When asked to define God in one word, Christians often use the word love. If God is, in fact, love, as well as humankind’s creator, then God is also a parental figure in a relationship with creation. Thus, God is the heavenly father whom Christians call upon in prayer, as instructed by God’s son, Jesus (Matt. 6:9-13). Yet because Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), and that “as Word/Wisdom Son of God, Christ is eternally and personally related to the Father in the Spirit” (O’Collins 343), the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the pre-existent, eternal family relationship that the one God, in three persons, rooted entirely in love, wish to share with humankind.
In turn, the hypostatic union of Jesus’ two natures, fully God and fully man, during his earthly existence, manifested the complete family relationship among the triune God and also with humankind. Being homoouisios with the Father, and also homoouisios with humankind, Jesus served as a bridge between both human and divine family relationships. As the Logos (John 1:1-3), as the incarnate Son of God, as the Christ who is the final Adam and therefore restores a wounded creation (1 Cor. 15:22), Jesus had to be both fully human and fully divine in his salvific mission. O’Collins supports this notion by quoting the Church Father, St. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 261, “If Christ did not sojourn in the flesh, then the Redeemer did not pay the penalty of death for us, nor destroy death’s dominion through Himself. If death reigned over what the Lord did not assume, death would have continued to work its purpose, and the sufferings of Christ’s flesh would not have benefited us. He would not have overcome sin in the flesh, and we who died in Adam would not have been made alive in Christ” (O’Collins 160, 161).
Still, Jesus as fully divine was also necessary to salvation. Athanasius, another Church Father, gives the following perspective of Christ’s salvific purpose: Christ’s eternal pre-existence involved Christ acting as the agent of creation: The same Word that brought about creation is the same Word who can restore it into right order (O’Collins 162). As baptized believers into the new creation, Christians are to live out the restored family relationship they have been granted through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This eternal, divine relationship not only gives believers the means to nourish the grace they have been given, but to look forward to the day when God’s kingdom is fully made present to all of creation (O’Collins 131).
In the meantime, while humankind awaits the ushering in of God’s kingdom, believers are also to remember that, by restoring humankind into a new creation, Jesus’s salvific death and resurrection is for all people, regardless of social status or class (O’Collins 132, 133). In tending to his creation, Jesus was especially concerned about the poor and disadvantaged. In fact, during his earthly existence, Jesus himself lived humbly and served others. And as the pre-existent Son of God (Colossians 1:15-17), Jesus used his fully human nature to show humankind that he was fully willing to take on suffering and strife for his *family*.
In return, believers are to accept their own suffering as they strive to live by God’s will. Jesus invites humankind to deny a potentially corrupt, worldly life and instead ‘take up the Cross’ (Matthew 16:24-25). But in doing so, believers may experience persecution, persistent temptations, and a possibly chaotic life all-around. Yet just as Jesus’ fully human nature overcame suffering, while his divine nature led to conquering both physical death and humankind’s spiritual death, the hypostatic union is the spiritual tie that binds all creation to an eternal love with God.
Works Cited
O’Collins, Gerald. Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus. 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.