Article 31
“The offering of Christ made once is the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual. There is no other satisfaction for sin but this alone. Consequently, the sacrifices of masses, in which it was commonly said that the priest offered Christ for the living and the dead so as to gain remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.”
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Biographies are very popular these days. A glance at the list of best-selling books shows that many of us are buying and reading accounts of the lives of famous people. We are fascinated by their achievements – and what made these possible. Some subjects of biographies are still alive and others have died naturally and peacefully. Some, however, like Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, died violent and infamous deaths that have caused great outrage and speculation. Their biographers, therefore, spend time describing their subject’s death, as well as his life’s achievements.
However untimely, scandalous and politically significant each man’s assassination was, though, few biographies devote more than ten percent of the book to the death itself. This is in great contrast to the accounts we have of the life and death of Jesus. Only two of the four gospels mention the events surrounding his birth, and none of them spend more than a couple of pages on his resurrection. However, the gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – each devote about a third of their book’s length to the last week of Jesus’ life. They regarded Jesus’ death as the most significant event of his life.
The gospel writers describe a man who has an close relationship with God; one who heals and teaches with God’s power and authority; one who can say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” and “I and the Father are one.” They describe the agonizing death of this young man who clearly did not deserve such a cruel and lonely end and whose final words include the woeful quotation, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus’ death was not merely physical agony, but total separation from his heavenly Father as he took upon himself the sins of the world and endured the punishment that they deserved. The 39 Articles state that this “offering of Christ made once is the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world… There is no other satisfaction for sin but this alone.” No wonder these writers dwell on this momentous event: a terrible death, but mankind’s only hope of reconciliation to God.
