Only-begotten enters; divine blood; mediator enough for all; impassible yet passible

Christ’s suffering has become saving for the world; yet it is necessary to see who the one entering into the world is. For he was outside the world wholly and entirely — since how has he entered into it if he was not outside the world? Therefore, existing by nature above the whole world as Only-begotten God, he has entered into it, having become a part of it — that is, a human — and thus, having offered the sacrifice for us and dedicated himself, he has saved what is under heaven.

“Therefore Jesus also, so that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate.” How would a common human’s blood show us holy? But Christ’s blood has sanctified. So it is divine, then, and not simply human; for God was in flesh, cleansing us by his own blood.

From the letter to Timothy. “For there is one God, and one mediator of God and humans, the human Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” Christ’s death is confessedly saving for the whole world. Yet if he is not God, how would he himself alone suffice to become a ransom for all? But he alone sufficed, dying for all, because he is also above all. So he is God, then — having destroyed the world’s death by the death of his own flesh.

From Peter’s letter. “Because Christ once died concerning sins, a righteous one for unrighteous ones, so that he might bring us to God, put to death in flesh but made alive in spirit; in which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who once were disobedient.” Many of the holy prophets have been killed, but none of those is said to have died for sins, nor to bring us to God through his own death, nor did anyone preach to the spirits in prison. But Christ has done this, and through him and in him we have been redeemed, and his suffering was saving for the world. So he died for us not as one human among those like us, but as God in flesh, giving his own body as an exchange for the life of all.

“Christ therefore having suffered for us in flesh.” For as Christ being God, the disciple wisely and thoughtfully says he has suffered in flesh, exempting from suffering the ineffable nature, to which suffering is foreign. So he has suffered in his own flesh, though the Word from God is accustomed to have no share in suffering. So Christ is God, then — impassible divinely, but passible according to the flesh.