This talk is entitled “Who Is Jesus Christ: The Orthodox Understanding.” For believers in Christ like myself, “Who is Jesus Christ?” is the most important question one could ask. But even if one is not a believer, one must acknowledge this as an important question, because no one can deny that Jesus Christ, and the Faith that formed around Him and His teachings, have changed the world. In today’s world, with its mass communication, everyone is confronted in one way or another with this question, and everyone is challenged to find an answer.
“Who is Jesus Christ?” is a much-debated question now, both among scholars and non-scholars. People are looking at Christ from many different angles, and offering their own perspectives. In this talk, we will look at Christ from the unique perspective of the Church He founded two thousand years ago. While many modern commentators may offer some helpful insights into the question “Who is Jesus Christ?”, I believe that the only completely reliable answers are to be found in the Church Christ founded. This is because, according to the Christian Scriptures, the Church is Christ’s Body, and Christ is the Head of the Church (cf. Ephesians 1:22–23; 5:23). Therefore, throughout the last two thousand years, Christ has spoken through His Church. Through His Church He has revealed as much as can be known of Who He is.
I am a member of the Orthodox Christian Church. Since I will be drawing from the teaching of the Orthodox Church in order to answer the question “Who is Jesus Christ,” I think it will be helpful for me to offer some words of introduction about this Church and its history.
Historically, the Orthodox Church is the ancient, New Testament Christian Church, founded in Jerusalem by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Orthodox Church traces its beginnings—in a direct and unbroken line—all the way back to Jerusalem in the time of Christ and His Apostles. There has been no break in continuity during the two-thousand-year history of the Orthodox Church. The teachings, worship, and practices of the Orthodox Church today are essentially what they were in the early centuries of the Church, because the Church has followed them without interruption for the last two millennia.
Orthodox means “right worship” or “right glorification” of God. In order to glorify God rightly, we need to have the right understanding of Who God is, Who Jesus Christ is. We need to have the right Scriptures to reveal this to us, and we need to have the right interpretation of those Scriptures. The ancient Orthodox Church, through guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, has not only produced the Bible, but has also given us the right theology by which to understand the Bible in the way it was meant to be understood.
The Orthodox Church, the Church of Jesus Christ, began on the Feast of Pentecost in 33 A.D., when, just as Christ had promised, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles in Jerusalem. From that day forward, the Apostles were endowed with power and began to spread the Christian Faith throughout the world. From Jerusalem the Apostles traveled throughout the Roman Empire and beyond: the Apostle Peter went to Greece and Rome, and was the Bishop of Antioch in Syria before being martyred in Rome; the Apostle Andrew went to Russia and, according to some early traditions, as far as the western border of China; Mark went to Egypt, where he founded a Christian community; Thomas went as far as India; and Matthew went to Ethiopia.
Wherever they went, the Apostles appointed bishops, priests and deacons, ordaining them by the laying on of hands. The bishops were the Apostles’ direct successors, and to them was given the authority to ordain priests.
The Bishops whom the Apostles appointed as their successors were later called “Apostolic Fathers.” Many of their letters survive, and are found in the book The Apostolic Fathers. These letters were written to many of the same churches that the Apostle Paul wrote to, and contain much useful information about the early Church, its life and organization.
The Bishops of the Orthodox Church today trace their lineage directly to the Apostolic Fathers, and through them to the Apostles and to Jesus Christ Himself. Christ laid his hands on the Apostles, and the Apostles laid their hands on their successors, and this has continued up to today in the Church. For example, the present bishops of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem can name all their predecessors, all the way back to the Apostle James, the step-brother of Jesus Christ; and the present bishops of the Orthodox Church in Antioch can name all their predecessors back to the Apostle Peter.
After the Apostolic Fathers, there have been many holy bishops who, as teachers and instructors of the Church, have shown themselves to be bearers of the Spirit of God. The Church calls them Holy Fathers because they are more than just instructors, according to the words of the Apostle Paul: Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel (I Corinthians 4:15–16) (that is, St. Paul is telling his flock that he has begotten them as their spiritual father).
In A.D. 325, when the Church had recently been freed from three centuries of persecution, 318 Holy Fathers gathered in council from all over the Christian world to answer the question we are looking at today: “Who is Jesus Christ?” This Council of bishops needed to carefully define the answer, because at that time a priest named Arius was spreading false teachings about Christ, and He had gathered quite a following. At this council—called the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea—the bishops repudiated the teachings of Arius and categorically affirmed that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh. The Holy Fathers at the Council based their dogmatic teaching on the words of Holy Scripture, interpreting the Scripture under the same Divine guidance that produced them.
From the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D., there were seven such Ecumenical Councils. The Councils were usually called when some kind of heresy was disturbing the Church. At these Councils the bishops, guided (we believe) by the Holy Spirit of God, proclaimed the true doctrine, thus overcoming all possible heresies concerning Who God is and Who Jesus Christ is.
In addition to the Ecumenical Councils, there were local councils that were accepted by the Church as a whole. One of the most important of these was the Council of Carthage, held in North Africa in A.D. 397. This council confirmed once and for all which books would make up the Bible. For the first three centuries of the Church, the books of the Bible were written and known, but they were still in the process of being compiled. In some place a few books were disputed and left out; in other places a few books were added. The Church, then, made the final determination of the New Testament canon of Scripture in a council held nearly three hundred years after the last book had been written, and Christians have abided by this canon ever since.
Thus, it is thanks to the Councils of the Orthodox Church, both ecumenical and local, that we have right faith, right worship, right dogmas, and the right Bible.
In this talk, in addressing the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” I will be drawing first of all from the Holy Scriptures of the Church: primarily from the New Testament, which was written by Christ’s Apostles. For the right doctrines based on these Scriptures, I will be turning to the decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and to the teachings of the Holy Fathers throughout the Church’s history.
The two main dogmas of the Christian Faith are (1) the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and (2) the dogma of Christ, which includes the teachings on Who Christ is and What Christ accomplished through His work of redemption.
In order to adequately address the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” we need to first discuss the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity. From an Orthodox interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the Church confesses that God is One God in Three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When in Christian doctrine we speak of the Tri-unity of God, we speak of the mystical inward life hidden in the depths of the Divinity, revealed to the world in time, in the New Testament, by the sending down of the Son of God from the Father into the world, and by the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world. Since there were no words to express this great mystery of the inward life of God, the Holy Fathers had to give new definitions to existing Greek words in order to at least approach the mystery with words. They agreed that God is one in Essence (Ousia) and three in Persons (Hypostases). Each Person of the Holy Trinity, sharing in the One Essence of God, is equally and fully God along with the Other Persons. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit possess one will, one power, and one operation. One Person of the Holy Trinity does not will anything or perform any action without the Other Persons. As Christ said: The Son can do nothing of Himself; but what He sees the Father; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner (John 5:19).
The Holy Fathers, strictly following the words of Christ Himself, taught that the Son is Begotten of the Father and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Beyond that they dared not say anything more about the distinction between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, since nothing more had been revealed by Christ in the Gospels.
The Holy Fathers also affirmed that the Divine begetting of the Son and the Divine procession of the Holy Spirit occurred outside time. There was never a time when the Father existed and the Son did not, and there was never a time when the Father existed and the Holy Spirit did not. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are pre-existent or pre-eternal.
The dogma of one God in three Persons indicates the fullness of the inward life of God. For God is love, and the love of God cannot merely be extended to the world created by Him: In the Holy Trinity this love is directed within the Divine Life also. Love must be bound up with His eternal existence. Love is the “being of God.” Perfect love exists between the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, and in this self-forgetting, self-emptying love the Three Persons are one.
A correct understanding of the dogma concerning Christ is contingent upon a correct understanding of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. For, as the Holy Scriptures proclaim and the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils affirmed, Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the second Person of the Holy Trinity. He is the only begotten Son of God Who has taken flesh, Who has become a man.
As the incarnate Son of God, Christ is of One Essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ Himself said: I and My Father are one (John 10:30), and elsewhere He said: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me (John 14:11; 10:38).
Being of one Essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Christ is fully God. As the Apostle Paul wrote: In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9).
Being fully God, Christ is the incarnation of the Creator of the universe. The Apostle John declares: All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1:3). Likewise, the Apostle Paul writes: For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible …: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist (Colossians 1:16–17).
At the Ecumenical Councils it was affirmed that Christ is fully God and at the same time fully man. The Holy Fathers at the Councils overcame heresies that attempted to diminish either Christ’s Divinity or His humanity.
In his humanity Christ was in all ways like us except for sin, as the Scripture says (Hebrews 4:15). He has both a human nature and a Divine nature, and these two natures are united in one Person. The Fathers defined in precise terms how the two natures are united in Christ: They are united unconfusedly and immutably and yet indivisibly and inseparably. “Unconfusedly and immutably”: this means the two natures do not mingle and are not converted one into the other. “Indivisibly and inseparably”: this means that both natures are forever united. They do not form two persons who are only morally united, as the heretic Nestorius taught. According to the doctrine proclaimed at the Councils, the two natures were inseparable from the moment of Christ’s conception within the womb of the Virgin Mary, by the action of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, at the Ecumenical Councils it was decreed that Christ, having two natures in one Person, also has two wills. The human will of Christ was not changed into the Divine will and was not destroyed. Christ completely subjected His human will to the Divine will, which in Him is one with the will of the Father. As He said: I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me (John 6:38).
To sum up what I’ve said so far: The Holy Trinity is God of One Nature or Essence (Ousia) and of Three Divine Persons (Hypostases), while Jesus Christ the incarnate God has two natures (ousia) and two wills united in one Divine-human Person (Hypostasis).
That, in very basic terms, is Who God the Holy Trinity is, and Who Jesus Christ is. But to fully answer the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” we have to ask two more questions which follow from the first: “Why did Jesus Christ come, and what did He accomplish?”
Christ came to unite man with God. He came as Saviour, in order to redeem man. But to redeem man from what? To explain the meaning of Christ as Saviour and Redeemer, we have to start by discussing the state of man before the Fall and after the Fall.
According to the Orthodox interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, before the Fall man’s body was not subject to death and corruption. He was made potentially immortal, that is, if he had not sinned he could have lived forever in an incorrupt body, partaking of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Before the Fall, man knew no pain, no sickness. He was not subject to old age. He was not subject to the elements; he could not be physically hurt. He knew no decay. His body, while still material and sensual, was more spiritual than the body we inhabit now. It was not grossly material, like the body we now have.
At his creation from the dust of the ground, man was created in Grace. The Holy Fathers say that when God breathed a living soul into Adam, He breathed also into Him the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Before the Fall, the first man and the first woman had the Grace of the Holy Spirit abiding within them.
Here I must stop to explain what is meant by Grace. The Orthodox Church understands Grace to be the very Energy of God. In the New Testament, Divine Energy is often called “Grace” (in Greek: charis), such as when Christ tells the Apostle Paul: My Grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness (II Corinthians 12:9), or when the Apostle John writes: Of His [Christ’s] fullness have we all received, and Grace upon Grace (John 1:16). In other places Divine is called “power” (in Greek: dynamis), such as when Christ says: I perceive that power has gone out of Me (Luke 8:46), or when the Apostle Peter writes: According as His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness (II Peter 1:3).
The Grace, Power, or Energy of God is not an energy that God created for us. Rather, it is Uncreated. Since only God is Uncreated, to say that Grace is Uncreated is to say that Grace is God Himself. And that is exactly what we say. Through their own experience of God, the Holy Fathers affirmed that we can never know God’s Essence, but we can know God through His Uncreated Energy or Grace. Through God’s Uncreated Energy, man can participate in the Divine Life of God Himself.
The first man, made in the image of God, was created for union with God. By drawing ever closer to God in love, by seeking spiritual pleasure in God rather than physical pleasure through His senses, man was to become ever more holy and spiritual, ever more in the likeness of God, ever more transformed by the Grace of God. Since God is limitless and unfathomable, the path of union with God was never to end. Man was created a little lower than the angels, but he was to eventually become higher than the angels, higher even than the highest ranks of the angels.
Moreover, as man became more spiritual and divinized by drawing closer to God, he was to make all of creation more spiritual and divinized as well, drawing everything closer to God. Many Holy Fathers teach that the entire creation was incorrupt before the Fall just as man was incorrupt: for the entire creation had been made for man. Because he possessed both body and soul, man was the link between this incorrupt material world and the noetic world of the angels. As such, he was to unite the material world with the noetic world through his own ascent to God.
Such was the lofty original state of man and the creation, and such was man’s lofty original calling. But as we all know and experience every day, the first man, Adam, fell from this state. In wrongly using the free will given him by God, man turned away from following God. He fell from love of God to love of himself. Rather than seeking spiritual pleasure through his ascent to God, he sought pleasure through his senses. In his Fall, he brought himself and all of creation into a state of corruption and death.
In the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, God told Adam: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Genesis 2:16–17). In fact, that Adam did not physically die on the day he ate from the tree: according the Scriptures he lived to be 930 years old. But according to the Orthodox Holy Fathers, God’s words were true: Adam did die on the day he ate the fruit. He died spiritually. He lost the Divine Grace that he had been created in. He no longer had the Holy Spirit abiding within him. Because his nature had become corrupted, deifying Grace was now foreign to it. Before, God Himself abode within him through His Uncreated Energy. Now man became empty, devoid of Grace. He was separated from God. And this spiritual death made Adam subject to physical death, which in his case occurred after 930 years.
At the Fall, man’s nature was changed. He still had the image of God in him, but now he had become corrupted. His spiritual corruption made his body more grossly material, subject to physical corruption or decay after death. Also, his spiritual corruption made his soul unable to partake of eternal union with God after death. Paradise had been barred from Adam during his earthly life, and both Paradise and heaven remained barred from him after death. After their death, Adam, Eve, and all their posterity went down into hades: a place of waiting, of separation from God.
Also, at the Fall, all of creation fell into corruption along with man: decay and death were introduced into the creation. In Romans 5:12 St. Paul says that By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and a little later, in Romans 8:20–21, he says that the creation entered into “futility” and “corruption” because of man’s sin.
We are all the inheritors of the death and corruption that entered into man’s nature at the Fall. We all share the consequences of the original sin. We are born into corruption, and with an inherited tendency or inclination toward sin. All of us sin, all of us depart from following God, and so we deserve the consequences of sin: spiritual and physical death, and eternal separation from God in hades.
Between the time of Adam’s fall and the coming of Christ, there were many righteous men and women, whom we read about in the Old Testament. But they, even through their righteous and Godly lives, were unable to undo the consequences of the Fall. Grace could act on them from the outside, as it did on the Prophet Moses, so much so that he had to cover his radiant face as he descended from Mount Sinai. However, this was only a temporary radiance, as the Fathers say. He and all the Old Testament prophets did not have the Grace of the Holy Spirit abiding within them, as their personal strength and power. And after death, everyone, even the most righteous, went down into hades, being cut off from Paradise and heaven.
During the Old Testament period, God gave laws to the Hebrews to help them live righteous lives. He instituted animal sacrifices, which the Hebrews were to make as offerings for sin. These sacrifices were a prefiguration of Christ’s sacrifice, to prepare the people of God to understand and accept the meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. But neither the sacrifices nor the laws were able to restore mankind to the state he had lost at the Fall.
A perfect, blameless sacrifice was needed—a man who was without sin—in order to destroy the consequences of sin. That was why Christ came: that was why God became a man. Having a Divine Nature inseparable from his human nature, Christ could not depart from God; in other words, He could not sin. The first Adam fell from his original designation, bringing everything into ruin. Therefore Christ, Who is called the Second Adam or the New Adam, came into the world to fulfill man’s original designation and restore what was lost. But Christ did even more than that. He not only restored man to what Adam was before the Fall: He gave man the possibility to become that which Adam was supposed to become, what Adam could have become had he not fallen.
Our redemption by Jesus Christ began with His incarnation. In assuming human nature, He united it with God. Since human nature is one, this gave man the potential of being united with God as well.
But with Christ’s incarnation, man was still not able to actualize the potential for union with God. Because of his spiritual corruption, man was an impure vessel. Because of the barrier of sin, man could not receive and keep the Grace of the Holy Spirit inside of him. So Christ, having overcome the barrier of nature at His incarnation, had to now break down the barrier of sin. He would do this through his death.
As God, Christ knew He had come to earth to die for man, and in dying to rise from the grave. He said, speaking of Himself: The Son of Man must be lifted up [that is, raised on the Cross], that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:14–15). And on the day before His crucifixion, He said: Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour (John 12:27).
Why did Christ have to die to save man? At the Fall, death was the sentence for sin. When He died on the Cross, Christ took upon Himself that sentence, but since He was wholly without sin and thus undeserving of the sentence, the sentence was abolished for all mankind, and mankind was freed from the consequences of the primordial Fall.
By His death on the Cross, Christ ransomed man out of servitude to sin, and redeemed man from the eternal consequences of sin which had been incurred at the Fall. Christ Himself spoke of this. He said of Himself: The Son of Man came … to give His life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28).
Out of His infinite love for us, Christ died in place of us, so that we could be given life. St. Paul says: God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). In the fourth century, St. Athanasius the Great explained this as follows: “Taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to corruption and death, He surrendered His body to death in place of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished.”
Now, having looked at how Christ redeemed us through His death on the Cross, let us turn to the saving fruits of Christ’s death. What does it mean for mankind to be ransomed out of the eternal consequences of sin? It means, as St. John Damascene wrote in the eighth century, that “the road back to the former blessedness (i.e., before the Fall) has been made smooth, and the gates of Paradise opened.” Through Christ’s death, we can be forgiven and cleansed of sin so as to receive what we would otherwise not be worthy of receiving: the Grace of the Holy Spirit inside of us, as Adam had it before the Fall. Moreover, we can go where we would not otherwise be worthy to go: Paradise and heaven. The first to receive this gift was one who was clearly unworthy, but who nevertheless believed in Christ and thus was redeemed through Christ’s death. This was the repentant thief who was crucified next to Christ, to whom Christ said, Today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43).
The saving fruits of Christ’s death were made available not only to those who lived after Him, but also to those who lived before Him; for during His three-day burial Christ harrowed hell and brought to Paradise those righteous ones who had lain in hades throughout the ages. The Apostles Peter and Paul write about this in their epistles (I Peter 3:18–19, 4:6; Ephesians 4:8–10).
At His death, Christ broke down the barrier of sin. But there was one barrier left: death itself. This Christ broke down at His Resurrection, when He rose from the grave in a renewed, spiritual body. As in Adam all die, writes the Apostle Paul, so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man according to his order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming (I Corinthians 15:22–23). Through Christ’s Resurrection, all mankind has been made subject to future resurrection: physical resurrection in incorruptible bodies that are more spiritual than the ones we have now. We shall all be changed, writes the Apostle Paul: in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at that last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (I Corinthians 15:52–53). At the General Resurrection, those who receive Christ’s gift of salvation are resurrected unto eternal life, as Christ says; while those who reject it are resurrected unto damnation (cf. John 5:29).
In Christ alone there is true life. He offers us eternal life: first of all true spiritual life by having His life-giving Grace abiding inside of us; secondly, eternal spiritual life in His Heavenly Kingdom; and thirdly, eternal physical life in our resurrected bodies.
When Christ first appeared among His Apostles after His death and Resurrection, His first act was to breathe upon them and to say: Receive ye the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). He could say and do this at that point because He had purified them by His sacrifice on the Cross; He had loosed them from sin. And then, after He had ascended to Heaven and seated our human nature on the right hand of the Father, Christ sent down the Holy Spirit on His Apostles on Pentecost, as He had promised.
Since that time, those who have been baptized in Christ’s Church have received the Grace of God within Him. We receive Christ’s gift of redemption and eternal life through His Church, which is His Body. It is in the Church that Christ bestows on us the saving fruits of His death and Resurrection. St. Symeon the New Theologian, a Holy Father of the tenth century, explains this beautifully: “One Person of the Holy Trinity, namely the Son and Word of God, having become incarnate, offered Himself in the flesh as a sacrifice to the Divinity of the Father, and of the Son Himself, and of the Holy Spirit, in order that the first transgression of Adam might be benevolently forgiven for the sake of this great and fearful work, that is, for the sake of this sacrifice of Christ, and in order that by its power there might be performed another new birth and re-creation of man in Holy Baptism, in which we also are cleansed by water mingled with the Holy Spirit. From that time people are baptized in water, are immersed in it and taken out from it three times, in the image of the three-day burial of the Lord, and after they die in it to this whole evil world, in the third bringing out from it they are already alive, as if resurrected from the dead, that is, their souls are brought to life and again receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit as Adam had it before the transgression. Then they are anointed with Holy Myrrh, and by means of it are anointed with Jesus Christ, and are fragrant in a way above nature. Having become in this way worthy of being associates of God, they taste His Flesh and drink His Blood, and by means of the sanctified bread and wine become of one Body and Blood with God Who was incarnate and offered Himself as a sacrifice.”
We receive the seed of Divine Grace within us at Baptism. And then, through life in His Church, through a life prayer, self-denial, virtue, faith and love, practicing the commandments of Christ, preparing for and receiving the Eucharist, reading and contemplating the Holy Scripture, we are to cultivate and nurture this seed of inward baptismal Grace so as to acquire a greater measure of Grace. In being ever more filled with God’s Grace or Energy, we grow ever more in the likeness of Christ. Then, after our death, Christ will know us as His own and will receive us into His Kingdom.
Earlier in this talk I mentioned that Christians are given the potential of attaining to a state even higher than Adam’s state before the Fall. Through Christ’s incarnation, death and Resurrection, man can not only be restored to what Adam lost; now he can attain to what Adam was meant to attain. Man can be filled with God’s Energy to such an extent as to be deified by Grace. In breaking the tyranny of sin through His work of redemption, the Saviour opens to us anew the way of deification, which is the final end of man.
In Orthodox Christianity, deification does not mean that man becomes God by nature. Man’s nature is not absorbed into God, so that he loses his identity as a created being. Rather, in Christianity deification is a sharing in God’s Life. It is a personal communion of love between man and God. The distinction between the created and the Uncreated never disappears. Man always remains within the confines of his created nature. He never becomes of One Essence with God, as Christ was.
As we have seen, Christ was the Son of God by Nature and by Divine, pre-eternal begetting from the Father. Man, on the other hand, can become a son of God by Grace and by adoption. As the Gospel of St. John affirms: As many as received Him [Christ], to them He gave the power to become sons of God, even to those who believe on His name (John 1:12). Man remains a creature while becoming a son of God by Grace, as Christ remained God in becoming man by the Incarnation.
Through union with God in His Energies, we are to become, in the words of the Apostle Peter, partakers of the Divine Nature (II Peter 1:4). Christ the incarnate God wishes us to be united with Him in love. He wishes us to dwell in Him, and He in us. He said to His disciples: If a man love me, he will keep my words, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with Him (John 14:23). And a little later he said: Abide in Me, and I in you (John 15:4).
This oneness between man and God is to be an image of the oneness that exists between the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity. Christ prayed to the Father for His disciples: The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them, that they may be one even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me; that they may be made perfect in one (John 17:22–23).
St. Symeon the New Theologian, who experienced the Grace of deification, speaks of this as participation in the Life of God Himself. It is not an impersonal experience of some kind of impersonal energy or power. Rather, it is a personal encounter with the living, personal God, through His deifying Grace. “I am sitting on my couch” writes St. Symeon, “all the while beyond the world. Being in the middle of my cell, I see Him present, the One Who is beyond the world. I see Him and I speak with Him. I—dare I say it?—I love Him and He, in turn, loves me. I nourish myself with this contemplation alone. Forming one with Him, I transcend the heavens. That is true, I know, and yet where my body, is I do not know. I know that the One Who remains unmoved descends. I know that the One Who remains invisible appears to me. I know that the One Who is separated from all creatures takes me inside Himself and hides me in His arms, and then I find myself outside the whole world. Yet in turn, I who am so insignificant in this world, I contemplate in myself completely the Creator of the world. I know that I will not die since I am inside of life: all of life surges within me. He is in my heart, yet He remains in heaven. Here and there, equally dazzling, He reveals Himself to me. How can all of this come about? How can I accurately understand it? How would I be able to express all that I understand and see? In truth, these are indescribable things, utterly ineffable.”
St. Symeon and many other Holy Fathers describe the experience of deification as an experience of Light. In Orthodox Christian spirituality, Grace or Uncreated Energy is also referred to as Uncreated Light. With this Light of Grace, Christ shone on the mountain when He was transfigured before His disciples, revealing a part of His true glory to them. That Light was Christ’s own Light, coming forth from His Divine Nature. When Christians shine with Uncreated Light, it is not with their own Light that they shine. They shine with Christ’s Light, with which Christ has filled them. St. Gregory Palamas, a Holy Father of the fourteenth century, says that “He who participates in the Divine Energy, himself becomes, to some extent, Light. He is united to the Light, and by that Light he sees in full awareness all that remains hidden to those who do not have this Grace. Thus, he transcends not only the bodily senses, but also all that can be known by the intellect.”
In one of his hymns, St. Symeon the New Theologian describes his experience of this. He writes: “God Himself is discovered within me, resplendent inside my wretched heart, enlightening me from all sides with His immortal splendor, shining on all of my members with His rays. Entirely intertwined with me, He embraces me entirely. He gives Himself totally to me, the unworthy one, and I am filled with His love and beauty. I am sated with pleasure and Divine tenderness. I share in the Light. I participate also in the glory. My face shines like that of my beloved and all my members become bearers of the Light.”
In the Orthodox Church, believers seek to grow toward deification in this life as a preparation for eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Since God is unfathomable and limitless, growth toward Him never ends, even in the life to come. “Indeed,” says St. Symeon, “over the ages the progress will be endless.… To be filled with Him and to be glorified in His Light will cause unfathomable progress.”
What St. Symeon describes of his experience of deification, as marvelous as it is, is only a foretaste of the future life in the Kingdom of Heaven that is promised to Christ’s true followers. The Kingdom of Heaven is a Kingdom of Light, and in this Light those who have been united with God will make their endless progress toward Him.
Furthermore, the glory that now exists among the saints and angels in heaven is only a foretaste of the glory that will be revealed at the General Resurrection, when all the saving fruits of Christ’s death, incarnation and Resurrection are to be fully revealed. Adam, it will be remembered, was supposed to raise the first-created world closer to God, to make it more spiritual through his own spiritual ascent to God. Adam failed in his purpose, so the New Adam, Jesus Christ, came to fulfill it. His redemptive work was already accomplished with His death and Resurrection. But the fruits of that work unfold over time. For through Christ’s Resurrection, not only will man be resurrected in a renewed, spiritual body: the entire creation will be re-created and become spiritual. As the book of the Apocalypse says, there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth.
The Body of the resurrected Christ was incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt body of Adam before the Fall. Christ’s resurrected, spiritual Body was like the spiritual body that Adam was supposed to attain by ascending to God in Paradise. Likewise, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt creation before the Fall. Through Christ the New Adam, the re-created creation will be what it would have been if the first Adam had raised it to God. The Apostle Paul bears witness that the whole creation “groans” as it awaits this future glory, when, as he says, it will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:21–22). In the words of St. Symeon, the re-created creation will be “a certain immaterial and spiritual dwelling, surpassing every sense.”
All this, the glory of the future age, has been made possible by Christ’s incarnation, death and Resurrection. Through the totality of Christ’s work of redemption, man is spiritually united with God and deified; man can attain to Paradise and heaven after death; and, at the General Resurrection, man’s body and the entire creation are to be renewed as a spiritual and divine dwelling place.
In the fourth century, St. Gregory the Theologian expressed beautifully in a few words the reason for Christ’s coming: “We needed an incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live. We were put to death together with Him, that we might be cleansed; we rose again with Him, because we were put to death with Him; we were glorified with Him, because we rose again with Him.”
But the most beautiful explanation of why Christ came has been given us by Christ Himself. Speaking of His coming, Christ said: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:16).