Selections from the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, Part 2 of 2: The Incarnate Savior and His Companions

“He it is who was our Savior in willing compassion, who is that which they were. For it was for their sake that He became manifest in an involuntary suffering. They became flesh and soul, that is, eternally which (things) hold them and with corruptible things they die. And as for those who came into being, the Invisible One taught them invisibly about Himself. Not only did He take upon [Himself] the death of those whom He thought to save, but He also accepted their smallness to which they had descended when they were [born] in body and soul. (He did so) because He had let Himself be conceived and born as an infant, in body and soul.”

“He came into being from the glorious vision and the unchanging thought of the Logos who returned to Himself, after His movement, from the organization, just as those who came with Him took body and soul and a confirmation and stability and judgment of things. They too intended to come.”

“The Savior was an image of the Unitary One, He who is the Totality in bodily form. Therefore, He preserved the form of indivisibility, from which comes impassability. They, however, are images of each thing which became manifest. Therefore, they assume division from the pattern, having taken form for the planting which exists beneath the heaven.”

“Therefore, it was from (reasons) of this sort that it began to receive Grace to give the honors which were proclaimed by Jesus, which were suitable for Him to proclaim to the rest, since a seed of the promise of Jesus Christ was set up, whom we have served in (His) revelation and union. Now the promise possessed the instruction and the return to what they are from the first, from which they possess the drop, so as to return to Him, which is that which is called ‘the redemption.’ And it is the release from the captivity and the acceptance of freedom. In its places, the captivity of those who were slaves of ignorance holds sway. The freedom is the knowledge of the truth which existed before the ignorance was ruling, forever without beginning and without end, being something good, and a salvation of things, and a release from the servile nature in which they have suffered.”