How are we saved by the cross? How are we to understand Jesus’ death as salvific?
Many Christians around the world are still taught and believe the outdated, debunk and disturbing 12th century understanding of the Cross often called the “theory of satisfaction” that basically says that we humans sinned and offended God, so God was angry with humanity and demanded justice, or some kind of payment for our blunder. But humanity couldn’t offer any kind of divine gift big enough to diffuse God’s anger since we are just lowly humans. So, God, needing to loose a lighting rod, sent Jesus, and Jesus said, “You can loose it on me” substituting himself for us. Lighting rod gets struck; Sacrifice is carried out; and God is again happy because he got his bloodlust satisfied. (Alison)
This is a very pagan idea of sacrifice going back to the ancient Aztecs in which the priest sacrificed a person or animal to satisfy a hungry God. It is NOT our Catholic understanding. It was not Jesus’ understanding. The Jewish priestly rite that Jesus grew up with was already way beyond this primitive understanding of sacrifice.
“If we cling to the idea that God will not forgive us until his Son has been tortured to death for us then God is a lot less forgiving than even we are sometimes. If God is satisfied or somehow compensated for sin by Jesus’ suffering, he must be vengeful in a pretty infantile way.” (McCabe)
St. Thomas Aquinas states that the mission of Jesus from the Father is NOT the mission to be crucified; what the Father wished is that Jesus should be human.
The obedience of Jesus to the Father, his mission, was simply to meet us right here in our own history and show us the way to be a loving human being.
Jesus’ death on the cross was not “God’s will” - that would make him a rather sick and abusive God, certainly not worthy of our trust. Rather the cross is the reminder of the world WE have fashioned where it is dangerous and sometimes even fatal to be a compassionate, courageous and loving person. God, out infinite love for us, his misdirected people, sent his love embodied in the person Jesus to live with us and show us the way and we murdered him.
The fact that Jesus never broke, never became bitter, and never stopped loving us even as we were nailing him to the cross, but rather prayed “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they do” - his endurance in this love is what saves us and continues to show us the way; this is how we are “saved” by the cross of Christ, both by how Jesus lived and how he died.
Not for one minute did Jesus stop being a loving compassionate person and we are bid to follow him in this way. Jesus knew that this kind of limitless, unconditional love is the only force in our world that can bring about real and substantial change but sadly, it sometimes, also brings us to genuine suffering because of the state of the world.
As the story goes: Seeing all the suffering in the world, the man prayed, “Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something . . . I made you.”
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