The Father Establishes and Seals Us in Christ

… and spoke about Him” (John 12:41). So even if the Father is glorified through Him, and since He has been set forth as “a propitiation through faith” (Romans 3:25), and has also become “a minister of the holy places” (Hebrews 8:2) because of His humanity, offering as a priest the prayer of each of the saints as a spiritual sacrifice (for through Him is our Amen), still He could not be thought to stand outside the duty of being worshiped and glorified together with the One who begot Him, both by us and by the multitude of holy spirits above.

The inspired Paul says somewhere, “And when He again brings the Firstborn into the world, He says, ‘Let all the angels of God worship Him’” (Hebrews 1:6). And yet to which of all beings is it unclear that He is Only-begotten insofar as He is understood to be God? For He alone has been begotten of the Father alone. But when He lowered Himself into our condition and came to be among many brothers (Romans 8:29), then He was set in the first place. So besides being Only-begotten as God, He has also been called Firstborn because of His humanity.

“Now He who establishes us with you in Christ,” and so on (2 Corinthians 1:21). God the Father establishes us in Christ by setting a right and unshaken faith in the souls of all, persuading them to hold that He is God by nature and in truth, even if He was seen in our form, He who is above all creation having been born of a woman according to the flesh. Indeed, when Peter confessed the faith and said plainly, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), our Lord Jesus Christ Himself answered, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). For since the mystery is exceedingly great, it would rightly need instruction from above, from the Father. So it is God Himself, who has also sealed us and anointed us and given us the pledge of the Spirit, who establishes us in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:21–22).

From these words too it should be clear to us that the Son did not become “yes and no” (2 Corinthians 1:19), but is rather true God, and that in all good things “in Him is the Yes” (2 Corinthians 1:20). For while God is said to seal and anoint us and to have given the pledge of the Spirit, it is again Christ who accomplishes these things in us, not as a servant, nor anointing and sealing us with a Spirit foreign to Him, but with the very Spirit that is His own and the Father’s. For the Holy Spirit is in both, because of the sameness of substance, not divided, but as reaching from the Father through the Son to the creation. For He breathed on the holy apostles, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).

Through Him and in Him we have been sealed into the divine and spiritual image. For the divine apostle himself, writing to the Galatians, said, “My little children, for whom I am again in the pains of birth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). And if, by being formed into Christ, we gain the riches of the divine image in ourselves, then He Himself is the image of God the Father and His exact likeness, not as we are, called to likeness by sharing in holiness, but rather by nature and in substance. For He who is God by nature can have nothing unlike Himself in the One who is God by nature and in truth and begotten of His own substance.

The most wise John says that He too has been sealed by God the Father: “For whoever has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true” (John 3:33). Yet He has been sealed, again, not in the same way as we are, but with the Father all but writing His whole self into the nature of the Son and, as it were, imprinting Himself there in substance. That is why He said, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ and through us makes known the fragrance of the knowledge of Him in every place” (2 Corinthians 2:14). The apostles give thanks …