Colossians 1:15-22 (Divine Mechanics Translation)
15 The Son is the exact likeness of the invisible God, first-born of all creation (of every creature) (via birth through resurrection), 16 because within Him all things in the heavens and on earth were shaped, the visible and invisible (the physical and the psychological), whether seats of dominion, or positions of jurisdiction, or the things ruling, or the things influencing (as incorporates the systems of thought and belief). All things were shaped through Him and into Him (being that everything obtained co-participation in Christ's divine state, and not that everything became Christ). 17 And He is before all things (existing in front, in time and place), and within Him all things were brought together (by means of His incarnation), placed in proper alignment, and established as a whole. 18 And He is the Head of the body, the ekklesia (the body of Christ, being co-participants in His consciousness), Him being the beginning, the first-born out from the dead (through resurrection), so that it would come to be He has first place in all things. 19 Because it was gladly determined that within Christ all fulfilment to a state of perfect completion be permanently established, 20 and through Him to completely reconcile all things into Himself, to fundamentally transform them to become just like Him, having made harmonious peace through the bloodshed of His cross, whether the things on earth or the things in the heavens (such that everything mortal be brought through to an incorruptible immortal state).
21 And you were at one time estranged (from both God and your true self), namely at enmity in the mind (possessing thinking that opposes divine truth), and in the ensuing erroneous behaviours that are harmful, ruinous and troublesome. 22 But now, He has completely reconciled you into alignment with the divine, having transformed you in His own mortal body, through physical death, to then present you (in His resurrected body) perfectly holy like God, totally flawless (psychologically whole) and beyond all reproach, standing face-to-face before God the Father (in the resurrected state).
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To see ourselves as God sees us, as a creation that has ultimately been fully perfected through Christ, is to enter into God’s own rest. All our needless human striving in an effort ‘to become’ (i.e. in order to gain our sense of self, identity, significance, and/or meaning) can finally cease, as we come to the awareness that Christ has actually completed us, and has finally brought us all through to a state of absolute perfection. In this regard, no event in all of human history has been of such insurmountable importance than Christ's incarnation! This is because Christ's incarnation was how God ultimately brought all humanity through to our final state of 'full complete perfection!' Yes, Christ was accomplishing so much more than just humanity's redemption, He was actually completing the process of our creation, by making us into who we were always meant to be! The 'incarnation' (God becoming fully human) is how God actually imparted into humanity the full intimate knowledge of who we truly were (our core identity), and in so doing, actually completed God's creative process regarding our formation as human beings.
God's eternal plan for who we were always destined to be as humans actually sets us apart from all other creatures in a profoundly unique way. It meant that a very particular creative process was fundamentally necessary in our formation, one involving us obtaining our core identity directly from God's own sense of self-awareness. To achieve this, a two-stage process in our formation was required; with humanity having an initial 'incomplete state' (i.e. our mortal human form), which had an 'innate lack of clarity’ in regards to knowing God's objective truth about our existence. This innate lack concerning our own identity was always fundamentally necessary, so that God would be able to impart into us full clarity about our existence directly, from God's own sense of self-awareness. This would ultimately be achieved through God becoming exactly what we are - fully human in every way. And all this was because of God's unfathomable desire to have humanity co-participate in God!
Astoundingly, God's creative process in forming humanity always involved humanity's inclusion into God (our adoption), as the very sons and daughters of God. However, becoming 'a child of God' in this context is very different from the generic notion that we are all 'God's children' (right along with every creature), simply because we are a part of God's creation. Our 'adoption' into God is infinitely more profound than this notion! This is actually about humanity becoming included as part of God - meaning our inclusion into the eternal relational circle of Life and Love that exists between 'the Father,' 'the Son,' and 'the Holy Spirit.' This is humanity essentially becoming a part of the Divine Family that is God (the Trinity), in order for us to fully co-participate in God's own divine self. Humanity's adoption into God means an eternal existence of experiencing God 'from the inside,' as a co-experience of God's own existence. This is co-partnership in the perfect Love, Life, and goodness that God actually is!
Obviously, 'adoption' from God's perspective is not a legal process, but an organic one, involving a very literal creative process regarding our formation. Our adoption into God (inclusion into God), was achieved through 'God the Son' becoming exactly what we are - fully human in every way. Subsequent to the occurrence of this specific historical event (Christ's incarnation), humanity was fully represented within the Trinity, in and through the very person of Jesus Christ. Yes, one of the three persons of the Trinity became exactly what we are, and in so doing quite literally 'inserted' humanity into the Trinity, and so making us a part of God's eternal self. The point at which Christ (God the Son) became fully human, was the very point that humanity actually obtained all that personally belonged to Christ - meaning that humanity were included into Christ's own eternal relationship with His Father and the Holy Spirit, and were made full co-participants in the triune God (triune: 'consisting of three in One'). Consequently, Christ now literally defines what it means to be human, making all of humanity 'co-heirs of God’ along with Him, and 'co-partners' in God’s eternal Kingdom. All of humanity was inseparably 'grafted' into the divine circle of perfect relational at-oneness (the Trinity), in and through Christ’s own person and being! And nothing can ever change this immovable reality, as it is quite simply God’s own reality, and God's very truth about us all!
Of course, our inclusion into God does not mean that we became God, and this distinction needs to be made clear. Humanity are (and always will be) created beings, and are not the uncreated Source and Creator of all existence. However, all the information about who we truly are (our fundamental core identity as humans) comes directly from Christ Himself, with Christ being the very definition of both who, and what we are. We have indeed been given Christ's own divine nature, and also Christ's very own awareness of self as 'God the Son.' As such, we are co-participants in God, through the person of Jesus Christ; co-sharing in Christ's own divinity. In this way, humanity actually get an eternal existence in the unimaginable bliss of the ‘perfect at-oneness in love’ that Christ has eternally enjoyed, in His relationship with His Father and the Holy Spirit! Yes, Christ’s own ‘divine self-awareness in love’ has become our too!
But it must be noted that our ‘inclusion into God’ does not mean that we somehow 'merge' into God in such a way that we lose our own unique personhood as a distinct individual. This is not how God works! God specifically created us all as uniquely individual persons, and this dynamic never changes. However, in the same way that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always remain as three distinct persons, and yet they exist in a continual state of inseparable, interconnected at-oneness, we too will indeed always maintain our own unique personhood, and yet remain fully and inseparably at-one with God. In fact, we only ever exist in the context of connectedness to God, and simply cannot ever exist in isolation or separation from God! In order for us to even exist, God must sustain our existence at every moment, continually holding us together within God's very self (i.e. 'in Christ'). Reality itself is that we all exist in fundamental connection to God (the Trinity), with God also being the very Life and Love that flows through our being.
Through the event of Christ's incarnation, God entered right into our 'darkness,' bringing God's own 'light of truth' right along with Him. While we were in the midst of an earthly existence marred by profound 'blindness to God's objective truth,' and experiencing the innate difficulty associated with having a lack of proper clarity about who we truly were, Christ actually secured us all in the glorious relational wholeness of love that He has always experienced in His relationship with His Father and the Holy Spirit. Through divine conception in a virgin’s womb some two thousand years past, Christ joined divinity into the frailty and vulnerability of our mortal human state, and subsequently experienced existence from our perspective, and through our own mortality. He did this primarily in order to give us everything that was always fundamentally necessary for our eternal existence, as beings who would be the perfect reflection of God's own divine self.
God found His way right inside of us, and inside of our mortality (which is characterised by difficulty, hardship, pain, suffering, and strife), and through Christ's own divinity, fundamentally changed us, perfecting us from within. Christ actually worked the perfect wholeness of God's own divine nature and being into humanity, thus ultimately freeing us from our slavery to all manner of false belief about our existence. As such, God was essentially forming our core identity and giving us complete wholeness regarding our sense of self, through imparting into us Christ's own divine perfection of being. This included giving us the perfect clarity of Christ's own faith (God's perfectly right belief system), His own perfectly right way of being as God (God's own righteousness), and also His very own self-awareness regarding His divine standing within the Trinity as 'the eternal Son of the Father.' Christ actually got inside us all (through the incarnation), and gave us His own divine clarity of truth, thus correcting all the faulty ways we perceive our own existence!
God’s very own eternally experienced reality, being the perfect relational awareness of pure loving goodness (existing between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) literally became ours too, through Christ's incarnation. We have subsequently been made fully at-one with God, with Christ completely 'converting us' (i.e. fundamentally changing us from within) from our imperfect ways of being, to God‘s perfect way of being. This was not just something Christ did for us, but to us - as an essential formative process in our creation! God did not actually place any responsibility for our final completion into our own hands, nor leave our eternal destiny up to us! Our eternal fate does not actually rest upon a supposed decision we must make - especially considering how innately blind we all are regarding knowing God's objective truth! There was no 'decision' to be made on our part, in order for us to be somehow become included in the creative work Christ was doing! We are all 'in Christ,' and simply because of who Christ is - the One in whom all things exist! We are not actually self-created beings, but God's very own creation - and so the only One who can actually perfect us is God! This work was done to us, by God, as an act of pure grace from start to finish!
Accomplishing our state of 'final perfection' in and through the person of Christ, was actually always God’s desire, initiative, and design for all humanity. Christ's incarnation was indeed always God's plan (from before all time), with the incarnation being fundamentally essential in the process of creating us into who we were always meant to be! We were all intrinsically included in the formative process that occurred through Christ's incarnation, simply because all humanity is fundamentally connected to Him! This is because Christ is both the Creator and Sustainer of all existence, and the very One in whom all things exist and are continually being held together! Absolutely no-one has been left out, nor excluded from what Christ accomplished - not one person was left behind! From God's vantage point, we were all pre-destined to be made completely perfect (divinely whole), and to experience the incredible fullness of 'eternal life' in divine incorruptibility, in and through the very person of Jesus Christ!
As both the ‘Son of God’ and the ‘Son of a Man’ (i.e. both fully God and fully human), Christ now exists as the ‘Mediator’ between the two (i.e. the very point of union), making God and humankind eternally at-one within His very own being! Christ has actually already resolved all our blind confusion about who God is, and has overcome all our faulty belief about who we are, through what He (as God) has always known to be true in His eternal relationship with His Father. During His earthly existence, Christ completely overcame the obstacle of our flawed ways of being through His own flawless divinity; thus finally removing all our 'blind corruption' by ultimately putting it to death through His own crucifixion. He then re-birthed humanity as a whole 'New Creation' through His resurrection, with humanity finally unveiled in the resurrected Christ as the now ‘fully perfected' and 'finally completed' creation of God!
As a direct result of Christ's 'atoning work' (i.e. Christ making humanity fully 'at-one' with God, by transforming us to God's own perfect state of wholeness), the restless human soul that searches for identity, significance, and meaning has finally been brought to rest, and is now anchored firmly in Christ's own intimate knowledge of the Father’s loving embrace. Humanity has been fully reconciled to God through Christ - meaning that we have been made 'divinely perfect,' just as God is - and not that the Father's supposed 'wrath for sin' has somehow been appeased through Christ's death!! Christ's 'atoning work' had nothing to do with him supposedly receiving 'wrathful punishment' from God on our behalf! Humans were the very ones doing the 'punishing,' through unjustly crucifying Christ, not God! God doesn't actually have an innate need to punish us for our wrong doing! Neither was Jesus merely 'covering over our sin' with His innocent blood, making our sin magically disappear! The 'blood of Jesus' is not some mystical 'smokescreen' that effectively tricks God the Father into thinking we are perfect like Jesus. There was no 'hocus-pocus' going on at the cross! Jesus was literally making us perfect, through and through! Christ was enacting a transformational creative work through His very crucifixion - and one that fundamentally set us free from all our corrupt ways of being!
The Father did not need to be 'conditioned' (through human sacrifice) into accepting us! This profoundly perverse, utterly barbaric understanding of God is unmitigatedly false! The Father forgives and accepts us, in spite of all that we may have done - and simply because of who He is and what He is like! 'Absolute loving acceptance' is who God by nature is - meaning that it is impossible for God to do anything besides loving us unconditionally! Just look at Christ's selfless act in freely giving His own life for our sake, and there you will see the Father, plainly revealed through the Son! The Father is just like Jesus - with them having the exact, identical nature of perfect love!
The problem that Jesus was resolving was not on God's side, it was on ours! God was not the one who needed to be changed, we were! This was about Jesus healing us from within, and changing the way we fundamentally perceived our own existence. "By His stripes we are healed" - meaning completely cured of our innately dysfunctional ways of being. Jesus did not simply make it 'appear' to the Father as if we were perfectly righteous, He literally established His own 'perfect way of being' within us! Christ was fundamentally changing us, through destroying our corrupted mortal human state, in His death by crucifixion, and then ultimately re-birthing us into our incorruptibly whole human state, through His resurrection! It was our initial mortal state that died right along with Christ, meaning our current (imperfect) form of 'mortal human flesh,' with it's innate propensity for 'truth blindness,' and its corresponding corrupted ways of being! This was the 'old man' (or the 'old self') that the Apostle Paul says was 'crucified along with Christ' (Romans 6:6). The very mortal body that we currently 'inhabit,' with its innately flawed ways of being as a result of faulty belief was what died along with Christ! And this occurred because we are all fundamentally joined directly to Christ, with our very existence being 'summed up' within His very being! Yes, our corrupted mortal self died right along with Christ!
However, the 'corruption' innately associated with our mortal human state does not mean that we were, are, or ever can be, innately 'bad,' 'wicked,' or 'evil!' God created us all as good - 'very good!' It's just that we weren't finally perfected yet (while in our mortal form), with us lacking the full clarity of innate self-awareness regarding who we were. And as a result, we all ended up embracing belief that was incorrect (i.e. lies), and was therefore harmful to our very existence. But, we were never fundamentally 'evil,' 'wicked,' or 'bad' because of sin! God cannot actually create something that is (or even can be) innately evil, for that would be for God to be operating in total contradiction to God's fundamental nature of perfect love and goodness! Evil can only ever exist as the result of belief in lies - and lies (by their very nature) are something that doesn't actually exist! Lies are the very opposite of who God is - and thus are directly opposed to God's fundamental way of being (perfect love)! It is the lies themselves that are evil, and also the behaviour that we perpetrate as a result of believing them! We do not become evil, we participate in it - through our faulty belief, and through our subsequent dysfunctional behaviour. God is the only One who ultimately defines who, and what we are, and not our behaviour!
Sin was never actually a reason for God to reject anyone, but rather a problem that God always foreknew would occur! Sin was actually the unavoidable outworking of humanity's initial incomplete mortal state, with us having an innate lack of proper clarity regarding our own existence. According to our imperfect (i.e. incomplete) mortal form, we had not yet obtained all the necessary critical information about ourselves, and the proper divine awareness about our own identity. These were things that would only ultimately come directly through Christ, via His incarnation. If we actually had the full clarity of God about who we were to begin with, then we would have always had the innate self-awareness of being absolutely loved, and at every single moment of our existence! In this case, the truth of God's love would have been so fundamentally built-in to our being that doubt would have been a total impossibility! This is the type of 'full self-awareness of love' that we will all ultimately experience!
Sin was only able to occur because humanity (in their mortal state) was not yet fully formed, and was missing the full clarity regarding some very essential core identity-based information! Sin (as concerning belief that is incongruent with God's objective truth, and the resulting behaviour that is 'out of step' with God's perfectly loving way of being), would inevitably be humanity's predicament, so long as we lacked the perfect clarity of Christ's own self-awareness, and His very own faith (i.e. God's own perfect belief system). So long as we were lacking the full intimate knowledge about our Heavenly Father and about who we truly were, we were always bound to make a mess of things - and so we did!
So, sin has always been essentially an identity-based issue, with its very basis being our faulty belief about our own existence. When we believe the wrong things about our own existence, then the result is dysfunctional behaviour - this is how 'sin' works (in a nutshell). But 'sin' was always going to be unavoidable, so long as we did not yet possess the full clarity of God's objective truth about who we were! And God foreknew it, having already accounted for its full resolution! Christ was actually always God's answer to this identity dilemma, being the One who would finally complete us, through establishing in us all the correct belief that we were essentially in need of!
In fact, one of the New Testament Greek words that gets translated as 'sin' is the noun 'hamartia;' which is also commonly understood to mean 'a missing the mark,' or 'a failing to hit the mark.' However, Hamartia is a compound word consisting of 'ha' meaning 'without,' or 'missing,' and 'martia' from the word 'meros,' meaning 'a part,' 'one of the constituent parts of a whole,' 'a portion,' or 'form.' Thus, according to its derivatives, the word 'hamartia' indicates 'without a part,' or 'missing one the constituent parts of a whole,' or 'without a portion,' or 'without form.' This all very clearly points to a state of existence that is incomplete, with humanity missing an essential 'part' in order to become whole! So, an appropriate definition for 'sin' (the noun) would be: 'a state of existence that is innately 'out of sync' with God, because we are missing the perfection (completion) of full divine self-awareness!'
And this is our common predicament as humans, according to the innately incomplete nature of our mortal form! Yes, sin is tied directly to our mortal human body, and simply because it has the innate inability to see God clearly, lacking the full clarity of divine self-awareness, and therefore the propensity towards believing things that are not actually true! But, our initial' incomplete' mortal form was always a fundamentally necessary step in our creation, in order for God to accomplish our 'adoption' into the Trinity, and our identity within God! Our 'missing part' was Christ's own divine self-awareness - meaning His divine relational awareness as 'the eternal Son of the Father!' So, at its foundation, 'sin' was never actually a moral issue, but an issue concerning our identity! It was not even about 'transgressing divine Law,' as so many often claim! Sin is existence that is 'out of step' with who God fundamentally is! Sin was always an inescapable situation we would have always fallen into, so long as we could not see God clearly!
So, humanity's initial 'Fall' into sin was actually a fall from 'naive innocence,' into dysfunctional ways of believing (with all the associated dysfunctional behaviour). But, it was not a 'fall from 'complete immortal perfection,' as many Christians are incorrectly taught. Humanity did not begin its existence from a place of complete immortal perfection, because 'complete perfection' from God's perspective means the infallibility and divine incorruptibility of God's own self! If humanity was indeed originally a 'fully complete' creation of God, then sin (which essentially is our participation in false belief) would not have even been a possibility for us! If we already comprehensively knew who we really were, then we would not have been able to be deceived by false notions about our existence, due to the absolute clarity of truth that we already innately possessed! No, this world was indeed always a 'temporary transitionary realm,' and a vitally necessary step in the process of our ultimate formation into the very sons and daughters of God - meaning beings who possess the fullness of God's very own divine self-awareness of love!
Physical death, decay, and atrophy were always a part of this cosmos, as necessary protective limitations that prevent the indefinite continuity of corrupt and dysfunctional ways of being. So the 'death' that the apostle Paul says entered the world through sin, was a 'death' in the way that we experienced our existence - meaning things like hardship, labour, suffering, difficulty, and pain. And the experience of these adverse consequences are there to let us know when we are not actually functioning according to the true created order of things, and when we are not properly 'in sync' with God's own way of being (i.e. love). And in the same way that first man and woman 'fell,' we have all fallen - from an initial state of 'naive innocence,' into faulty ways of thinking and believing, with all the ensuing dysfunctional behaviour that is associated with belief that is not actually based in God's objective truth. Thus the inescapable necessity for all humanity to actually have proper awareness of God's objective truth about our existence!
Christ was actually always the 'missing piece of the puzzle' regarding our human existence, at least until the point He entered into human history, some two thousand years ago. Christ was the only One ever capable of resolving our inherent predicament, with Him being the One who was the answer to the 'identity crisis' and the 'truth blindness' that we all are innately subject to whilst in our mortal human form. Christ ultimately stepped into our mortal existence, becoming one with His very own creation (through becoming fully human), and with the chief aim of bringing His own creation through to a state of 'complete perfection,' all within Himself! Christ assumed (took upon Himself) the entirety of what is our human mortality, with all it's innate vulnerabilities, so as to give us the entirety of His own divinity, and so finally make us all incorruptibly whole!
Christ has now completely removed every trace of corruption from our existence, totally liberating us from every false, unloving way of being - finally destroying 'sin' altogether in His own death at human hands! All our distorted ways of perceiving our existence have conclusively been 'taken away' in Christ's death by crucifixion. Christ was indeed "the Lamb of God who 'takes away' (removes) the sin of the whole world!" God has ultimately 'exchanged' all our corrupt ways of being for God's perfectly right way of being, giving us God's own sense of perfect love, peace, and joy, through Christ Himself. However, it is important to properly recognise that Christ was doing far more than just 'redeeming us from sin' - He was actually completing us! Christ was not just restoring us to the initial state of 'naive innocence' that we all had as children - He was finally perfecting us into the wonderful fullness of God's own likeness and being! Christ completed the process of our formation through imparting His own divinity into humanity, giving us the fullness of His own experiential awareness as God!
Christ was never God's 'Plan B!' God was never simply 'reacting' to humanity's sin through sending Christ, in order for Him to essentially 'fix our mess!' God is not actually that short-sighted! God does indeed 'know the end from the beginning,' as 'all time and space' exist within God's own self! Christ was always coming into this world, from even before humanity's original 'Fall' into sin' - and specifically in order to finish the creative work He had started in the first place! The truth is that we were all always going to be fully perfected - as beings quite literally 'created in Christ!' So now, as the direct result of what Christ accomplished through His incarnation, to be human is to be included into God, and to have the full perfection of God's own divine nature of perfect love! There truly is nothing greater that God could have given to us than the very gift of God's own self, imparted into us! Yes, the shock of all shocks is that through His incarnation, Christ has quite literally included humanity into God, effectively making us innately part of the divine, and so giving us everything that God within God's triune self is! We could not possibly be more exceedingly blessed than we already are through Christ!
And so, all humankind has ultimately been 'born again' through Christ's resurrection - a literal re-birth into complete wholeness of being! As Peter states:1 Peter 1:3-5 (ESV) "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you..". Yes, we are all 'born again,' and specifically through Christ's resurrection - which is not through any choice, decision, response, prayer, or even belief on our own part! And as Christ now is (in His resurrected human state), so we all will one day be! As such, Christ was the 'firstborn' among us, meaning the first of us to experience 're-birth' through resurrection, into our final incorruptible, immortal human form. It is in this form that we will experience all the very fullness of eternal life that God has always intended for us, in God's eternal Kingdom! The resurrected Christ reveals God's conclusive truth about all humanity, with Him being the very One in whom we have all been made complete, and re-birthed into divine incorruptibility!
The 'Good News' regarding humanity having finally been made complete in Christ, is already true about us all, and regardless of whether we believe it or not! Our belief does not make the truth true - God does! Our completion to a state of full perfection is both God's own reality, and also the truth concerning the future state of our personal human existence, after the death of our mortal body. The resurrected Christ is literally God's very truth about all humankind, and also God's way of showing us what we will all ultimately become! This is God's objective truth about us all, and something that will never be taken away, revoked, or removed! It is our awareness of God's objective truth that makes all the difference in how we experience our mortal existence. And we have access to the awareness of this now, while still in our imperfect mortal human form (with its innate limitations and its propensity toward 'truth blindness'), via the Holy Spirit - whom God has given to 'all human flesh!' (Acts 2:17).
The Holy Spirit is the One who bears witness to Christ's truth, giving us the experiential awareness of Christ's own faith, confirming in us that we are indeed the very children of God. While we still currently lack the fullness of our final immortal human form, and while we do still currently experience the innate limitations associated with our mortal state, we have been given the indwelling Holy Spirit as our guarantee of what is to come, and the One who gives us God's own certainty regarding our existence. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher, our Guide, the 'Revealer of Truth,' and our ever-present help, as the 'Divine Enabler.' It is through the Holy Spirit that we are given 'eyes to see' - meaning the very eyes of Christ's own faith! The Holy Spirit makes the truth known to us, from within us, and this the only way that we can actually ever know God's objective truth! It is the Holy Spirit who makes the truth 'come alive' within - through releasing vitality within our very being, upon the hearing of God's actual 'Good News' regarding Christ!
We all have become the very dwelling place of God - beings that are the embodiment of God's own divine presence. We are indeed 'image-bearers' of the perfect loving nature of our Heavenly Father - with Christ forever in us, and us forever in Christ! Yes, we have finally been made complete; perfected through Christ’s incarnation, and made full co-participants in the triune God. God's eternal symphony of loving-grace has been made fully ours to enjoy also, as our eternal co-inheritance through Christ. Christ is indeed our very Life, our very Source, and the One in whom we 'live, move, and have our being!' Christ is God's very Truth about who we are, one-and-all! This is the astoundingly 'Good News' of God’s benevolent 'gift of grace' bestowed upon all humanity, being quite literally what happened to us all, in and through the very person of Jesus Christ!