Life Re-Created

Our Savior was born. Let us be glad. There is no place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life. This Life destroys the fear of death and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all people one common measure of joy. Because our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, finds no one free from sin, so He has come to free us all. The true democracy of life comes only in Christ. Let us rejoice that victory draws near. We sinners should be glad because we have been invited to pardon. Let us take courage because we are called to the life.

In the incarnation Christ assumes the very instrument of our demise by taking our flesh. He does battle in the flesh with the one who perverted flesh. He takes on our human nature, which had been weakened, corrupted and made subject to death and the devil by our sin. Clothed in the weakness of the flesh, He did battle against our corrupter.

The re-creation of Adam is complete in the Life of the Word made flesh. And He leads the way from this death-darkened world into the new world re-made by Him in His birth. In that flesh, as it was intended to be: holy and without sin, our Lord Jesus Christ invades the dominion of our enemy. He enters the battleground for us while setting aside the exercise of his divine power, and "taking mortal form for mortals' sake" rescues that flesh from both corruption and corruptor. The inventor of death, the devil, is conquered through that flesh which he had conquered.

St. Athanasius

"Paul, after saying, 'He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death' (Phil 2:8), immediately added, 'Therefore God has highly exalted him' (Phil 2:9), wishing to show, that, although as man He is said to have died, yet, as being Life, He was exalted at the resurrection; for 'He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens' (Eph 4:10). He descended in body, and He rose again because He was God Himself in the body. And this again is the reason why according to this meaning Paul brought in the conjunction 'Therefore;' not as a reward of virtue nor of advancement, but to signify the cause why the resurrection took place; and why, while all other men from Adam down to this time have died and remained dead, He only rose in integrity from the dead. The cause is this, which He Himself has already taught us, that being God, He has become man. For all other men, being merely born of Adam, died, and death reigned over them; but He, the second man, is from heaven (1Co 15:47), for 'the Word was made flesh' (Jn 1:14), and this Man is said to be from heaven and heavenly, because the Word descended from heaven; therefore He was not held under death. For though He humbled Himself, yielding His own body unto death, in that it was capable of death, yet He was highly exalted from earth, because He was God's Son in a body. Accordingly what is here said, 'Therefore God has highly exalted him,' answers to Peter's words in the Acts, 'God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it' (Acts 2:24). For just as Paul has written, 'He being in the form of God became man, and humbled Himself unto death, therefore God has highly exalted Him' (Phil 2:6-9), so also Peter says, 'Since, being God, He became man, and signs and wonders proved Him to beholders to be God (Acts 2:22), therefore it was not possible that He should be held by death' (Acts 2:24) It was not possible for man to succeed in this; for death belongs to man. Therefore, the Word, being God, became flesh, so that, being put to death in the flesh, He give all men life by His own power."

St. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, 1.44