God with the Father, to take human flesh, so that as Man, by dying might pay the debt due to divine justice, and, as God,
might make to it full satisfaction. The Passion has, moreover, made known how strict is the Justice of God. According to
Saint John Chrysostom, it is not so much in hell that the strictness of divine justice is seen; it is revealed rather in seeing
Jesus on the Cross; for in hell creatures are punished for sins of their own, while on the Cross we see a God cruelly treated
to make satisfaction for the sins of men. And what obligation had Jesus to die for us? None: He was offered because it
was His own will. (Isaias liii. 7.) He might have, with justice, abandoned man to perdition; but the love which He had for
us, would not allow Him to see us lost; therefore He chose to give Himself up to so painful a death, that He might save us:
He hath loved us and hath delivered Himself for us. (Eph. v. 2.)
God had from all eternity loved man: I have loved thee with an everlasting love. (Jer. Xxxi. 3) But afterwards seeing
that His justice obliged Him to condemn man and to keep him ever at a distance from Him and in hell, His mercy urged
Him to find a way by which He might save him. But how? By making satisfaction to divine justice by His own death.
And, consequently He willed that the condemnation to eternal death which man had merited should have been fixed to
that very Cross on which He died, that thus it might be cancelled in His blood: Blotting out the writing of the decree that
was against us, which was contrary to us, He hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it to the Cross. (Col. ii. 14.)
Thus, by the merits of His own blood, He pardoned all our sins: Forgiving you all offences (Ibid.) At the same time He
deprived the devils of the rights which they had acquired over us, carrying with Him in His triumph both His enemies and
ourselves whom He had delivered, and who were till then the prey of the devils: And despoiling the principalities and
powers, He hath exposed them confidently in open show, triumphing over them in Himself. (Col. ii. 15.) Theophylactus
thus explains these words: "As a triumphant conqueror He carries with Him in His triumph the booty and the enemy