“HE TOOK WHAT IS OURS AND GAVE US WHAT IS HIS”

He took what was ours to be His very own so that we might have all that was His. “He was rich but he became poor for our sake, so that we might be enriched by His poverty.” (2 Cor. 8:9). When they say that the Logos of God did not become flesh, or rather did not undergo birth from a woman according to the flesh, they bankrupt the economy of salvation. For if He who was rich did not impoverish Himself, abasing Himself to our condition out of tender love, then we have not gained His riches but are still in our poverty, still enslaved by sin and death, because the Logos becoming flesh is the undoing and the abolition of all that fell upon human nature as our curse and punishment…
If the Logos has not become flesh then neither has the dominion of death been overthrown, and in no way has sin been abolished, and we are still held captive in the transgressions of the first man, Adam, deprived of any return to a better condition; a return which I would say has been gained by Christ the Savior of us all… For God was in humanity. He who was above all creation was in our human condition. The invisible One was made visible in the flesh. He who is from the heavens and from on high was in the likeness of earthly things. The immaterial One could be touched. He who is free in His own nature came in the form of a slave. He who blesses all creation became accursed. He who is all righteousness was numbered among the transgressors. Life itself came in the appearance of death. All this followed because the body which tasted death belonged to no other but to Him who is the Son by nature.