1. In Jesus’ messianic mission there is a culminating and central point, towards which we have gradually been drawing in the previous catechesis: Christ was sent by God into the world to bring about the redemption of humankind through the sacrifice of his own life. This sacrifice was to take the form of ‘emptying’ himself in obedience even unto death on the cross: a death which, in the eyes of his contemporaries, bore a particular mark of ignominy.
Throughout his preaching and in all his conduct, Jesus is guided by a profound awareness of God’s plans for his life and death within the economy of the messianic mission, with the certainty that these plans spring from the Father’s eternal love for the world and, in particular, for humankind.
2. If we consider the years of his adolescence, the words of the twelve-year-old Jesus, addressed to Mary and Joseph at the time of his ‘rediscovery’ in the Temple in Jerusalem, give much food for thought: ‘Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?’ (Luke 2:49). What was on his mind and in his heart? We can deduce this from many other expressions of his thoughts throughout his public life. From the very beginning of his messianic ministry, Jesus insisted on instilling in his disciples the concept that ‘the Son of Man . . . must suffer greatly’ (Luke 9:22), that is, that he must be ‘rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and then put to death (and, after three days, rise again)’ (Mark 8:31). But all this does not stem solely from human beings, from their hostility towards his person and his teaching; rather, it constitutes the fulfilment of God’s eternal plans, as foretold in the Scriptures containing divine revelation: “How is it written concerning the Son of Man? That he must suffer greatly and be despised” (Mk 9:12).
3. When Peter tries to deny this possibility (‘… this will never happen to you’) (Mt 16:22), Jesus rebukes him with particularly harsh words: ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men’ (Mk 8:33). The eloquence of these words is striking; through them, Jesus seeks to make Peter understand that to oppose the way of the cross is to reject the very plans of God himself. ‘Satan’ is precisely the one who, ‘from the very beginning’, has been in opposition to ‘what is of God’.
4. Jesus is therefore aware both of humanity’s responsibility for his death on the cross—which he will face as a result of a sentence handed down by earthly courts—and of the fact that through this human sentence the eternal divine plan will be fulfilled: that ‘which is of God’, that is, the sacrifice offered on the cross for the redemption of the world. And even though Jesus (like God himself) does not will the evil of the ‘deicide’ committed by men, he nevertheless accepts this evil in order to bring about the good of the world’s salvation.
5. After the Resurrection, whilst walking unrecognised with two of his disciples towards Emmaus, he explains the ‘Scriptures’ of the Old Testament to them in these terms: ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ (Lk 24:26). And on the occasion of his final meeting with the apostles, he declared: ‘These are the words I spoke to you whilst I was still with you: everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled’ (Luke 24:44).
6. In the light of the events of Easter, the apostles came to understand what Jesus had told them beforehand. Peter, who—out of love for the Master, but also through a lack of understanding—seemed to oppose his cruel fate in particular, would say to his listeners in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, speaking of Christ: “This man . . . who, according to God’s predetermined plan and foreknowledge, was handed over to you; you, by the hands of lawless men, nailed him to the cross and put him to death . . .” (Acts 2:22–23). And he will add once more: “God has thus fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, namely that his Christ would die” (Acts 3:18).
7. The passion and death of Christ were foretold in the Old Testament not as the end of his mission, but as the indispensable ‘passage’ required for him to be exalted by God. This is made clear to us in particular by the song of Isaiah, which speaks of the Servant of the Lord as the ‘Man of Sorrows’: ‘Behold, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and greatly exalted’ (Isaiah 52:13). And Jesus himself, when he foretells that ‘the Son of Man . . . will be killed’, also adds that ‘after three days he will rise again’ (cf. Mk 8:31).
8. We are therefore faced with a divine plan which, even though it appears so evident when considered in the light of the events described in the Gospels, remains nonetheless a mystery that cannot be fully explained by human reason. In this spirit, the Apostle Paul expresses himself with that magnificent paradox: ‘For what is foolishness to God is wiser than human wisdom, and what is weakness to God is stronger than human strength’ (1 Cor 1:25). These words of Paul concerning the cross of Christ are irreplaceable. But it is also true that whilst it is difficult for human beings to find a rationally satisfactory answer to the question ‘why the cross of Christ?’, the answer to this question comes to us once again from the Word of God.
9. Jesus himself formulates this answer: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life’ (John 3:16). When Jesus spoke these words during his night-time conversation with Nicodemus, his interlocutor probably could not yet have imagined that the phrase ‘gave his Son’ meant ‘gave him up to death on the cross’. But John, who recounts this in his Gospel, understood its meaning perfectly well. The unfolding of events had shown that this was precisely the meaning of the answer to Nicodemus: God ‘gave’ his only Son for the salvation of the world, giving him up to death on the cross for the sins of the world, giving him out of love: ‘God . . . so loved the world’, creation, mankind! Love remains the definitive explanation of redemption through the cross. It is the only answer to the question ‘why?’ concerning Christ’s death as part of God’s eternal plan.
The author of the Fourth Gospel, in which we find the text of Christ’s reply to Nicodemus, will return to the same concept again in one of his letters: ‘This is what love consists in: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice of atonement for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).
10. This is a love that transcends justice itself. Justice may concern and apply to the one who has committed a wrong. If it is an innocent person who suffers, then there is no question of justice. If an innocent person who is holy, like Christ, freely offers himself up to suffering and death on the cross, in order to fulfil the Father’s eternal plan, this means that God, in the sacrifice of his Son, goes, in a certain sense, beyond the order of justice to reveal himself in this Son and through him in all the richness of his mercy — Rich in Mercy (Eph 2:4) — almost as if to introduce, together with this crucified and risen Son, his mercy, his merciful love, into the history of the relationship between humankind and God.
It is precisely through this merciful love that humankind is called to overcome evil and sin within themselves and in relation to others: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’ (Mt 5:7). ‘God demonstrates his love for us in that, whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us’, as Saint Paul would write (Rom 5:8) .
11. The Apostle returns to this theme at various points in his letters, in which the triad of ‘redemption – justice – love’ frequently recurs.
‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but they are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . through his blood . . .’ (Rom 3:23–25). In this way, God shows that he is not content merely with the rigour of justice—which punishes evil when it sees it—but that he has chosen to triumph over sin in another way, namely by offering the possibility of deliverance from it. God has chosen to reveal his righteousness in a positive way by giving sinners the opportunity to become righteous through their faith in Christ the Redeemer. Thus God ‘is just and justifies’ (Rom 3:26). This takes place in a profoundly astonishing way, for ‘God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor 5:21).
12. He who ‘knew no sin’ – the Son consubstantial with the Father – took upon himself the terrible yoke of the sin of all humanity, in order to secure our justification and sanctification. Here is God’s love revealed in the Son. Through the Son, the love of the Father was revealed: “who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Rom 8:32). To grasp the full significance of these words—“did not spare”—it may be helpful to recall the sacrifice of Abraham, who had shown himself ready to “not spare his beloved son” (Gen 22:16) ; God, however, had spared him (Gen 22:12). His own only-begotten Son, on the other hand, God “did not spare, but handed him over” to death for our salvation.
13. From this springs the Apostle’s certainty that no one and nothing—“neither death, nor life, nor angels . . . nor any other creature—will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39). Together with Paul, the whole Church is certain of this love of God “which surpasses all things”, the final word of God’s self-revelation in the history of humankind and the world, the supreme self-communication which takes place through the cross, at the heart of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ.
[John Paul II, General Audience, 7 September 1988]
