For today's post I offer an excerpt from my book, Open Before Christmas....
Late one evening a professor
sat at his desk working on the next day’s lectures. He shuffled through the
papers and mail placed there by his housekeeper. He began to throw them in the
wastebasket when one magazine—not even addressed to him but delivered to his
office by mistake—caught his attention. It fell open to an article titled: The Needs of the Congo Mission.
The professor began reading it
idly, but then he was intrigued by these words: “The need is great here. We
have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it
is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one—one on
whom, already, the Master’s eyes have been cast—that he or she shall be called
to this place to help us.” The professor closed the magazine and wrote in his
diary: “My search is over.” He gave himself to go to the Congo.
The professor’s name was Albert
Schweitzer. That little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else,
was placed “by accident” in Schweitzer’s mailbox. “By chance” his housekeeper
put the magazine on the professor’s desk. “By happenstance” he noticed the
title, which seemed to leap out at him. Dr. Schweitzer became one of the great
figures of the twentieth century in a humanitarian work nearly unmatched in
human history. Was it chance? No, I don’t think so. I believe it was the
providence of God at work.
By the providence of God, you
are reading this blog. By the providence of God, you have been born in a
certain place, brought up in a certain family, been given certain abilities and
certain opportunities. God, in his providence, has chosen you for a special
work that only you can do.
God, in his providence, also
chose a certain young girl, who lived two thousand years ago, to be the human
mother of his Son and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is her story that
we read from Luke 1:26-56….
I invite you to focus today on
verse 37: “For nothing is impossible with
God.” Let us consider the impossible thing that God did in Mary’s life.
First, the impossible thing that
God did in Mary was a virgin conception. It is clear from the verses we
have just read that what Luke insists happened to Mary is that God conceived in
her womb a child without the aid of a human father.
Now, if you are having trouble
believing in the virgin conception of Jesus I ask you to consider these
factors:
Factor #1: Luke, who is reporting this story, was a medical doctor
(Colossians 4:14). Luke certainly understood how babies are conceived. He knew
that a virgin conception was a human impossibility. Yet, he reports it as a fact.
Why? Because he obviously believed that, in the case of Jesus’ conception, a
miracle had taken place.
C. S. Lewis has written, “You
will hear people say, ‘The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of
a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility.’ Such people
seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when men were so
ignorant of the cause of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be
contrary to it. A moment’s thought shows this to be nonsense: and the story of
the Virgin Birth is a particularly striking example. When St. Joseph discovered
that his fiancée was going to have a baby, he not unnaturally decided to
repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as any modern gynaecologist
that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have
lain with men. No doubt the modern gynaecologist knows several things about
birth and begetting which St. Joseph did not know. But those things do not
concern the main point–that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature.
And St. Joseph certainly knew that…
When St. Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancée’s pregnancy was due
not to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something
contrary to the known order of nature… Belief in miracles, far from depending
on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws
are known.”[i]
Factor #2: Luke was a painstaking historian. He tells us that he
had researched his story well (Luke 1:1-4). If Luke did not make up this story
(and fabrication seems to me highly unlikely in this case) then the only people
Luke could have gotten the story of the virgin birth from were members of
Jesus’ family. Furthermore, Mary seems to be the most likely source for the
story. The reason the doctrine of the virgin birth does not appear in the
letters of the New Testament was, perhaps, that the other New Testament authors
were not familiar with the story. You see, the Gospels were written after most,
if not all, of the letters were written. Luke and Matthew record the story of
the virgin birth, I believe, because they got the story from another source,
one that in some way must have gone back to Jesus’ immediate family. I imagine
that Mary may not have recognized the importance of the virgin birth for the
theology of the church. It was a fact about her son Jesus that she treasured in
her own heart, until she was asked about it; then the story came out. At any
rate, Luke was a painstaking historian who had done his research and he was a
doctor. Personally, I think the only reason he would have reported the story
was that he thought it was a historical fact.
Factor #3: the incarnation is a bigger miracle than the virgin
birth. God becoming a man is the greatest miracle of all. The virgin birth, as
the vehicle for that incarnation, pales as a miracle by comparison to the
incarnation. Thus, if you believe in the incarnation then you should have no
difficulty believing in the virgin conception of Jesus.
Factor #4: nothing is impossible for the God who created the
universe. If there is a God who created the far-flung galaxies of outer space
then certainly a virgin conception is not too hard a task for him to
accomplish.
C. S. Lewis makes another
important point in this regard. He writes, “No woman ever conceived a child, no
mare a foal, without Him. But once, and for a special purpose, He dispensed
with that long line which is His instrument: once His life-giving finger
touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events. Once
the great glove of Nature was taken off His hand. His naked hand touched her.
There was of course a unique reason for it. That time He was creating not
simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was
beginning, at this divine and human point, the New Creation of all things. The
whole soiled and weary universe quivered at this direct injection of essential
life—direct, uncontaminated, not drained through all the crowded history of
Nature.”[ii]
A virgin conception is not too
hard a feat for a God who causes babies to be conceived every day. The
specifics of how God accomplished the virgin conception of Jesus are not part
of the story or the church doctrine about it. However, the fact that Matthew
and Luke teach that Jesus was born of a virgin is undisputed.
Now is a great time to order my Advent devotional book for yourself, a friend, or a family member. You may learn more here: Open Before Christmas. The book may also be ordered direct from Amazon by clicking here: Open Before Christmas
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