Catechism for Adults

Extract

The arms of Christ on the Cross are represented on the crucifix as stretched out to their full extent. They not only bear the weight of man’s sin, but they are extended to include all men. There is no limitation to the act of sacrifice—it is offered for all men, and it obtains for all the possibility of eternal life in the presence of God. Christ is for all men the cause, the only possible cause, of salvation in the sense that he alone frees man from the consequences of sin and that no type of man is excluded from the newness of life his sacrifice gains—save only the one who, by the exercise of his freedom, shuts his mind and heart to faith when it is presented, or refuses, in pride, to repent.

The statement in the Creed, ‘He descended into hell’, means that Christ’s redemptive work is not confined to those who lived during or after his life on earth. The Cross of Christ is the central point in history in that it is an eternally decisive point, whose consequences are effective throughout the whole temporal process. Those who lived before Christ, and who tried to do the Will of God in so far as light was given to them, were not untouched by grace. Since they were born in a state of condemnation and death, they were as a people incapable of entering into the presence of God. As individuals who had looked for God, and by grace in hope, they were not condemned, but just.