THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, THE RESTORATION OF MAN IN JESUS CHRIST Abstract Through Resurrection the humanity of Jesus Christ was entirely covered by the life of the Spirit; …

[Păştin Antoniu-Cătălin]

THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, THE RESTORATION OF MAN IN JESUS CHRIST

 

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Through Resurrection the humanity of Jesus Christ was entirely covered by the life of the Spirit; even now, like a man, Jesus Christ has completely the Holy Spirit in Himself, which since the beginning had It, according to His divinity.

The Resurrection from dead of Our Lord Jesus Christ represents the appearance of the divine power in body and namely in the body of the Incarnated Word.

 

 

From the Jesus Christ Word radiated the perfect love and just through it, His call sounded with a categorical authority. Befor Our Savior, people experienced not only His Divinity, but also their sins. These two different experiences are very closely united.

The condition of man after he has fallen in sin, was very serious. The man lost the communion with God and the image of God in the human nature was adulterated and the death came into the mankind.

God decided to restore the humanity and from here Our Redeemer is called “the New Adam”. If Jesus wouldn’t have risen again from the dead and wouldn’t have ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father, He would be for us a transcendence neither in our earthly life and nor in the afterworld.

That who recognizes Jesus like an alive Person, will see in Him during his earthly life the true border, namely the true Judge and Redeemer.

God chooses this way, namely the coming into world of our Savior, because He wants to join His Love with His Rightness. As the love lies on the fundament of the man creation, at the same measure it lies on the basis of the man restoration. God could redeem the man in other different way, but He wanted to improve him from inside the human nature (His Rightness). The possibility of the Embodiment is given by the fact that the evil couldn’t definitively extend upon the man, his fall wasn’t definitive. Adam didn’t stabilize in the evil.

Since the beginning God foresaw the fall of man and to restore his nature decided to sent into the world His unique Son to redeem the mankind, and in this meaning took place His Descension through His Incarnation. The redemption seems to be a very serious work, not only that God was deeply engaded in it, but also that it represents and forms His preoccupation within His eternal plan.

The worship of the mystery hidden from eternity and also unknown even by the angels, lies in the worship of love of God towards the wolrd. Not even the angels couldn’t imagine that in God from eternity, together with His Being can hide a such great love for the world. The “only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds” (the Creed of the First Council of Constantinopole (381)) came to the world to put us within the relationship in which He finds Himself with God the Father – although we are created – and consequently in the realtion of Son with Father and brother with himself.

Jesus Christ incarnated as Son of God to keep His feature as Son and through the Embodiment to bring us the adoption gift according to which He makes us sons, like Him before the Father.

Love is the supreme responsibility directed to the other fellow man. Through love we give to the other from all what we have, accomplishing him, to later receive everything from him. That means that love is sincere inclination to the other to give and receive.

What makes us responsible is our consciousness. Depending on the measure of the our inner voice profundity (of consciousness) is within us increased the love capability and the subject (the person).

Through the fact that the Son of God is not only word, but also above all the Word, in the true meaning of this notion. In Himself  the Person supremely accomplishes.

The preparation of men for the receiving of the Son of God with a human body, to maximal approach to them requested a certain period of time and it couldn’t be carried out only through people; without a such preparing work everybody would have been completely incapable to understand the descension of God between them.

The man becomes through Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and fellow man of Jesus Christ – God. This is the highest dignity and state at which the human person is risen.

Jesus Christ is the only “Mediator”, Whom God has given to the others men, as a laddr to Himself. In this meaning we shall properly quote from the Bible: “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things inearth, or things in heaven” (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the COLOSSIANS, 1,20).

And everybody who stays in communion with God is eternal, because, so as much God loves him, as much He receives him in union with Himself.

Jesus Christ redeems us, firstly because He deified His humanity, which is essence of our human nature, and then offering us His deified or transfigured by the Grace humanity, He also deifies us. 

The child, who leaves the his parental home, without the usual cordial disposition, begins psychologically to be down.

After the catholic perception, the human nature being not degraded by sin, but having the threat of death only over it, through the juridical satisfaction brought by Jesus Christ, death was removed and  it was carried out, what it had to be accomplished. Jesus incarnated as man to permanently stay facing the people.

To restore the nature was necessary a death which had to shake the heaven and earth till their ultimate foundations, as through an universal spiritual collapse to begin a new existence form of the creation, which already quitted its old path.

God preferred this death which through its shaking equates the abyss echo of the universal death….The death of the Son of God was the outburst of a focus of the unlimited love.

The Ressurection finds Itself strictly connected with the Incarnation and the Cross, which continue and at the same time reflect the man communion with God, considered as a new creation or with other words, the eighth day of creation, namely a gift from God and which restores the man and accomplishes the union of God with everybody. 

The blood of the divine Lamb, which never ends to flow and to be given  in the Eucharist, has a real purification capacity for those who take It within the Holy Communion.

Everyday and specially at the moment of the Holy Eucharist, the christian believer currently experiences this shaking. Without sincere tears for our sins, without the penitence weeping we are not able to be redeemed.

The christian believer dies in every moment of the world and rises from the community with Jesus Christ. The Saint John Chrysostom says: mor difficult like the primar creation was this, because is more difficult to improve a spiritual world, which begun to run on the deterioration wane, that to create a new one.

Compared to the Old Testament – the father is more severe with his child after this has done serious failures and keeps him at distance. The Father is so severe that it seems to the child that his parent deals with him like with a servant: within the New Testament the child feels he is in a pass phase to a filial communion and therefore this improvement is more important – those under the law live with the hope which looks for its fulfillment in  the future.

„Fulness of the time” = the history and time are fulfilled by all the conditions that explicitly indicate the necessity of the descension of the Son of God to the earth.

„Fulness of the time” = in the negative meaning explains us that the man was convinced by his inefficacy and means the point in time since which we have a time filled with presence of God (positive aspect).

A descension of God with His entire glory would overcome, blind the people, would hinder them in their free movements. But God wants to win them through their freedom and benevolent decision.

In the inner life of the Holy Trinity nothing was changed through the kenosis. The three hypostatical centres going on the exist and each of the three persons going on to maintain its eternal relation with the other two persons, as a natural result of this condition, the happiness, which radiates from these relationships also continue to exist. Father is pleased about the Son and the Son continuing to exist as  a divine Person, usually radiates the divine life and happiness.

Without kenosis the human nature wouldn’t  have been able to endure the deepen intimacy with the divine nature, it would have burnt and melted due to the too great power of the divine nature. 

Through kenosis we must understand the complete integration of the divine nature with the human nature in the existence and life of Jesus Christ, showing the people His divinity only under the man humble image and not separately the other Persons of the Holy Trinity, but within an entire unity including His human nature. The kenosis can’t be understood in any case that behind the human aspect wasn’t  also revealed the divine feature of the Jesus Christ Person.

The interpretation of the protestant theology, as a renunciation of the Son of His divinity, can be accepted in no case.

Each work of the incarnated Redeemer comprises in its essence both the action of the human and the divine nature.

The people were really overwhelmed by His words:”nobody spoke like Him in Israel”- whispered the listeners. His Word was human, but both in content and in its way, in which it was expressed, was something more like a human speaking. His power was human and also was a power, as nobody had and can have it.

Through kenosis we believe in this interdependence of the divine nature with the human nature in its existence and activity.

As far as He became a subject of the human nature, even if He was in time and space from eternity, the Son of God covered His almightiness in its manifestation towards the people in the means tolerable for men, i.e. in the toreable human forms, exactly as a too strong light is covered in a material, which tempers its intensity, but actually is active in its fulfillment.

The protestant kenosis obstructs the meaning of the incarnation, as a overflowing of the divine energies into world and history !

Not to accept that the Virgin Mary born Jesus Christ, that means not to recognize that He wasn’t the product of immanence. And that means to deny the Revelation.

The supernatural  nativity of Jesus Christ don’t directly imply the virginity of Mary for all the time, but only the fact that She didn’t conceive and gave birth Him in a natural way. But Her everlasting virginity indirectly results from His supernatural nativity.

At the birth of Jesus like a man it was produced a new intervention of God: only in this way could be escaped the human nature from the vicious and tragic cycle of sin and death.

If the Mother Mary wouldn’t have been a virgin woman, when She conceived the Son of God, wouldn’t have been able not to interfere through her memory within his condition with the human desire, which was prevously brisk.

The Virgin Mary is with her entire being available for God, being in this meaning only obedience, purity and desire to serve.

The believers see in Jesus Christ a Master in Whom they will fiind a trusful help and Who at His turn isn’t dependent on other things and conditions.

Who believes in Jesus Christ has an unlimited confidence, which could be interrupted by no doubt.

The prophet, being a messenger of God towards men, is on the other hand a demonstration of their sinfulness, a separation between God and people.

Eveybody have to rely on the help of God and not to trust in his own powers and capabilities regarding the problem of the afterlife.

The capability of Jesus Christ as prophet  acting as mediator between God and man specially consists of His condition through which He discloses through His human nature the mysteries of the divine life.

The life of Our Savior and Redeemer is divided in two states:

– the humility state or the state of the”kenosis”, which begins at the Incarnation moment, the prophetic mission and the bishop’s work, so this state is lasting along the course of His entire life, which culminates with His Death on the Cross and

– the glorification which begun after His death and comprises: His descension to hell, the Ressurection, Ascension to heaven and finally His stay at the right hand of God the Father.

– The orthodox christian spirituality essentially distinguishes from other spiritualities through the feature that it has as a strong fundament in the Person of the incarnated Son of God, which is an embodied God for all the people from all the times and all the places, namely from Adam till the end of the times.

– The Christianity represents the life in Jesus Christ. The orthodox christian spirituality means the experience in Christ and the conscience of His presence and work. The main principle of the christian spirituality must be the experience of the truth, which brings us to the redemption with the help of the Divine Grace. The Divine Grace is the expression of the love of God for everybody. The divine grace is the divine increate energy, radiated by the Holy Spirit energy over us, through the humanity of Jesus Christ. The divine grace is the communion with Christ in the Holy Spirit. The lost divine grace through the original sin was regained through the sacrifice on the cross of the Redeemer. The Holy Fathers assert that the divine grace is eternal or the divine energy which springs from the sacrifice on the cross of the Redeemer, which improve and sanctify the beleivers.

– Through the Ressurection the humanity of Jesus Christ was entirely penetrated by the life of the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ as a man has completely the Holy Spirit in Himself, which He already had from the eternity according to His Divinity.

– The Ressurection from death of Our Savior represents the appeareance of His Divine Power in His body and namely in the body of the Incarnated Word.

– Through Resssurection, through the real fact that the body of Jesus Christ is transparent, radiating love and He penetrates us together with His Soul and Divinity.

– And we at our turn, being spiritualized and sublimated through His Assistance and Care, have become the „own brothers” of Jesus Christ, because we shared Him through faith and communion.

– In the person of Jesus Christ is confessed the Word of God as person and command. This person reveals to us as the Son of God, who sacrifices himself for the humankind and as way of life, which absolutely corresponds to the divine command.

– The orthodox christian spirituality is the life in Jesus Christ, Who conquered our death through His death on the Cross, where His supreme love as a Man towards the Father was deeply working, as the supreme love as God, incarnated man for us.

– In the orthodox spirituality, that who belives in Christ, must concretize his faith through good deeds, namely he must use his liberty to accomplish the good helped by the divine grace of God, manifested within the world through the increate divine energies.

– The divine grace is the bridge oriented to the infinity of God as Person or as trinitarian communion of persons, since God put us through this divine grace into a relation with Himself.

– Jesus Christ, living in us since the baptism, powerfully leads  not only our efforts towards the christian virtues, namely not only the positive work with the purpose of the strengthening of the will of the new man, but also the negative one, of the annihilation of sin, of weakining through the will too, of the old man.

–  „Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians 2,20).

 

Theological, Ecumenical and  Intercultural Researches Centre “Saint IOAN CASSIAN” within the “OVIDIUS” University of CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

 

Doctor  in orthodox theology: Antoniu – Cătălin  Păştin