Thursday 13 October 2011

God Became Human

God’s adversary, the Devil, despises our humanity, yet God so loved His Creation that He desired to unite Himself with it and become a man. God is not proud, distant or aloof. The Devil’s great sin was to want to be God. Our first parents sinned because they wanted or chose to be ‘like gods’ following the serpent’s temptation.

Yet Almighty God, who has no sin, who is all pure and all holy and who dwells in ‘inapproachable light’, before whom Israel's sons prostrate themselves in fear and awe, wants to become a man, wills to become a man, desires to be human and so does so! What are we to think? That being Almighty God 'in inapproachable light' surrounded by adoring Angels is not all it is cracked up to be?!

Yet it was His plan to do so, we are told, from all eternity, whether Adam and Eve had caused our humanity to fall or, indeed, not!

How strange and contradictory and mystifying is God! He said, after Creation, that man is ‘very good’, not just ‘good’ as he described the rest of it. The Creation of man is so ‘very good’ and in man's Creation He is so very delighted, in fact, that He chose, before all eternity to join in on the party and become one Himself! What great a dignity then now, has man! For it is not the other species, nor any other created thing which can 'boast in the Lord'!

He did not choose to become a whale, he did not choose to become a tiger. Much of nature he endowed with beauty but He did not choose to become a bird, graceful as they are (apart from pigeons). He did not choose to become a constellation, nor a planet, nor a star, nor a moon though all speak of His beauty. He chose to become human. This He did, while remaining God, for at no point in the Virgin's womb, or in His infancy, did He 'become God'. We are told that nothing in His own divine nature changed when He became man, even though he 'assumed humanity', and became man. His descent is contradictory and His death is contradictory to us. Why should unbelievers not believe it!? It often seems that nothing in man's nature changed either when God became man, since we see evil in the World and in ourselves and yet something in man's nature has irrevocably changed.

Man now has the capacity to know, love and serve God. Man is no more capable of great human achievements now than ever he was. Man cannot build buildings any better than he could before Christ came. He cannot make money better than he could before Christ came. He cannot be a more fierce warrior than he was before Christ came. Man can, however, now become 'by adoption, what Christ is by nature' because 'God became man, so that man might become God'.

In Jesus Christ, God chooses to become that which can issue forth blood, mucus, urine, faeces, that which can bleed, that which can have a runny nose or a cold, that which can undergo mental anguish, or even terror, that which can cry, that which can be frightened, that which can graze its knee as a child, that which can work and labour, that which can toil, that which can have friends, a mother, an earthly father under whom he places himself for protection and responsibility, that which can sleep, breath, that which can be abandoned, that which can even be tempted, that which can be betrayed, that which can trust only in God, that which can be spat upon and mocked, that which can be nailed to wood, that which can be tortured, that which can feel deserted by even God, even that which can pray and that which can die. God became human. Yes, the Devil despises our humanity. He cannot abide it, but not so God - for He desired, chose and willed to become 'like us in all things' except sin.

1 comment:

Who is God said...

Wow! I like that. Not many people know that Jesus is God. They always refer to Jesus as the offspring of Yahweh. People forget that when the Angel of Yahweh (Angel of The Lord) appeared to man it was God in Angel form and He received praise and accepted the name Yahweh. Jesus also accepted praise, gave blessings, and accepted the name Yahweh when He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM" saying that He is older than Abraham (The first person to convert to Judaism)because He is Yahweh in the flesh which technically makes Him the oldest living being in the universe. Awesomeness :)

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