To help us remember this week the events leading up to our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, I have attached a set of readings containing harmony of the Gospel accounts, focusing primarily but not exclusively on the Synoptics. The readings for each day of Passion Week generally correspond to the events that happened on that day, with the notable exception of Wednesday, on which the Gospel accounts do not record any events happening. Therefore, to even out the readings across the week, the events that happened on Thursday of Passion Week are divided into readings on both Wednesday and Thursday in this schedule; Wednesday’s readings cover those events leading up to and including the Last Supper, and Thursday’s readings cover Jesus’s betrayal and trial.
The names given to each of the days of Passion Week are descriptive, rather than traditional. The traditional names, in fact, are misnomers. “Palm Sunday” comes from the reference in John 12:12 where it talks about the branches of palm trees being waved; the Synoptics omit this, focusing instead people spreading their cloaks before the Lord’s triumphal entry. “Maundy Thursday” comes from the Latin phrase, maudatum, referring to the “new” commandment that Jesus gives in John 13:34, however this commandment was not entirely new nor was it the focus or the climax of the events that transpired on that evening. As in the words of institution for the Lord’s Supper continually recalls, it was “on the night that He was betrayed.” Lastly, “Good Friday” can be confusing as well; it was “good” in the sense that atonement was accomplished for us on the cross, but that accomplishment was made at the price of the worst injustice the world has ever seen and the most horrible death imaginable to that point.
May these readings help you in focusing this week on the work our Lord did on our behalf, that our sins may be forgiven that we be adopted into becoming sons and daughters of the Living God.
For much of the fourth century AD, the Roman Empire was consumed in combating the Arian controversy, which asserted that Christ Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, was a created being and neither fully God nor fully man. Were that the case, then Christ could not be a genuine Savior of His people. The Council of Nicaea in 325 encapsulated Christian orthodoxy in the Nicene Creed, stating that Christ was indeed fully God and fully man, but supporters of the heretic Arius sought for decades to use imperial political power to overturn the creed, touching off a bitter conflict across the Empire. The end of the conflict came in 380 AD with the triumph of the pro-Nicene Emperor, Theodosius I, over his rivals to become the sole Emperor of the Empire. The defeat of the Arians was sealed in 381 AD when the Council of Constantinople reaffirmed the Nicene Creed as reflecting the Trinitarian truth that God was one in substance (ousios) and three in Persons (hypostases).
The first clear observance of the Feast of the Nativity–what we would now call Christmas–was held in Constantinople in 380 AD, presided over by Gregory of Nazianzus. Observance of the Feast of the Nativity, however, did not become regular within the Christian Church for some decades. During his pontificate, Leo the Great delivered a series of sermons on the Feast of the Nativity which did much to solidify observance of the feast in the Western tradition.
The settlement of the Trinitarian controversy led naturally to the next question, namely, how it was that Christ was both human and divine. This was worked out in a series of councils, culminating with the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Leo the Great was active in promoting what would come to be accepted by the Church as orthodoxy and used the occasion of the Feast over several years to expound and teach that truth about Christ. While Leo’s sermons were deep in theology, they also were beautiful in describing that truth devotionally. Below is the third of Leo’s Christmas sermons, the text of which is taken from the Phillip Schaff’s Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, found in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
On the Feast of the Nativity, III.
I. The truths of the Incarnation never suffer from being repeated.
The things which are connected with the mystery of to-day’s solemn feast are well known to you, dearly-beloved, and have frequently been heard: but as yonder visible light affords pleasure to eyes that are unimpaired, so to sound hearts does the Saviour’s nativity give eternal joy; and we must not keep silent about it, though we cannot treat of it as we ought. For we believe that what Isaiah says, “who shall declare his generation?” applies not only to that mystery, whereby the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father, but also to this birth whereby “the Word became flesh.” And so God, the Son of God, equal and of the same nature from the Father and with the Father, Creator and Lord of the Universe, Who is completely present everywhere, and completely exceeds all things, in the due course of time, which runs by His own disposal, chose for Himself this day on which to be born of the blessed virgin Mary for the salvation of the world, without loss of the mother’s honour. For her virginity was violated neither at the conception nor at the birth: “that it might be fulfilled,” as the Evangelist says, “which was spoken by the Lord through Isaiah the prophet, saying, behold the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” For this wondrous child-bearing of the holy Virgin produced in her offspring one person which was truly human and truly Divine, because neither substance so retained their properties that there could be any division of persons in them; nor was the creature taken into partnership with its Creator in such a way that the One was the in-dweller, and the other the dwelling; but so that the one nature was blended with the other. And although the nature which is taken is one, and that which takes is another, yet these two diverse natures come together into such close union that it is one and the same Son who says both that, as true Man, “He is less than the Father,” and that, as true God, “He is equal with the Father.”
II. The Arians could not comprehend the union of God and man.
This union, dearly beloved, whereby the Creator is joined to the creature, Arian blindness could not see with the eyes of intelligence, but, not believing that the Only-begotten of God was of the same glory and substance with the Father, spoke of the Son’s Godhead as inferior, drawing its arguments from those words which are to be referred to the “form of a slave,” in respect of which, in order to show that it belongs to no other or different person in Himself, the same Son of God with the same form, says, “The Father is greater than I,” just as He says with the same form, “I and my Father are one.” For in “the form of a slave,” which He took at the end of the ages for our restoration, He is inferior to the Father: but in the form of God, in which He was before the ages, He is equal to the Father. In His human humiliation He was “made of a woman, made under the Law:” in His Divine majesty He abides the Word of God, “through whom all things were made.” Accordingly, He Who in the form of God made man, in the form of a slave was made man. For both natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God. And so the mystery of power united to weakness, in respect of the same human nature, allows the Son to be called inferior to the Father: but the Godhead, which is One in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, excludes all notion of inequality. For the eternity of the Trinity has nothing temporal, nothing dissimilar in nature: Its will is one, Its substance identical, Its power equal, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God; because it is a true and inseparable unity, where there can be no diversity. Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. And by “ours” we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning, and what He undertook to repair. For what the deceiver brought in, and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Saviour; nor because He partook of man’s weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine: for that “emptying of Himself,” whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power.
III. The Incarnation was necessary to the taking away of sin.
In order therefore that we might be called to eternal bliss from our original bond and from earthly errors, He came down Himself to us to Whom we could not ascend, because, although there was in many the love of truth, yet the variety of our shifting opinions was deceived by the craft of misleading demons, and man’s ignorance was dragged into diverse and conflicting notions by a falsely-called science. But to remove this mockery, whereby men’s minds were taken captive to serve the arrogant devil, the teaching of the Law was not sufficient, nor could our nature be restored merely by the Prophets’ exhortations; but the reality of redemption had to be added to moral injunctions, and our fundamentally corrupt origin had to be re-born afresh. A Victim had to be offered for our atonement Who should be both a partner of our race and free from our contamination, so that this design of God whereby it pleased Him to take away the sin of the world in the Nativity and Passion of Jesus Christ, might reach to all generations: and that we should not be disturbed but rather strengthened by these mysteries, which vary with the character of the times, since the Faith, whereby we live, has at no time suffered variation.
IV. The blessings of the Incarnation stretch backwards as well as reach forward.
Accordingly let those men cease their complaints who with disloyal murmurs speak against the dispensations of God, and babble about the lateness of the Lord’s Nativity as if that, which was fulfilled in the last age of the world, had no bearing upon the times that are past. For the Incarnation of the Word did but contribute to the doing of that which was done: and the mystery of man’s salvation was never in the remotest age at a standstill. What the apostles foretold, that the prophets announced: nor was that fulfilled too late which has always been believed. But the Wisdom and Goodness of God made us more receptive of His call by thus delaying the work which brought salvation: so that what through so many ages had been foretold by many signs, many utterances, and many mysteries, might not be doubtful in these days of the Gospel: and that the Saviour’s nativity, which was to exceed all wonders and all the measure of human knowledge, might engender in us a Faith so much the firmer, as the foretelling of it had been ancient and oft-repeated. And so it was no new counsel, no tardy pity whereby God took thought for men: but from the constitution of the world He ordained one and the same Cause of Salvation for all. For the grace of God, by which the whole body of the saints is ever justified, was augmented, not begun, when Christ was born: and this mystery of God’s great love, wherewith the whole world is now filled, was so effectively pre-signified that those who believed that promise obtained no less than they, who were the actual recipients.
V. The coming of Christ in our flesh corresponds with our becoming members of His body.
Wherefore since the loving-kindness is manifest, dearly beloved, wherewith all the riches of Divine goodness are showered on us, whose call to eternal life has been assisted not only by the profitable examples of those who went before, but also by the visible and bodily appearing of the Truth Itself, we are bound to keep the day of the Lord’s Nativity with no slothful nor carnal joy. And we shall each keep it worthily and thoroughly, if we remember of what Body we are members, and to what a Head we are joined, lest any one as an ill-fitting joint cohere not with the rest of the sacred building. Consider, dearly beloved and by the illumination of the Holy Spirit thoughtfully bear in mind Who it was that received us into Himself, and that we have received in us: since, as the Lord Jesus became our flesh by being born, so we also became His body by being re-born. Therefore are we both members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost: and for this reason the blessed Apostle says, “Glorify and carry God in your body:” for while suggesting to us the standard of His own gentleness and humility, He fills us with that power whereby He redeemed us, as the Lord Himself promises: “come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls.” Let us then take the yoke, that is not heavy nor irksome, of the Truth that rules us, and let us imitate His humility, to Whose glory we wish to be conformed: He Himself helping us and leading us to His promises, Who, according to His great mercy, is powerful to blot out our sins, and to perfect His gifts in us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells the congregation there, “Now I will come to you when I pass through Macedonia (for I am passing through Macedonia). And it may be that I will remain, or even spend the winter with you, that you may send me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not wish to see you now on the way but I hope to stay a while with you, if the Lord permits. But I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost” (1 Cor. 16:5-8). Paul probably wrote the letter from Ephesus in about AD 55, where he was based on his Third Missionary Journey, but he had to curtail his stay in that city in AD 57 because a riot broke out there opposed to the success his Gospel preaching and teaching had made. In leaving Ephesus, Paul did make a circuit around the Aegean, checking in on churches he planted in Macedonia and Greece before heading toward Jerusalem. In this circuit he made several stops on the coast of Asia Minor, but as Luke records in Acts, “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he would not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the Day of Pentecost” (Acts 20:16). Paul’s haste to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost raises the obvious question as to why was this holy day so important to him and what would it have meant for him to observe it?
The Old Covenant Antecedent to Pentecost: The Feast of Weeks
The name “Pentecost” comes from the Greek rendering of Leviticus 23:16 referring to the fact that it occurs 50 days after Passover. The Old Testament calls this festival day the “Feast of Weeks” (or alternatively, the “Feast of Harvest” or the “Feast of Firstfruits”), and it is described in Exodus 23:14-19, 34:22-28; Leviticus 23:15-21; Numbers 28:26-31; and Deuteronomy 16:9-12.
The 50 days referred to are counted from the day after the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the broader celebration of the Passover, where a sheaf of grain was waved as a wave offering, an offering of particular dedication to the LORD (Exod. 23:9-14, Lev. 23:9-14). This period also approximates the time it took Israel to go from Egypt to Sinai in the Exodus. In Exodus 19:1, Moses notes that it was “In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day [as the Exodus], they came to the Wilderness of Sinai.” Israel left Egypt in the middle of the month of Nisan, so including that month, Israel would have gone into its third month when it arrived at the foot of Sinai. This passage is just before God’s giving of the Law in Exodus 20. The agricultural and covenantal aspects of the Feast of Weeks laid the basis for the redemptive historical significance of Pentecost.
Agriculturally, the sheaf that would have been waved (or more likely, simply lifted up) during the Feast of Unleavened Bread probably would have been a barley sheaf, as the barley harvest would typically have been in the March-April timeframe and the offering would have been a firstfruits dedication to the LORD. The more significant cereal crop, though, was wheat, and the wheat harvest would only be just beginning in the April-May timeframe. Thus, the Feast of Weeks was at a minimum the firstfruits of the greater blessing.
The Feast of Weeks was more than just a harvest festival. Deuteronomy 16:12 grounded the Feast in the remembrance of Israel’s deliverance from slavery. It was one of the three high holy days on which all Israelite males were to appear before the LORD (Exod. 23:17), and the LORD promised to “cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year” (Exod. 34:24). All these things gave the Feast a covenantal significance. Appearance before the LORD, therefore, would be tantamount to vassals coming before the suzerain king to pay homage and tribute (i.e., thanksgiving and honor). It would inculcate in the Israelites a proper fear of the LORD if consistently obeyed with the right attitude, and it would bind the nation together; the shared experience and the contacts with others would get them beyond their tribal horizons.
The Leviticus and Numbers passages mentioned above contain details on the rituals that are to be done on the Feast of Weeks: there are a burnt offering, a grain and drink offerings, a sin offering, a peace offering, and a wave offering. Thus, included here were offerings for atonement, tribute, sanctification, and thanksgiving—almost the entire spectrum of offerings under the Levitical sacrificial system. The scale of the offerings is larger than normal. The sacrifices were freewill offerings offered in the spirit of thanksgiving in response to the great things God had done. In sum, God in His covenant brings His people out, and gives them the first fruits of blessing, makes them into a nation, binds them together, blesses them, and calls them to image His name among the nations in thanksgiving.
How the Feast Was Transformed Under the New Covenant
After the Mosaic period, the Feast of Weeks is not mentioned in the rest of the Old Testament. After the Exile, the Jews began rediscovering the Law, since their neglect of it earlier had resulted in the trauma of the Babylonian Captivity. The Feast of Weeks was part of this rediscovery. During the period between the Old and New Testaments, the pseudepigraphic Book of Jubilees stipulated (6:17) that the Feast was to be celebrated yearly as a covenant renewal. In addition, certain exegetical interpretations emerged that highlighted God’s gift of the Law (Torah) at Sinai. These were probably extant in the time of the New Testament and formed the background for how the Apostles understood the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost described in Acts 2.[1]
The major passage in the New Testament is, of course, Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:14-34. On that day, the Holy Spirit came upon the people assembled in the Temple and everyone begins speaking in tongues, hearing their own languages despite their ethnic differences. In Acts 2:3, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is described as “divided tongues, as of fire,” phraseology evocative of Psalm 29:7 (“the voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire”) and of Exodus 19:16, where the word typically rendered in English “thunderings” literally means “sounds” or “voices” in Hebrew. Because of these connections, the early Christian Church often included Exodus 19 in Scripture readings for Pentecost.[2]
When bystanders at Pentecost asked how it could be that people were understanding things in so many different languages and what explained the tumult, Peter then launched into his explanatory sermon. To understand Peter’s explanation, we have to look first at two passages, Joel 2:28-32, which Peter preached in his sermon, and Jeremiah 31:31-34, which prophesied the changes that would come about as a result of the New Covenant.
Joel’s prophecy highlights the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on God’s people, that they would be supernaturally empowered to speak God’s words for the salvation of many. It also anticipated a day of judgment, a Day of the LORD. It probably was one of the first written prophecies, and with Pentecost, it was partially fulfilled: the Spirit has come, but the Day of the LORD is still pending.
Although not cited by Peter in his Pentecost sermon, Jeremiah 31:31-34 builds on the foundation set by Joel and is the foundational passage in the Old Testament for understanding the New Covenant.
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.
The key part of this covenant is that the Lord says that He will, “put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). The question this raises is how would the Lord do this? Paul in effect answers that question in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:10-12). At Pentecost, God did not remove His law or change it, but gave His people His Holy Spirit to unite them to Himself so that they could know and obey His law. Just as the Old Covenant was inaugurated with the Feast of Weeks, so the New Covenant is inaugurated with Pentecost.
The Significance of Pentecost Today
In pulling together all these threads, what would Pentecost have meant to Paul? Paul was not simply being an observant Jew by wanting to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. In Paul’s conversion account in Acts 9:1-19, there were three major touchstones which marked his preaching and teaching for the rest of his life: (1) the resurrection of Christ; (2) the union of Christ with His people; and (3) the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It was the power of the resurrected Christ that confronted Paul on the road to Damascus. Christ’s union with His people can be seen in 9:4-5 where He twice confronts Paul about Paul’s persecution of Him. From Paul’s perspective, he was persecuting Jesus’s followers, assuming Jesus to be dead, yet Jesus so identified with His people that for them to be persecuted meant He was being persecuted. And, after the encounter with Jesus, the Holy Spirit came upon Paul when Ananias laid hands upon him. In light of this, Pentecost would have been central for Paul: the coming of the Holy Spirit occurred because the risen Christ ascended to the Father; the Spirit was the One by whom God’s people are united to Christ; and the indwelling of the Spirit transformed His attitude to the Law which he had been so zealous for, from living by the works of the Law to living by the grace of the Spirit. No wonder then that Paul was so eager to return to Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. His journey to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost is the inverse of his journey to Damascus that effected his conversion years earlier. Then, he had a mandate to crush the Christian faith before it could reach the nations, but in returning to Jerusalem for Pentecost, he was going to further the spread of the Gospel to the nations.
For us today, Pentecost tends to be under appreciated. It is a celebration of the new age ushered in by Christ, the radical change that had been wrought in redemptive history. Writing in about AD 200—in the earliest post-apostolic reference to the day—the Latin church father Tertullian of Carthage (AD 155-220) described Pentecost in his treatise, On Baptism as a most joyous time given that the resurrection of Christ had been proven to be true. One can add to Tertullian’s statement that this joyousness is also due to the coming of the Holy Spirit. So, what is the significance of the coming of the Spirit? First, we are joined to Christ through the Spirit, therefore the judgment Christ has borne is our judgment and the righteousness He possessed is our righteousness. Second, Christ promised He would never leave us. Because we are joined to Him in the Spirit, He never will. Third, we are being conformed by the Spirit into the image of Christ. This is a tie back to the Law, but also an advancement on it, as we, through the Spirit’s work, increasingly reflect the holy character of Christ that the Law foreshadowed. Lastly, just as the firstfruits are brought in so to in this period between the first and second coming of the Lord, the nations are being gathered in. This ties back to the promise made to Abraham, and reverses the curse imposed at Babel. Where the nations were dispersed, they are now being drawn together. For these reasons, Pentecost—arguably even more than Easter—brings into perspective the full scope of God’s redemptive work.
[1] One such tradition surrounds the rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 68:17-18, which held that the Law which Moses received on behalf of the people was a gift from God. This interpretative tradition was fairly consistent during the intertestamental period, even though it did not fit the details of the Psalm entirely. There is a loose correlation between Ps. 68:18 and Peter’s explanation for the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:33, which Peter interpreted in a Christological manner as the gift of the Holy Spirit rather than the Law. Paul also quotes Ps. 68:18 in Eph. 4:8, similarly putting a Christological interpretation on the passage. Both probably knew of the rabbinic interpretation, and their Christological interpretations better harmonize with the text of Psalm 68:18. Thus, by correcting the rabbinic interpretation, they also are indirectly linking the Pentecost event with the giving of the Law at Sinai. See F. S. Thielman, “Ephesians” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 819-825.
[2] For a fuller discussion of the connections between the Jewish Feast of Weeks and the Christian Pentecost, see Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple; Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downer’s Grove IL: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 393-397, and Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 69-74.
Leo the Great, the bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) from AD 440-461, gave a series of sermons during his administration on the Feast of the Nativity (i.e., Christmas). The Christian church at the time was wrestling through the issue of understanding how Christ could be both fully man and fully God, producing what came to be known as the Definition of Chalcedon in AD 451. Leo’s Christmas sermons were not simple pietistic homilies on the Baby Jesus in the manager. Instead, they combined deep theological reflection with rich devotion to teach people the mystery of Christ’s human and divine natures. The sermon below is the third of his Christmas sermons.
On the Feast of the Nativity, III.
I. The truths of the Incarnation never suffer from being repeated
The things which are connected with the mystery of to-day’s solemn feast are well known to you, dearly-beloved, and have frequently been heard: but as yonder visible light affords pleasure to eyes that are unimpaired, so to sound hearts does the Saviour’s nativity give eternal joy; and we must not keep silent about it, though we cannot treat of it as we ought. For we believe that what Isaiah says, “who shall declare his generation?” applies not only to that mystery, whereby the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father, but also to this birth whereby “the Word became flesh.” And so, God, the Son of God, equal and of the same nature from the Father and with the Father, Creator and Lord of the Universe, Who is completely present everywhere, and completely exceeds all things, in the due course of time, which runs by His own disposal, chose for Himself this day on which to be born of the blessed virgin Mary for the salvation of the world, without loss of the mother’s honour. For her virginity was violated neither at the conception nor at the birth: “that it might be fulfilled,” as the Evangelist says, “which was spoken by the Lord through Isaiah the prophet, saying, behold the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” For this wondrous child-bearing of the holy Virgin produced in her offspring one person which was truly human and truly Divine, because neither substance so retained their properties that there could be any division of persons in them; nor was the creature taken into partnership with its Creator in such a way that the One was the in-dweller, and the other the dwelling; but so that the one nature was blended with the other. And although the nature which is taken is one, and that which takes is another, yet these two diverse natures come together into such close union that it is one and the same Son who says both that, as true Man, “He is less than the Father,” and that, as true God, “He is equal with the Father.”
II. The Arians could not comprehend the union of God and man
This union, dearly beloved, whereby the Creator is joined to the creature, Arian blindness could not see with the eyes of intelligence, but, not believing that the Only-begotten of God was of the same glory and substance with the Father, spoke of the Son’s Godhead as inferior, drawing its arguments from those words which are to be referred to the “form of a slave,” in respect of which, in order to show that it belongs to no other or different person in Himself, the same Son of God with the same form, says, “The Father is greater than I,” just as He says with the same form, “I and my Father are one.” For in “the form of a slave,” which He took at the end of the ages for our restoration, He is inferior to the Father: but in the form of God, in which He was before the ages, He is equal to the Father. In His human humiliation He was “made of a woman, made under the Law:” in His Divine majesty He abides the Word of God, “through whom all things were made.” Accordingly, He Who in the form of God made man, in the form of a slave was made man. For both natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God. And so, the mystery of power united to weakness, in respect of the same human nature, allows the Son to be called inferior to the Father: but the Godhead, which is One in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, excludes all notion of inequality. For the eternity of the Trinity has nothing temporal, nothing dissimilar in nature: Its will is one, Its substance identical, Its power equal, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God; because it is a true and inseparable unity, where there can be no diversity. Thus, in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. And by “ours” we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning, and what He undertook to repair. For what the deceiver brought in, and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Saviour; nor because He partook of man’s weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine: for that “emptying of Himself,” whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power.
III. The Incarnation was necessary to the taking away of sin
In order therefore that we might be called to eternal bliss from our original bond and from earthly errors, He came down Himself to us to Whom we could not ascend, because, although there was in many the love of truth, yet the variety of our shifting opinions was deceived by the craft of misleading demons, and man’s ignorance was dragged into diverse and conflicting notions by a falsely-called science. But to remove this mockery, whereby men’s minds were taken captive to serve the arrogant devil, the teaching of the Law was not sufficient, nor could our nature be restored merely by the Prophets’ exhortations; but the reality of redemption had to be added to moral injunctions, and our fundamentally corrupt origin had to be re-born afresh. A Victim had to be offered for our atonement Who should be both a partner of our race and free from our contamination, so that this design of God whereby it pleased Him to take away the sin of the world in the Nativity and Passion of Jesus Christ, might reach to all generations: and that we should not be disturbed but rather strengthened by these mysteries, which vary with the character of the times, since the Faith, whereby we live, has at no time suffered variation.
IV. The blessings of the Incarnation stretch backwards as well as reach forward
Accordingly, let those men cease their complaints who with disloyal murmurs speak against the dispensations of God, and babble about the lateness of the Lord’s Nativity as if that, which was fulfilled in the last age of the world, had no bearing upon the times that are past. For the Incarnation of the Word did but contribute to the doing of that which was done: and the mystery of man’s salvation was never in the remotest age at a standstill. What the apostles foretold, that the prophets announced: nor was that fulfilled too late which has always been believed. But the Wisdom and Goodness of God made us more receptive of His call by thus delaying the work which brought salvation: so that what through so many ages had been foretold by many signs, many utterances, and many mysteries, might not be doubtful in these days of the Gospel: and that the Saviour’s nativity, which was to exceed all wonders and all the measure of human knowledge, might engender in us a Faith so much the firmer, as the foretelling of it had been ancient and oft-repeated. And so, it was no new counsel, no tardy pity whereby God took thought for men: but from the constitution of the world He ordained one and the same Cause of Salvation for all. For the grace of God, by which the whole body of the saints is ever justified, was augmented, not begun, when Christ was born: and this mystery of God’s great love, wherewith the whole world is now filled, was so effectively presignified that those who believed that promise obtained no less than they, who were the actual recipients.
V. The coming of Christ in our flesh corresponds with our becoming members of His body
Wherefore, since the loving-kindness is manifest, dearly beloved, wherewith all the riches of Divine goodness are showered on us, whose call to eternal life has been assisted not only by the profitable examples of those who went before, but also by the visible and bodily appearing of the Truth Itself, we are bound to keep the day of the Lord’s Nativity with no slothful nor carnal joy. And we shall each keep it worthily and thoroughly, if we remember of what Body we are members, and to what a Head we are joined, lest anyone as an ill-fitting joint cohere not with the rest of the sacred building. Consider, dearly beloved, and by the illumination of the Holy Spirit thoughtfully bear in mind Who it was that received us into Himself, and that we have received in us: since, as the Lord Jesus became our flesh by being born, so we also became His body by being reborn. Therefore, are we both members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost: and for this reason the blessed Apostle says, “Glorify and carry God in your body:” for while suggesting to us the standard of His own gentleness and humility, He fills us with that power whereby He redeemed us, as the Lord Himself promises: “come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls.” Let us then take the yoke, that is not heavy nor irksome, of the Truth that rules us, and let us imitate His humility, to Whose glory we wish to be conformed: He Himself helping us and leading us to His promises, Who, according to His great mercy, is powerful to blot out our sins, and to perfect His gifts in us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
Covenantide 