We are currently in the Advent Season.  Advent includes the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.  The dictionary defines advent as: The arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.

NOTHING in this world has ever been as notable as the arrival of Christ and nothing will be as notable as the Second Advent, the second coming of Christ.

There have been scholarly disagreements about the virgin birth.  People will say, well that is impossible.  No person could be born of a virgin, but the Bible makes it VERY clear that Jesus WAS born of a virgin, the Virgin Mary.  But why is it important for us, as Christians, to acknowledge the virgin birth.  This can be summed up in three points.

First it is important because it shows that our salvation comes from God, not from man.  If Jesus was not brought to us in this special way, in this miraculous way, then our salvation would not be from God.  God promised us in Genesis 3:15 that our Lord would come from the “seed” of a woman, but this could not happen without the supernatural intervention of God.  Nothing on this earth could have brought about the payment for our sins, only the efforts of God Himself could do this.

Second, Jesus being born of a virgin makes Him fully man, born of Mary, and fully God, conceived by God.  If Jesus were not fully man, He could not have lived our experiences, felt our grief, and suffered the consequences for our sins.  However, if He had not been fully God, he would have been imperfect and not able to atone for our sins.  Prophetically Jesus needed to be fully human, a descendent of Adam, in order to bring about our atonement.

And lastly, Jesus’ humanity through Mary, but His conception through God, made Him free from the inherited sin of Adam. Jesus, because He was God and from God did not inherit the corruption of sin, nor the guilt of sin that rests on all mankind. In Luke 1:35 the angel Gabriel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”  This passage tells us that Jesus was innately holy and was morally pure.  Because Jesus was not born of a human father but rather of God breaks the human line of inherited sin.

I marvel at the love our Heavenly Father.  He loved us so much that He sent His son to pay the price for our sins.  He loved us so much, that He conceived His son as a real human child, without human sin, who could experience the pains of this world.  Jesus thirsted, he wept, he got hungry, and he learned and grew strong.  In every way but carrying sin, Jesus was a man.  He was perfectly man and perfectly God because of the virgin birth.  So as we go into this Christmas season, a season filled with gifts and frivolity, let’s not forget to remember what this season is really all about.  This season brings to memory the beginning of God’s redemptive work and the beginning of our justification through faith in this man, the one true God we know as Jesus!