§ 6
For these reasons death gained the greater mastery, and corruption remained upon men. The race of men was wasting away. Man, made rational and after the image, was vanishing. And the work that God had made was being destroyed. For death, as I said before, held from then on a lawful power against us. It was not possible to escape that law, since God Himself had laid it down on account of the transgression. And what was happening was truly both absurd and unfitting.
It was absurd that God, having spoken, should prove false. He had laid it down that man, if he transgressed the commandment, should die the death. If then, after the transgression, man did not die, and God's word were undone, God would not be true. For He had said that we should die, and man would not have died. And it was unfitting, again, that creatures once made rational, and sharers in the Word Himself, should perish, and turn back through corruption into non-existence. It was not worthy of the goodness of God that the things He had made should be corrupted through the deceit the devil had practiced upon men. And it was most unfitting of all that God's own workmanship in men should be blotted out, whether through their own carelessness or through the deceit of demons.
So then, while the rational creatures were being corrupted, and such works of His were perishing, what was God to do, being good? Was He to let corruption prevail against them, and let death hold them fast? Then what need was there for them to have come to be at all? For it would have been better never to have been made, than, once made, to be neglected and destroyed.
Such neglect would make known weakness in God rather than goodness, if, having made man, He looked on while His own work was corrupted. It would tell against Him more than if He had never made man at the beginning. Had He not made them, there would be no one to charge Him with weakness. But since He made them, and brought them into being out of nothing, it was most absurd of all that His works should perish, and perish before the eyes of their Maker. Men could not be left, then, to be carried away by corruption, for that was unfitting, and unworthy of the goodness of God.
§ 7
But just as this had to be, so from the other side there stands against it the just claim of God: that God should be shown true in the law He had laid down concerning death. For it would be absurd that God, the Father of truth, should appear a liar for the sake of our profit and our continuance. What then had to happen? What was God to do? Was He to demand of men repentance for the transgression? One might call this worthy of God, saying that as by the transgression they came into corruption, so by repentance they might come again into incorruption. But repentance did not guard the just claim of God. He would still remain not true, if men were not held fast in death. Nor does repentance call men back from what belongs to their nature. It only puts a stop to their sins.
Now if there had been only a fault, and no corruption following upon it, repentance would have been enough. But once the transgression had gone before, men were held fast in the corruption that belonged to their nature, and were stripped of the grace of being in the image. What else, then, had to happen? Who was needed for such grace and such recall, but the Word of God, who in the beginning had made all things out of nothing?
For it was His to bring the corruptible into incorruption, and to preserve intact the just claim of the Father on behalf of all. Being the Word of the Father, and above all, He alone was able to create all things anew. He alone was fit to suffer for all, and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.
§ 8
For this reason, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes into our own country. He was not far from it before. No part of creation was ever left empty of Him. He fills all things everywhere, being present with His own Father. But He comes down now, condescending in His love for mankind, and in His appearing among us.
He saw the rational race perishing, and death reigning over them through corruption. He saw the threat that followed the transgression holding our corruption fast, and how absurd it was that the law should be undone before it was fulfilled. He saw what had come to pass, and how unfitting it was: the works of which He Himself was the Maker were being blotted out.
He saw the exceeding wickedness of men, and how little by little they had increased it beyond all bearing against themselves. He saw that all men were liable to death. Then He took pity on our race, and had compassion on our weakness, and came down to our corruption. He could not bear that death should hold the mastery. So that what had been made should not perish, and His Father's work in men should not come to nothing, He takes to Himself a body, and a body not foreign to our own.
For He did not simply will to come to be in a body, nor did He will only to appear. Had He willed only to appear, He could have made His divine appearing through some greater thing. But He takes what is ours, and not simply so. He takes it from a spotless and undefiled Virgin who had not known a man: a body clean, and truly untouched by the union of men. For being Himself powerful, and the Maker of all things, He prepares for Himself in the Virgin a body as His temple, and makes it His own as an instrument, known in it and dwelling in it.
And so He took from what is ours a body like our own. Since all were liable to the corruption of death, He gave that body over to death in the place of all, and offered it to the Father. All this He did out of His love for mankind. He did it so that, all having died in Him, the law concerning the corruption of men might be undone. Its power was fully spent in the Lord's body, and it had no further ground against men, who are His own kind. And He did it so that He might turn men back again to incorruption, who had turned aside to corruption, and might give them life out of death. This He did by making that body His own, and by the grace of the Resurrection, driving death away from them as fire drives away stubble.
§ 9
For the Word saw that the corruption of men could be undone in no other way, except by death, and by dying for all. Yet the Word could not die, being immortal, and the Son of the Father. For this reason He takes to Himself a body that was able to die. He took it so that this body, sharing in the Word who is over all, might be sufficient for death in the place of all; that it might remain incorruptible, because of the Word who dwelt within it; and that from then on corruption might cease from all men by the grace of the Resurrection. And so, offering to death the body He had taken for Himself, as a victim and a sacrifice free from every stain, He at once made death vanish from all who share His nature, by the offering of what was equal to them all.
For the Word of God is over all. It was fitting, then, that He should offer His own temple, the bodily instrument, as a ransom for all, and so pay in His death what was owed. And being joined to all men through a body like theirs, the incorruptible Son of God fittingly clothed all with incorruption, in the promise of the Resurrection. For the very corruption of death has no further ground against men, because of the Word who came to dwell among them through that one body.
It is as when a great king enters some great city, and takes up his dwelling in one of its houses. That city is counted worthy of great honor. No enemy or robber comes down against it any longer to overthrow it. It is thought worthy rather of every care, because of the king who has taken up his dwelling in one of its houses. So it has been with the King of all.
For when He came into our country, and dwelt in one body like our own, from then on the whole plot of the enemy against men was brought to an end, and the corruption of death, which of old prevailed against them, vanished away. For the race of men would have perished utterly, had not the Master of all, the Son of God, the Savior, come to put an end to death.
§ 10
And this great work was above all truly fitting to the goodness of God. Consider a king who has built a house or a city. If it is beset by robbers through the carelessness of those who live in it, he does not overlook it at all, but defends it and preserves it as his own work. He looks not to the carelessness of the inhabitants, but to what befits himself.
How much more, then, did God the Word of the all-good Father not overlook the race of men, His own work, as it went down into corruption. He wiped out the death that had come upon them by the offering of His own body. He corrected their carelessness by His own teaching. And He set right all that belonged to men by His own power.
Of this a man may be assured from the writings of the Saviour's own inspired men, if he meets with their words. For they say: "The love of Christ constrains us, because we judge this: that if one died for all, then all died; and He died for all, so that we should no longer live to ourselves, but to Him who died for us and rose again from the dead," our Lord Jesus Christ. And again: "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for every man."
Then he shows the reason why none other than God the Word Himself had to become man, saying: "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings." By these words he means that it belonged to no other to raise men up out of the corruption that had come upon them, than to the Word of God, who also made them in the beginning.
And that the Word Himself took a body for the sake of the sacrifice offered for bodies like His own, they show when they say: "Since then the children share in blood and flesh, He also in like manner partook of the same, so that through death He might bring to nothing him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and might set free those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."
For by the sacrifice of His own body He put an end to the law that stood against us, and made for us a new beginning of life, giving us the hope of the Resurrection. Since it was through man that death prevailed over men, for this reason, through the Word of God becoming man, the undoing of death and the resurrection of life have come to pass.
So the man who bore Christ says: "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive," and what follows. For we no longer die now as men under condemnation. We die as men who shall rise, and we await the general resurrection of all, "which in its own times He shall show," even God, who has both wrought it and given it to us. This, then, is the first cause of the Saviour's becoming man. But one may see from what follows also that His good coming among us happened with every reason.