Jan 13 Mon
Why did the Word become flesh?
When the Word took on human flesh, He made us divine.
Our faith is not founded upon empty words; nor are we carried away by mere caprice or false arguments. On the contrary, we put our faith in words spoken by the power of God, by the Word himself at God’s command. God wished to win men back from disobedience, not by using force to reduce them to slavery but by appealing to their free will to set them free.
Initially, the Word spoke through the prophets, but because the message was couched in such obscure language, it could be only weakly apprehended. Now, the Father has sent the Word in Person, commanding him to show himself openly so the world could see him and be saved.
We know that by taking a body from the Virgin, He restored our fallen nature. We know that his human nature was of the same clay as ours. Otherwise, He would not have been a teacher to be imitated. If He had taken a different substance than mine, He could not have ordered me to do as He did, since by my nature I am so weak. Such a demand could not be in keeping with his goodness and justice.
No. He wanted us to consider him no different from ourselves, so he worked, was hungry and thirsty, and slept. Without protest, he endured his Passion, submitted to death, and revealed his resurrection. He offered his human nature as the first fruits so that we will not lose heart when suffering may come our way, and to make us look forward to receiving the same reward as He did since we know that we possess the same humanity.
When we have come to the company of God, both our bodies and our souls will be immortal and incorruptible. We shall enter the kingdom of heaven, because while we lived on earth, we acknowledged heaven’s King. Having become friends of God and co-heirs with Christ, we shall be subject to no evil desires or inclinations, or any affliction of body or soul, for we shall have become divinized.
Whatever evil you may have suffered, being man, it is God that sent it to you, precisely because you are man; but equally, when you have been divinized, God has promised you a share in every one of his attributes. The saying ‘Know yourself’ means therefore that we should recognize and acknowledge in ourselves the God who made us in his own image, for if we do this, we in turn will be recognized and acknowledged by our Maker.
So let us not be our own enemies, but change our way of life without delay. For Christ who is God, exalted above all creation; He has taken away man’s sin, and restored our fallen nature. In the beginning, God made man in his image and so gave proof of his love for us. If we obey his holy commands and learn to imitate his goodness, we shall be like him and He will honor us. God is generous, and for the sake of his own glory, He has given us a share in his divinity.
The treatise of St Hippolytus "On the Refutation of All Heresies"
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