The fact that Jesus was conceived in the power of the Holy Spirit by a virgin as incredible implications for this God-man who is the perfect intersection of heaven and earth.
How Babies are Made
Today we are going back to high school. To high school health class. To a topic that made the kids giggle. The topic that made me hang out in the library for a week because my mom exempted me from it. SEX ED.
I’m guessing all of you know where babies come from. It’s not the stork, and it’s not because the mommy ate too much. (Don’t EVER ask a mommy who did eat too much if she’s pregnant!) Even with technology trying to show that a man and a woman aren’t both necessary to produce a baby, they are. Babies are made just like everything else in nature is.
I think farm kids have an unfair advantage in learning about this topic. They learn it at a young age without all the weird perversion of sex between people added to the very natural process. If you’re raising cattle, sheep, goats, or even chickens, your kids are learning about the birds and the bees early in life.
The reproduction process is pretty much the same for plants as for animals. Encyclopedia Britannica says:
In flowering plants, pollination occurs when pollen grains are transferred from the stamens to the ovules. There they germinate and form pollen tubes, which grow downward through the style toward the ovules. Fertilization occurs as a sperm cell in a pollen tube fuses with the egg cell of an ovule, resulting in a plant embryo.
That certainly sounds exactly like how babies are made. The seed of a man fuses with the egg of a woman, resulting in an embryo – the first stage of human life.
I sure wish I had found that out in health class like my classmates did! (Never fear! I got the information. The other high-school boys were very articulate in explaining the intricacies of the process to me in the locker room.)
Anyway – now that we’re all adequately uncomfortable, let’s talk about perhaps the most unlikely character in the Christmas story, the young virgin who finds herself pregnant.
The Message for Mary
Luke 1:26-35 – 26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, [Remember her from three weeks ago – the older woman who had been barren until God began his rescue plan?] God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
The virginity of Mary is a key part of the story of Jesus. Luke mentions this three times here. The first two times he uses a word that could mean “young woman” or “girl”; but most commonly (though not exclusively), the word meant a young female who had never had sexual relations. Some may argue that we can’t know for sure that Mary had not had sexual relations with a man; but in verse 4, Mary makes it pretty clear when she asks, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” I think it’s safe to assume that Mary, like all of us, knew where babies came from and knew that the process of fertilization could not have taken place in one of her eggs.
The Scandal of the Virgin Birth
The birth of Jesus to a virgin makes His birth completely miraculous. And completely scandalous.
Not having been in the room with Mary when the angel Gabriel spoke to her of her miraculous conception, everyone else would have had a very different idea of why Mary started to show a baby bump. I’m sure Mary, knowing about the birds and the bees, knew the talk of the town would be about who the father was.
Scripture doesn’t tell us how this news was received by her neighbors or her parents, but we can assume there were many quiet whispers. Most people, even those closest to her, probably doubted her story, even if she bothered to tell them. I’m sure Mary had to endure a great deal of shame and sideways glances as everyone made assumptions about her sexual behavior.
This still happens today. Many young women instantly feel ashamed and afraid when they learn they are pregnant. They don’t want people to judge them, and they don’t know how to move forward. I knew one young woman who became pregnant in high school and essentially dropped out, hid in her parents’ house, and didn’t go outside for the entire duration of her pregnancy – just to avoid hearing people talking about her.
This is why places like Agape Pregnancy Center are so important. The staff there can walk young women through all their feelings and questions when they first find out they are pregnant. Young women who have counseling and support are more likely to feel like they can carry the child to term rather than deciding the easiest – or sometimes the only – answer is to abort the baby.
But back to Mary and her shame. Even Joseph, whom she was to marry and who was to raise this child, had questions. I’m sure Mary told him about the angel coming to her, but we see in Matthew that Joseph didn’t believe her.
Matthew 1:18-19 18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
We don’t have all the details; but we do know that Joseph knew she was pregnant, knew the baby wasn’t his, and wanted to get out of his pledge to marry her. But because he was a righteous man, he wanted to do it quietly to cause her the least possible amount of shame.
However, God knew Joseph wasn’t on board; and that’s why He sent an angel to Joseph with additional details for what Joseph needed to do:
Matthew 1:20-23 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
The angel explained again that this pregnancy was not the result of sexual relations, but the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Some people might convolute this story with some perverted twist in which the Holy Spirit had intercourse with Mary; but that is nowhere implied in the text. What is implied is the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit to create the tiny embryo inside Mary.
100% God and 100% Man
In Jesus, the spiritual realm and the physical realm came together. Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. Don’t miss this point! It is absolutely critical to our faith. Jesus is God come to this earth, and He is an infant born to a woman. The angel told Mary that Jesus would be called “Son of the Most High,” but He would also be her baby boy. This seeming contradiction is what makes this virgin birth so crucial to Jesus’s mission – to come and die on the cross to provide forgiveness of the sins of “His people.”
Hebrews 9:22 tells us, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Therefore Jesus had to be a flesh-and-blood person for the shedding of His blood to meet God’s righteous requirement for forgiveness. Some heretical views, such as the Docetists of the first couple of centuries following the death of Jesus, believed Jesus was 100% God but 0% man. They saw Him as a Spirit who only appeared to be like a man. However, a spirit can’t shed blood.
Meanwhile, other heretical groups from early Christianity, such as the Ebionites, denied the virgin birth of Jesus and His divinity but instead viewed Him as merely an enlightened prophet – 100% man but 0% God. If this were true, we would all have a problem! A single sacrifice by a good man – maybe even a great and godly man – cannot redeem all people for all time. The eternal aspect of a single, perfect, and holy sacrifice can be accomplished only by God Himself.
We see that explained in Hebrews 10:11-14:
11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
Our eternal salvation – the forgiveness of our sins – rests on the fact that the virgin girl conceived apart from any sexual relationships. This proves that Jesus is like no other. He is not only 100% man, but He is Immanuel, 100% God with us.
A High Priest Who Understands
The good news of Jesus being the perfect intersection of humanity and divinity does not start and stop with His saving work on the cross. It also includes His mediating work at the throne of grace for each one of us. The book of Hebrews goes on to tell us what Jesus is doing for each one of us in Heaven right now.
Hebrews 4:15-16 – For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Not only is Jesus the sacrifice for our sin, but He is also the high priest who makes atonement for our sin. Because Jesus lived a life just like ours, faced the pain and the shame and the trials we have, He can relate. God is not judging us from a distance without any point of reference to our human challenges. He came and walked in our shoes. As a result, He encourages us to approach the throne of grace with confidence.
We need NOT fear God, hide from Him, or hope our deep, dark secrets are never uncovered. Because Jesus has walked a mile in our shoes, He meets us with mercy and grace in our time of need. Because He is just like us and still fully God, we must run to Him, the One who gave up everything for us to be reunited into His family.
Conclusion
- At the birth of Jesus, Heaven met earth in a transformative way. God in flesh dwelt among His people. He taught us how to live. He taught us how to obey. Then He died in our place.
- The story of Jesus’s birth doesn’t end with His death on the cross. We see He was raised to new life, and the veil in the temple was torn – the veil that separated God from humans. Because this God-Man came and died and was resurrected, He created a path for all of us to experience eternal life and to live on this earth while we hold citizenship in Heaven.
- We have the unique honor of living lives like Jesus, lives that are the intersection of Heaven and earth. The Holy Spirit of God constantly and consistently resides inside us, leading and guiding us as we walk this earth.
- Like Jesus, we must use this new life to offer life to others. We must show others the good news of Christmas – that Jesus is more than a good man. He is the God-Man, Son of God and son of Mary, God in flesh, coming not only to save but to intercede for us as our high priest who knows exactly what we are going through.
That is why we worship this baby who came to a manger, this baby who came to save.
0 Comments