What redeems is love, love that is willing to suffer for the sake of a beloved, a beloved held captive by his capacity for injustice and alienated from the one who loves. Jesus loves human beings. He wants to redeem them from their sin and to be reconciled with them, and to do this he must retain their company. He must be willing to endure their injustice and suffer their violence, not because he wants to, but rather because these other aims cannot be achieved without staying put, seeking union, and bearing burdens. In the language I have borrowed from Aquinas more than once, we can say that his velleity toward this patient endurance is negative. He would avoid it if he could. Even so, he knows these aims cannot be achieved apart from this act and without suffering what comes, and he knows that this suffering and endurance are very likely to bring about his own death. When Christians say that he offered himself as a willing sacrifice, they mean (or ought to mean) that he willed these ends in light of this knowledge and with this particular negative velleity.