John 1:14 (NKJV)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
If there is one aspect of the Christmas story that has drawn consistent skepticism though the years, it is the virgin birth. The virgin birth could easily be dismissed as the fictional story of a young, single woman seeking to avoid the calamity of unwed pregnancy in a society that did not look favorably on such things. A society that considered such things as punishable by death when taken to the extremities of the law.
The virgin birth is something that must, by all accounts, be taken by faith. There was no such thing as DNA testing in those days. And what would the DNA of God look like, anyway? And for Mary to have given birth to a son, requiring a Y chromosome no female has ever produced, makes the virgin birth that much more improbable, from a human perspective.
Mary herself had questions about this. Here is her response to the angel’s declaration:
Luke 1:34 (WEB)
Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, seeing I am a virgin?”
The angle’s explanation, and perhaps the only answer we have been given for how this came about, is in verse 35.
Luke 1:35 (WEB)
The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God.”
For the virgin birth to be possible at all requires something to be in existence that is more than just the material, physical world we know and feel and touch and taste. There must be a non-material, spiritual world, as well.
Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher of the law, was in confusion himself about the nature of a spiritual rebirth, when he spoke with Jesus about being born again. He could only understand birth from a material perspective. How can one be born of a non-material substance?
Jesus responded this way: He used a physical phenomenon to explain the existence of the spiritual.
John 3:8 (WEB)
“The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
In the preceding verses, Jesus says:
John 3:5-6 (WEB)
Jesus answered, “Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
If man became a living soul, a living being by the breath of God, could not the Creator God cause His very spiritual nature and being to be formed and shaped into, or placed or encapsulated into, the stuff of the material life, even wrapped up in a Y chromosome and DNA and the fluid of life? (Genesis 2:7)
Colossians 2:9 (NIV)
For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form…
It is still a a matter of faith to believe such a thing, since we spend more of our time living in and grappling with the material world than with the spiritual world. Yet both are in existence and both affect our daily lives. Indeed, without the spiritual reality of life, we ourselves would not be living beings. Rather, our physical bodies would deteriorate and return to the dust from which they were formed.
There was a necessity for Jesus to be both human and God. Paul talks about this when explaining the gospel of God. He calls it “the gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding His Son, who as to His human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 1:2-4 NIV)
In Hebrews 2:14-18 (NIV), Paul explains,
Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Referring to the Fall of Man, Paul says in Romans 5:12,18 (NIV):
“Therefore, just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
In order for Christ to deliver us from the penalty of sin, He had to become human. But only God Himself was capable of the task of taking the sin of humanity onto Himself and dying for it and then rising from the dead, having victory over death. This task required someone who was both human, yet Deity.
For the Jewish believer, this concept was not completely foreign, for it was spoken about through the prophet Isaiah.
Matthew 1:23 (WEB) “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a son. They shall call his name Immanuel,” which is, being interpreted, “God with us.” (Isaiah 7:14)
This is why the angel Gabriel told Mary that her son would be called “the Son of God.”
Our response is to thank God, for it is by the incarnation of Christ that God drew near to us and made peace between God and man.
Luke 2:14 (KJV) Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, by Charles Wesley
Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
late in time behold him come,
offspring of the Virgin’s womb:
veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel.
Chorus
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
[Chorus]
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
[Chorus]
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture marked NKJV taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked WEB taken from the World English Bible. Public Domain.
Image of baby Jesus by www.LumoProject.com