4176 Incarnation of God....

November 27, 1947: Book 50

The most formidable problem is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. And yet a person with childlike faith can pass over it without intellectual difficulties, it can appear simple to him precisely because he believes.... For him Jesus Christ is God, and he also believes it with full justification, for divine is that which has united with God through love. However, the fact that this union was the final aim of a human being in the first place, achieved by the man Jesus in a short time on earth, likewise remains a truth which neither the keenest intellect nor the most devout heart can deny, for in order to attain the degree of perfection which makes a soul divine, a life of love must absolutely be lived in free will, of its own accord, and that in the stage as a human being, and the will may not be influenced in any way in a certain state of constraint. An already perfect being only enters earth for the purpose of a mission. It will also fulfil this mission but never on the basis of its already high degree of maturity before its embodiment as a human being, instead, its life, like that of every other human being, must be a battle waged in freedom of will against weaknesses and faults of all kinds. He must freely want the degree of perfection which marks him as a divine being, strive for it and achieve it through loving activity, which he can also refrain from, just as he could also direct his will downwards because he can freely use his will. He must be able to be just as evil as good, just as he will be credited with every decision one day. God does not influence such a soul in any way, but neither does He allow it to fall prey to the adversary involuntarily, thus to be forced by him to apostatise from God or to act against His will. This freedom of choice also had to be granted to the man Jesus if His act of salvation was not to lose in value, just as His divinity had to be the merit of a human being striving for perfection, Who should serve as an example for the whole of humanity and inspire people to imitate His way of life.... (27.11.1947) Jesus was a living example of a life according to divine will for people, consequently it must also be possible for a human being to attain the same perfection. He was a mediator between God and people, consequently it must be possible to reach God under the assistance of Jesus Christ; thus Jesus also had to be close to people in a human way, He had to have walked the same path on earth and have an intimate relationship with both, with God and with people, a relationship which was borne by deepest love, that He felt such great love for people that He wanted to help them; but He also felt the love for the eternal Deity which God requires in order to give Him unlimited power and abundance of strength, that He united Himself with Him, but which always presupposes that Jesus was a human being Who reached His aim.... was born as a human being and ascended to heaven as God in all glory. He was in no way endowed preferentially so that He would have succeeded in His human existence without any effort and as a matter of course, rather, He had to struggle unusually against temptations of unclean spirits who knew about His mission on earth and tried to prevent it. The temptations approached Him in every way, and it took all His strength of will to withstand and to adapt His physical desires to the desiring of the spirit and the soul, for His external body was human with flesh and blood, His senses felt the beauty and charm of the earthly world to an unusual degree, and they longed for fulfilment, yet He denied it to the body out of love for needy humanity, to whom He could only bring help by sacrificing Himself, by achieving a higher degree of maturity of His soul through refrainment and renunciation, which led Him to union with God. The union with His father from eternity, however, enabled Him in the first place to embark on His mission to spread the divine teaching of love on earth and to proclaim the divine will to people, but on the other hand it also gave Him the strength to make the most difficult sacrifice a human being has ever offered to God and people on earth.... To blamelessly take upon Himself the death on the cross and to suffer unimaginable mental and physical pain out of love for humanity in order to bring help to it, which had to expect a dreadful fate in the beyond due to its great guilt of sin, and to save it from eternal condemnation, from sinking into deepest darkness. Jesus, the man, put spiritual life before earthly life, His will was stronger than His physical desire, and thus He was victorious in the battle against Himself and thereby won the highest prize.... the love of the eternal Deity, Which gave Itself to Him, Which flowed to Him without restriction and worked upon Him as strength. And He became powerful and wise, He was filled with light and strength, the essence of God completely took possession of Him. That is, body and soul shaped themselves into love and thus became divine, because the fundamental substance of the eternal Deity is love and consequently anyone who carries love within himself and thus unites himself with God, the eternal Love, has to be a divine being.... Jesus was God and man.... God was His being, man was His body, which held the divine being, love, within itself. Therefore, if one speaks of Jesus as God, then His essence is meant, the spiritual shaping of His soul, the absorption in pure, selfless love and thereby the shaping of His soul into the image of God.... And since Jesus had gained victory over Himself, His body spiritualised itself and completely subordinated itself to the will of the soul.... And thus Jesus was filled with light, flowed round by light, and after His death He ascended into heaven as the purest spirit, yet also visible to the disciples through His will.... For He had overcome death, He had redeemed the world from the state of weakness into which it had fallen through sin.... He had accomplished the work of redemption as a human being, because otherwise it would not have been a sacrificial death and would not have extinguished the immense guilt of sin into which humanity had fallen....

Amen

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