Christ is risen!
The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”?’ If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:33-36)
St Mark the Ascetic living in the 5th Century (perhaps my favorite author in THE PHILOKALIA) comments on our salvation –God became human (incarnation) in order that humans might be fully united to God (deification). Even God’s idea for salvation is not to Lord it over us but to unite us to Himself, to share the divine life with us, which is what God intended from the beginning when He created us in His image and likeness.
…think to what depth of human humiliation He descended in His ineffable goodness, becoming in all respects like us who were dwelling in darkness in the shadow of death (Isaiah 9:2; Matthew 4:16), captives through the transgression of Adam and dominated by the enemy through the activity of the passions. When we were in this harsh captivity, ruled by invisible and bitter death, the Master of all visible and invisible creation was not ashamed to humble Himself and to take upon Himself our human nature, subject as it was to the passions of shame and desire and condemned by divine judgment; and He became like us in all things except that He was without sin (Hebrews 4:15), that is, without ignoble passions. All the penalties imposed by divine judgment upon man for the sin of the first transgression—death, toil, hunger, thirst and the like—He took upon Himself, becoming what we are, so that we might become what He is. The Logos became man, so that man might become Logos. Being rich, He became poor for our sakes, so that through his poverty we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). In his great love for man He became like us, so that through every virtue we might become like Him.
From the time that Christ came to dwell with us, man created according to God’s image and likeness is truly renewed through the grace and power of the Spirit, attaining to the perfect love which ‘casts out fear‘ (1 John 4:18) — the love, which is no longer able to fail, for ‘love never fails‘ (1 Corinthians 13:8). (Vol 1, p 155)
Fraternized 