The big theological word “incarnation” starts getting tossed around come Christmastime. It refers to teaching that the eternal Son of God took on flesh at a certain moment in human history. This moment when transcendent God became the imminent God - what the angel told Joseph in Matthew 1:23, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us.)
There is no Christianity without the Incarnation. Unless the true God of true God took upon himself our flesh, the corruption of sin and death could not be adequately dealt with. This is the glory of Christmas. Far from simply embracing an infant in a manger, we are celebrating the miracle of God becoming one of us for the purpose of saving us from ourselves.
Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria for over 40 years between the years 328-370. He is most famous for the Creed named after him in which he gives a brilliant defense of the Trinity. He is also known for his short but powerful work “On the Incarnation”, written to describe exactly why God had to become a man. Though the language is a bit archaic and scholarly, I am attaching a short section of that work here for your edification. Read it slowly, maybe even out loud and allow it prepare your heart and soul for Christmas!
There is no Christianity without the Incarnation. Unless the true God of true God took upon himself our flesh, the corruption of sin and death could not be adequately dealt with. This is the glory of Christmas. Far from simply embracing an infant in a manger, we are celebrating the miracle of God becoming one of us for the purpose of saving us from ourselves.
Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria for over 40 years between the years 328-370. He is most famous for the Creed named after him in which he gives a brilliant defense of the Trinity. He is also known for his short but powerful work “On the Incarnation”, written to describe exactly why God had to become a man. Though the language is a bit archaic and scholarly, I am attaching a short section of that work here for your edification. Read it slowly, maybe even out loud and allow it prepare your heart and soul for Christmas!
“[The Son of God] saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father -- a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.” - Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Section 8
- Josh Light
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