He Did Not Fly Away

It has been clearly shown that the Word — who was in the beginning with God, through whom everything was made, and who was always present with the human race — was in these last days joined to his own handiwork at the time the Father had appointed, and became a man who could suffer. That disposes of every objection raised by people who say, “If our Lord was born at that time, then Christ had no existence before it.” For I have shown that the Son of God did not begin to exist then; he was with the Father from the beginning. But when he took flesh and became man, he began the long line of human beings over again, and put salvation into our hands in short compass, so that what we had lost in Adam — being in the image and likeness of God — we might get back in Christ Jesus. [a]

The man who had once for all been beaten, and who had been ruined by his disobedience, could not remake himself and win the victor’s prize; and the man who had fallen under the power of sin could not reach salvation on his own. The Son did both of these things. He is the Word of God: he came down from the Father, took flesh, stooped as low as death, and carried through to the end the arrangement made for our salvation. Paul, urging us to believe in him without hesitation, says of him: “Who will go up into heaven?” — that is, to bring Christ down; “or who will go down into the deep?” — that is, to bring Christ up again from the dead. Then he goes on: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And he gives the reason why the Son of God did all this: “For this is why Christ both lived and died and lived again — so that he might rule over the living and the dead.” And writing to the Corinthians he declares, “But we preach Christ Jesus crucified,” and adds, “The cup of blessing which we bless — is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?”

But who is it that has shared food and drink with us? Is it the one they picture as the Christ above, who stretched himself out through Horos and gave their Mother her shape? Or is it the one who is from the Virgin, Emmanuel, who ate curds and honey, and about whom the prophet said, “He too is a man — and who will know him?” This is the one Paul preached: “For I handed on to you first of all,” he says, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.” It is plain, then, that Paul knew no other Christ than this one alone — the one who suffered and was buried and rose again, who was also born, and whom he speaks of as a man. For after saying, “But if Christ is preached, that he rose from the dead,” he goes on to give the reason he came in flesh: “For since death came through a man, through a man came also the resurrection of the dead.”

And everywhere, when he speaks of our Lord’s suffering, of his being human, and of his being subject to death, Paul uses the name Christ. So in this passage: “Do not destroy with your food the man for whom Christ died.” And again: “But now, in Christ, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” And again: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” And again: “And by your knowledge the weak brother perishes, for whom Christ died.” All of this shows that no Christ incapable of suffering came down onto Jesus. It was he himself, because he was Jesus Christ, who suffered for us — he who lay in the tomb and rose again, who came down and went up, the Son of God having been made the Son of man, as the name itself declares. For the name Christ carries three things in it: the one who anoints, the one who is anointed, and the anointing itself with which he is anointed. It is the Father who anoints, and the Son who is anointed, by the Spirit, who is the anointing — as the Word says through Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” Those words point out all three: the Father who anoints, the Son who is anointed, and the anointing, which is the Spirit.

The Lord himself, too, makes it clear who it was that suffered. He asked the disciples, “Who do people say that I, the Son of man, am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And the Lord commended him, saying that flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but the Father who is in heaven. By that he made it plain that he, the Son of man, is Christ the Son of the living God. “For from that time on,” the account says, “he began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the priests, and be rejected and crucified, and rise again on the third day.” The one whom Peter acknowledged as the Christ, and whom Peter was called blessed for acknowledging, because the Father had revealed the Son of the living God to him — that same one said that he himself had to suffer many things and be crucified. And then he rebuked Peter, who was taking him for the Christ in the way most people imagined the Christ would be, and who could not bear the thought of his suffering. He said to the disciples: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Christ said these things openly, being himself the Savior of those who would be handed over to death for confessing him, and who would lose their lives.

But if he was not going to suffer himself, and was going to fly away from Jesus, why did he urge his disciples to take up the cross and follow him — the very cross which these men say he never took up, but claim he let go of, dropping the arrangement of suffering? He did not say this with reference to acknowledging the Stauros above, as some of them dare to explain it, but with reference to the suffering he was to undergo himself and that his disciples were to endure. He shows it when he says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses it will find it.” And that his disciples would have to suffer for his sake he showed when he said to the Jews, “Look, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify.” And he used to say to the disciples, “You will stand before governors and kings for my sake; and they will flog some of you and kill you, and drive you from town to town.” So he knew who would be persecuted, and he knew who would be flogged and killed on his account; and he was speaking of no other cross than the suffering he was to undergo first and his disciples afterward. That is why he gave them this encouragement: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Be afraid rather of the one who is able to send both soul and body into hell.” He said it so that they would hold fast to the confessions they had made about him. For he promised to acknowledge before his Father those who acknowledged his name in front of other people, and he said he would deny those who denied him, and would be ashamed of those who were ashamed to confess him.

And even so, some of these men have gone so far in their recklessness that they pour contempt on the martyrs and abuse those who are killed for confessing the Lord — people who go through everything the Lord foretold, and who by that very thing are trying to walk in the footprints of the Lord’s suffering, becoming witnesses of the one who suffered. These we count in with the martyrs themselves. When their blood is called to account, and they come into glory, then everyone who has cast a slur on their witness will be put to shame by Christ.

And from the fact that he cried out on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” we see Christ’s long patience, his endurance, his compassion and his goodness: he suffered, and he himself made excuses for the men who had abused him. The Word of God, who told us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who hate you,” did that very thing himself on the cross, loving the human race so much that he prayed even for the men who were putting him to death. And if anyone does start from their assumption that there are two Christs and judges between them, the one who will be found far better, far more patient, and truly good is the one who went on doing good in the middle of his own wounds and lashes and everything else done to him, and who took no account of the wrongs done to him — not the one who flew away, and suffered neither injury nor insult.

This also answers those who claim that he suffered only in appearance. For if he did not really suffer, he deserves no thanks, since there was no suffering at all; and when the time comes for us to suffer in earnest, he will look like someone who misled us, urging us to endure a beating and to turn the other cheek when he had not in fact undergone the same thing himself before us. Just as he misled them by seeming to them to be what he was not, so he misleads us too, urging us to endure what he did not endure himself. In that case we would end up above our Master, because we suffer and bear what our Master never bore or endured. But our Lord is the only true Master; and so the Son of God is truly good and truly patient, the Word of God the Father having been made the Son of man. For he fought and won. He was a man contending on behalf of the fathers, undoing disobedience completely by obedience; he tied up the strong man, set the weak man free, and gave salvation to his own handiwork by destroying sin. For he is a Lord most holy and merciful, and he loves the human race.

So, as I have already said, he made man cling to God and become one with him. For unless a man had conquered man’s enemy, the enemy would not have been beaten lawfully. And again, unless it had been God who freely gave salvation, we could never have held it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have shared in incorruption. The Mediator between God and men had to be related to both, so that by that relationship he could bring both into friendship and agreement, and present man to God while he showed God to man. For how could we share in being adopted as sons unless we had received from him, through the Son, that fellowship which has to do with himself — unless his Word, made flesh, had entered into communion with us? That is also why he passed through every stage of human life, giving everyone back their communion with God.

So those who claim that he appeared only in seeming, that he was not born in the flesh and did not truly become man, are still under the old condemnation, and are pleading sin’s case; for on their showing death has not been beaten — death, which “reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the same way Adam did when he broke the command.” But when the law came, given through Moses, and testified about sin that it is a sinner, it really did take away death’s kingdom, showing that death was no king but a bandit, and exposing him as a murderer. It did lay a heavy load on man, who had sin inside him, by showing him that he was liable to death. Since the law was spiritual, it only threw sin into relief; it did not destroy it. For sin had no mastery over the spirit — its mastery was over man. So the one who was going to destroy sin and buy back the man who was under death’s power had to be made that very same thing which man was: man, who had been dragged into slavery by sin and was being held by death. Then sin could be destroyed by a man, and man could walk out of death. For as by the disobedience of the one man who was first shaped out of virgin soil the many were made sinners and lost their life, so it was necessary that by the obedience of one man, who was first born from a virgin, many should be counted righteous and receive salvation. That is how the Word of God was made man — as Moses too says: “God: true are his works.” But if he had not been made flesh, and only appeared to be flesh, his work would not have been a true one. What he appeared to be, that is what he also was: God summing up in himself the ancient forming of man, so that he might kill sin, strip death of its power, and give man life. And that is why his works are true.

But then there are those who claim that he was nothing more than a man, fathered by Joseph. They remain in the slavery of the old disobedience and stay in a state of death, since they have not yet been joined to the Word of God the Father and have not received freedom through the Son — as he himself says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Because they do not know the one who is Emmanuel from the Virgin, they are cut off from his gift, which is eternal life; and since they do not receive the incorruptible Word, they stay in mortal flesh and are death’s debtors, never getting hold of the antidote of life. The Word says to them, speaking of his own free gift: “I said, You are all sons of the Most High, and gods; but you will die like men.” He is plainly saying this to people who have not received the gift of adoption, who despise the coming in flesh of the pure begetting of the Word of God, who rob man of his ascent to God, and who show themselves ungrateful to the Word of God who became flesh for them. For this is why the Word of God became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, having made room for the Word and having received adoption as a son, might become a son of God. There was no other way for us to reach incorruption and immortality except by being united to incorruption and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruption and immortality if incorruption and immortality had not first become what we ourselves are, so that what is corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and what is mortal by immortality, and we might receive adoption as sons? [x]

This is why it is said, “Who will tell of his generation?” — since “he is a man, and who will recognize him?” But the man to whom the Father in heaven has revealed him does know him, and understands that the one who “was born neither by the will of the flesh nor by the will of man” is the Son of man, and that this is the Christ, the Son of the living God. For I have shown from the Scriptures that no son of Adam is called God, or named Lord, in the full and unqualified sense. But that this one is, in his own right and beyond every man who ever lived, God and Lord and King forever and the Word made flesh, proclaimed by all the prophets and by the apostles and by the Spirit himself — that can be seen by anyone who has grasped even a small part of the truth. The Scriptures would not have said such things about him if he had been a mere man like the rest. But that he had, beyond everyone else, that surpassing birth which is from the Most High Father, and that he also went through that surpassing birth which is from the Virgin, the divine Scriptures testify of him on both sides. They testify as well that he was a man with no beauty to him and able to suffer; that he sat on the colt of a donkey; that he was given sour wine and gall to drink; that he was despised among the people, and humbled himself even to death; and that he is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counselor, beautiful in form, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men. The Scriptures prophesied every bit of it about him.

He became man in order to be tested, and he was the Word in order to be glorified. The Word kept still, so that he could be tested and dishonored and crucified and undergo death; but the man was swallowed up in the Word when he conquered, and endured without giving way, and did acts of kindness, and rose again, and was taken up. And so he — the Son of God, our Lord, who is the Word of the Father and also the Son of man — was made the Son of man, since as to his humanity he was born from Mary, who was descended from human beings and was herself a human being.

That is also why the Lord himself gave us a sign, in the depth below and in the height above, which man had not asked for; man never expected that a virgin could conceive, or that a woman could stay a virgin and give birth to a son, or that what was born of her would be “God with us,” and would come down to the things of the earth below, looking for the sheep that had been lost — his own handiwork — and would then climb to the height above, presenting and commending to his Father the man he had found, making in his own person the firstfruits of the resurrection of man. So, as the Head rose from the dead, the rest of the body — the body of every man who is found alive — may rise too, once the time is filled up of the condemnation that came by disobedience: fitted together and made strong through its joints and ligaments by the growth God gives, each of the parts holding its own proper and fitting place in the body. For there are many dwelling places in the Father’s house, just as there are many parts in the body.