Luke 1:34-35 (NKJV) 34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” 35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.
In our last post we watched as sin entered into man’s nature. The result was a separation between God and his children. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23.) Death in a spiritual sense is not just ceasing to exist. Death is a condition of separation from God’s life. Eventually it resulted in the death of Adam’s and Eve’s body as well. This condition is eternal. Unless something changed man would be eternally separated from God. That is what he deserved and that is what he would have received. However, God had another plan.
Let us lay out the problem God has after the fall. God created man to be his family. That is the reason for all of the physical creation. He wants to share his life with his children. For this love to be real he must give man a choice. Man made the choice to sin and was cut off from the life of God. This is an eternal choice. Once it is made it cannot be unmade. Because everything must reproduce after its own kind, man’s offspring will carry the same seed of death in them with which Adam was affected by the fall.
God is an absolutely just being. He cannot simply overlook sin. He cannot just forgive man. That is not justice. If man can be forgiven without payment, why is it impossible for Satan to be forgiven? Man must pay the price for his sin. Man will pay the price. The problem is that the price is death. Physical death is the inevitable result of the fall. Man’s body will ultimately fail. However, that is not the price. That is simply a symptom of the disease.
The price is eternal separation from God. Physical death, though not the price itself is the threshold beyond which eternal separation becomes certain. Once man leaves time and enters eternity nothing can change. Man will pay the price, but he will pay it forever.
The other difficulty is that no one else can pay the price for him. It must be a man. Not in the sense of gender but in the sense of humanity. God cannot pay it. That would not be justice. Only a flesh and blood human being can pay the price of separation from God. It seems that God has no choice but to condemn his children to eternal separation from himself. Satan has won. God’s plan for a family is defeated. The best solution to this problem would be to destroy humanity now so that only Adam and Eve suffer the consequences of their sin. That is what they deserve. That is pure justice. However, God is not just absolute justice. He is also absolute love.
It is just as much against God’s nature to leave his family helpless as it is to forego justice. Man deserves the penalty for sin. God has every right to “wash his hands” of man’s future. Nevertheless, at this point the three elements of the love of God go into motion.
God is a God of compassion. He identifies with man’s condition. Compassion moves him to mercy. Mercy is God withholding what is deserved. Man deserves justice and will have it if that is what he chooses. Mercy seeks to find a way for man to avoid the eternal consequence of sin while remaining within the bounds of justice.
If man fulfills the need of justice, he will be eternally separated from God. What if a man could be born who was not of the seed of Adam. What if there could be a human being who did not carry sin. The “seed” is carried in the human male. The seed fertilizes an egg in the human female. The body is formed in the womb. It is made up of the DNA of both father and mother, but the body is formed in the female. What if there could be a human being born whose DNA did not carry the human male component?
Many “enlightened” Christian scholars have come to view the Virgin Birth of Jesus as part of Christian mythology. Surely, we cannot believe that something like that could happen. We live in the twenty-first century. We know where babies come from. If we believe the bible, we understand that the virgin birth is the only solution the mercy of God can use to satisfy God’s absolute nature of both justice and love.
A descendant of Adam must pay the price. Once a descendant of Adam pays the price they will be eternally separated from God. However, the sin nature is passed on in the seed of Adam. The virgin birth is the result of a human female conceiving through the energy of a different seed.
John 1:1 (NKJV) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:14 (NKJV) 14 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.
How did the word become flesh? We read how in today’s scripture. The Holy Spirit come upon a virgin woman and she conceived by the power of God. What was the seed that produced this conception? I believe we can get a little more insight by reading about our own “new birth.”
1 Peter 1:23 (NKJV) 23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
The seed that entered Mary’s womb was the Word of God. The child that was born of that conception was Mercy incarnate. All of humanity deserved to be separated from God because of the nature Adam brought into the earth through sin. God’s compassion would not let that be the final word. Mercy said there is another way.
What was Jesus? Because he was the son of Mary he was fully human. He was born of Adam’s race. Because he had no human father he did not carry the curse of spiritual death. He is called that last Adam by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:45. His body is completely human but without the curse of death.
Not only is he a human free of death, but he is something else. The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was not only man. He was also God.
Colossians 2:9 (NKJV) 9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily
What is it that Mercy provided for God’s family? Mercy provided a being who, as man, could rightfully pay the price. However, because he did not carry the stain of sin he did not owe the payment. Because he was also God we see that what Mercy did was choose to pay the price himself. God chose to create knowing what man would do. Man chose to rebel and become separated from God for eternity. God chose to take on flesh and pay the price for man’s rebellion himself.
The result is that mercy has made it possible for man to escape what he deserves. He must choose to accept God’s mercy and grace. He must receive this grace by faith. Grace is getting what you do not deserve. Jesus is the vehicle by which grace became available to man. The only way for man to escape what he deserves and obtain what he did not deserve is to receive the sacrifice of Jesus by faith (Ephesians 2:8.)
What was born in the manger. What came forth from Mary’s womb. Mercy and grace came forth. After the process of redemption was complete all of humanity had could choose again. Adam chose death. We have the right to choose life. That is Grace.
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