CHRISTMAS FROM ETERNITY PAST

            The music, the lights and the decorated shopping centers tell us that it is here again. The busy days, full evenings, and short nights tell us we must slow down and consider the real meaning of Christmas. For a moment let's put aside the gift lists, forget the parties, and pause to meditate on the birth of our Savior. Through a miraculous birth, the eternal God became the perfect, sinless man to save sinners. The Creator took on the form of the created to rescue the creature from sin's clutch. The King of Kings was made in the likeness of a servant to redeem the slave from the bondage of sin.

            How could this be? How could the everlasting Father become a lowly man? How could God the Son become the Son of man? The answer, of course, is the virgin birth. Christmas can be a splendid time of praise and devotion as we focus our attention on the birth of Christ. His incarnation is an event filled with miracles and overflowing with His love for us.

            The virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is a fundamental teaching of Scripture and is essential to Biblical Christianity. Though we follow the teachings of Christ, it is the identity of Christ that enables us to be Christians. Redemption, forgiveness, salvation, and glorification all depend on the person and work of Jesus Christ. If that babe in the Bethlehem manger had a human father, then He was unable to perform the work needed for our salvation.

            But He had no human father! “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” Matthew's gospel says of Mary, “she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” “Now all this was done,” he continued, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.” The prophecy fulfilled was Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

            Luke records that when the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would bear a son, Mary was perplexed. She was both unmarried and a woman of moral virtue. Her question to the angel is understandable, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” Gabriel's reply is filled with wonder, mystery and miracle:

“The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:35

Many consider the virgin birth of Christ to be impossible. Humanly speaking, they are correct, but they leave God out of the picture. Gabriel's answer to Mary about this impossibility is classic, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

            Rejecting the virgin birth of Christ puts one in the dubious position of rejecting the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. If the Bible is wrong about the birth of Christ, everything it says about His life, ministry, death, resurrection, and coming again is suspect. If the Bible is mistaken here, it is not the inspired Word of God! The integrity of God and His Word stand or fall with the accuracy of any statement He makes, including the virgin birth.

            The virgin birth is inseparably linked to every facet of Christ and our salvation. The provision of salvation required a spotless Savior. Jesus could not possess the sinful nature of fallen man and still be “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The Bible states, however, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” In Psalm 51 David explains that the sin nature is inherited at conception, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” If Jesus had both a human father and mother, He would inherit a sin nature. Only the virgin conceived Christ could qualify as the Savior. Peter stated that we are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

            Jesus was a person from eternity past. In his gospel account, John recorded Jesus' words, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” Only by the virgin birth could the eternal Christ become a human being without becoming a new person. He did not become a person through human conception and birth, but He took on humanity by the means of the virgin birth. The Father “prepared” a body for Him (Hebrews 10:5) by the virgin birth.

            Jesus Christ is the unique God-Man. He is God and He is man, yet He is one person. As a man He identified with His creation. It was man who sinned and offended a Holy God. Only a sinless man was able to bear the penalty of sin for mankind. Christ was that sinless sacrifice. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” As the infinite God, His sacrifice was of infinite value. “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world,” (1 John 2:2). He bore the wrath of God to free others. He applied His work on the cross to a needy humanity. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”

            Christmas is not just a tender story of a young, poor couple unable to find lodging whose child is born in a stable. It is the marvelous, miraculous mystery of the infinite, eternal and holy God stooping to becoming the lowliest of men that He might suffer the judgment for sin in our place!