"God Is" Equals "God Does"

Why did God send his Son into the world? John 3:17 answers that "God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him."  But why did God become one of us, taking human existence into himself and becoming something new, a God-man?  Was that some sort of grudging "I-guess-I-have-to" effort like you and I put out sometimes, sighing and complaining about our indignity? After all, humbling himself completely even to the point of needing to be taken care of as a baby, is a big step down from being ruler of the universe! 

Athanasius, a bishop in North Africa in the 300s AD, wrote a marvelous little book called "On the Incarnation of the Word" and put into clear prose some principles of a Christ-centered Trinitarian theology. The bishop makes these points in his first few pages (these are all quotations):

• He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.
• Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, [men] were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion.
• It was impossible...that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.
• But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and self-revealing to us.
• Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men.
• What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him?...The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image.

To summarize, God Father, Son and Spirit in eternal love, and he loves us because he is love.  God joined us in our human existence, as a human, out of love for all of us broken, evil and corrupted people, to rescue us from rebellion, corruption and death. The Son of God became one of us, because the Son of God was the only one who could be the agent of reconciliation for all people. The Son's humanity was not simply for the purpose of the cross and the resurrection. He remains as the mediator between God and man, (1 Tim. 2:5) out of his love for us.

God acts as God is. So we can see that Jesus is exactly who God is and always will be toward us. That's why we praise and honor him in this season. Hallelujah!