2.2. The New Testament

A fundamental theme connected with the idea of guilt, and amply present in the New Testament, is that of the absolute holiness of God. The God of Jesus is the God of Israel (cf. Jn 4:22), invoked as “Holy Father” (Jn 17:11), and called “the Holy One” in 1 Jn 2:20 (cf. Acts 6:10). The triple proclamation of God as “holy” in Is 6:3 returns in Acts 4:8, while 1 Pt 1:16 insists on the fact that Christians must be holy “for it is written: ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (cf. Lv 11:44-45; 19:2). All this reflects the Old Testament notion of the absolute holiness of God; however, for Christian faith the divine holiness has entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Old Testament notion has not been abandoned but developed, in the sense that the holiness of God becomes present in the holiness of the incarnate Son (cf. Mk 1:24; Lk 1:35; 4:34; Jn 6:69; Acts 3:14; 4:27,30; Rev 3:7), and the holiness of the Son is shared by “his own” (cf. Jn 17:16-19), who are made sons in the Son (cf. Gal 4:4-6; Rom 8:14-17). There can be no aspiration to divine sonship in Jesus unless there is love for one’s neighbor (cf. Mk 12:29-31: Mt 22:37-38; Lk 10:27-28).

Love of neighbor, absolutely central in the teaching of Jesus, becomes the “new commandment” in the Gospel of John; the disciples should love as he has loved (cf. Jn 13:34-35; 15:12,17), that is, perfectly, “to the end” (Jn 13:1). The Christian is called to love and to forgive to a degree that transcends every human standard of justice and produces a reciprocity between human beings, reflective of the reciprocity between Christ and the Father (cf. Jn 13:34f; 15:1-11; 17:21-26). In this perspective, great emphasis is given to the theme of reconciliation and forgiveness of faults. Jesus asks his disciples to be always ready to forgive all those who have offended them, just as God himself always offers his forgiveness: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Mt 6:12; 6:12-15). He who is able to forgive his neighbor shows that he has understood his own need for forgiveness by God. The disciple is invited to forgive the one who offends him “seventy times seven,” even if the person may not ask for forgiveness (cf. Mt 18:21-22).

With regard to someone who has been injured by another, Jesus insists that the injured person should take the first step, canceling the offense through forgiveness offered “from the heart” (cf. Mt 18:35; Mk 11:25), aware that he too is a sinner before God, who never refuses forgiveness sincerely entreated. In Mt 5:23-24, Jesus asks the offender to “go and reconcile himself with his brother who has something against him” before presenting his offering at the altar. An act of worship on the part of one who has no desire beforehand to repair the damage to his neighbor is not pleasing to God. What matters is changing one’s own heart and showing in an appropriate way that one really wants reconciliation. The sinner, however, aware that his sins wound his relationship with God and with his neighbor (cf. Lk 15:21), can expect pardon only from God, because only God is always merciful and ready to cancel our sins. This is also the significance of the sacrifice of Christ who, once and for all, has purified us of our sins (cf. Heb 9:22; 10:18). Thus, the offender and the offended are reconciled by God who receives and forgives everyone in his mercy.

In this context, which could be expanded through an analysis of the Letters of Paul and the Catholic Epistles, there is no indication that the early Church turned her attention to sins of the past in order to ask for forgiveness. This might be explained by the powerful sense of the radical newness of Christianity, which tended to orient the community toward the future rather than the past. There is, however, a more broad and subtle insistence pervading the New Testament: in the Gospels and in the Letters, the ambivalence of the Christian experience is fully recognized. For Paul, for example, the Christian community is an eschatological people that already lives the “new creation” (cf. 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), but this experience, made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus (cf. Rom 3:21-26; 5:6-11; 8:1-11; 1 Cor 15:54-57), does not free us from the inclination to sin present in the world because of Adam’s fall. From the divine intervention in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, it follows that there are now two scenarios possible: the history of Adam and the history of Christ. These proceed side by side and the believer must count on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus (cf., for example, Rom 6:1-11; Gal 3:27-28; Col 3:10; 2 Cor 5:14- 15) to be part of the history in which “grace overflows” (cf. Rom 5:12-21).

A similar theological re-reading of the paschal event of Christ shows how the early Church had an acute awareness of the possible deficiencies of the baptized. One could say that the entire “corpus paulinum” recalls believers to a full recognition of their dignity, albeit in the living awareness of the fragility of their human condition. “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). An analogous reason can be found in the Gospel narratives. It arises decisively in Mark where the frailties of Jesus’ disciples are one of the dominant themes of the account (cf. Mk 4:40-41; 6:36-37, 51-52; 8:14-21,31-33; 9:5-6,32-41; 10:32-45; 14:10-11, 17- 21, 27-31,50; 16:8). Even if understandably nuanced, the same motif recurs in all of the Evangelists. Judas and Peter are respectively the traitor and the one who denies the Master, though Judas ends up in desperation for his act (cf. Acts 1:15-20), while Peter repents (cf. Lk 22:61) and arrives at a triple profession of love (cf. in Jn 21:15-19). In Matthew, even during the final appearance of the risen Lord, while the disciples adore him, “some still doubted” (Mt 28:17). The Fourth Gospel presents the disciples as those to whom an incommensurable love was given even though their response was one of ignorance, deficiencies, denial, and betrayal (cf. Jn 13:1-38).

This constant presentation of Jesus’ disciples, who vacillate when it comes to yielding to sin, is not simply a critical re-reading of the early history. The accounts are framed in such a way that they are addressed to every other disciple of Christ in difficulty who looks to the Gospel for guidance and inspiration. Moreover, the New Testament is full of exhortations to behave well, to live at a higher level of dedication, to avoid evil (cf., for example, Jas 1:5-8, 19-21; 2:1-7; 4:1-10; 1 Pt 1:13-25; 2 Pt 2:1-22; Jude 3:13; 1 Jn 5-10; 2:1-11; 18-27; 4:1-6; 2 Jn 7-11; 3 Jn 9-10). There is, however, no explicit call addressed to the first Christians to confess the faults of the past, although the recognition of the reality of sin and evil within the Christian people – those called to the eschatological life proper to the Christian condition – is highly significant (it is enough to note the reproaches in the letters to the seven Churches in the Book of Revelation). According to the petition found in the Lord’s Prayer, this people prays: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Lk 11:4; cf. Mt 6:12). Thus, the first Christians show that they are well aware that they could act in a way that does not correspond to their vocation, by not living their Baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus.