He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

            Because we are humans, we are unable to grasp the inner workings of God’s mind. When we were searching for something greater than ourselves or even after we have come to know Christ but are stuck in moments of doubt, we often question God. We ask why He allows certain circumstances to occur or why bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, we even question His divine plan and wonder why Jesus had to die so young and such a brutal death. In his book On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius explains that Jesus “having mercy upon our race, and having pity upon our weakness,” descended to Earth and dwelled in a human body in order to redeem mankind and renew His creation (57). Athanasius addresses questions such as why Jesus had to sacrifice Himself, why He had to die by crucifixion, and how all of this reinforces the Christian faith. By demonstrating that God’s hand was over every aspect of the crucifixion, Athanasius is able to show that God had a divine plan from the very beginning and that the crucifixion played a vital role in that plan, serving as evidence for the Christian faith. 

            After the fall of Adam and Eve, God gave humans every opportunity to choose and follow Him. Not only did God unfold knowledge of Himself through “the works of creation,” but He also “sen[t] the law and the prophets” (61-62). Creation directly points to God, showing Him as a master artist who was intentional about every aspect of the universe. If the distance to the sun was closer to or farther away from the Earth, for example, then humans would either burn alive or freeze to death. If the air percentage of oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen were slightly different, then humans would not be able to breathe. Not only did God show Himself through the logistics of creation, but He also made creation aesthetically beautiful. A night sky littered with shooting stars, a fawn and his mother frolicking in a meadow covered with wildflowers, human beings themselves—all point to a single Creator. Unfortunately, because humans were weak, they focused more on what they could tangibly see and hear and resulted to the worship of idols. Since humans might be more willing to listen to human instruction, God showed mercy by sending the prophets to instruct His people in the law and explain how God wanted them to live. However, humans continued to pursue corruption and fell away from Him, but God did abandon them. Instead, He sent His Son, the Word of God to “renew again ‘in the image’ so that through it, human beings would once again be able once again to know Him” (63). Through the cross, Jesus “blotted out the death which had occurred through the offering of His own body…restoring every aspect of human beings by His own power” (59). Jesus created us, partook of us, and saved us through His body, all of which is connected to the plan God set in motion from the very beginning. 

            Jesus’s death on the cross was perfectly orchestrated by God. St. Athanasius explains that Jesus had to endure crucifixion as a means of death because a natural death, like from a heart attack, for instance, would show weakness. Dying from an illness would not be appropriate for Jesus because He “healed the illnesses of others” (72). It would cause people to assume that the Son of God could not even save Himself from an illness. Furthermore, it was “unfitting for illness to precede death, lest it be thought a weakness of Him who was in the body” (72). When Jesus died, His life was not taken from Him like humans’ are when they die; Jesus literally gave up His life. St. Athanasius also notes that being crucified is a very public death, an important aspect in God’s plan. If Jesus “had hidden His body away by itself privately…or in a desert place or a house or anywhere at all,” people could have claimed that He lied (73). It would be easy to dispute Jesus’s claims that He sacrificed Himself because there were no eyewitnesses. The Pharisees of the time “compelled even those who had seen the resurrection to deny it,” so they could have effortlessly planted seeds of doubt in others’ minds if no one had been present (74). Part of the evidence for the Christian faith rests on the fact that there were firsthand eyewitnesses at the crucifixion who later wrote a Biblical account of the event. Christians base their faith on the crucifixion story; without it, we would all be helpless sinners who could never have eternal life. The Bible explains that a blood sacrifice was required to fulfill the Law and atone for mankind’s sins, and Jesus took their place and died a criminal’s death, a shameful death. Enduring the agony of crucifixion, which symbolizes the pain that sin creates, proves the love He has for humans. Every piece of God’s plan carries great significance—even the fact that Jesus rose on the third day. In order to prove that Jesus was actually dead, “the Word waited one intermediary day, and on the third day,” rose again (77). In contrast, if he waited longer than three days to be raised from the dead and appear to others, people “might distrust what appeared and forget what happened” (77). Three days was sufficient time because the events from that Friday afternoon were still fresh in the disciples’ and the crowd’s minds. This interval of time is often used as evidence to prove that the resurrection was legitimate, and therefore, that the entire Christian faith is valid. God’s timing is perfect—not only in relation to the timespan between Jesus’s death and resurrection, but for His divine plan as a whole. 

            In order to truly grasp and appreciate Christ dying for mankind, we must first recognize the divine plan God had from the very beginning and realize that crucifixion was the only way that Jesus could have died. Understanding the crucifixion and the type of death Jesus endured is “the chief point of our faith,” and further verifies that “Christ is known to be God and Son of God” (70). Jesus’s death and the pain, humiliation, and separation from God that accompanied it demonstrates the extraordinary love He has for us. The cross and the crucifixion were tools God used in His divine plan, a plan which demonstrates God’s love for us and serves as evidence for the Christian faith.