Description
Understanding the Miraculous Birth of Jesus: Immanuel, God with Us
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Transcript
It’s wonderful during Advent to be able to pick up some of the most incredible moments in the story of Jesus’s arrival on earth. Like this, from Matthew chapter 1, verse 23. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us.
This is one part of the story of Jesus, that your first reaction to it might well be, a virgin conceiving, that’s ridiculous. Of course we know this is completely outside our normal experience.
Why was it important for Mary to conceive as a virgin, the son of God? Maybe it’s partly to do with the way inheritance works during that paternalistic society where sons would inherit from fathers. This broke the inheritance of the sin nature from Adam. Instead, Jesus inherits the God nature.
It’s more complex and sophisticated than that, than I can possibly explain, because Jesus existed before this conception. Nevertheless, it is an incredible message to us humans, that here we have the fusion of the divine with the human, the holy with the unholy, the righteous with the unrighteous.
God chose to do that, and in doing that, he says in the most intimate way He possibly can, I am with you. And this is why one name for Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. He was with us, fleshly with us. Mary had not known a man, she bore the Son of God.
God, I’m not sure that we can even wrap our heads around this. You did a miracle. You did the greatest miracle in allowing Jesus to come into the human race. And at this time of Advent, we just stand amazed at what you’ve done for us.
