Four Hundred Texts on Love (Fourth Century) 15

42.  The Lord revealed His wisdom by the way in which He healed man, becoming man without the slightest change or mutation. He demonstrated the equity of justice when in His self-abasement He submitted deliberately to the sentence to which what is passible in human nature is subject, and made that sentence a weapon for the destruction of sin and of the death which comes through sin – that is, for the destruction of pleasure and of the pain which pleasure engenders. It was in this pleasure-pain syndrome that the dominion of sin and death lay: the tyranny of sin committed in pursuit of pleasure, and the lordship of the painful death consequent upon sin. For the dominion of pleasure and pain clearly applies to what is passible in human nature. And we seek how to alleviate through pleasure the penalty of pain, thus in the nature of things increasing the penalty. For in our desire to escape pain we seek refuge in pleasure, and so try to bring relief to our nature, hard pressed as it is by the torment of pain. But through trying in this way to blunt pain with pleasure, we but increase our sum of debts, for we cannot enjoy pleasure that does not lead to pain and suffering.

This text restates the wonder and importance in Jesus becoming fully human in every way, “without the slightest change or mutation.” He didn’t take on the mere appearance of humanity. He wasn’t mostly human. He became sarx or flesh wholly and fully while also, in a great mystery, also containing the fullness of the godhead. Nothing less could have healed us. And then we see St. Maximos once again describe the way Jesus turned death into a weapon destroying death. The fullness of the glory of God was displayed to all creation, made manifest to all mankind, on the Cross.