Of the Son’s ‘identification’ with the world into which he was sent, there can be no shadow of doubt. He did not remain in heaven; he came into the world. The word was not spoken from the sky; ‘the Word was made flesh’. And then he ‘dwelt among us’. He did not come on a fleeting visit and hurry back home again. He stayed in the world into which he came. He gave men a chance to behold his glory. Nor did he only let them gaze from a distance. He scandalized the church leaders of his day by mixing with the riff-raff they avoided. ‘Friend of publicans and sinners’, they dubbed him. To them it was a term of opprobrium; to us it is a title of honour. He touched untouchable lepers. He did not recoil from the caresses of a prostitute. And then he, who at his birth had been ‘made flesh’, was in his death ‘made sin’ and ‘made a curse’. He had assumed our nature; he now assumed our transgressions, our doom, our death. His self-identification with man was utter and complete. Therefore when he says to us ‘Go’, this is what he means.

—Dr. John R.W. Stott, Our Guilty Silence 65