CCC 602 Consequently, St. Peter can formulate the apostolic faith in the divine plan of salvation in this way: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers. .. with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake.”¹ Man’s sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death.² By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”³

CCC 603 Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned.⁴ But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”⁵ Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all”, so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son”.⁶

1 I Pt 1:18-20.
2 Cf. Rom 5:12; I Cor 15:56.
3 2 Cor 5:21; cf. Phil 2:7; Rom 8:3.
4 Cf. Jn 8:46.
5 Mk 15:34; Ps 22:2; cf. Jn 8:29.
6 Rom 8:32; 5:10.