Why Repentance Was Not Enough

But just as this had to be so, on the other side stood the just claims of God: that God should prove true to the law he had laid down about death. For it would be monstrous for God, the Father of truth, to appear a liar for our benefit and preservation. So here again, what course was God to take? Should he demand repentance from men for their transgression? Someone might call this worthy of God, reasoning that, just as men had become headed toward corruption through transgression, so through repentance they might be set once more on the road to incorruption. [a]

But repentance, first, would fail to safeguard the just claim of God. For he would still be no more true if men did not remain in the grip of death. Second, repentance does not call men back from what is their nature; it only stops them from acts of sin. Now if there were merely an offense in question, and not a corruption following from it, repentance would have been well enough. But once transgression had gained a start, men became caught up in the corruption that was their nature, and lost the grace they had as being in the image of God. What further step was needed then? Or what was required for such grace and such a recall, but the Word of God, who had also made everything out of nothing in the beginning? For it was his part, once again, both to bring the corruptible back to incorruption and to keep intact the just claim of the Father upon all. Being the Word of the Father, and above all, he alone was by nature fit to re-create everything, and worthy both to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all to the Father.