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Before the Incarnation God showed some, but not all, His perfections. He showed —

1. His goodness, in creating man after His own image.

2. His love, when He led Eve and the animals to Adam.

3. His pity, by clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins.

4. His power, in creating the world out of nothing.

5. His justice, in expelling our first parents from Paradise, deluging the wicked world, wasting the cities of the plain.

6. His wisdom, confounding the tongues of the builders of Babel.

7. His providence, in saving Egypt by means of Joseph. In the Incarnation these perfections shone out with greater clearness. We note here —

I. THE GOODNESS OF GOD. He clothed Himself with our nature, that His virtues, grace, and glory, yea, and Himself, He might communicate to us.

1. Naturally, by preserving the order of nature.

2. By the supernatural order of grace.

3. By His particular personality.

II. THE LOVE OF GOD. Seen in the close union between God and man (Romans 8:32).

1. He became incarnate to suffer and die for man.

2. And that for man, His enemy.

III. THE PITY OF GOD. In person coming to relieve our miseries, making Himself capable of sorrow and suffering (Hebrews 4:15).

IV. THE POWER OF GOD. Uniting the highest nature with the lowly nature of man; the human and the Divine, without any confusion of substance, in unity of person.

V. THE JUSTICE OF GOD. Not rescuing man from sin and death by might or by power, but paying a full and sufficient satisfaction for all men's sins: making an infinite satisfaction for infinite sin.

VI. THE WISDOM OF GOD. In planning the redemption of man. Neither man nor God, singly, could redeem man; it needed a God-man to do this. VII. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. Which saw how to help and enrich man, when he was poor and naked, and destitute of all things.

(M. Faber.)

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KJV: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

WEB: "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men."