"Jesus Christ walked in the flesh thirty-three years on the earth, O King. In the thirtieth year he repaid to God all the debt that the human kind and angels owed to Him. It was a debt that no man and no angel was able to pay, because there has never been a created being that was free from sin, except the Man with whom God clothed Himself and became one with Him in a wonderful unity." - Catholicos Timothy I, Patriarch of the Church of the East (here)
I was thinking of substitutionary atonement just yesterday when I heard the first reading, which begins: "Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.
ReplyDeleteSpeak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins."
only in Christ has this superfluity happened, the more than double expiation of sins.