What Was God to Do?

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. ROMANS 5:12

At the centre of On the Incarnation there is a question that Athanasius asks again and again, almost like a refrain. Having described the ruin of the human race, he stops and says: “what was God in His goodness to do?” It is a daring question. It sounds as if God were in a difficulty. In a sense Athanasius means exactly that — not that God was helpless, but that the fall of man had created a situation in which two things that are both true about God seemed to pull in opposite directions. The way he works through the dilemma is one of the clearest pieces of reasoning in the early church, and it is worth following step by step.

The ruin of the image

First, the problem. God had made man in His own image and given him a law: keep the grace you have been given, and you will live; turn away, and you will die. Man turned away. And the death that followed, Athanasius says, was not simply the end of the body. It was corruption, a slow unravelling of everything God had made us to be. Human beings began to sink back towards the nothing from which they had come.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. ROMANS 6:23

Nor did they stop at one sin. Athanasius paints a grim picture of a world that had become insatiable in sinning: adulteries and thefts everywhere, cities at war with cities, nations rising against nations, every new evil followed by another. “the race of man was perishing,” he says; the rational creature made in God’s image “was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution.” It is a picture of a masterpiece being eaten away.

Two things God could not do

Now the dilemma. On one side stood God’s truthfulness. God had said that if man sinned he would die. If God simply cancelled the sentence, He would be breaking His own word. Athanasius will not allow that for a moment. “For it were monstrous for God, the Father of truth, to appear a liar for our profit and preservation.” God cannot save us by ceasing to be true.

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? NUMBERS 23:19

On the other side stood God’s goodness. It was unthinkable that creatures made in His image, made to share His Word, should be allowed to perish through their own carelessness or the deceit of the devil. That would be unworthy of Him. Athanasius makes a sharp point here: if God had simply let His work be ruined, it would have shown weakness, not goodness. “For neglect reveals weakness, and not goodness on God’s part,” he writes. Better never to have made man at all than to make him and then abandon him to ruin before the eyes of the Maker.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. ISAIAH 49:15

So God could not simply forgive, because He is true. And He could not simply abandon us, because He is good. What was God to do?

Why repentance was not enough

Athanasius then considers the obvious answer. Why not simply call men to repent? Surely that would be worthy of God? He answers carefully, and his answer goes deeper than many modern sermons. Repentance, he says, fails on two counts. First, it does not satisfy God’s truthfulness; the sentence of death would still stand unfulfilled. Second, and more profoundly, repentance cannot heal what has gone wrong in our nature. In his words, repentance does not “call men back from what is their nature—it merely stays them from acts of sin.”

This is a searching insight. If our problem were only a list of wrong actions, repentance would be enough; we could stop doing them. But our problem is deeper. We have been infected by corruption; we are dying. A man with a fatal disease is not cured by resolving to live more healthily. He needs a physician who can reach the disease itself.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. JEREMIAH 13:23

Athanasius does not despise repentance; the whole Christian life is full of it. But he sees that repentance is our response to salvation, not its cause. Something had to happen that we could not do.

Only the Word

Here the argument reaches its resolution. What was needed, he says, was the Word of God, who had made everything out of nothing at the beginning. Only He could do what the situation required. He alone was able to recreate everything; He alone was worthy to suffer on behalf of all; He alone could stand as ambassador for all with the Father.

The Word, then, took a body of our kind. In that body He could die, and so the sentence of death would be truly carried out, and God’s word would stand. But because the body was His own, the body of the very Life, death could not hold it. And so, as Athanasius puts it, two marvels came to pass at once: the death of all was accomplished in the Lord’s body, and death and corruption were done away by reason of the Word united with it.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

In the cross, God’s truth and God’s goodness meet. Neither is sacrificed. The sentence is carried out, and the sinner goes free. This is what Paul meant when he said that God is both just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus.

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. ROMANS 3:26

Why it matters now

Much popular religion offers a God who is good but not true — a kindly grandfather who overlooks everything and requires nothing. Much harsh religion offers a God who is true but not good — a judge who keeps the rules and does not care. Athanasius will have neither. The God of the gospel is both, perfectly, and the cross is where we see it. If you have ever wondered whether God can really forgive you without pretending your sin does not matter, here is the answer. He has not pretended. He has paid.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down Athanasius’s question — what was God in His goodness to do? — and keep it where you pray this week. Let it lead you into thanksgiving.

2. Ask yourself whether you lean towards imagining God as good but not true, or true but not good. Which Scriptures correct your particular leaning?

3. If you have been trying to fix yourself by resolutions alone, admit to God that your problem is deeper than your actions, and ask Him to heal your nature.

4. Read Romans 3:21–26 and trace how Paul holds God’s justice and God’s mercy together.

5. When you next confess a sin, thank God that He forgives you not by overlooking it but because Christ has borne it.

A PRAYER

Holy Father, You are true, and You do not go back on Your word; You are good, and You do not abandon the work of Your hands.

I have been corrupted by sin more deeply than I know, and no resolution of mine can heal me.

Thank You that You did not leave me to ruin, but sent Your Word to bear the sentence and to break the power of death.

Keep me from treating Your mercy lightly, and from doubting it when I feel my guilt. Amen.