They say that it’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end. 

Christmas is a loooooong season, and then a sudden stop. 

It’s a long season, of course, because that’s when the retailers make pretty much all their money for the year, so the hype is insistent, intrusive, and extended. 

Everybody knows that. 

And then comes the 25^th, when there’s an explosion of gift-opening, a feast, and then maybe a football game or two while the children play with the boxes that their toys came in. 

And then. 

It’s over. 

The Sudden Stop. 

If you buy into the commercialism and consumerism and Clausism, then that can be a pretty depressing time. 

But it shouldn’t be. 

It shouldn’t be, you see, because you shouldn’t buy into the 3 C’s—because as we know, Christmas is not about the 3 C’s. And it isn’t even about the stuff that TV movies have in mind when they talk about “the true meaning of Christmas”—by which they mean family, and giving, and snow. 

Which kinda leaves out the Southern Hemisphere, doesn’t it? 

Seems like “the true meaning of Christmas” should include everybody. 

I’d suggest that the most important element of “the true meaning of Christmas” is that it’s not an end, but a beginning. 

It was an end to Mary’s pregnancy, of course, and that was undoubtedly a great relief to her. But all mothers, and most dads, know that a birth is a beginning to a far greater commitment to the raising of the child and preparation for his life mission. 

And in the case of this child, the Son of God, the life mission is the most important one in all of history. 

I’ve meditated before on the many mysteries surrounding the development of this unique child, the God-man. The questions are beyond our understanding, and speculation doesn’t really get us anywhere except to increase our wonder and awe at this person. We are mystified by our Elder Brother (Ro 8.29). 

We assume Mary and Joseph pursued his education in pretty much the normal way, but at least by age 12 he was aware that he had a mission far beyond that of his brothers or his parent(s). As an adult, even in the middle of the greatest crisis of his earthly life, he commented, 

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour (Jn 12.27). 

That “cause,” or mission, as we know, was to die, and to die no ordinary death, but one that embraces the wrath of God upon all sinners for all the sins of all time. 

And more than that—if “more” is the right word—to live in perfect obedience to the Law, thereby accomplishing the righteousness that will be available as a gift to all who come to him in faith and repentance. 

And even more than that. 

He came to save us, yes (Mt 20.28). But even that salvation comes in stages. Justification, conversion, is just the beginning of a lifelong path of sanctification and eventual glorification. 

And even more. 

As we noted in a recent series, the final goal—the real goal, if I can put it that way—is union and fellowship. This baby, this Immanuel, is God becoming one of us, to be united with the human race forever, to be our spouse in an eternal, intimate marriage. 

And so yesterday we celebrated the birth of this unique infant, but today is the first day of All the Rest of It. 

Lots to treasure now, and lots to look forward to. 

Note: I wrote this post before I read this.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

This Christmas season I’ve been meditating on the Virgin Birth of Christ.

We all know the story. Mary gives birth to a baby boy without the participation of a human father. Some anti-trinitarians charge that this is unseemly—that God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit, had sex with a Jewish teenaged girl. This is of course ridiculous and blasphemous. If Mary had had sex with God, then she wouldn’t be a virgin, would she?

The whole point of the story is that this is a birth unlike any other. God, the Creator, caused an embryo to form in Mary’s womb, and she gestated and bore the baby in the normal way.

I suppose that means that Jesus shared Mary’s DNA—that just as the human authors participated with the divine Spirit in the work of inspiration, so Mary participated in the origin and development of the human Jesus; whom the Bible repeatedly identifies as a “son of David.” But we are not informed of the details.

Why did this happen? Why was Jesus not born, in God’s providence, in the ordinary way?

The Bible doesn’t tell us.

Bishop Ussher, the same man who calculated the Creation to have occurred in 4004 BC, postulated that the Virgin Birth kept the defilement of Adam’s sin from passing to Mary’s baby:

“For sin having by that one man entered into the world, every father becometh an Adam unto his child, and conveyeth the corruption of his nature unto all that he doth beget. Therefore our Savior assuming the substance of our nature, but not by the ordinary way of natural generation, is thereby freed from all the touch and taint of the corruption of our flesh; which by that means only is propagated from the first man unto his posterity. Whereupon he being man of man but not by man, and so becoming the immediate fruit of the womb and not of the loins, must of necessity be acknowledged to be that HOLY THING” (James Ussher, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 12).

Paul Enns, author of The Moody Handbook of Theology, agrees:

“The virgin birth was the means whereby the incarnation took place and guaranteed the sinlessness of the Son of God.”

Charles Ryrie takes exception:

“The Virgin Birth … need not be the necessary means of preserving the sinlessness of Christ, since God could have overshadowed two parents so as to protect the baby’s sinlessness had he so desired” (Basic Theology).

Ryrie goes on to say,

“It served as a sign of the uniqueness of the person who was born.”

Since we get our fallen natures from our mothers as well as our fathers—women are sinners too—Ussher’s thesis seems flawed, and Ryrie appears to be right.

I recently read Mitch Chase’s article “Six Reasons for the Virgin Birth,” which seems to me to handle this particular question well:

”There seems to be a connection between the virginal conception of Jesus and the sinlessness of Jesus. Exactly how that connection exists is debated. … The language of Luke 1:35 doesn’t mean that sin is only biologically transmitted through a human father. Mary was a sinner with a sinful nature. However, the work of the Holy Spirit ensured that the human nature of Jesus in the womb of Mary was holy and without corruption.”

Chase goes on to list other reasons for the Virgin Birth; I commend the entire article for your consideration.

Jesus is the only case of God becoming man. We have trouble understanding unique things, and this is no exception. There is much mystery here. The early church spent 400 years wrestling with the question and never did explain it.

But God has become man, and perfect man at that, and will remain one of us for all time and beyond.

We have much to celebrate and meditate on in these days.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash