Origen on the Cross of Christ

From Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John Bk I (par. 231-235):

For we must dare say that the goodness of Christ appeared greater and more divine and truly in accordance with the image of the Father when “he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross,” than when “he had considered being equal to God robbery,” and had not been willing to become a servant for the salvation of the world.

For this reason, wishing to teach us that to have served in this way was a great gift which he had received from the Father, he says, “And my God shall be my strength. And he said to me, This is a great thing for you, that you are called my servant.” For if he had not become a servant he would not have established “the tribes of Jacob” nor converted “the diaspora of Israel”; neither would he have become the “light of the gentiles” to ” be for salvation to the end of the earth.”

And although the Father says it was great, the fact that he became a servant was moderate indeed compared to the fact that he became an innocent little lamb and a lamb to be slaughtered that he might take away “the sin of the world.” He who bestowed speech on all is compared to a lamb dumb “before his shearer,” that we might all be cleansed by his death which is distributed like a drug against the adverse influences and against the sin of those who wish to receive the truth. For the death of Christ has made the powers which war against the human race ineffectual, and by an ineffable power, has brought the life in sin in each believer to an end.

And because he takes away sin until all his enemies are abolished, and death is the last indeed, that the whole world might be without sin, John points to him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” He does not say he who will take it away but is not already also taking it away; and he does not say he who took it away but is not also still taking it away.

For the “taking away” affects each one in the world until sin be removed from all the world and the Savior deliver to the Father a prepared kingdom in which there is no sin at all, a kingdom which permits the Father’s rule and again admits all things of God in its whole total self, when the saying is fulfilled :That God may be all in all.

The image of Jesus’ death on the cross as “a drug” which heals is and takes away the sins of the world, I think, spot on! As the beautiful hymn Vexilla Regis produent by Venantius Fortunates (530-603) says:

He, our Maker, deeply grieving / That the first-made Adam fell, / When he ate the fruit forbidden / Whose reward was death and hell, / Marked e’en then this Tree the ruin / Of the first tree to dispel.

Thus the work of our salvation / He ordained to be done; / To the traitor’s art opposing / Art yet deeper than his own: / Thence the remedy procuring / Whence the fatal wound begun.

Or again a hymn by the same poet Bishop expresses the victory and greatness of the Cross:

The royal banners forward go; / The Cross shines forth in mystic glow; / Where he in flesh, our flesh who made, Our sentence bore our ransom paid.

Where deep for us the spear was dyed, / life’s torrent rushing from his side, / to wash us in that precious flood / where mingled Water flowed and Blood.

Fulfilled is all that David told / in true prophetic song of old; / Amidst the nations, God, saith he, / Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.

Far from defeat the Cross is a “remedy” or “drug” which cures the “adverse influences” of sin and heals our “fatal wound” precisely where it had begun – a tree. The poetry of the hymnography is rich and deep but expresses the same truth Origen had already laid down. “God reigns from the Tree” because the “kingdom without sin” is establishes there and from there spreads throughout the sinful world to heal and restore while establishing the reign of God. It is also important to note that Origen states that it is on the Cross that Christ’s divinity is especially evident! Because it is there – at the height of human suffering (death) – that the cause of our fatal illness (sin) is taken care of once and for all. The reign of sin is “brought to an end’ in the believers and instead Christ is enthroned as King. This sinless kingdom is “handed over to the Father” because only this Kingdom “permits the Father’s rule” as Origen states following St. Paul.

+  Fr. Gregory Wassen