Summary
St. Athanasius’ second treatise written to Marcarius, On the Incarnation, is an apologetic work in which Athanasius considers “the Word’s becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst.” The work is not intended to be a doctrinal explanation of the incarnation but a defense of it against its 4th century critics.
First, Athanasius addresses the creation of man and his fall into sin, which is necessary background for a proper understanding of the incarnation. As Athanasius argues, humankind’s dilemma caused the Word to take human form.Through transgression man had broken fellowship with God and faced corruption and death. However, the same agent through whom the world and mankind was created would become the agent of its deliverance and re-creation. “For this purpose, then,” to maintain God the Father’s consistency in regards to his sentence of death on all due to sin and His ultimate purpose in creating the world and a humanity in His image, “the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.” The Word took on a body capable of death to face humanity’s corruption in death for the sake of all. “Yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die.” And, therefore, death could not hold Him and He emerged victorious from the grave, defeating death and obtaining incorruption through His resurrection. As Athanasius states,
Today I was reading in The Supremacy of God in Preaching by John Piper and I ran across the paragraph below. This paragraph really seems to be just a side thought in Piper’s argument, but nonetheless, it caught my attention. Read it for yourself:
I ran across this hymn a few weeks ago, although I have been acquainted with it before. I decided it was definitely worth sharing. This hymn is certainly not as popular as John Newton’s famous hymn, “Amazing Grace,” but I certainly recommend reading through the words and meditating on their truth. From a man who understood grace extremely well in light of who he was as a depraved, wicked, detestable man in need of saving, “In Evil Long I Took Delight”:
The following are my favorite quotes from the book 
I just recently read and completed this book. Its main thesis is that the Gospel is not something believers should “move on” from after conversion. Instead, Christians should seek to grow in deeper love with the Gospel everyday and allow its reality to affect every aspect of who they are and the way they live. This excerpt from the book seems to summarize its main theme rather well:
Kirk E. Miller 