It is to men in this situation that God has now given new hope, a hope indeed that has been foreshadowed in the Old Testament, but that has now become a reality through Christ. God offers free pardon to guilty sinners – and that means every man alive – not because of anything they have done or can do to deserve it, but because of what Christ has done. God treats guilty men as innocent, and delivers them from the shackles of their sins, when they commit themselves utterly to Christ. The right relationship to God, achieved once only in the perfect obedience and self-dedication of Christ, becomes possible through the mystery of the Cross, for all who identify themselves with Christ by incorporation into his Church. The gulf had to be bridged: God himself had to bridge it: now any man may make his way from death to life in the strength of God's Son (3: 21-31).