father in love for broken humanity, He healed the full brokenness of human nature by arising from the dead, and making our flesh to be a partaker of eternal life.

The old covenant was fulfilled by Jesus’ obedience; and it was brought to an end by the Jews’ rejection of their God, as Jeremiah prophesied, that the new covenant might come into effect. The new covenant is written in the blood of Christ’s self-offering in love to the Father. By offering Himself to the Father, He expiated the sin of all humanity. Thus the Cross becomes the altar of the new covenant, the mercy seat and place of expiation of sin, and the very place where the Glory of God dwells, shining forth from the face of Jesus Christ crucified for us.

“Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him” (John 13:31). Jesus glorifies God by His suffering, by His self-offering in love, by His obedience, by His unbroken love, hope and faith in the Father, and thus overcomes all suffering. For what is the purpose of the evil one but through suffering to make us lose hope, and to break our relationship with the Father? And so God’s Glory, the radiance and uncreated energies of His Presence, shine forth from the face of Christ, the Victor over sin, dead on the Cross.

Jesus’ Suffering and Our Own

Jesus did not suffer in order to abolish suffering in this world. He accepted suffering so that He might accompany us in our suffering, being like us in everything but sin. He takes on suffering so that He might show us how to hope in the midst of suffering, that it might not lead to despair. Despair, the loss of hope, is in essence the fear of death, and thus the root of sin. He shows us how to accept suffering without despair, revealing that through we feel abandoned by God in the midst of our suffering, God has not in fact abandoned us and will raise our life from corruption. God does not abandon us or reject us in our suffering; rather, it is we who abandon Him in despair. Jesus confronted the despair of death as He hung on the Cross, and cried out in the words of the Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” But the Psalm continues, a song of hope and praise:

“But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me;

O My Strength, hasten to help Me!

[…]

I will declare Your name to My brethren;

In the midst of the assembly I will praise You….

For He has not despised not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;

Nor has He hidden His face from Him;

But when He cried to Him, He heard.

(Psalm 22:19-25)

The temptation of suffering is to despair, to lose hope and to abandon God. Christ remained faithful, freely giving Himself over to God at the culmination of His suffering: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.”

Death is not the end, as Jesus showed us by His resurrection. Indeed, it was His resurrection that ended the finality of death. Our life in this world, dominated by sin and the power of death and the devil, is revealed as simply as passage into the eternal life of the Kingdom of God. The resurrection of Christ was the fulfillment of faithful endurance to the end. Our resurrection is the fruit of Christ’s sufferings. It is that resurrected life that gives to us, as to the martyrs and the saints of all ages, the hope that enables us to endure all manner of suffering. It identifies our suffering with that of the Lord Jesus, making it redemptive. As St. Paul was able to say, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24)

Suffering itself is not sin or a curse. Rather, it is a moment of judgment, a crisis in the Greek sense of the word. Whatever kind of suffering it may be, if we remain faithful to God, if we hope in Him, we will be able to bear whatever comes. This is what it means to bear our cross: to surrender ourselves completely to God’s providence in faith and hope, to love until the end, despising the shame.

Hope and faith are the very means of our relationship with God, the means of our communion. Suffering endured for Christ, in faith and hope, makes us confront ourselves and cleanses us from all our selfish fears. Thus, suffering itself, endured for Christ’s sake, becomes a means of communion with Him, purifying us of all that is in rebellion against God. This communion is itself the very essence of joy.

Life in this world inevitably includes suffering. The life of the world passes away, and its suffering has an end. Christ accompanies us in our suffering, giving us hope in the assurance that He has overcome the world, by revealing to us the Resurrection. In this is the substance of our hope, which enables us to bear all things by the grace of Christ, and in this is the very essence of the Gospel:

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!