...the Word became flesh...
...he assumes sinful flesh, human existence in repudiation of and rebellion against its ordering by God to find fulfillment in fellowship with God. The Word assumes the full extent of human alienation, taking the place of humanity, existing under the divine condemnation. But his relation to the human alienation which he assumes is not such that he is swallowed up by it. He does not identify with humanity under the curse of sin in such a way that he is himself sinner. He exists at a certain remove from sinful humanity even as he assumes it. It remains utterly foreign, indeed, utterly hateful to him, because it is disoriented, abased, unrighteous, and under God’s condemnation. He adopts the condemned human situation without reserve, but with a peculiar distance from our own performance of our humanness. By not following our path, by refusing complicity with the monstrousness of sin, he is and does what we are not and do not do: he is human. In his very estrangement from us as the bearer rather than the perpetrator of sin, he takes our place and heals our corruption. That the Word became flesh means that he takes to himself the accursed situation of humanity in sin. But he takes it to himself; he does not evacuate himself into our situation. The flesh which the Word becomes is the flesh which the Word becomes, and the flesh which the Word becomes. In his utter proximity he is utterly distant from the misery of humanity in sin; and only so is he redeemer.
- John Webster, Word and Church, 140-41.
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