The Gospel of Jesus Christ (12) The Incarnation of Jesus Christ (2)

​(Mt 1:18) 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.
(Mt 1:19) 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.
(Mt 1:20) 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.
(Mt 1:21) 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.”
(Mt 1:22) All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
(Mt 1:23) “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
(Mt 1:24) When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.
(Mt 1:25) But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
 
Review
We’ve been talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Romans 1:1-4, Paul briefly but excellently explained what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. He divided the gospel into four parts.
 
First, “[God] promised [the gospel] beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2)
 
That’s what we’ve explored for the last few months. We’ve discussed how God gradually revealed what Jesus would do through signs, events, figures, and prophecies in the Old Testament.
 
Second, Paul said that even though Jesus was the Son of God, He had an earthly life just like us.
 
Third, Paul said that Jesus was raised from the dead. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important part of the gospel.
 
Out of these three parts, we started to talk about the second part—the earthly life of Jesus Christ.
 
As I said last Sunday, one of the most amazing facts about the Son of God is that He had an earthly life like us. The God we believe in is the God who actually came down to the world in human form.
 
The word who was with God, who was God, who existed even before the creation of the world, and through whom all things were made became flesh and made His dwelling among us. He is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and we call this amazing event His incarnation.
 
Last Sunday, we talked about two reasons the Son of God came to the world. First, Jesus came to the world in human form to have a physical body like us so that He could bleed and die, which is an essential condition in making atonement.
 
Second, Jesus visibly revealed Himself to show us that God is alive and that He works for our salvation. If the written word had been the only way through which we could know God, it would have been much harder for us to believe in Him. But, God revealed Himself by lowering Himself, becoming one of His creatures, and making His dwelling among us. That’s how we can have assurance that He does exist.
 
These two reasons are closely related to the consequences of sin. Sin in its nature severs our relationship with God. It blinds us so that we can’t perceive Him and makes us ignorant of God. And, sin results in separation from God, which brings eternal death.
 
However, by becoming a human being, Jesus solved these problems. He showed us who the heavenly Father is through His earthly life and reconciled us with Him through His sacrifice and death. That’s the reason the name of Jesus is good news to us.
 
The Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ
Now, let’s continue to talk about Jesus’ earthly life. Today, I want us to especially focus on how He was born. The gospels of Matthew and Luke testify that Jesus was born of a virgin woman named Mary.
 
The story of Jesus’ birth begins with Mary, who was pledged to be married to a man named Joseph. One day, God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary to tell her,
 
“Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.” (Lk 1:30-31)
 
When she first heard this, Mary didn’t understand what the angel was saying because she hadn’t married Joseph yet and thus was a virgin at that time. So she replied to Gabriel,
 
 “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Lk 1:34)
 
Then 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.” (Lk 1:35)
 
The angel told Mary that she would become pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. And after a few months, while she was still unmarried, she conceived a baby just like the angel had said.
 
When Joseph found that his fiancé, Mary, was pregnant, he was confused and greatly discouraged. But he didn’t want to disgrace her publicly. Rather, he tried to divorce her quietly. However, when he was troubled because of Mary’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel 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. 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.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”” (Mt 1:20-23)
 
Here, Joseph learned three facts about Mary’s pregnancy. First, what was conceived in Mary was from the power of the Holy Spirit. Second, he would give the baby the name “Jesus,” which means “the Lord saves,” because the baby would save all people from their sins.
 
These two facts by themselves are very important and surprising, but that’s not all. The passage also says that all this took place to fulfill what the prophet Isaiah had said 700 years earlier,
 
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Is 7:14)
 
So, what we know from this is that Jesus didn’t just randomly come to the world. God had carefully planned His coming and promised it in the Old Testament long before it actually took place.
 
That’s why we can say that the Old Testament is about the Messiah who would come while the New Testament is about the Messiah who has come and who will return.
 
1. Salvation Comes from the Lord
So, what can we learn from the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? The first truth that it teaches us is that God planned our salvation, waited for the perfect time, and finally began to fulfill it with the birth of Jesus Christ.
 
Earlier, we read one of the most important prophecies directly related to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. The prophet Isaiah had prophesied that the virgin would conceive and give birth to a son around 700 years before Mary conceived Jesus. However, the promise of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ actually goes all the way back to Genesis, as we talked about before when we discussed the protoevangelium.
 
After Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the forbidden tree, God told the serpent,
 
“And 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 heel.” (Gn 3:15)
 
Even though the first human beings sinned against God and were destined for eternal death because of their sin, God didn’t let them die.
 
From the very moment sin first came to the world through the disobedience of the first people, God planned to save all people. God knew that true and perfect salvation would only come through His Son, so He said that He would send an offspring from a woman, who would crush the power and authority of sin, death, and Satan.
 
And this promise was fulfilled when Jesus was born of the virgin Mary according to God’s perfect timing that He had set long before it happened. As Paul said,
 
“When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4)
 
From the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, we see God’s divine plan and providence and His sovereignty over our salvation. Jesus’ birth didn’t happen randomly. It was planned and promised by God and perfectly achieved when the set time came through the power of the Holy Spirit, not mere human effort.
 
Therefore, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is a great reminder that salvation is the work of God Himself. Our salvation only comes through the supernatural work of God, not through our efforts or righteousness.
 
2. Fully God, Fully Human
The second truth we know about Jesus from His virgin birth is that He has two natures—human and divine.
 
One of the important truths we must profess as Christians is that Jesus was fully God and fully human at the same time, and this was evident in His virgin birth. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ was God’s way of uniting full deity and full humanity in Him.
 
There are many extraordinary stories about the births of historically important people, which were often made up to deify them. What these stories imply is that these people were different from everyone else from birth.
 
But, that’s not the focus of the story of Jesus’ birth. The reason Jesus was born of a virgin was not to show us how different He was from us, but to show us how it was possible for Him to be both fully God and fully human at the same time.
 
This becomes clear when we think about two other possible ways in which Jesus might have come to the earth.
 
First, God could have created Jesus as a complete human being in heaven and just sent Him to earth without any human parents. Then, we could definitely see Him as God, but it would have been hard for us to see how Jesus could be fully human as we are.
 
On the other hand, God could have sent Jesus into the world through both a father and a mother. Then we could see Him as fully human, but it would have been hard for us to understand how Jesus was fully God, who is sinless, since His birth would have been just like ours in every way.
 
So, when we think about these other possibilities, it helps us understand how God, in His wisdom and power, combined humanity and divinity in Jesus through the virgin birth.
 
Jesus’ full humanity is evident in His ordinary birth from a human mother. But at the same time, Jesus’ full deity is also evident in His extraordinary birth since He was conceived by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, without a human father.
 
So, Jesus was human, but He wasn’t just a man because “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9).
 
The fact that Jesus was fully God and fully human is especially important in our salvation because it explains how He’s able to perfectly save all humanity from their sins and reconcile them with God.
 
Because Jesus is fully human and fully God, He can lead us to God as a human and He can also deliver God’s message to us as God. That’s the reason the apostle Paul calls Jesus the only mediator between God and human beings. 1 Tm 2:5 says,
 
 “There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tm 2:5)
 
A mediator refers to a person who helps people in a conflict come to an agreement. A mediator serves as a reconciler between two people or two groups. It’s important for a mediator to be able to understand both sides.
 
In that sense, only Jesus could serve as the perfect mediator between us and God because He is fully God and fully human. That’s why Jesus said that only He is the way, the truth, and the life through which we can come to the Father in heaven.
 
The prophet Isaiah prophesied that the Son who would be born to the virgin would be called Immanuel, which means ‘God with us.’ So, Jesus was God’s miraculous way of being with us. Through Jesus, God dwells in us and allows us to be reconciled with Him. In Christ, we enjoy a peaceful relationship with God. That’s the second truth we know from the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
 
3. A Man without Sin
The last important truth we learn about Jesus through His virgin birth is that He was the only Man without sin.
 
One truth about human beings we can find from the Scriptures is that all people are sinners without exception.
 
Romans 5:12 clearly declares, “Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Rom 5:12)
 
It’s not easy to understand how the sin and disobedience of the first man, Adam, and the result, death, can affect all people on earth.
 
But what we at least know is that Adam can represent all human beings since he wasn’t born from human parents but was the first person created by God. So, because Adam is representative of all human beings, all people share his sinful nature as his descendants. Some theologians call this ‘original sin’ or ‘inherited sin.’
 
So, what the fact that Jesus didn’t have a biological human father shows is that the line of descent from Adam was interrupted. Jesus is the only One who didn’t descend from Adam. And this helps us understand why Adam’s sin, which applies to all other human beings, didn’t apply to Jesus.
 
We also see the sinlessness of Jesus from what the angel Gabriel told Mary. He said, “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.” (Lk 1:35)
 
Here, Gabriel connects the virgin birth of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit with His holiness. Because the Son would be conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit, not by a human father, the child was to be called ‘the holy One.’
 
So the virgin birth allows us to understand how God made it possible for Jesus to be fully human without sharing in Adam’s sin. And, this is very important in understanding His salvation because it tells us how His sacrifice on the cross could perfectly wash away all people’s sin.
 
As we’ve talked about before, in the Old Testament, people sacrificed animals to atone for their sins. And, the most important condition when selecting animals for sacrifice was that they had to be without blemish or defect.
 
That’s because when sinners laid their hands on the heads of the animals before killing them, it wasn’t just that their sin entered the animals, but the innocence and purity of the animals also entered them.
 
In the Old Testament, before Jesus came to the world, animals without defect were used to atone for people’s sin. But they could never be perfect sacrifices because animals by nature couldn’t perfectly replace human beings. So the sacrifice had to be done repeatedly day after day and year after year.
 
Therefore, in order for our sins to be perfectly atoned, we need a person who meets two conditions. The first condition is that the person must be innocent, pure, and sinless. The second is that the person must be able to represent all human beings. And there has been no one in the world throughout human history who could meet these two conditions except Jesus.
 
Because Jesus is the Son of God, He could serve as the representative of all people on earth. That’s the reason Paul calls Jesus ‘the second Adam.’
 
Paul said in 1Co 15:45-49,
“So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit… The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man” (1Co 15:45-49).
 
Here, we find two representatives God sent to the world. The first representative was called Adam. He was of the dust, and so are all those who belong to him. All those who belong to Adam will eventually die in their sins like him.
 
But we see another representative God sent to the world—Jesus Christ. He is called the last Adam not because he shares in his sinful nature but simply because He was a representative like Adam.
 
This second representative is different from the first one since He was of heaven and thus sinless, which means that all those who belong to this Man, Jesus, not Adam, would also have a heavenly image like Him. That’s why God sent Jesus Christ—to forgive our sins and let us become His children of heaven. This is the amazing truth we see from the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
 
So, the virgin birth teaches us very important truths about Jesus. It was God’s way to perfectly unite divine nature and human nature in Jesus. Because He was a man without sin, He could atone for all our sins. And because He was the Son of God, He could represent all human beings and thus bring all people to His kingdom.
 
What I want to emphasize is that no matter how unreasonable it sounds and no matter what unbelievers think of it, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is real and it contains significant truths about Him that we must know in order to understand the salvation He gives us.
 
I want to read this verse before we wrap up. “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1Co 1:25)
 
No matter what people say about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, we should recognize it as God’s power and wisdom through which He saves us from our sin and death.
 
These are the truths about Jesus Christ I want us to think about more deeply today. And, the more we think about who He is, the more we’ll get to know Him and praise Him for who He is and what He has done for us.
 
Let’s pray.
 
[Prayer]
Dear God, we thank You for Your wonderful salvation that You planned for a long time and fulfilled in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
 
We thank You for sending Your Son to be the Mediator and Reconciler between us and You. We believe that He was born of the virgin Mary, so He was fully divine and fully human without sin.
 
And we believe He shed His blood and died on the cross to give His body as the ransom for our sins. We thank You, Lord, for everything You’ve done to save us through Jesus Christ, Your Son.
 
Please open our minds and hearts and let them be focused on Jesus so that we won’t stumble but firmly hold on to the truth. Please cast out all our doubts and unbelief, and help us grow spiritually so that we could be conformed to the image of Your Son more day by day.
 
In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, we pray. Amen.
 
[Reflection Questions]
1. Do you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? Why do you think the virgin birth is important when it comes to salvation?
 
2. What are some obstacles that prevent people from believing in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? How would you explain your faith in it to non-believers around you when they ask about it?