St. Athanasius composed one of the most important books in Christian literature, On the Incarnation, which provides a discourse on the divinity of Christ and the redemptive purpose of the Incarnation. In explaining the reason behind the Word of God becoming man, St. Athanasius provides five main arguments; in this article, we will cover the third.

The incarnation exhibits God’s immense love for us and therefore enables us to love God.

After finishing the first two main arguments, St. Athanasius provided spiritual arguments for the Incarnation of the Word. One of these arguments is that the Incarnation reveals God’s immense love to us and therefore enables us to love God. He explains that God:

“pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitations, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to naught.” God therefore  “surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us.”

Without the Incarnation of God and His sacrifice for us, how can we be assured that He loves us? Jesus went through torture and death to save us from eternal damnation, and therefore, He made it possible for us to love God in a much deeper way than any religion or philosophy offers. In no other religion do we find believers renouncing material ‎luxuries, and enduring torture and death for their faith, than in Christianity. This is only ‎possible because only Jesus has provided an example for us, and given us of eternal life ‎in Him.‎