An Excerpt from “A Journey Toward Perfection”
Although He knew the outcome from the very beginning, God still graced us with free will. This was necessary because perfect divine love can only be expressed through our free will. God knew that not one single person throughout time would be able to keep themselves holy and free from sin. He knew that man would continually reject Him and instead, choose evil, yet He still created us. As hopeless as we are, He never gave up on us. Throughout time, God was patient with us and continued to be merciful toward us. He continued to love us. God knew that the only way to save us from ourselves was to personally intercede on our behalf. Before He even created us, He knew He would sacrifice Himself for each and every one of us.
Only God could prepare a plan for our salvation, which required His only son to die for us as a sacrifice for our sins. Only a holy and perfect God could conceive of such a plan for our salvation, which required that He condescend from His throne of glory and become a man. Christ, being perfect and sinless, chose to put on the flesh of man, which is subject to temptations and passions. He knowingly entered a world filled with evil. He suffered the mocking, the rejection, the beatings and His own murder by those He created and loved. He did this just to let us know how much He loves us and to invite us into a relationship with Him. This is why Christ’s sacrifice is foolishness to the unbelievers. It truly sounds unbelievable. No human mind can imagine such a plan. God chose to work through our hearts. If we contemplate the magnitude of what He has done for us, this pure act of love, a sacrificial love, is truly wondrous.
Even more incredibly, He suffered the burdens of all of mankind’s sins. The one and only man throughout time who was sinless, took on all of our sins, yours, mine and everyone’s since Adam. This, Christ chose to do of His own free will, even before the foundation of creation. God knew that only through this act of sacrifice on the cross could we comprehend His great love for us. By the tree of knowledge, we fell from grace, but by the tree of the cross, we were redeemed by grace. One of the hymns from our Resurrection Service (Kezios, 1994) declares the true majesty of this act:
“Be astonished and in awe, you heavens, and let the earth’s foundation quake; for behold, the One who dwells in the heavens is reckoned among the dead and is a lodger in a small tomb. You youths, bless Him; you priests, praise Him; and you people, exalt Him to the ages…
“Mother, it is of my own will that the earth covers me, but the gatekeepers of Hades shudder seeing me clothed in a robe stained with the blood of vengeance. For as God, having vanquished the enemies on the Cross, I will rise anew and magnify you.”
If this alone was not incredible enough, through this great act of love for us, Christ rose from the dead, and even now, lives in us. He is a part of us through the Holy Spirit. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we have access to a one-on-one relationship with our Creator, our God.