The Word Made Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. JOHN 1:1

On the Incarnation begins with a young man writing to a friend. Athanasius addresses him as Macarius, a name that means blessed, and calls him a true lover of Christ. He has already written one book for him, answering the idol-worship of the pagan world. Now he wants to go further, and to set out what he calls the Word’s becoming man, and His divine appearing among us — the thing, he says, “which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh to scorn, but we worship.” The whole treatise is an answer to one question. Why did God become man?

It is a question many Christians have never thought to ask. We know that Christ was born at Bethlehem, and we sing about it every December. But why did it have to be that way? Could God not have forgiven us from heaven? Could He not have sent a prophet, or an angel, or simply spoken a word? Athanasius takes the question seriously, and his answer has shaped the church’s thinking ever since.

The Maker comes to remake

The first thing he does is surprising. He does not begin with Bethlehem at all. He begins with creation. You cannot understand why the Word came, he says, unless you understand who made the world in the first place. And the reason is this: the One who saves the world is the One who made it. He puts it in a single sentence at the start of the book, that “the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning.”

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. JOHN 1:3

That is the key to everything that follows. Salvation is not a second project, an afterthought bolted on to a world that went wrong. It is the Maker coming back to His own work. The artist returns to the damaged painting. The builder returns to the ruined house. The One who spoke the world into being steps into it Himself to set it right. There is something deeply fitting about that, and Athanasius wants his reader to feel it.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible … all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. COLOSSIANS 1:16–17

This is why he insists so fiercely, later in his life, that the Son is God and not a creature. If the Word were only a creature, however exalted, then the one who came to rescue us would not be our Maker, and the rescue would be a lesser thing done by a lesser being. The whole logic of On the Incarnation depends on the Son being the Creator Himself.

He was not far from us before

One of the loveliest touches in the book is a small phrase in the eighth section. The Word of God, Athanasius says, comes to our realm, “howbeit he was not far from us before.” He was never absent. He filled all things and held all things together; no part of creation was ever empty of Him. And yet He came — in a new way, to a particular place, in a particular body — to show His loving-kindness and to visit us.

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being. ACTS 17:27–28

This guards against two mistakes. The first is to imagine that God was far away until Christmas, watching from a distance. Athanasius will not have it. The Word was always present, upholding the world. The second mistake is to imagine that the Incarnation was merely a kind of appearance, a costume God wore for a while. Athanasius will not have that either. He insists that the Word “takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours.” He did not simply will to appear. He could have done that in any number of dazzling ways. He took our actual nature, born of a virgin, and made it His own.

Not to make a display

Near the end of the book Athanasius faces an objection from the educated pagans of his day. If God wanted to show Himself, why use something as humble as a human body? Why not appear in the sun, or the stars, or some nobler part of creation? His answer is one of the finest things he wrote: “the Lord came not to make a display, but to heal and teach those who were suffering.”

The point is simple and searching. A person who wants to impress will dazzle. A person who wants to heal will come close, and come in a way that the sick can bear. It was not the sun or the stars that had gone wrong, Athanasius says; they had kept their order. It was man alone who had turned away. So it was as a man that God came, to meet human beings where they were.

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. HEBREWS 2:14

There is a whole theology of ministry in that answer. The Lord did not stand on a height and shout down to us. He came down and walked among us, at a pace we could follow and in a form we could touch.

Walking as man, upholding all things

Athanasius is careful here, and his care is worth learning. He does not think that the Word was shrunk or trapped by taking a body. “For He was not, as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body,” he writes. While He walked the roads of Galilee, He was still upholding the universe. Athanasius puts it in a marvellous line: the Word was “at once walking as man, and as the Word was quickening all things, and as the Son was dwelling with His Father.”

Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. HEBREWS 1:3

We cannot picture this, and we are not meant to. But we can worship it. The baby in the manger was the One who held the stars in place. The man asleep in the boat was the One who made the sea. That is not a contradiction; it is the mystery of the Incarnation, and Athanasius wants us to marvel at it rather than explain it away.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. 1 TIMOTHY 3:16

Why it matters now

We live in an age that is often happy to admire Jesus as a teacher, a prophet or an example, and uneasy to go further. Athanasius shows why that is not enough. A good teacher can tell us how to live; he cannot remake us. A prophet can tell us about God; he cannot bring God to us. Only the Maker can remake what He has made. If Christ is less than the Word who was with God and was God, then we are still waiting for our rescue. If He is the Word made flesh, it has come.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read John 1:1–14 slowly each day this week, and notice how John moves from creation to Incarnation in a single breath.

2. Ask yourself honestly whether you think of Jesus more as a good teacher than as your Maker come to remake you. What difference would the second make to how you pray?

3. The Lord came to heal, not to make a display. Look at one place where you serve others and ask whether you are aiming to impress or to help.

4. Spend a few minutes each day thanking God that He was never far from you, even before you knew Him.

5. Begin reading On the Incarnation for yourself this week. Its first sections are short and repay slow reading.

A PRAYER

Eternal Word, You made all things, and You were never far from any of us.

Yet You came nearer still: You took a body like ours, not to dazzle us but to heal us, and You walked among us at a pace we could follow.

Forgive me for making You smaller than You are, and for admiring You when I ought to worship You.

Remake in me what You first made, and let me live today in the wonder of Your coming. Amen.