Jesus was anything but ordinary. The life of Jesus is book-ended by the same thing which characterized it throughout – the extraordinary; the supernatural.
Quote: “And at the beginning of Jesus life he makes an impossible entrance; and at the end of Jesus life he makes an impossible exit: he enters & exits from places where life life ordinarily doesn’t enter or exit from:
A virgin’s womb; and a sealed tomb.”
Life normally doesn’t make an entrance from a virgin’s womb; in fact, humanly speaking, it’s impossible. But with God, all things are possible. And in doing so God shows us that this life isn’t only explained by the ordinary; that he isn’t confined to the ordinary; and that he can’t be kept out of our experience but he bursts into our experience in the most supernatural and mysterious way.
Life normally doesn’t make an entrance from a virgins’ womb; and life normally doesn’t make an exit from a sealed tomb. If life is trying to exit a sealed tomb, then something went terribly wrong in the “pronouncing dead” part of things – life doesn’t exit a sealed tomb. A sealed tomb is the unchangeable end of life – the stamp of hopelessness and despair and defeat; but not for Jesus; his life couldn’t be sealed in or stamped down by death.
Jesus’ life began with divine intrusion & it ended with divine victory.
And Jesus’ made a supernatural entrance into this world – and this Divine Intrusion shows us that no door in this world or in your life, is too sealed up to keep God out – that’s what God does – he enters in – and in the birth of Jesus we see that in the most profound way – that God was born.
If you remember back to the 90’s – half of you don’t know what the 90’s refers to – it’s the years between 1990 and 1999 – before the year 2000 – there was a terrible but popular song, asking the question: “What if God was one of us?”
I’m sorry to those of you who had forgotten but now it’s back in your head – but – God was, and remains now, One of Us.
The creator of the universe, entered into his creation; the maker of humanity, took humanity upon himself. The eternal second person of the trinity was conceived and born.
The eternal Son of God, became a son. The fully divine Son of God, became a fetus; lived 9 months attached to the umbilical cord of his mother; was born; nursed, burped, spit-up, cried; wore diapers and was changed.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that we believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Only Son, Our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and Born of the Virgin Mary.
Why does did the early church feel the need to preserve this as part of the essential necessary historic Christian Faith?
The answer is that if you don’t have the virgin birth, you don’t have the real Jesus.
If you lose the virgin birth, you lose Jesus.
Recent Church history has tried to dispense Christianity of things like the virgin birth – not just the virgin birth at the beginning of Jesus’ life, but the resurrection at the end of his life and all of the miraculous throughout his life;
and it’s important to recognize that this has come from inside the church, not outside.
Sure people outside the church don’t believe those things – they reject them. but they aren’t the ones trying to say that Christianity isn’t those things.
It’s people inside the church – who were trying to make Christianity more respectable and palatable and believable and popular to the supposedly “modern mind that doesn’t so easily believe in the miraculous.”
But in doing so, they didn’t tweak Christianity; they didn’t improve Christianity; and they certainly didn’t make it more popular. They eviscerated it. They sucked the essence of it out of it and left an empty shell that has no power left in it.
And wherever that’s happened, Christianity hasn’t gotten more popular; it’s shriveled up and died.
If you want to believe in Jesus, you have to believe in the miraculous.
If you believe in Jesus, you have to be willing to believe in many things that the world around you rejects or even considers ridiculous.
Christianity doesn’t retain some value if you get rid of the miraculous events of it; and just hold on to the ethical teaching or subjective inspirational effect.
Because if the events of Christianity didn’t happen, then it’s a lie. If the events of Christianity didn’t happen, then Jesus isn’t who he claimed to be at all and the Christian Faith isn’t what it claims to be at all.
Christianity is essentially historical; because Christianity is not primarily ethical teaching.
If Christianity is primarily ethical teaching – then the stories that carry that teaching can be retained or rejected without damage to that teaching – we can still value it, try to keep it, use it to better our lives in the here and now or to save our soul for eternity.
If Christianity is primarily ethical teaching, then it’s primarily about what we do for ourselves.
But Christianity isn’t about what we do to save ourselves; it’s about what God did to save us.
And if that’s what its about, then the miraculous events of Jesus’ life can’t be rejected without doing utter damage to the essence of the faith.
Often this battle-ground begins with the virgin birth, because once we reject the virgin birth and reduce that to just the myth that carries some philosophical idea or ethical teaching, then dealing with Jesus’ resurrection becomes unnecessary – it is by default, then, likewise rejected and mythologized.
But if you reject the virgin birth, you get reject Christianity. If you mythologize the christian birth, you don’t retain the “truths” of Christianity underneath the shells of claims to miracles that you don’t need; because those truths are dependent upon the miracles and whether those miracles are historical.
If it didn’t happen, then Christianity is really just one movement’s take-it-or-leave-it version of human morality wrapped up in human fables –
and so, maybe it will help you here or there, but give your life to it? Why?
If you want to be a Christian – you have to admit and embrace that Christians believe some weird things that have huge, life-changing implications – that people will reject either because they feel that they can’t accept those things or they can’t accept the implications of those things.
And, here’s the problem. The virgin birth is not so hard to believe, depending on your starting point:
If you conclude that the virgin birth is impossible; then its only because at some point prior to that you’ve already concluded that God doesn’t exist – at least not a God that even somewhat resembles the God of the Bible.
Because, if God exists at all – if God who we already professed is the almighty maker of heaven and earth – exists, then why couldn’t he create life in the womb of a virgin?
Why couldn’t he enter this world through a supernatural conception and resulting miraculous birth?
If God made all things – and even if He usually governs those things with a degree of consistency and usualness; what prevents him from doing something out of the ordinary?
That’s really all a miracle is: when God does something unusual – out of the ordinary.
Everything that happens – is in some sense supernatural because it is the working of God’s providential hand in his world that he made and that he owns and that he sustains and that he rules.
He is always sustaining, guiding, ruling this universe. But sometimes, he does things a little differently. And who are we to say he can or can’t do that?
Miraculous Conception? Virgin Birth? Are those too difficult for an all-powerful God? Do those violate some unalterable law that stands over and above God – even though he is over and above all things?
The only thing that prevents God, is God himself – his own nature – but nothing about the virgin birth is a contradiction to God’s own nature – but it’s perfectly consistent with God’s nature – it’s how he has chosen to reveal himself to humanity; and how he has redeemed humanity.
What the virgin birth doesn’t mean:
- Mary was always a virgin.
- Mary is co-redeemer or co-divine with Jesus.
- Mary was always a virgin.
It’s appropriate to talk about Mary for a minute – after all, the creed mentions Mary by name.
While some skeptics deny that Mary could have been a virgin; some religious people have wrongly affirmed that Mary couId only ever be a virgin – and I only mention this briefly because much of the church has wrongly concluded that Mary retained her virginity throughout her life.
These narrative accounts are clear that Mary was a virgin up until the birth of Jesus. Anyone who tries to deny that that’s what the bible teaches, however they might try to do so and whatever advanced bible degrees or greek words they throw at you – they are not being honest with the biblical account or with themselves or with you.
You can believe or reject what these accounts claim, but you can’t reasonably say that these accounts claim anything other than: Mary was a virgin up until Jesus’ birth. Over and over again – it’s affirmed that Mary was a virgin, and the characters in the story grapple with the unbelievable nature of what was happening.
But at the same time, the accounts teach that after that point, Mary and Joseph had a normal, sexual marriage and had other children in the ordinary way.
Matthew 1:25 But he (Joseph) did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son.
That until, implies that sometime after that point, they did consummate their marriage. And the gospel accounts tell us about Jesus’ siblings.
Even for the mother of our Lord, sexual relationship in marriage is proper and good – it’s God’s good gift, to be received and enjoyed and honored in the right context of marriage where God gives it.
Doesn’t Mean:
- Mary was always a virgin.
- Mary is co-redeemer or co-divine with Jesus
Mary had quite the role in the redemptive plan of God. In fact, it was foretold all the way back in the third chapter of the bible – at the very beginning of the existence of the human race; and anticipated ever since then:
Genesis 3:15 – sometimes called the first gospel announcement, when God says to Serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heal.”
Mary gave birth to that promised anticipated offspring of Eve that would bring victory over God’s enemy and bring redemption for mankind’s sin. That’s quite a privileged role.
But, it’s clear, that the victory and redemption belongs to the redeemer alone.
That’s Mary’s own perspective. Though she was a recipient of God’s grace and favor – Luke 1:30 “You have found favor with God” – that word favor is “grace” – and she is a recipient of it – it was given to her, not because of her own virtue but only by the undeserved Grace of God – because she saw herself as a sinner in need of a savior: Luke 1:47 “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
If God is her savior, she isn’t her own savior or the co-savior of anyone else; she is a sinner just like us, in need of her savior, just like us.
And so we don’t look to Mary or pray to Mary as co-redeemer.
We can look to Mary as as an example as we might look to any other faithful believer as an example to us in our faith.
She had great faith. She receives this extraordinary news with humble faith. And you know, if you’ve been engaged, and during that time planning a wedding – you don’t really love surprises that come along with that planning process; talk about a disruptive surprise – that disrupts Mary’s dream of living a nice quiet life with her husband; giving birth to a normal child who would follow in his father’s footsteps of the family business;
now unsure what life would look like, how Joseph would respond – she probably expected he would leave her;
But her response is: “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”
In other words: You are God; I am not; and I submit my life to your will.
Don’t pray to Mary; pray to be like Mary. Pray that when God disrupts your life and changes your agenda and even takes away your earthly dreams; that you would have the same response she did.
What it doesn’t mean;
What it does mean:
- Jesus was fully divine
- Jesus was fully human
- And so Jesus was fit to be our Savior
1) Fully Divine: That the person of Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, means that he had no human Father.
His conception was not the result of the union between a Father and a mother but the holy Spirit bringing life in the womb of a virgin and uniting the eternal second person of the trinity to human flesh.
And in fact, Jesus’ birth was – apart form the circumstances around it and the fact of Mary’s virginity – apart from that it was an ordinary birth. There was nothing supernatural about the birth itself, it was the typical painful messy loud-screams birth that all humanity shares in common.
It was his conception that was supernatural.
The gospel accounts are clear that Joseph was not Jesus’ father; the gospel accounts are clear that the people around Jesus knew that Joseph wasn’t his father – “isn’t this Mary’s son?” they asked – not the normal way someone would be referred to in that culture – the normal way would be to ask “Isn’t this Joseph’s Son?” but by asking with reference to the mother it was certainly intended a not-so-subtle jab at the well-known suspicious circumstances of his birth.
It was his conception that was supernatural.
He had no human Father, because God was his Father. And that means that from the very beginning of his human existence, he was fully God.
He wasn’t something less than God; he didn’t become divine later in his life or career (adoptionism); he was fully God from the beginning of his conception in the womb.
2) He was fully God; at the same time he was fully human.
If he had a human father; he wasn’t divine. If he didn’t have a human mother; he wasn’t human.
But having a human mother and having God as his father means that he was and is fully divine and fully human, in 1 person.
He had a human mother; he had a human birth; he lived in this world as a human; he was a human being just like us.
He didn’t just appear to be a human (docetism), as though he was just a divine ghost with the hologram of a body or something. He was really human: he got hungry, he got thirsty, he got tired, he breathed oxygen, he suffered, bled and died.
The eternal Son of God shared in our humanity – even in the humanity of the smallest, weakest, and most helpless & vulnerable of the human race.
And, in doing so, he affirms the full humanity of the weakest, most helpless & most vulnerable of humanity.
Whether in the womb or out of the womb – the weak and vulnerable among us are fully human and have the full dignity of the image of God; and we ought not to let weakness, or vulnerability in others prevent us from treating others with all the honor and dignity of humanity.
Fully Human. Fully Divine. Neither one compromising the other, both absolutely necessary
3) fit to be our savior.
His full humanity means he can be our substitute:
The NT authors, and the early church considered it absolutely necessary that if Jesus was to be our Redeemer – he had to be fully human – human in every way – not just a human body, but a human will, a human mind, a human spirit –
Athanasius – important figure in early church history in helping the church formulate and hold to the biblical view of the person of Jesus: “What has not been assumed has not been redeemed”.
In other words – if Jesus is our substitute – who stood in our place to accomplish our redemption – he had to be a fitting substitute – a human redeemer if he were to serve as the redeemer for humanity.
If sin’s corruption stretched to every part of our humanity – and if Jesus entered into humanity for our redemption – then if we are to see full redemption, then Jesus had to become fully human in every way – but without sin – so that he could be not just a fitting substitute but a perfect substitute – not paying any penalty for his own sin – but paying instead all the penalty for all of our sins.
His full humanity means he can be our substitute; his full divinity means he can pay our debt.
If he wasn’t fully divine (as we talked about last week), then there’s no way he could either have no sins of his own to pay for, or be able to pay the price for all of our sins.
But if he was fully divine, then he could live the perfect life – the life that you and I ought to have lived but didn’t; and he could pay the price for our sin – the price you and I deserve to pay but can’t.
If he was fully divine, then he could be free from the penalty and corruption of sin that all in Adam live with – he could be a new Adam – to succeed where Adam failed; to win our redemption.
Jesus is our redeemer. We still suffer and struggle in this life until the completion of our redemption in the next life; but we do so with the knowledge that God is With us – “Immanuel”.
That he knows what we experienced – because he experienced all we experience. We don’t need to try to explain it to him. We don’t need to doubt that he understands exactly.
Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted. Jesus knows what it is like to suffer and grieve. And when we pray for God’s help in such situations, we can know that he not only knows exactly what we face, but that he knows exactly how to help.