The salutary worth of Christ's death, as we have said, does not lie in the mere biological disintegration of a man who was at the same time God, but rather in the obedient love through which Christ sacrificed himself in absolute attachment to God. Death objectively and factually implies the abandoning of all; a thorough rooting out and dispossessing of self, a passive being-shut-off from without, a loss of proprietary right to self. Death takes everything from us. This precisely is the nature of death as a punishment for sin.

Death is something that happens to us; in itself dying is not an Action done by man, let alone the greatest action he does: it is something which overcomes us. Death can therefore only have a positive, Christian and salutary significance when we freely accept this alienation from self, which is a fact, as a positively desired detachment from self for the love of God in union with the dying Christ.