Section 3
in, Adam was clean and innocent. His virtues, however, might not have been strong and rich. But in the Lord Jesus, the second Man, the human virtues are strong and rich. In Christ's human love, for instance, there is strength. Because His human love is a strengthened, enriched love, it cannot be broken or defeated. The Lord's love is rich because it has been filled with the divine attribute of love. Hence, His love is a mingled love, a composition of the human love with the divine love.
TO SANCTIFY THE HUMAN VIRTUES
The divine attributes also sanctify the human virtues. For Christ to be incarnated means that He became flesh. Concerning this, John 1:1 and 14 say that the Word, which is God, became flesh. By the time of the Lord's incarnation, the word "flesh" signified something that was not positive. Regarding the incarnation of Christ, the Bible says that He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3). This means that when He be came flesh, He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, but did not have the nature of the flesh of sin. This is typified by the brass serpent in Num bers 21. The brass serpent was in the form of a