L5: The Humanity of Christ

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. 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. 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. 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.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). —Matthew 1:18-23

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 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. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her. —Luke 1:26-38

Yet while he needed to become human, there was a fairly obvious problem in so doing. If Adam’s sin really did lead to condemnation for all humanity, how could he become human and not himself be condemned like everyone else? How could he save his people from their sin if he too was born with the very sin that ran in the veins of Adam’s race? Ever since Genesis 4, men have fathered children in their own sinful image and likeness. Flesh has given birth to flesh (Jn 3:6). What was needed was a new thing: Christ must be born of woman, but he must have no human father in whose image and likeness he would otherwise be. Like Adam, he must have no father but God. A virgin would need to conceive him by the pure power of the Holy Spirit (Is 7:14; Lk 1:35) and would thus give birth to a spiritual, holy one (Jn 3:6). And so, just as the Spirit hovered over the waters in Genesis, he would overshadow Mary, that the one to be born might be the head of a new humanity and a new creation. As well as avoiding the inherited sin of Adam, through the virgin birth Christ showed that his salvation and his new human race are miraculous. Joseph and Mary, however much they might have wanted it, could never have produced the Savior of the world by themselves. Jesus’ blessed and beautiful life is not an instance of some superhumanity we can aspire to by our own efforts. He is not the product of an evolutionary leap, the unfolding of our race’s inner potential. We have not joined God and humankind together. Mary simply received the word of God as a gift from heaven: that is how we can have Christ’s new life. The virgin birth is an almighty No! to all our silly attempts at earning salvation. It means that before Jesus is ever an example to us, a model of love and goodness, he is something we cannot be. In his birth of a virgin he was not giving us an example; he was coming as a Savior…Otherwise, Christ is of little more help to us than any other good man. And then we have no good news at all. Small wonder, then, that whenever the virgin birth has been demythologized or denied by theologians, the invariable consequence has been a loss of the gospel in their theology. The virgin birth of Jesus guards the very goodness of the Christian good news: here is a supernatural intervention and salvation. (Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, 45-47)