Yet just as this had to happen, there was also an opposing requirement: God’s truthfulness in what He had decreed concerning death had to be upheld. For it would have been unthinkable for God, the Father of truth, to be untrue to His word for the sake of our benefit and continued existence.
What, then, was to be done, or what was God to do? Was He to require human beings to repent of the transgression? Someone might say that this was worthy of God, arguing that just as they had come into corruption through transgression, so through repentance they might return to incorruption.
But repentance would not uphold God’s truthfulness, for He would still not be true if human beings were not held in death. Nor can repentance reverse the corruption natural to them; it only stops them from sinning.
If the problem had been only an offense, with no corruption following from it, repentance would have been enough. But once transgression had occurred, human beings were held in the corruption natural to them and had been deprived of the grace of being made according to the Image. What else had to happen? Who was needed for such grace and restoration except the Word of God, who in the beginning had made all things out of nothing?
For it belonged to Him to bring the corruptible back to incorruption and to uphold before the Father what was right on behalf of all. Because He is the Word of the Father and is above all, He alone could recreate all things, suffer on behalf of all, and intercede for all before the Father.