A Reflection on Forgiveness, Redemption, and the Passion

How many times have we heard that Jesus died so our sins could be forgiven? Yet when I read the Old Testament, I find God forgiving sins long before Calvary. David committed adultery and arranged the death of an innocent man, yet when he repented, God forgave him. Psalm 51 reveals a man who understood God’s mercy and the necessity of a contrite heart. So if God could forgive David, and many other sins of Israel, why did Jesus have to die? I believe the answer lies in understanding that forgiveness is part of redemption, but redemption accomplishes something greater than the pardon of individual sins. Jesus came to redeem us, it is in that redemption that we are forgiven.

To understand this, we must return to Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they lost the original holiness and justice in which they had been created. Genesis tells us that God expelled them from the garden and placed cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. This was more than exclusion from a physical place. Humanity had lost its original communion with God and could not restore that communion through its own power. The Church teaches that Heaven remained closed to humanity until Christ accomplished His redemptive work. The righteous who died before Him were not necessarily condemned to Hell; they awaited the Redeemer in what Christian tradition calls the abode of the just. David could be forgiven, Abraham could believe, and Moses could obey, but none could open Heaven by his own merits. Their salvation, like ours, depended upon Jesus Christ.

This raises an important distinction. God did not begin showing mercy at Calvary. The Father has always been merciful, and the redemption accomplished by Christ extends to those who lived before His earthly life. David’s forgiveness was already possible through the merits of Christ’s sacrifice, which God eternally knew and willed. As Hebrews teaches, Christ’s death redeemed transgressions committed under the first covenant. Calvary did not change an unwilling Father into a forgiving one. Rather, the Father sent His Son out of love to accomplish our reconciliation. The Son freely offered Himself in obedience to the Father, through the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of humanity.

I believe this is the deeper meaning of Israel’s history. We often read the Old Testament as the story of the Jewish people, but it is also the unfolding history of salvation through the people God chose. For centuries, God revealed His faithfulness through covenants, the Law, the prophets, and His saving actions. Israel’s repeated struggles revealed the weakness of fallen humanity, but they never canceled God’s covenant or His love for His people. The Law was holy and good, yet it could not by itself give humanity the grace needed to overcome sin and death. God was preparing His people, and through them the nations, for the coming of the Messiah. Humanity needed to discover that salvation could not be achieved through human strength alone. On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus explained how Moses and the prophets had prepared the way for His suffering and glory. What appeared to be a long and often tragic history was part of God’s unfolding revelation of His saving purpose.

Now consider the Passion from Satan’s perspective. Catholic teaching recognizes Satan as a fallen angel, a creature of extraordinary intelligence whose rebellion was a definitive rejection of God. His intelligence did not make him equal to God, nor did it give him knowledge of every aspect of God’s providence. He had witnessed humanity’s fall, Israel’s repeated disobedience, and the domination of much of the world by powers opposed to the true God. Perhaps, blinded by pride, he mistook God’s patience for weakness and believed that humanity’s rejection of God assured his own victory. When Jesus appeared, Satan tempted Him, but Jesus remained perfectly obedient to the Father. As Christ’s ministry unfolded, His authority over demons, sickness, sin, and even death became unmistakable. Jesus said clearly, this is not my dominion, and if it wasn’t Jesus dominion, it was Satan’s. In Satan’s mind the battle was for control of the earth, it was won or lost here. The alternative ending, a new path to Heaven, was not a consideration since it was not one for Satan. Perhaps Satan believed that removing Jesus would scatter His followers and bring an end to His mission, as had happened to other movements. We cannot know Satan’s precise thoughts, but it is reasonable to consider whether his pride prevented him from understanding how divine love and humility would triumph through the Cross.

John’s account of the Passion reveals that Jesus was never merely a helpless victim of His enemies. When the soldiers arrived to arrest Him in the garden, Jesus identified Himself, and they drew back and fell to the ground. He did not resist their arrest, although He had the power to do so. He had already declared, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). His suffering and death were freely accepted in obedience to the Father’s saving will. The Crucifixion was public, His death was real, and His burial confirmed that He had truly entered the human condition of death. These facts became central to the apostolic proclamation of His bodily Resurrection. God was not dependent upon Satan or human wickedness to accomplish redemption, but in His providence He permitted their freely chosen evil and brought from it the greatest good. As Hebrews 2:14 teaches, Christ entered death to defeat the Devil’s power and free humanity from its bondage to death.

Here we encounter the extraordinary reversal at the heart of the Passion. Satan’s rebellion was rooted in pride and the refusal to serve, while Christ’s victory came through humility and obedience. Adam’s disobedience brought sin and death into human history; Christ, the new Adam, restored humanity through His obedience unto death. Satan may have believed that the public execution of Jesus would prove His defeat, and convince the world once and for all, that Satan was the ruler of this world. The public nature of the killing made this victory undoubtable. The Cross was not simply an example of human cruelty or even a demonstration of God’s love. It was Christ’s unique and sufficient sacrifice, offered for our sins, through which He reconciled humanity to the Father, defeated the dominion of sin and death, and opened the way to eternal life. The public nature of the Resurrection and Christs subsequent time in a glorified body here on earth, the freeing of the souls trapped in the earth so that they could travel to Heaven, these acts made Satan’s dominion something that could be resisted and defeated. And, incredibly, that resistance would be rewarded.

This brings us back to the distinction between forgiveness and redemption. Imagine a man who commits a terrible crime, sincerely repents, and receives forgiveness. His guilt may be forgiven, yet the consequences of his actions can remain. Even if freed his past remains with him. Now imagine that he given a new life, a new name, with no past to label or haunt him. This begins to illustrate what redemption means, although Christ’s work is greater than any human analogy. Through His sacrifice, Jesus not only obtains forgiveness but liberates us from bondage to our past. Through Baptism, we are united to His death and Resurrection, cleansed of sin, made children of God, and given sanctifying grace. Paul tells us that anyone in Christ is a new creation. Our past does not become historically unreal, nor do all earthly consequences disappear, but sin need no longer define our relationship with God. Grace truly renews us and makes us capable of sharing in divine life.

The Bible begins with humanity losing access to the tree of life, and it ends in Revelation with the tree of life appearing in the heavenly Jerusalem. The fulfillment is greater than a simple return to Eden. Through Christ, humanity is invited into the eternal communion of the Blessed Trinity, a participation in God’s own life through grace. Jesus tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The way that fallen humanity could not reopen through its own strength has been opened by Christ. He is not merely the one who unlocks the gate; He Himself is the Way. He grabs our hand and walks us into Heaven, in fact that is the only way we can enter. His descent to the dead proclaimed the fulfillment of God’s promise to the righteous who awaited Him, and His Resurrection and Ascension reveal the destiny He has prepared for those united to Him.

Yet Christ does not impose salvation upon us. His redemptive sacrifice was offered for all humanity, and no one is excluded from the reach of His saving grace. But the grace of redemption must bear fruit in each person’s life. Salvation is not something we earn through our own efforts; it is God’s gift, received through faith, Baptism, and a life of grace and charity. We remain free to cooperate with grace or reject it. Through grave sin, committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent, we can lose sanctifying grace, but God’s mercy continues to call us to repentance and reconciliation. Like the prodigal son, we are invited to return to the Father, who desires not merely to pardon us but to restore us to life in His family.

I believe this is the story we must recognize when we read Scripture. John begins his Gospel by telling us that the Word was with God in the beginning and that all things were made through Him. The eternal Son through whom humanity was created entered human history to redeem it. The Old Testament prepared the way; the Incarnation revealed the Father’s love; the Passion accomplished the sacrifice of reconciliation; and the Resurrection revealed Christ’s victory over death. What Satan may have imagined as the destruction of Jesus’ mission became the occasion of his own defeat. The power of death was overcome not by human strength but by the perfect obedience and self-giving love of the Son of God.

So what happened at Calvary that had not already happened for David? David was truly forgiven, but even his forgiveness depended upon the redemption Christ would accomplish. David could not conquer death or open Heaven. Neither could Abraham, Moses, or any of the righteous who came before Christ. They awaited the fulfillment of God’s promise, and that fulfillment came through the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Calvary did not create God’s mercy; it accomplished the redemption through which God’s mercy brings humanity into eternal communion with Him.

The tragedy of Eden was not merely that humanity had sinned, but that humanity had lost the original holiness and communion with God for which it was created. The triumph of Calvary was not merely that individual sins could be forgiven, but that through Christ, humanity could be reconciled, renewed, and brought into eternal life. The angel’s sword reminds us that we cannot return by our own power. The Cross reveals the One who made our return possible, and the Resurrection assures us that death does not have the final word.

We began in a garden, lost our way through disobedience, and spent centuries learning that we could not save ourselves. Then God came Himself. He did not simply show us the way to Heaven. He was always the Way.