That Is Why We Have Hope…

In this Advent season, reflect on these words about the incarnation of Jesus:

What we have said will be clearer once we understand that the role of Mediator was no ordinary one, in the sense that his task was to so restore us to God's grace as to make us, the children of men, children of God, and to make us who were heirs of hell, heirs of the heavenly kingdom.

Who could have accomplished that except the Son of God who was made Son of Man, who so took our condition upon himself that he transferred his to us, and who made what was his by nature ours by grace?

So we are confident that we are children of God, having this as our guarantee, that God's natural Son took his body from ours, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, that he might be united to us. What was ours he took into his own person so that what was his should belong to us, and thus that, in common with us, he might be both Son of God and Son of man.

That is why we have hope that the heavenly inheritance is ours, because only God's Son to whom it was wholly due has adopted us as his brothers. Now if we are brothers, we are co-heirs with him.

John Calvin (1509–1564)