When writers in the first Christian centuries treated Jesus' death, they put primary emphasis on the cross as a great victory over death and sin. Christ defeated the powers that held humanity in bondage and succeeded in restoring the intimacy with God and participation in eternal life that had been lost. "God became as we are, in order that we might become as God is," was an idea frequently expressed in these texts.16 This is an interesting turn on the serpent's charge, in Eden, that God feared having Eve and Adam become "like God." Quite the contrary. God acts to restore that possibility for
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