Interconnected Through the Incarnation

The Incarnation is not just God entering into our world and drawing near, but God uniting with humanity in Christ. Because the Word became flesh, every human being is already bound up with Him — and therefore bound to one another in Him. The good news of the gospel is not just that we are forgiven, but that in Christ’s humanity we are united with him, and therefore with each other. In Christ, all things are brought together in unity (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:17).

Formerly, humankind was headed up in Adam, but now it is headed up in Christ. “Consequently, just as one trespass [Adam’s] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [Christ’s] resulted in justification and life for all people” (Romans 5:18). “Just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). 

This is the recapitulation about which St. Irenaeus writes so famously. What was once encompassed in Adam is now recapped in Christ. For example, of the hunger, weariness and tears Christ experienced, the wounds he suffered, and the piercing of his side from which flowed blood and water, Irenaeus says, 

All these are tokens of the flesh which had been derived from the earth, which He had recapitulated in Himself, bearing salvation to His own handiwork. (Against Heresies 3.22.2)

For if He did not receive the substance of flesh from a human being, He neither was made man nor the Son of man; and if He was not made what we were, He did no great thing in what He suffered and endured. But every one will allow that we are [composed of] a body taken from the earth, and a soul receiving spirit from God. This, therefore, the Word of God was made, recapitulating in Himself His own handiwork. (Against Heresies 3.22.1) 

St. Leo the Great, in his sermon On the Feast of the Nativity, shows that Christ has taken on human nature, and by that nature conquered death and the devil: “For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that which he had conquered.” Isn’t that what we find in Hebrews? 

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

St. Gregory Nazianzen, in a Letter to Cledonius shows that whatever has not been assumed by Christ cannot be saved: “If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole.” 

There is only one human nature, of which we all partake, and Christ has assumed it and recapitulated it in himself. St. Gregory writes particularly about the various aspects of human being, such as body, spirit, mind and will; whatever has not been assumed by Christ cannot be made whole. But this applies just as well to all humankind. In his Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15:28, Gregory says, “Now the body of Christ, as I often have said, is the whole of humanity.”

Through baptism, we are incorporated into the body of Christ in a very tangible way. As we participate in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of our Lord made present, we experience together what it means to become the body of Christ. 

Each of us bears the humanity Christ has made His own and are intimately and inextricably united with Christ and so also with each other. We are each created in the image of God, of Christ, who is the Image of the Invisible God, and in Christ we become partakers of the divine nature. Faith lives in that reality.

The Good News of the Gospel is that 
through the Incarnation, we are, every one of us, 
interconnected with Jesus Christ, 
and so also with one another 
through Him.