O Victim of love, to take away our sins, you have restored our goodness by your blood! (Proper liturgy of the Crosiers, second Tuesday before Lent).
By a strange twist of fate, one could say that Jesus’ crucifixion was justifiable. According to the ancient law of the society (which remains in tact in some places in our own day), the worst criminals would be executed. Capital punishment was demanded by the character of their crimes, evil acts that threatened the very survival of society. These guilty people would be eliminated for the sake of the common good. In identifying himself deliberately with all the sinners of the world, Jesus presented himself as such a contemptible person. Despite his personal innocence, he wished to bear the guilt of all others. He accepted his sentence in silence, without a fight. He wanted to draw down on his own head all the consequences of the misdeeds of human history, the most disastrous symbol of which and the worst punishment for which was the cross. He wanted to be known as a person who merited condemnation to death and who, by such a death, would eliminate all subsequent threat to human society. Guilty by association, crucified in solidarity—that was justice. And so it was: through the wood of the Cross, the power of evil in the human world was finally destroyed.
You will not know where to find the sickness in a body that is not your own. (Luba)
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