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?
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