But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

God’s love for His creation could not leave it in corruption. The Holy Trinity works to reconcile rebellious creatures to Himself. The eternally begotten Son of God entered into the creation at a particular place and in a particular point of time. But effects of the incarnation reach all places and all time. The eternal entered into time so that we mortals can enter the eternal.

Again, all Persons of the Trinity participate in the incarnation. The speaking Father sends the Word that was spoken in creation, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit that hovered “over the face of the waters.” The God-Man Jesus enters into creation so that we can enter into the perichoretic dance of this Creating, Redeeming and Sanctifying Holy Trinity. Only through the One who has seen the Father, can we enter God’s feast. As George Herbert says, Jesus is “not only the feast, but the way to it.”

All of humanity is blessed by the coming of the Christ. Athanasius likens the incarnation to a city being visited by a King, just as the city is glorified by the coming of the Sovereign to one house, so are we all honored by the coming of Jesus. Moreover, Mary’s pregnancy shows God’s love and redemption for all of life, from the moment of conception on. This alone should convince us when God says someone becomes a person.

Not only is humanity blessed, but all of creation! Christ did not simply appear to be human, but “became truly human.” All matter is changed and blessed now that the fullness of God has walked on the earth. In the person of Jesus, God has truly entered into creation and sanctified the world. The incarnation is not that God put His spirit into a human body. Jesus’ spirit and body both were fully divine and fully human. Bread was taken, blessed, broken and given by the Lord, and consecrated as it touched the skin of our Lord and reverberated the words that were spoken by His tongue. As Jesus breathed in air, it touched the divine Body. The air was exhaled and continues to blow where it wills. Divine tears fell to the earth to be evaporated and poured out in rain or drunk into the roots of a tree. Hair pulled from the beard of Jesus by a Roman soldier fell to the earth and became part of the dust; blood dropped to the ground at Golgotha, sweat in a carpenters shop, dried flakes of skin in the Judean desert. Being in creation, matter continually mingles with other particles of creation.