And among us may be seen both women and men with gifts from the spirit of God. So that it was not because He lacked power that it was prophesied that there should come on Him the powers that were enumerated by Isaiah, but because there would be none after them. And let that also be a witness to you which I told you was done by the Wise Men from Arabia, who came the moment the Child was born and worshipped Him.
For even when He was born He held His power, and growing after the fashion common to all other human beings, and using the things that were suitable to Him, He apportioned what was proper to each stage of growth, being nourished with all kinds of food, and remaining thirty years (though they might be more or even less) until John came in front of Him as the herald of His coming, acting as the forerunner for His baptism, as I have already shown.
And then when Jesus came to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, when Jesus went down to the water, fire was even kindled in the Jordan, and when He was rising up from the water the Holy Spirit fluttered down upon Him as it were a dove, as the Apostles of this our Christ Himself have written.
And we know that He did not come to the river as though He were in need of being baptized, or of the Holy Spirit coming upon him in the form of a dove, even as He did not endure being born and crucified as being in need of birth and crucifixion, but it was all on behalf of the race of men, which from the time of Adam had fallen under death and the deceit of the serpent, each man acting ill by his own fault.
For God, purposing that they who were born in freedom of choice and with authority over themselves, both angels and men, should do whatever He gave each the power to be able to do, made them such that if they were to choose what was well-pleasing to Him He would keep them immortal and free from punishment, but if they should do evil, He would punish each as He thought best.
Nor did His entry into Jerusalem seated upon an ass, as we have proved was prophesied, produce in Him power to be Christ, but it supplied proof to men that He is the Christ, in the same way that in the time of John men required a proof, that they might know who the Christ was.
For when John was seated by the Jordan, and was preaching the baptism of repentance, and wearing only a leathern girdle and clothing of camel’s hair, and eating nothing save locusts and wild honey, men suspected that He was the Christ. But unto them he himself cried aloud: I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying aloud; for there will come He that is stronger than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.
And when Jesus came to the Jordan, being supposed to be the son of Joseph the carpenter, and appearing without form as the Scripture proclaimed, and supposed to be a carpenter — for when He lived among men He wrought these works of a carpenter, ploughs and yokes, teaching by them both the signs of righteousness and a life of energy — the Holy Spirit fluttered down on Him in the form of a dove, for men’s sake, as I said before, and a voice came at the same time out of the heavens. This also had been spoken by David, who, as in his own person, spoke what was hereafter to be said to Him by the Father: Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee, meaning that His birth began for men, when they first knew that it was He.