Arabic original here.
The Cross
"God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..." (John 3:16).
Christ gives us forgiveness of sins first through baptism, just as He gives us His surpassing love through the cross.
He first gives us a type from the Old Testament (the bronze serpent) and then speaks of the cross.
We first have the image of the serpent, which is a type of the cross from the Old Testament because the Hebrews were saved from death when they beheld the image of the bronze serpent.
Those who believe in the Crucified One shall enjoy a greater blessing.
Faith in the cross causes believers to flee from eternal death.
"The Son of Man shall be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" )(John 3:14-15).
All of this occurs through the cross, to show that man's salvation is achieved by his faith in the cross of Christ God: the cross is the source of life.
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
With the image of the serpent, the Jews fled death, and here with the cross believers flee from eternal death. Christ heals the spiritual wounds of the serpent and death becomes the beginning of eternal life.
The cross is the source of life.
Human reason does not accept all of this easily.
Faith in the cross of Christ transcends the weakness of rational logic.
Through death, Christ gives others life.
By his faith in the cross, the believer does not perish, just as the Crucified One Himself does not perish. In this way, Christ liberates others from perishing through faith, just as He was first liberated from perishing through the resurrection.
In this way, the cross became, as we have said, the source of life.
Faith transcends the weakness of rational logic. Pagans mock the cross while the faithful hold fast to it.
All of this is an expression of God's surpassing love for us.
+Ephrem
Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies
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