The Word made Flesh (John 1:14)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us - John 1:14

Jesus is the Communication of God to man.

In order to understand the meaning and implications of the incarnation, we first need to to put ourselves in God's shoes (I know that sounds silly but stick with me for a moment).

God is infinite, eternal, and perfect.

Man is finite, temporal and broken.

God desires to communicate Himself to man. But how?

Let us use an earthly example to illustrate the problem.

Imagine Albert Einstein wanted to communicate the wonders of physics to a toddler. There certainly aren't many people more qualified than Einstein to accomplish this task.

But how could Einstein begin to possibly communicate the complexities of general relativity to a toddler who doesn't even know how to form a basic sentence yet?

It's not that Einstein is a bad teacher, its that the toddler has not yet developed the mental capabilities in order to make sense of the information Einstein is communicating.

Now take this example and multiply it by infinity and you will begin to see the predicament God is in. He seeks to communicate His glory, power, wisdom and love to creatures who simply do not have the ability to receive these things at their current stage of development.

It is for this reason that God had to become man. He had to descend to our level in order to speak our language, so that He could finally communicate Himself to us in a way we could grasp.

But He did not descend to our level simply to say "hi" and then ascend back to where He was. He descended to our level in order to raise us up to His level.

As St Athanasius has said, "He incarnated so that we might be divinized."

So profound is what Christ has accomplished that to many it will sound like heresy.

Of course, we are not "divinized" in the sense that we dethrone God or that we get absorbed into a vague divine soup and lose our personal identity. These are indeed heresies.

But as Peter has plainly said, through Christ we have become "partakers of the divine nature."

The fullness of this process will be manifested at the return of Christ at the end of the age. But in the meantime, we can receive as much of His divinizing grace as we are willing to accept.

It does not come without a cost - namely, our entire life. But this cost is infinitely dwarfed by the reward of divine union with the Triune God.

Beloved, we are God’s children now,

and what we will be has not yet appeared;

but we know that when he appears we shall be like him,

because we shall see him as he is

1 John 3:2