Yet just as this had to be so, the opposite consideration also stood before God: He had to be shown true to the law He had established concerning death. For it would have been unreasonable for God, the Father of truth, to appear false for the sake of our benefit and continued existence.
What, then, was to happen in this matter, 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 again to incorruption.
But repentance would not preserve what was fitting with respect to God, for He would still appear untrue if human beings were not held by death. Nor does repentance recall human beings from what belongs to their nature; it only brings an end to acts of sin.
If the issue had been only a trespass, without corruption following from it, repentance would have been sufficient. But once transgression had come first, human beings were held in the corruption that belonged to their nature and had been deprived of the grace of being according to the Image. What else needed 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?
His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.