Thursday, December 16, 2021

It is Impossible!

 

[Photo of sunshine through the clouds]


Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.
—Luke 1:28

Many years ago, an older man in my church at that time engaged me in a conversation. One of the things he wanted to tell me went something like this:

“You see, Dean, I’m a Christian, but there are certain things in the Bible that I just don’t believe. The virgin birth, for example. I just don't believe it. It's impossible!”

My dear friend, for whom I hold deep respect, has passed from this earth several years ago. I wonder if he continues to doubt. At the time of our conversation, he didn’t understand that, without the virgin birth, Jesus cannot be “fully God and fully man.” It’s a foundational truth of Christianity. The virgin birth simply cannot be an optional belief.

Of course, I’m talking about the event Dr. Luke records in Luke 1:26-35:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.

But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

What more can I say? Either you believe what the Bible describes, or you don’t. But understand this: without the truth of what Dr.Luke records, Jesus cannot be “God the Son.” So, the entirety of Christianity rests on the truth of these few words.

 

Based on a blog originally posted on Friday, December 11, 2015

Copyright © 2021 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.