Human beings are marked simultaneously both by immortal longings and by the certainty of death. They form a crossroads between God and the whole material creation, standing at the heart of the created order. This is one reason the devil, in his revolt against the wisdom of God, seeks to wrestle humanity away from God so as to make a caricature of the creation of God and to mark the world of men with clear signs of moral capitulation and spiritual failure.
Christianity claims that God's central response to human sin, however, has been to become human. Why? If the human situation is marked by opaque meaning, residual moral frailty, and physical mortality, then why should God embrace our situation? If God is real, ought he not simply to have chosen to remake the human condition from scratch, by divine fiat? Why should he unite himself to us in our very imperfect situation? The answer is divine love. God manifests his mysterious wisdom and power not by destroying or instantly resolving our situation, but by offering us his divine mercy, grace, and friendship, and by offering all this to us in the midst of our suffering and moral fragility. Divine love has its own customs which are infinitely wise, but which are not those of men. God sees fit to "rehabilitate" the human race after sin not by destroying it, but by entering into it via incarnation, in the vulnerability of being a human child and of death by crucifixion, so as to invite the human race to discipleship and to resurrection from the dead.
From pp. 135-136, In The Light of Christ.
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