THE INCARNATION Stated a few paragraphs back, that it is not the nature that acts, but the person. Therefore, whether He was acting in His divine nature or in His human nature, it was always the person who acted : and there was only the one person — God. Then this is the position. Christ is God: therefore whatever Christ did, God did. When Christ acted in His divine nature (as when He raised the dead to life) it was God who did it: when Christ acted in His human nature (as when He was born, suffered and died) it was God who did it: God was born, God suffered, God died. For it is the person who acts: and Christ is God. THE ATONEMENT The next paragraph must be read with the closest attention or the map will not be properly understood. Because Christ was God and Man, He was able to effect the reconciliation of God and man. The human race had broken the first relationship of oneness by sin: and of itself the human race with all its imperfections on it could make no offering to God in reparation for its sin. Literally the human race could not make reparation. Yet for the human act of rebellion, a human act of atonement was required : for the sin of human nature, only an act of human nature could satisfy — yet this act of human nature man could not perform. Christ was God 49