44. This then I consider the sense of this passage, and that, a very ecclesiastical sense. However, there is another way in which one might remark upon it, giving the same sense in a parallel way; viz. that, though it does not speak of the exaltation of the Word Himself, so far as He is Word (for He is, as was just now said, most high and like His Father), yet by reason of His becoming man it indicates His resurrection from the dead. For after saying, ‘He hath humbled Himself even unto death,’ He immediately added, ‘Wherefore He hath highly exalted Him;’ wishing to shew, that, although as man He is said to have died, yet, as being Life, He was exalted on the resurrection; for ‘He who descended, is the same also who rose again.’ He descended in body, and He rose again because He was God Himself in the body. And this again is the reason why according to this meaning he brought in the conjunction ‘Wherefore;’ not as a reward of virtue nor of advancement, but to signify the cause why the resurrection took place; and why, while all other men from Adam down to this time have died and remained dead, He only rose in integrity from the dead. The cause is this, which He Himself has already taught us, that, being God, He has become man. For all other men, being merely born of Adam, died, and death reigned over them; but He, the Second Man, is from heaven, for ‘the Word was made flesh,’ and this Man is said to be from heaven and heavenly, because the Word descended from heaven; wherefore He was not held under death. For though He humbled Himself, yielding His own Body to come unto death, in that it was capable of death, yet He was highly exalted from earth, because He was God’s Son in a body. Accordingly what is here said, ‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him,’ answers to Peter’s words in the Acts, ‘Whom God raised up, having loosed the bonds of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it.’ For as Paul has written, ‘Since being in form of God He became man, and humbled Himself unto death, therefore God also hath highly exalted Him,’ so also Peter says, ‘Since, being God, He became man, and signs and wonders proved Him to beholders to be God, therefore it was not possible that He should be holden of death.’ To man it was not possible to succeed in this; for death belongs to man; wherefore, the Word, being God, became flesh, that, being put to death in the flesh, He might quicken all men by His own power.