What did Jesus say and do about sin?
Jesus is the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29). His first public words were “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mt 4:17). He healed the sins of the paralyzed man and of the woman caught in adultery (Mk 2:5; Jn 8:11). He preached on God’s desire to reconcile us with the beautiful images of the lost sheep, lost coin and lost son (Lk 15). He taught us how to be brutal toward sin, instructing us in the Sermon on the Mount us that it would be better to rip out our eyes or cut off our hands if they were leading us to sin than to do nothing and lose our bodies and souls forever in Hell (Mt 5:29-30). He taught us to pray to the Father to forgive us our sins and to bring us to forgive the relatively smaller debts of those who sin against us (Mt 6:12; 18:21-35). On the Cross, as he prepared to die to take away our sins, Jesus’ salvific words were, first for sinners in general, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” and then for o
