Whether Christ made satisfaction for the punishment of our sins.
Whether Christ made satisfaction for the punishment of our sins.
§ 120. Christ not only made satisfaction for actual sins, He also offered full satisfaction in our place for the temporal and eternal punishments due because of our sins by taking upon Himself the punishments for our sins. This we confirm by the following arguments. (I) After the fault is removed, the obligation of punishment is also removed by the nature of a perpetual relation. But Christ took our sins upon Himself (Isa. 53:6; John 1:29; 1 Pet. 2:24). Therefore He also transferred to Himself the punishment owed to the sins and consequently freed us from the debt of the punishment that we had to pay. Tertullian (De bapt., ch. 5, p. 221): “Once the guilt is removed, the punishment is removed.”
(II) Scripture emphatically states that the very punishment that was owed to our sins was placed upon Christ. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him,” ׁשְֹלמֵנּוחַסוּמ ויָלָע (Isa. 53:5); that is, He Himself was chastised that we might have peace.
(III) All punishments—temporal and eternal, corporeal and spiritual—are included under the word “curse.” But now, Christ was made a curse for us to free us from the curse of the Law (Gal. 3:13). Here let us look on the actual account of the Passion, crucifixion, and death of Christ, which bears witness that the serious punishments owed because of our sins were inflicted upon Christ so that we might be freed from them in God’s judgment. “He was wounded for our sins; He was bruised for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5). The punishment for sin is the curse of the Law, but “Christ has freed us from the curse of the Law” (Gal. 3:13). The punishment for sin is the dominion of Satan, but “Christ has freed us from the power of Satan” (Heb. 2:14). The punishment for sin is God’s wrath, but now, “Christ has freed us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). The punishment for sin is death, but now, “Christ has freed us from death” (Hosea 13:14). The punishment for sin is hell and eternal damnation, but now, Christ has freed us from hell and eternal damnation (Rom. 8:1[–2]).
(IV) God’s righteousness does not allow the same sin to be punished twice, but now, He smote His most-beloved Son for our sins (Isa. 53:4). Therefore He will not punish sins in those who have been reconciled, in those who have become sharers of the satisfaction made through Christ.
(V) If we were still obligated to make satisfaction for the punishments of sin, Christ’s satisfaction would not yet be complete, His work of redemption would not yet be done, all things would not yet be finished through Him. But He Himself cried out on the cross: “It is finished [consummatum est]” [John 19:30], from which the Epistle to the Hebrews (10:14) concludes: “By a single offering He has perfected [consummaverit] forever those who are being sanctified.” For this reason the satisfaction made through Christ is called “ransoming” [ἀπολύτρωσις, 1 Cor. 1:30], to signify complete liberation, as Chrysostom notes correctly somewhere. If Christ had made satisfaction for original sin alone or for fault alone, His satisfaction would have to be called “half ransoming” [ἡμιλύτρωσις] rather than “ransoming” [ἀπολύτρωσις].
** Dr. Luther (Vermahnung an die Geistlichen zu Augsburg in 1530, Jena German edition, vol. 5, f. 81): “When it is said, ‘You must make satisfaction for your sins,’ what else is that but: ‘You must deny Christ; you must renounce your Baptism, blaspheme the Gospel, accuse God of lying, not believe the forgiveness of sins, trample on Christ’s body and blood, dishonor the Holy Spirit, and go to heaven by means of yourself with such virtues’?”2 In the same place see about the statements of the fathers which are cited in favor of satisfaction. **
Bellarmine (De amiss. grat. et stat. peccati, bk. 5, ch. 20): “Sin is then regarded as remitted perfectly and completely when not only fault but also every punishment has been remitted.” (Therefore, from the opposite sense, if punishment has not yet been remitted, the sin itself has not yet been perfectly remitted.)
(VI) If we can make satisfaction for the punishments of sins, we transfer part of Christ’s redemption to ourselves, just as Biel argues (Sent., 4, dist. 14): “Christ’s suffering is not the sole and total meritorious cause of our salvation.” And yet He “trod the winepress alone” (Isa. 63:3). Augustine (Sermon 141 de temp.): “Christ paid for both the punishment and the fault by sharing the punishment with us without fault.”
** [Augustine] again (Ad Bonifac., bk. 4, ch. 4): “Just as the Son of God alone became the Son of Man to make us God’s children along with Himself, so also He alone took up the punishment for us without wicked merits so that we might attain unowed grace without good merits.” **
Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 49, art. 3) responds in the affirmative to the question: “Are we freed from the punishment of sin through Christ’s Passion?” He adds that such freeing takes place in two ways: “(1) Directly, insofar as Christ’s Passion was a sufficient and superabundant satisfaction for the sins of the human race; the guilt of punishment was removed once the satisfaction had been provided. (2) Indirectly, insofar as Christ’s Passion is the cause of the remission of the sin on which the guilt of punishment is based.”
** He writes (dist. 4, ch. Filius Dei): “The Son of God took up the flesh of sin and its punishment without fault, that both the fault and punishment of sin might be paid in His flesh.” Cassander (Consult., art. De bon. operib.): “With complete consensus all the ancients teach the doctrine that the confidence in the remission of sins, even of those which one commits after rebirth, and the hope of forgiveness and of eternal life must be placed solely in God’s mercy and Christ’s merit.” **
Moreover, the splendor of truth forced even Bellarmine himself to write clearly (De indulg., bk. 2, ch. 10, col. 1592): “Christ made an utterly complete satisfaction to God the Father for the guilt of fault, and of the temporal and eternal punishment of all sins.” (For what, then, shall we have to make satisfaction?) “Some of the professors at Louvain have held that temporal punishment was remitted by the satisfactions of Christ alone” (De indulg., bk. 1, ch. 4).