Redemption begins with the incarnation. . . . In the incarnation humanity was grasped by God; the human condition of sin and the resulting death was borne by God, who took into himself the reality of death. . . . God could have destroyed the creation and started over. Instead, God chose to become the creation. God united with humanity and took a body “under death” in order to defeat the consequence of sin, which was death.
-Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 59-60.