Christ, more than our link to God, is the very manifestation of His presence. As revealed by Christ Jesus, Christ is the ideal man. And God's ideal comes to correct wrong notions about man; to elevate human experience above the errors of material, corporeal, godless beliefs, out of the reach of anti-Christ; and to teach humanity to be undeceived by false Christs.
Through Christ we understand God; conversely, the better we understand God, the more clearly we perceive His Christ and man's ideal selfhood. Christ "comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error," Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook. This definition—the metaphysical interpretation of the Bible term—reads in full: "Christ. The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error."Science and Health, p. 583.
If we perceive Christ as coming to the flesh—not coming to man, but as the very selfhood of man—we gain an understanding that makes it natural for us to destroy error, or in other words, to heal. We understand that man already possesses Christliness, or ideal manhood, which has no juxtaposition with evil. So in the presence of true Christliness, understood and demonstrated, fleshly errors disappear.
