Chapter 2—Miraculous Union of Human and Divine
Laying aside His royal robe and kingly crown, Christ clothed His
divinity with humanity, that human beings might be raised from their
degradation and placed on vantage-ground. Christ could not have come
to this earth with the glory that He had in the heavenly courts. Sinful
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human beings could not have borne the sight. He veiled His divinity
with the garb of humanity, but He did not part with His divinity. A
divine-human Saviour, He came to stand at the head of the fallen race,
to share in their experience from childhood to manhood. That human
beings might be partakers of the divine nature, He came to this earth,
and lived a life of perfect obedience.—
The Review and Herald, June
15, 1905
.
In Christ, divinity and humanity were combined. Divinity was
not degraded to humanity; divinity held its place, but humanity by
being united to divinity, withstood the fiercest test of temptation in the
wilderness. The prince of this world came to Christ after His long fast,
when He was an hungered, and suggested to Him to command the
stones to become bread. But the plan of God, devised for the salvation
of man, provided that Christ should know hunger, and poverty, and
every phase of man’s experience.—
The Review and Herald, February
18, 1890
.
The more we think about Christ’s becoming a babe here on earth,
the more wonderful it appears. How can it be that the helpless babe in
Bethlehem’s manger is still the divine Son of God? Though we cannot
understand it, we can believe that He who made the worlds, for our
sakes became a helpless babe. Though higher than any of the angels,
though as great as the Father on the throne of heaven He became one
with us. In Him God and man became one, and it is in this fact that we
find the hope of our fallen race. Looking upon Christ in the flesh, we
look upon God in humanity, and see in Him the brightness of divine
glory, the express image of God the Father.—
The Youth’s Instructor,
November 21, 1895
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