Was Christ’s Passion necessary for our redemption?
St. Thomas Aquinas: Christ’s Passion shows us how much God loves man.
As Good Friday approaches, we are reminded of Christ’s redemptive Passion, death and Resurrection. St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican and the chief theologian of the Church, sheds some light on this great mystery.
Is there any more suitable way of delivering the human race than by Christ’s Passion? This question is asked by the 13th century theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, who gives answers in his Summa Theologica. [1]
We often say without thinking that Our Lord died on the cross to redeem us from our sins. But there is much more to it than that. St. Thomas points out that in Christ’s Passion, “many other things besides deliverance from sin concurred for man’s salvation.”
In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Romans 5:8): “God commendeth His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us.”
St. Thomas also tells us that, “He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation.”
There are other reasons pointed out by the angelic doctor:
- Christ suffered for us, “leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.”
- “Because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss.”
- “Because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:20: ‘You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body.’”
- “Because it redounded to man’s greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death.”
St. Thomas concludes, “Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 15:57): ‘Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good will.”
[1] Part III, Q. 46, Art. 3.
