👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾“I Ascend to #My #God and to #Your God” (John 20:17):
Grace and peace be multiplied to you, O beloved in Christ, children of grace and heirs of the promise! Today we reflect with trembling reverence upon the sacred words our risen Lord spoke to Mary Magdalene:
“I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John 20:17).
These divine words, uttered by the Word made flesh, are not simple utterances they are thunders of heaven echoing the mystery of the Incarnation, the unity of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. Let us open this mystery with care, not with the boldness of flesh but with the meekness of faith.
1. The Context of the Word: Resurrection and Revelation
Mary Magdalene stood weeping at the tomb, and the Lord Jesus, having risen from the dead by His own authority, appeared to her and declared this profound saying. Why did He speak in such a manner?
He who is very God of very God, consubstantial with the Father, speaks not out of inferiority, but out of the reality of His incarnation. The flesh He assumed born of the Virgin, taken from creation He now brings into glory. It is as man that He says, “I ascend to my God.” It is as the Incarnate Word, the Theanthropos (Θεάνθρωπος), God-man, that He acknowledges the Father as His God.
2. “My God” — According to His Flesh
The Lord Jesus Christ, in His divine nature, is co-equal, co-eternal with the Father. “I and the Father are one,” He declares (John 10:30). But in His human nature, in the form of a servant, He bows in obedience and humility, not because He is less than God, but because He has truly united Himself to our nature.
He does not say “our God” lest He be counted among the creatures. Rather, He distinguishes between His eternal sonship and the adoptive sonship of the disciples. The phrase “my God” is the voice of His humanity; “your God” is the declaration of our adoption.
3. “My Father and Your Father” The Twofold Sonship
“I ascend to my Father and your Father.”
Here the distinction is yet clearer. The Father is the natural Father of Christ, and the gracious Father of the disciples. Christ is the Son by nature, eternally begotten of the Father “Today I have begotten You” (Psalm 2:7) while we are sons by adoption, drawn near through grace. He is the Only-Begotten, we are the many brethren (Romans 8:29).
He did not say “I ascend to our Father,” lest He obscure this essential distinction. His is the eternal generation; ours is the gracious gift. His filiation is from the essence of the Father; ours is by the will of the Father and the work of the Son.
4. The Eternal Generation of the Son
Before the foundation of the world, before the stars were set in their place, before time began, the Son was begotten of the Father. Not made. Not created. Begotten.
“Before the morning star, I have begotten You.” (Ps. 110:3)
“You are My Son, today I have begotten You.” (Ps. 2:7)
Here the mystery of divine begetting reveals itself. Just as human parents beget children of their nature, so the Father begets the Son of His own divine nature. The Son is of the same essence (homoousios) with the Father, Light from Light, True God from True God. This is the faith of the Church, confessed in the Creed: Begotten, not made.
5. Not a Creature, but the Creator
Jesus Christ is not a creature, for no creature can create. The Son is called Creator, because He shares the nature of the Father who creates. “All that the Father has is Mine” (John 16:15). He created the very flesh He assumed from the Virgin. Thus, He is not created, even in His humanity, but born in the flesh, without sin, and without the will of man.
Continues 👇🏾