The Image and the Artist

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. he, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as it says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost." This explains also his saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew..." He was not referring to a man's natural birth, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God...the Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which the, the Word of God, did in the body.


--St Athanasius De Incarnatione pp.41-43