You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material.
In the same way, the all-holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came into our region to renew the human being made according to Him and, through the forgiveness of sins, to find him as one who was lost. As He Himself says in the Gospels, "I came to find and save what was lost." Therefore He also said to the Jews, "Unless someone is born again," not referring, as they supposed, to birth from a woman, but declaring that the soul is born again and created anew according to the Image.
Nor was this the only thing which only the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry and irreligion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Man's, would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over the world, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they did, nor would they be, unaided, a match for the evil spirits.
For when everyone had been wounded and confused in soul by demonic deception and the vanity of idols, how could a human being persuade the soul and mind of other human beings, since he could not even see them? How can someone retrain what he cannot see?
Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach men about the Father. But if that had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error.
Once more, then, it was the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things in creation, Who alone could meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of the universe reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching.
How, then, could this renewal have taken place? Someone might say that the same means as before were available, so that He could again reveal the truth about Himself through the works of creation. But this was no longer a reliable means. Human beings had already overlooked creation, and they no longer kept their eyes directed upward but downward.
Therefore, in all naturalness and fitness, desiring to do good to men, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other means to know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.