God commands us to forgive debts and trespasses, and he does so himself, simply by saying, “I forgive you.” We don’t need to demand appeasements before we’re forgiven. We are to forgive, in fact, “seventy times seven times”, just because our brother comes to us and asks for it. Would God behave less kindly to us than we would to our own children? Do we need our “wrath” to be “appeased” before we forgive them?
In the Gospels we see that the eschatological remission of sins that John the Baptist proclaimed as imminent (Mk 1.4) actually arrived in Jesus’ healing ministry— he says to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are remitted” (Mk 2.5). And it’s done— they’re remitted! But there is nothing about how sin was forgiven at the other end of the Gospel, when Jesus goes to the cross. There doesn’t need to be, because he’s already forgiven sins. The cross is his enthronement as Israel’s— and the world’s— King and Lord.
The fathers of the church had exactly the perspective. Sin is easy— just forgive, and it’s done. The habits (“passions”, in patristic parlance) that lead to sin— lust, greed, anger, pride, and so forth— are harder, because they must be addressed not by forgiveness but by a program of healing. That’s what the “mysteries” (i.e., sacraments), fasting, prayer, confession, almsgiving, Lent, asceticism, and all those things are about— to soften our hard hearts, to restrain and retrain our responses, to transform our relationships. And since those are the passions of death, this is already the beginning of our conscious, voluntary, and intentional participation in the resurrection. “We are buried with him by baptism into death: that just as the Messiah was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rm 6.4-6). These lines from Paul sum up the whole of patristic teaching.
It was Adam who fell, so it’s Adam who has to get up. But (obviously) the problem is, he can’t, because he’s dead! So as Paul says, the Messiah went down into death to Adam to bring him life— and that new life, by the way, is God’s Own life, not just a restoration to the previous kind of life Adam had previously enjoyed. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Messiah Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you” (Rm 8.11). The Messiah has become our New Adam— “as in Adam all die, so also in the Messiah shall all be made alive” (1Co 15.22); “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-creating spirit” (1Co 15.45).
In the final analysis, Jesus’ ministry was one of healing from beginning to end. By a word he healed the paralytic first of his sins, setting him uncondemned before the Father; then he healed him of his paralysis, restoring him to community and creativity; and now by his commandments and mysteries (“sacraments”) he heals those who follow him of their passions and evil habits, transforming their relationships with heaven, earth, and man; and finally, by his death and resurrection, he heals us all of death itself. And when death, “the last enemy”, is finally and absolutely overcome by his final appearance (1Co 15.26), “God will be all in all” (1Co 15.28; Ep 1.23), and “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of God’s children” (Rm 8.20-21).
“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of covenant membership* reign in life through the one man Jesus, the Messiah” (Rm 5.17).
*This is the meaning of dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη) “righteousness” in St Paul.