Advent Reflection: Incarnation as Saved by Jesus’ Life

Advent Reflection: Incarnation as Saved by Jesus’ Life

Incarnation: Saved by Jesus’ Death and also His Life

“We shall be saved by His Life” (Romans 5:10)

In this season of reflecting on the coming of the Eternal Son into the world at Bethlehem, we are exploring the precious doctrine of the Incarnation.    We are considering that Immanuel “God with us” means God as us– the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.   This is closeness indeed, for God not only draws near us, but actually gets “under our skin” being born the baby Jesus.  This is closeness such that the Incarnation (the Word becoming flesh) touches human life in a deep and transforming way.  By His union with us as God-and-Man, our Lord “lays hold of us in Himself and acts for us from out of the inner depths of His coexistence with us and our existence with Him, delivering us from the sentence of death upon us, and from the corruption and perdition that have overtaken us…. The whole of Christ became a curse for us, taking upon Himself our Adamic humanity, but triumphing over the forces of evil embedded within our existence, bringing His own holiness and obedience to bear in such a way as to condemn sin and deliver us from its power.  It is the inner man, in his rational human soul, that man has fallen and become enslaved to sin.  It is in the mind, not just the flesh . . . that sin is entrenched.  This means that redemption is necessarily closely linked to revelation in which the teaching of Jesus is to be regarded as an essential part of His saving work.  Christ’s life, from cradle to grave, in which he took on our whole humanity, and not just his death, is to be considered part of the atoning reconciliation.”  (Quoting from Thomas Torrance through his student Andrew Purves).  This deep work of God in the Incarnation is especially emphasized in the Eastern and Orthodox churches this time of year.  LH

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