Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/16

 Because hell had taken possession of the human race through the overthrow of man's free will. It was necessary for God no fight the hells. How could He do so? By assuming man's nature and form, as we have seen, in order that He might approach them without destroying them. It meant that God would have to identify Himself with humanity by taking upon Himself man's nature, subject to temptation, and that hell would have the power it had acquired through the ruin of man to make men suffer. Was there no other way? Jesus in His struggle in Bethsemane evidently asked the question, but He then saw that the only way was by submitting to the hells. "Not my will,"—not the human will,—not the will of the son of Mary.——"but thy will be done," the will of the Divine Love which would not destroy the hells by violence.

God identiﬁed Himself with the human race in His coming forth to view as Jesus. He had to be born of a virgin so as not to have a human father with resulting limitations when He should return to His full Deity. No man with a human father could ever be God. The Son had to be "the Only Begotten," unique in being merely the channel for God to enter the human race. He had to have the human nature and the body of flesh in order to be visible, tangible, directly in touch with humanity. He was absolutely different from all other men in having no limiting inheritance from a human father. But He took full possession of the planes of human life on earth and in heaven by becoming incarnate and made them forever His own by His victories over the hells who had invaded them. He thus provided an eternal basis on the planes of human life on earth and in heaven so that He could be fully present in them forever. He is truly now "Immanuel, God-with-us." He is "the tabernacle of God With men." He dwells with us now in His Divine Human, or human made Divine. We are His people, and God Himself is with us now, our God. He is "the mighty God, the everlasting Father. "King of kings, and Lord of lords." And we can never see any other God than the God we see in Jesus. As finite beings we have to see God in finiteness or not at all. As we cannot see the soul of another man except in his body, so we cannot see the Divine Soul except as made visible in Jesus. This is the plain teaching of the Bible.