12. О том, что Владыка восприял на Себя тело

Since we have learned the reason for God’s incarnation, then, using the evidence of God’s words, we will show that God the Word, having become man, took upon Himself a human body. For, firstly, the swaddling clothes were for humanity, and not for the Divine, and then “milk and honey,” which the Prophet proclaimed long before (Is. 7:15), and mother’s milk, and other food and drink indicate a nature capable of receiving it. If someone foolishly makes an objection, pointing to the food that was in Abraham’s tabernacle, then let him know that he is extremely meaningless. For there the food seemed to be eaten, but was destroyed in another way known to the one who destroyed it. And if someone agrees, out of stupidity, that it was an incorporeal nature that ate food, then he will find neither hunger nor thirst there, but here these demands were aroused by need, however, not because the Divinity united with the body could not make it needless of anything. Whoever soon afterwards had to grant immortality to all human bodies, It would not be difficult for Him to make His own body beyond all need. But He allowed the body to show its own nature in order to more clearly expose the falsity of the heresies that denied His perception of the body. Just as He could make the body a conqueror of death (which He did in three days), but allowed it to suffer and die in order to fulfill the mystery of the Economy, so He allowed the body to hunger, and thirst, and toil, and to sleep, so that the Docetes would not have any pretext for confirming the false heresy. Therefore, hunger, thirst, and moreover fatigue and sleep testify that the body of the Lord is a human body. Confirming this word, the divine Apostle cries out, saying: “Before now the children have partaken of flesh and blood, and He most sincerely partook of the same, so that through death he will abolish the power of death... and deliver these, who through the fear of death through all their life are guilty of death” (Heb. 2:14-15). And in this way he made it clear that the Lord had taken on the same nature as us. If anyone does not like the word: endowment, then let him hear what the patriarch Jacob predicts: “He will wash His garments with wine, and His clothing with the blood of grapes” (Gen. 49, 11); let him hear that the divine Paul also cries: “having the boldness, brethren, to enter into the holy blood” of Jesus, “the new and living way, which he renewed for us with the veil, that is, with his flesh, and the priesthood is great over the house of God: let us draw near with a true heart for the message of faith” (Heb. 10:19-22) and so on. For the Apostle called the Lord’s flesh a “veil,” just as Patriarch James called “garment” and “garment.” But it is unnecessary to continue the word about this, because both the New and Old Testaments clearly point us to the body of the Lord. You might be interested in: