Library › Metropolitan Platon of Moscow › Orthodox Doctrine (Summary of Christian Divinity)
Orthodox Doctrine (Summary of Christian Divinity)
Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, tr. Pinkerton, 1814
22. Part 2, Section 22: Of the Death of Christ Upon the Cross
Our Saviour finished the course of his blessed life by death, even the death of the cross.
Concerning our divine Mediator, his beloved disciple writes, that “He came unto his own, and his own received him not,” John i. 11. And he himself condemned the blindness of men on this account, “that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil,” John iii. 19.
The Jews, to whose ancestors and their posterity the Messiah and Deliverer of the world had been repeatedly promised, were so assured by the clearest prophecies of his coming, that it was impossible that any of them could fail to expect it. They still, however, though in vain, wait for his appearance. Those very Jews, by whose sacrifices he was always prefigured, by whose holy rites and ordinances he was represented, among whom also the prophets foretold the most evident marks of his appearance as a Saviour, so that they could ascertain the very time when he should be revealed; these very Jews, I say, as if determinately in opposition to the good will of God towards them, in an unprecedented state of hard-heartedness and blindness, denied him when he came, did not receive but rejected him, accounted him a deceiver, and persecuted him even unto death;—a death which was so salutary to the human race.
The chief causes of this desperate and dreadful act were their unpardonable blindness and wicked hardness of heart. But at the very time when they sought to kill him, they neither knew nor desired to fulfil the divine eternal purpose, that the Son of God should die for the human race; and thus they prepared (though not to their own advantage) an invaluable treasure for the whole world. At last, by their petitions, accusations, and threats, they prevailed upon Pontius Pilate, who at that time was the Roman governor among them, to condemn the innocent Jesus to the most shameful death of the cross, and this sentence was put in execution the very same day. The Mediator between God and man offered up unto his heavenly Father the most ardent prayers, when he suffered an agony in the garden, in which his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, and having borne every kind of insult, he was extended upon, and nailed to the cross. But even this was not enough of the wrath of man. When already dead, they pierced his side with a spear: but behold a wonder! Out of this life-giving wound ran forth blood and water, the image of the two mysteries instituted by himself, baptism and the communion.
When he gave up the ghost, an awful and most wonderful change took place in nature. The sun and moon were darkened, the earth trembled, many of the dead arose, and the veil of the temple was rent: what clearer demonstration could be given, that the temple itself, and all its holy services, were at an end? Christ, hanging on the cross, pronounced his last words full of mysteries: “it is finished,” John xix. 30. By these words he taught us, that all the sacrifices, mysteries, ceremonies, and prophecies of the Old Testament, concerning himself, were completed; and that the law itself was fulfilled. “For Christ is the end of the law,” Rom. x. 4.
It pleased our Lord to die the death of the cross; in this St Paul finds a great mystery. Those that were hung upon a cross, the law commands to be regarded as accursed. We, for our sins, lay under this curse; but as God promised to Abraham, that all believing nations should be blessed in him, so the Son of God, crucified on the cross, took upon himself this curse, and thus merited for us the blessing of Abraham. To this purpose, the apostle reasoneth: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ.” Gal. iii. 13, 14.