Monday, July 26, 2021

Christmas in July; Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:26-38

                 Today we get to celebrate Christmas in July, not because we are also beginning work on Operation Christmas Child, but because the phrase in the Nicene Creed that we are examining today is “was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.” 

We have seen in more than one sermon, in more than one statement that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, is 100% fully, totally God.  There are many people who struggle with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.  They ask, “Do I really have to believe that Jesus was born of virgin in order to follow Jesus or to be a Christian?”  My question in return would be, “What else don’t you believe and why?”  Because as I will continue to reiterate, everything we say we believe has implications.  Our beliefs determine the way we live, how we interact with people, how we relate to God, how we see ourselves, how we see the world.  It is not my place to determine whether anyone is or isn’t a Christian, though I can help people have the assurance that they are saved, that God loves them, that God forgives them.   But I can also tell you that there is not one church father, not any of the Nicene fathers, not any pre-Nicene fathers, not any Reformer, who ever considered the Virgin birth a minor doctrinal point.  It was a big deal.  If the seed, the sperm, did not come from the Holy Spirit, how could Jesus be 100% fully God.  Jesus didn’t become God.  Jesus wasn’t part God.  Jesus wasn’t a demigod.  Jesus was and is fully God.  It was so important to the church leaders, both early and latter, that they taught or at least considered the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, that Mary did not have any other children besides Jesus.  Even Luther and Calvin taught this.  The main exception I could find of the early church fathers was Turtullian.  The majority of church fathers and mothers believed that Jesus brothers and sisters are either his cousins or children of Joseph from a previous marriage and this is why the disciple John is given the charge to care for Mary by Jesus from the cross. Notice that this latter teaching is not included in any of our creeds or confessions, but the Virgin birth is.  Both gospel accounts—Matthew and Luke—emphasize that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  It was such a concern to Joseph that Mary was pregnant that he was going to put her away—he was going to issue a declaration of divorce, break off the engagement.  The Greek word used to describe Joseph when he heard the news implies anger, not merely shock and surprise.  If she had gotten pregnant by Joseph, he wouldn’t have pursued this route.  He decided to pursue it quietly because it could have cost Mary her life if he had chosen to make a big deal of it.  She could have been stoned as an adulteress.  The angel had to tell Joseph that the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  In Luke’s gospel, Mary specifically asks Gabriel how she is going to bear a son since she is a virgin.  Gabriel tells her the Holy Ghost will fall on her and she will conceive, and it is for this very reason that her holy begotten child will be called the Son of God.  By the way, we are pretty sure that Luke got his source material for the stories involving Mary from Mary herself.  Luke is the one who tells us that Mary kept, pondered, treasured these things in her heart.  The implications that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit is that Jesus is fully God. 

Jesus was also born of Mary.  He was fully human.  He wasn’t God in human form, like some sort of avatar, like Krishna in Hinduism or like the Greek and Roman gods who took on human form.  He was a real flesh and blood human being. He got hungry, thirsty, tired, angry, sad. He loved puns.  We don’t get to see them in English, but they are there in Aramaic and in Greek.  Jesus knew what is was to grieve and to be lonely.  He knew what is was to be humiliated.  He was amazed.  Nearly everything we feel, Jesus has felt.  He learned.  The unlimited God became limited.  Galatians 4:4 tells us that in the fullness of time Jesus was born of a woman, born under the Law.  Jesus lived in a specific time and culture.  He was a faithful Jew.  He was subject to the law. He had to be obedient. Gal. 4:5 gives us the implications of Jesus being born in this manner—“in order that He might redeem those under the Law that we might receive the adoption as sons.”  Jesus was also tempted.  Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way we are but without sin.  Because of this, Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses.  Jesus knew poverty.  II Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”  Jesus endured earthly poverty so we could attain heavenly riches.  In becoming mortal, Jesus gave us immortality.  These are just a few of the implications we get from Scripture that we receive because Jesus is 100% fully human. 

The implications of Jesus being fully human are just as significant as the fact that Jesus is fully God.  Because Jesus was fully human, Jesus could really die.  The implications of that are so big, we will spend some time in coming weeks when we get to talking about Jesus’s suffering, death, and burial.  And because Jesus rose again and still IS fully human and ascended as fully human, that has huge implications for us as well.  But because Jesus was fully human and fully God, He could be that perfect sacrifice, that ransom, that atonement we talked about last week for our sin.  Romans 8:3 says that God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.  The Law couldn’t save us but Jesus as one under the Law, fulfilling the Law, could even be the sacrifice for our sin.  The writers of the Nicene Creed elaborate on the implications of Christ’s humanity.  Athanasius, echoing the earlier church father, Origen, spoke of the importance of Christ coming in the flesh.  This is what he said…

The Savior having in very truth become man, the salvation of the whole man

was brought about…Truly our salvation is not merely apparent, not does it

extend to the body only, but the whole body and soul alike, has truly obtained

salvation in the Word Himself.[i]

 

Thomas Torrance adds, “This was held to include the redeeming and sanctifying in Christ of the mind and affections of ‘the inward man’, for they have been apportioned and renewed in the self-sanctification of Christ for our sakes. 

 Because Christ is fully human, we are saved body and soul.  St. Basil the Great said, “If Christ had not come in our flesh, He could not have slain sin in the flesh and restored and reunited to God the humanity which fell in Adam and became alienated from God.”  Gregory of Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa both spoke of the fact that it is because Jesus is fully God and fully human, He can save us body and soul.  Adam was fallen in both body and soul, thus we are as well.  We need redemption of both body and soul.  Iraenaeus summed it up like this:  “Out of His measureless love, our Lord Jesus Christ has become what we are in order to make us what He is Himself.”  Years later, Jean Calvin expounded on that by saying:

This is the wonderful exchange which out of His boundless kindness He has

entered into with us:  by becoming Son of Man with us he has made us sons of

God with Him; by His descent to earth He has prepared our ascent to heaven;

by taking on Himself our mortality he has bestowed on us His own immortality;

by taking on Himself our weakness he has made us strong with His strength;

by receiving our poverty into Himself he has transferred to us His riches;

by taking upon Himself the burden of the iniquities with which we are weighed

down He has clothed us with His righteousness.[ii]

 

Finally, in His humanity, Jesus shows us what we were originally created to be.  He is the perfect human.  He shows us what it is to live perfectly in the will of God, to love perfectly, to be kind, to be truthful, to do justice in the sphere and station of life we have been given.  So yes, brothers and sisters, it is important that Jesus was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.  Do you believe this?



[i] Athanansius as quoted in Torrance, Thomas F., The Trinitarian Faith:  The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church.  163

 

[ii] Calvin, Jean.  Institutes. 4.17.2, 3, 42 as quoted in Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith. 179. ft. 111.

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