The urgent problem of the New Testament writers was, How can man achieve that good which has been embodied {165} in the life and example of Jesus Christ? A full answer to this question would lead us into the realm of dogmatic theology. And therefore, without entering upon details, it may be said at once that the originality of the Gospel lies in this, that it not only reveals the good in a concrete and living form, but discloses the power which makes the good possible in the hitherto unattempted derivation of the new life from a new birth under the influence of the spirit of God. The power to achieve the moral life does not lie in the natural man. No readjustment of circumstances, nor spread of knowledge, is of itself equal to the task of creating that entirely new phenomenon--the Christian character. There must be a cause proportionate to the effect. 'Nothing availeth,' says Paul, 'but a new creature.' This new condition owes its origin to God. It is a life communicated by an act of divine creative activity. But while this regenerative energy is represented generally as the work of God's spirit, it is more particularly set forth as operating through Christ who is the power of God unto salvation. There are three great facts in Christ's life with which the New Testament connects the redemptive work of God. 1. _The Incarnation_.--In Christ God shares man's nature, and thus makes possible a union of the divine and human. On its divine side the incarnation is the complete revelation of God in human life, and on the human side it is the supreme expression of the spiritual meaning of human nature itself. Christ saves not by a special act of atonement alone, but emphatically by manifesting in Himself the union of God and man. In view of the fact of the world's sin, the Incarnation, as the revelation of the divine life, includes a gracious purpose. It involves the sacrifice of God, which theologians designate by the theory of _Kenosis_. The Advent was not only the consummation of the religious history of the race; it was also the inauguration of a new era. The Son of Man initiated a new type of humanity, to be realised in increasing fullness as men entered into the meaning of the great revelation. 'He {166} recapitulated in Himself the long unfolding of mankind.'[1] Hence in the very fact of the word becoming flesh atonement is involved. In Christ God is revealed in the reality of His love and the persistence of His search for man, while man is disclosed in the greatness of his vision and vocation.