Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
TRACTATE 3 77
And it is over their head for the purpose of showing their sins, not taking them away. The Law, then, orders; the giver of the Law takes pity in that which the Law orders. Men, attempting by their own strength to fulfill what was commanded by the Law, fell by their rash and headlong presumption. They are not with the Law but have become guilty under the Law. And because they were unable to fulfill the Law by their own strength, having become guilty under the Law, they implored the help of a liberator. And culpability under the Law made the proud sick. The sickness of the proud became the confession of the humble. Now the sick confess that they are sick. Let the physician come and heal the sick.
3. The physician. Who? Our Lord Jesus Christ. Who [is] our Lord Jesus Christ? He who was seen even by those by whom he was crucified. He who was seized, beaten with fists, whipped, besmeared with spittle, crowned with thorns, hung upon a cross, deprived of life, wounded by a spear, taken down from the cross, interred in a tomb. That same one [is] our Lord Jesus Christ. He is manifestly the same one, and he is the complete physician of our wounds, that crucified one against whom insult was hurled, at whom, when he was hanging, his persecutors shook their heads and said, "If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross. He is our complete physician, he, manifestly.
(2) Well then, why didn't he show his insulters that he was the Son of God, so that, if he allowed himself to be raised up on the cross, at least then, when they said, "If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross," he would come down and show them that he was truly the Son of God whom they had dared to mock? He did not want to. Why didn't he? Was it because he could not? Obviously he could. For what is greater, to come down from a cross or to rise up from the tomb?
(3) But he endured the insulters; for the cross was taken up not as a demonstration of power but as an example of suffering. There he cured your wounds where so long he endured his own; there he healed you of eternal death where he