Protestants often find the idea of “deification” unsettling. When we hear “God became man, so that man might become God,” it sounds as if someone has erased the distinction between Creator and creature.
But that pithy summary of the gospel comes from Athanasius, a trustworthy church father. More importantly, it summarizes the thrust of the gospel story. The Son took the form of a servant, so we could be remade in the likeness of God.
By taking flesh, the Son has stretched our humanity to make us big enough to receive the Spirit of God. By dying and rising in the flesh, He made our flesh “glitter with the sublime beams of the most high God” (Athanasius). If the Creator-creature distinction begins to look blurry, it’s because the boundary was transgressed from God’s side.
This can sound spooky and mystical, but nothing is more practical. God is righteous, and deification means that our bodies are enslaved to righteousness. God resolutely, faithfully keeps His promises, and deification means we are freed from our fitful desires. Above all, God is love, and deification means His love is perfected in us.
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