Hey Church!

In recent weeks, our prepare-for-worship reflections have centered around Advent’s questions concerning the good character of God. He has proven to us that He cares for our wellbeing, first, by the perfect order of the universe. Second, we know that He is engaged in the affairs of men by way of miracles, which are signs that we belong to a greater, unseen Kingdom. Today, we come to reflect on the greatest miracle of all, when the eternal God stepped into the world He created and took upon Himself true human form in the profound mystery we call the “incarnation.” 

Hear the words of the great 4th-century church father, Athanasius: 

“For he who by his own providence and ordering of the universe teaches about the Father, his it was to renew the same teaching. How could this be done? Perhaps one might say that it was possible through the same means, so as to show the things concerning him through the works of creation. But this was no longer certain. Not at all! Human beings had neglected this before, and no longer were their eyes held upwards but downwards. So, rightly wishing to help human beings, he sojourned as a human being, taking to himself a body like theirs and from below–I mean through the works of the body–that those not wishing to know him from his providence and governance of the universe, from the works done through the body might know the Word of God in the body, and through him the Father… For as a good teacher who cares for his students always condescends to teach by simpler means those who are not able to benefit from more advanced things, so also does the Word of God [condescend to us]…” 1 

The asei God who stands outside the realm of creation could not be known by His creatures unless He chose to reveal Himself. Otherwise, what knowledge could the finite have of the infinite? First, He made many of His attributes intimately familiar to us by imprinting the same on our souls. Attributes like a rational mind, a feeling heart, and an everlasting soul insist upon a Creator who made us in His likeness. 

“We love because He first loved us.”
       (1 Jn. 4:19)

But, as Athanasius said, we neglected to read of God’s nature written in the cosmos (cf. Rom. 1) and turned our eyes downward to baser things. Divorced from the divine logos (Word), we became like beasts chasing the appetites of our fallen nature. The race of rational man was perishing. 

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24)

Jesus, “[b]eing the Word of the Father and above all, he alone consequently was both able to recreate the universe and was worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to intercede for all before the Father.”2 The satisfaction of divine justice required one who was human (and so able to pay our debt) and divine (and so able to pay our debt). Not only is that impossible (as we count “possible”) but it may even smack of insanity–the idea that a perfectly self-sufficient being would leave the realm of heaven to enter into our mortal bodies, to say nothing of the kind of life He must live (despised, rejected) and the sort of death He must die (“cursed is he who hangs from a tree”). If that is the price of our redemption, then surely we must be doomed! 

If you ever doubt God’s love for you, turn your mind to the incarnation! “For we were the purpose of his embodiment, and for our salvation he so loved human beings as to come to be and appear in a human body… For this reason he was both born and appeared as a human being, and died, and rose again, dulling and overshadowing by his own works those of all human beings who ever existed…”3