Christmas Inserts

The Miracle of Meagerness

FRONT: "She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room for them in the inn." Luke 2:7 GOD’S WORD

BACK: Is Christmas Miraculous? Was Jesus’ Birth Miraculous? Jesus was born just like the rest of us. There was pain and blood and perhaps a queasy Joseph.

The Miracle Happened Nine Months Earlier. The miracle happened when "the power of the Most High" overshadowed Mary and she conceived the Son of God. After this incredible miracle, Jesus implanted in Mary’s uterine wall and developed and grew there as we all did in our own mother’s womb. Jesus’ humanity there speaks of our humanity there. His birth occurred as did all births before and after—nothing miraculous about it. Or was there?

The Miracle of Meagerness. The miracle of Jesus’ birth is seen in the completely un-miraculous nature of it all. The miracle of Christmas is the meagerness of Christmas.

It is not a mansion, but a manger, where God’s Son lays His head. It is not in the holy city of Jerusalem, but in the rather unholy village of Bethlehem, where God makes His earthly debut.

The miracle of Christmas is that God would come at all into a world that had rejected Him. But He did. And He did so in a way that excludes neither lowly shepherds nor stately kings from His presence. A Savior lying in a manger is a Savior for all—born and unborn, healthy and frail. What a miracle!

Conceived by the Holy Spirit

FRONT: What do you think of when you say in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus was "conceived by the Holy Spirit"? Do you ponder that mystery, or do you rush on to "born of the virgin Mary"? The latter is a little easier to understand this time of year because we have all those pretty manger scenes in our heads. We see depictions of baby Jesus lying in a manger. We sing songs about the "little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay." A group was asked how God came into the world. "As a baby," was their answer. True enough, but . . .

Before Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. It is important to understand that Jesus spent nine months in a womb before He was "asleep on the hay." It is particularly important in light of the attention given to stem cells and cloning these days.

BACK: A more precise answer to the question of how God came into the world is "As a zygote!" A zygote is the name given to what human beings look like at the one-cell stage.

This picture is what each of us once looked like. It is what Jesus looked like nine months before birth as He began his prenatal growth toward December 25th. I’ll grant you that it is not exactly conducive to inspiring great works of art or memorable musical melodies, and I doubt you will receive many Christmas cards with this on the front. Nevertheless, it has profound implications for all of humanity.

Psalm 51:5 ("Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me") reminds us that all of humanity was sinful from the moment of conception.

The implication, therefore, is that we were human beings from the moment of conception. We were human beings in need of salvation from the moment of conception. That is why God sent Jesus as a zygote. We were sinful zygotes. He took our place as a holy Zygote.

"Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is the devil" Hebrews 2:14.

In order to redeem us, Jesus had to become just as we were except without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus’ conception as a holy zygote attests to our humanity from the moment of conception.

Therefore, it is not just a five-day-old growth of cells that are destroyed when stem cells are extracted. A five-day-old human being, for whom Jesus was conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died, and rose again is destroyed. It is not just stem cells that are extracted. These are the body parts of a living human being. If a zygote would be cloned, he or she would be a living human being, a genetic twin of someone else. Although cloning is contrary to the will and ways of God for procreation and we should vigorously oppose it, once a cloned zygote exists he or she should not be subject to mutilation and experimentation.

So the next time you say that Jesus was "conceived by the Holy Spirit," remember that you are saying all you really need to know when it comes to deciding the rightness or wrongness of embryonic stem cell research.