Jesus Fulfills Salvation History

People of the Jewish faith who become Catholic (or part of a Christian ecclesial community) often claim that they are not changing religions, but living the fullness of their Jewish faith.  Indeed, as Catholics we see it very much the same way.  As Saint Paul tells us, we Gentile Christians are grafted onto the tree of the Jewish faith.  This statement is not surprising when you view it in light of salvation history.  The Jewish faith is built on the Old Testament Covenants, and Jesus Christ fulfills all of the promises of salvation history.

First of all, Jesus undoes the damage of Original Sin.  The Early Church Fathers expanded on the example of Saint Paul and considered Jesus the New Adam (and Mary the New Eve).

• His perfect obedience, humility, and love undo Adam’s disobedience, pride, and failure to sacrifice himself in love
• His miracles and grace undo the consequences of Original Sin
• His teaching, example, and grace empowering us to love heals the rifts in the relationships that were caused by Original Sin – most importantly the relationship between us and God

Secondly, Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament – not just the spoken prophecies but also those set up by the growing Covenant.  Exploring all of the prophecies would take too much time, but let’s look at how Christ fulfilled the expectations set up by each of the covenants.

• • God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between your offspring and hers.  She will strike at your head while you strike at her feet.”  Often called the “protoevangel,” this punishment God places on the serpent puts Satan at a distinct disadvantage, indicating his eventual demise.  Whether the offspring in this statement is interpreted as male

(indicating Jesus) or female (indicating Mary), it is Christ’s saving act on the cross that brings defeat to Satan.

• God’s promise to Noah that he would never revoke his covenantal relationship with humanity because of humanity’s sin strongly implies the coming of a savior who would eventually heal the covenant and save us from our sin.  Why would god allow the curse of Original Sin to go on if he did not mean to defeat it eventually?
• The parallels between Christ and Abraham are amazing – here are a few.  When Abraham takes his son to be sacrificed, Isaac (the only son as Jesus is God’s only Son) carries the wood (Christ carries the cross) up a mountain (Christ dies on Golgotha).  When Isaac asks Abraham where the lamb is for the sacrifice, Abraham replies, “God will provide the lamb.”  Christ is called the Lamb of God.  The angel stops Abraham from sacrificing his only son, but God does not hold back His only Son to be sacrificed for us.  God did indeed provide the Lamb.  Abraham’s willingness to obey God in trust is a step toward Christ’s perfect obedience and trust in the Father.
• Christ’s teachings fulfill the teachings of the Law of God given to Moses.  Christ’s teachings bring the Law of Love to the human heart, inspiring conversion toward self-sacrificing love.  The purpose of the Law of God given to Moses was to teach the Hebrew people how to love God and to live in Covenant with Him.  Christ’s teachings fulfill this purpose and bring it to all of humanity.
• Christ is Priest, Prophet and King.  He fulfills the role of the prophet, not just by making their prophecies come true, but by being the very Word of God in the world.  He fulfills the role of the kings by once again making God our King.  He also teaches the true meaning of kingly power – the power to bring good into the lives of others, the power to serve.

These are just a few ways that Jesus fulfills the expectations set up by the growing Covenant through Salvation History.  For a more detailed and knowledgeable exploration of this topic, look at material by Rosalind Moss, Scott Hahn, and Jeff Cavins.
Jesus’ teachings and example fulfill the moral law.  Jesus the perfect human being reveals man to himself.  He reveals humanity at its perfection, the way it can be with the help of grace.  He also reveals to us what it means to truly love God and neighbor and gives us the grace to love as He loved, helping us fulfill the purpose of the Divine Law.

• The Old Testament Law governed people’s external actions in order to train their hearts | Jesus’ teachings sought to directly convert hearts to love.
• The Old Testament Law was concerned with the minimum requirement of obedience (often referred to as the letter of the law) | Jesus’ teachings inspire us to live out the meaning and the goal of the law (often referred to as the spirit of the law)

Finally, Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection are the culmination of God’s loving plan of salvation.  A central theme of salvation history is sacrifice.  In salvation history sacrifices served a number of purposes.  They were an act of obedience, carried out as God commanded.  They were an act of love, telling God that nothing was more important than He.  During the Exodus, God commanded the Hebrew people to sacrifice animals that represented the Egyptian gods that the Hebrew people were tempted to worship (remember the golden calf?).  The main role sacrifices played in salvation history was the sealing of the Covenant.  There were three main types of sacrifice.  The sacrifice of communion was meant to heal relationships among the People of God and to unite them in the Covenant.  The blood of the sacrifice was offered to God and the meat was eaten by the people.  The sacrifice of atonement worked to forgive sins and to heal the people’s Covenantal relationship with God.  This sacrifice could only be eaten by the priest.  The holocaust was a burnt offering in which the entire animal was consumed in fire.  It was a complete offering to God.  Christ’s sacrifice on the cross fulfilled the purpose of all of the Old Testament sacrifices.

• Sacrifice of Communion: From Christ’s sacrifice the Church was born, uniting the world in the Universal Church.
• Sacrifice of Atonement: Christ’s perfect sacrifice paid the price for sin once and for all.
• Holocaust:  Christ offered Himself completely to the Father, holding nothing back, not even His life.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass makes the power of Christ’s sacrifice real to us, just as the Hebrew memorials such as Passover made the power of the historical events they commemorated real to the people celebrating the memorial.  The Holy Eucharist (Christ’s presence) continues to make these three types of sacrifice real to us – effecting communion by making us all one body, uniting us intimately with God, and allowing us to completely offer ourselves to the Father united to the Son.

Salvation history is an incredibly rich, complex history of God’s relationship with humanity.  Jesus Christ fulfills all of salvation history.  Obviously, it would be impossible to detail every element that Christ fulfills.  Those presented here are just a few highlights.  The most important concept is that Jesus Christ fulfilled salvation history by conquering Original Sin and intimately uniting humanity to God.  By becoming human and intimately uniting human nature to the Godhead, by offering the final sacrifice to pay the debt of sin, by offering us grace and the Holy Spirit, and by dwelling within the human soul through grace and especially through the Holy Eucharist, Jesus divinizes humanity and makes us true children of God.  Jesus gave humanity the very gift for which humanity was created for – the gift of becoming part of God’s family (covenant = sacred family bond).  According to Saint Francis de Sales, among other theologians, if the Fall never happened, God would eventually have granted this gift to unfallen humanity.  My own thought is that the divinization of unfallen humanity would have been a process, happening through time as humanity exercised free will to participate in God’s divine life.  Thanks to Jesus Christ, that process is now available to us once again.