Adolphe Monod was an eloquent and insightful French Pastor in the 1800’s. In his book on the incarnation, The Incarnation and Beyond, he wrestles through the importance of the incarnation of the Son of God for the accomplishment of redemption, but is not willing to only leave it at that.  The entire book, and all of his books (translated out of French by Constance Walker) are a spiritual feast.

When we hear someone speak of “Jesus Christ…come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2), our thoughts immediately carry across the distance that separates his birth from his death.  We go straight to his sacrifice as the final purpose and unique object of his incarnation.  Incarnation becomes absorbed in redemption. This, however, strains a truth which is based on the Scriptures. To subordinate the incarnation to redemption, as its final purpose, is good; Scripture did it first in more than one place [e.g. John 12:27, Hebrews 2:14, etc.]. But to absorb it there as its unique object, no, Scripture never does that.

Even as the incarnation is laying the only foundation on which the work of our redemption could be built, it is already bringing, on its own, an enormous and inestimable benefit into the world. It places us in direct contact with the invisible world through the person of Jesus Christ, allowing us to grasp that world in all its reality through the kind of clear-sighted faith appropriate for the disciples of Jesus Christ, come in the flesh. (The Incarnation and Beyond, pp. 26-27)

I appreciate this observation and am so edified by how Monod unpacks the “enormous and inestimable benefits” of Christ’s incarnation.  Christianity addresses the soul as well as all of life with the invisible realities of God and His salvation.