Crucifixion, by Anthony van Dyck (1622).
The Excess Of Divine Love | Brent Withers | HPR
The distance between our humanity and the divinity of God is so incomprehensible that to begin to try and imagine this distance through the eyes of faith, is to catch a glimpse of the unfathomable power of God, and immensity of his love for us. His love for us is expressed in his divine plan where: “Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence, determining that we should become his adopted sons, through Jesus Christ” ( Eph 1:4-5). To be holy and spotless in eternal love in the presence of God is to enjoy his beatific vision in all its splendor and grandeur. Again, this vision is as incomprehensible as grasping the distance between human and divine nature. The power of the Divinity in accomplishing our redemption is explained by God the Father to St. Catherine of Siena.
This is why I gave the Word, my only begotten Son. The clay of humankind was spoiled by the sin of the first man, Adam, and so all of you, as vessels made from the clay, were spoiled and unfit to hold eternal life. So, to undo the corruption and death of humankind, and to bring you back to the grace you had lost through sin, I, exaltedness, united myself with the baseness of your humanity. For my divine justice demanded suffering in atonement for sin. But I cannot suffer. And you, being only human, cannot make adequate atonement. Even if you did atone for some particular thing, you still could make atonement only for yourself, and not for others. But, for this sin you could not make full atonement, either for yourself or for others, since it was committed against me, and I am infinite Goodness. Yet, I really wanted to restore you, incapable as you were of making atonement for yourself. And because you were so utterly handicapped, I sent the Word, my Son; I clothed him with the same nature as yours—the spoiled clay of Adam—so that he could suffer in that same nature which had sinned, and by suffering in his body, even to the extent of the shameful death of the cross, he would placate my anger.1
The mystery of the incarnation embodies the depth of God’s excessive generosity and gratuitousness in stooping to become one with our human nature, so that we can become exalted and share in his inner life through grace. Through the first sin of Adam, we “were spoiled and unfit to hold eternal life.” The original sin of Adam could only be repaired and atoned for by the new Adam: Jesus Christ. In his exaltedness, he clothed himself in the “baseness of our humanity.”
Left on our own, we are “so utterly handicapped” and unable to save ourselves and, therefore, attain eternal life. On our own, we “cannot make adequate atonement” for sin. A sin committed against God carries an infinite offense because, in his divine nature, he is “infinite goodness.”
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