The Beautiful Craziness of Virgin Birth — Ami Loper
The Virgin Birth is a beautiful story that many either disregard because it sounds impossible or gloss over in confusion. But, as crazy as it sounds, the Virgin Birth is an essential element of our faith? Why? What’s so important about it? #Christmas #ChristianBlog
As Christmas quickly approaches, I have been focusing the vlog on some of the… well… ludicrous assertions of the Christmas story. Now, please understand that though I say they are ludicrous, I believe them. But so often as we roll along with the story we have heard year after year, sometimes our whole lives, we miss the miracle of it all, the total improbability of it all, and it deadens our sense of wonder at the Christmas story.
Here, on the blog, I thought I would tackle the Virgin Birth. Okay, I'm sure we've all been around enough to know the improbability of this once-in-a-universe happening. But have you ever asked yourself why? Why was this important to the story? Why, when you are trying to authenticate your declaration that the Savior of the world has come, would you throw in this detail that is going to make much of the population disregard it out of hand? Why would you add a detail that would be a stumbling block to belief?
It is conceivable that a very nice young man, conceived by and born to two upright and Law observant Jewish people, could come and teach and heal and then die a valiant death, but that is not the claim of the Gospel. The claim of the Gospel is often misrepresented to be this prosaic and "nice." It is often misrepresented as just a good man who wanted people to live at peace with one another and be good boys and girls. However, the claim of the Gospel is that God came, Himself, to show us His love and compassion for us by dying for us - yes, Himself. That could not come about if He were conceived by a human man and woman.
Why?
Clear back in Genesis, at the very beginning, Eve was promised that her seed would crush the enemy who had brought death to all mankind (Gen 3:15). Eve was promised this, not Adam. Since Adam carried the seed of guilt and death within him, all born of him were doomed to sin. (Yes, Eve sinned, but it was the seed of Adam that propagated a sinful race [Rom 5:12-14].) Yet, One would be born, not of the seed of man, but of the seed of God, Who would have the power to destroy death for all time.
It is the fact that Jesus was born of God and not of Adam's line that makes His life incorruptible (Heb 7:3, 15-16). It is because He was born of God that makes those of us who believe in Him children of God (John 1:12-13) and heirs of God (Gal 3:26, 4:4-7). It is only because He was not born of Adam that He was sinless from the start, while those born of Adam are born sinful (Psa 51:5, Rom 3:23). And it was His sinlessness that enabled Him to be the perfect substitutionary sacrifice for you and for me.
All of this because Jesus was born of a virgin. Consider it. If you disregard this portion of the Christmas story as being too fantastical, you disregard that Jesus was fully God and fully man: both at the same time and both with a purpose. Only the combination makes the whole Gospel possible.
"For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
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