How the Cross Stripped the Rebel Powers

Moreover, to touch briefly on some of the deeper matters: when God made the world in the beginning, he set certain heavenly powers over it and appointed them to govern and direct the race of mortal men. Moses shows that this was done in the Song in Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations, he fixed the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” But some of these powers, such as the one who is called the ruler of this world, did not use the authority God had entrusted to them according to the laws under which they had received it. They did not teach mankind to obey God’s commandments; they taught them instead to follow their own perverse leading. So we were brought under the bonds of sin, because, as the prophet says, “We were sold under our sins.” For every man who gives in to his lust is taking payment for his own soul. Under that bond, then, every man was held by those most wicked rulers. Christ, when he came, tore that bond down and stripped them of this power of theirs. Paul points to this under a great mystery when he says of him, “He destroyed the written record that stood against us, nailing it to his cross, and he led away rulers and powers, triumphing over them in himself.” [a]

Those rulers, then, whom God had set over mankind, became defiant and tyrannical. They set about attacking the men committed to their charge and routing them completely in the battles of sin, as the prophet Ezekiel hints in a hidden way when he says, “On that day angels will go out in haste to destroy Ethiopia, and there will be terror among them on the day of Egypt; for see, he is coming.” So, having stripped them of their almighty power, Christ is said to have triumphed, and to have handed over to men the power that was taken from them, as he himself says to his disciples in the Gospel: “See, I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the might of the enemy.” The cross of Christ, then, brought those who had wrongly abused the authority they had received into subjection to those who had once been subject to them. But us, that is, mankind, it teaches first of all to resist sin even to death, and to die willingly for the sake of our religion. Next, this same cross sets before us an example of obedience, just as it has punished the defiance of those who were once our rulers. Hear, then, how the apostle would teach us obedience by the cross of Christ: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in appearance as a man, he became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.” So, as a perfect teacher teaches both by example and by instruction, Christ taught the obedience that good men must give even at the cost of death by dying first himself in giving it.