Theology for Beginners (Illustrated) by Sheed Frank

Author:Sheed, Frank [Sheed, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aeterna Press
Published: 2016-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

XII

REDEMPTION

SUFFERING AND DEATH

ONCE we have come to some understanding of who and what the Redeemer is, we are in a better condition to see into the meaning of Redemption.

For the state from which humanity needed to be redeemed it would be well to re-read the Section on the Fall of Man. Here we may summarize briefly the principal element in it. Owing to the sin of the first man, the race had lost its union with God; a breach lay between. Where God and man had been at one, they were now at two: till at-one-ment, atonement, was made, heaven was closed to the race’s members.

God could, of course, have simply written off the race as a failure. He could, as simply, have forgiven the sin. He did neither. He chose that in human nature the sin committed in human nature should be expiated.

For the act by which Christ redeemed us was a wholly human act. The life He offered as sacrifice was His human life; an offering of the divine life would have been meaningless. The suffering was in His soul and body; the death was the separation of His soul and body.

In Him, humanity gave its all, holding back nothing. Here was a total obedience as against the disobedience of man’s sin, a total acceptance and self-surrender as against the thrust and self-assertion of man’s sin. And all this was wholly in human nature.

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