WHAT IS NOT ASSUMED, IS NOT SAVED: CHRIST'S HYPOSTATIC UNION

 

Our first parents, after being given everything in the garden by their Creator, were given just one prohibition, one law, by the Creator,

“16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gn 2-16-17)

The Creator, the Perfect Judge, promulgated to Adam and Eve this one law which carried a sanction of death if violated. Adam and Eve broke this law and as a result brought death into the world. Being the Perfect Judge, God had no choice but to impose the penalty of death, not only upon Adam and Eve, but upon all of their offspring, all of humanity to follow.

Since God created everything that exists including man ex nihilo, out of nothing, death for man meant that he would return to a state of non-existence. For God, our omnipotent Creator, this was unacceptable, yet, as the Perfect Judge the penalty of death would have to stand.

There was only one thing God could do while remaining both a Perfectly Just Judge and an Omnipotent Creator. God, the Creator of the universe, would have to become Incarnate, assuming all of the elements of human nature except for sin while at the same time retaining all of His divine nature. This is accomplished in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Christ was both fully human and fully divine. He was not half human and half divine, nor could you say that Christ was a mixture of both human and divine natures. We refer to Christ’s dual natures as the Hypostatic union, which is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or individual existence.

Having totally and completely assumed a human nature, our Lord could now take the punishment of death for all mankind. For our Lord was the only one who could take the penalty in our stead and not remain in death and thus return to a state of non-existence because of his divine nature.

The whole point of this blog post is to emphasize that God TRULY took on human flesh to save us from sin and death, from returning to a state of non-existence. He assumed human nature in its entirety and took what was meant for us upon himself. Please always keep in mind, WHAT IS NOT ASSUMED, IS NOT SAVED! Thank you, Jesus!