On Being Purchased through Christ's Cross

"Is sin, man’s refusal to be reconciled with eternal, absolute Goodness, really an organ essential to life? Is it not much more like a spreading cancer? Can we say that God is robbing man of anything by restoring his health? Furthermore, if a man has become locked in a syndrome of refusal, if he refuses to keep faith with God, can he free himself from his own obstinacy? He may think he can, but in reality he becomes a slave of his ‘No’ because there is only true freedom when we are in contact with the Good, in the atmosphere of love -- that is, of God. This is something that has to be shown, from within, to the person who has turned away. What is taken away from sinful man through the surrender of the Son of God is nothing other than his alienation from the Good; what is given to him is nothing other than inner access to the Good, that is, true freedom. He is liberated both toward himself and toward God.

'Bought at a great price.' The first Christians were well aware of this when they put these two little words, 'pro nobis,' at the heart of the Creed. It was 'for us' that the Son came down from heaven, 'for us' that he was crucified, died and was buried. And this means not only 'for our benefit' but also 'in our place,' taking over what was our due. If this is watered down, the fundamental tenet of the New Testament disappears and it looks as if God is always reconciled, sin is always forgiven and overcome, irrespective of Christ's self-surrender; then the Cross becomes merely a particularly eloquent symbol of God's unchanging kindness, only a symbol, indicating something but not effecting anything. ... By sleight of hand the modern world has caused death to vanish from its everyday awareness: let us make sure that we Christians do not, by equal stealth, remove the tremendous drama of the Cross from our Christianity. "

Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 78-79.

Martin Luther and the Priesthood of All Believers

"Now we, who have been baptized, are all uniformly priests ... The only addition received by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent... Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom." It follows that all of us who are Christian are also priests. Those whom we call priests are really ministers of the word and chosen by us; they fulfil their entire office in our name. The priesthood is simply the ministry of the word. So in 1 Corinthians 4 it says: "Let a man account of us as of ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."
That being the case, it follows (i) that any one who has been called by the church to preach the Word, but does not preach it, is in no way a priest; and (ii) that the sacrament of ordination cannot be other than the rite by which the church chooses its preacher. That is how Malachi 2 defines a priest: "The priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." ...
Therefore every one who knows that he is a Christian should be fully assured that all of us alike are priests, and that we all have the same authority in regard to the word and the sacraments, although no one has the right to administer them without the consent of the members of his church. ...
A joyful liberty would come back to us, in which we should understand that we are all equal by any law whatever; and, when the oppressive yoke had been cast aside, we should know that he who is a Christian possesses Christ; that he who possesses Christ possesses all things that are Christ's, and is able to do all things."

Martin Luther, Pagan Servitude of the Church (1520) part 6.

Chrysostom on the Resurrection

Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed,

that mortality might be swallowed up in life . . .

We do not wish to cast aside the body, but corruption;

not the flesh, but death.

The body is one thing, death another . . .

What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility.

De resurrectione mortuorum 256-274 (4th century)