PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: ”BECOMING A COMPLETE MAN-WHILE REMAINING GENUINELY GOD”.
By: Ron Woodrum
In July of 1978, a little girl named Louise Brown was born in England. She was born 5 pounds and 12 ounces. She was a tiny baby. But she came into the world as a most unusual baby. Louise Brown’s birth was truly extraordinary because she was the first child ever born who was conceived out the human body, Little Louise Brown was the first “test-tube baby.” Since then, many other children have been conceived by “in vitro” fertilization. It is amazing-unthinkable just a few years ago-but it is not miraculous. Conception occurs by a male seed fertilizing a female egg. Birth occurs normally. The only difference is the place of conception. But 2,000 years ago, at the first Christmas, Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, and became the incarnate Son of God via the Grand Miracle of the Virgin Birth.
Since that time there have been many attempts to discredit the reality of this important truth. First it was explained away as Christian mythologizing the birth of Jesus. Greek mythology taught that Dionysius, the god of wine, was born of his human mother, Semele, and the god Zeus. In ancient Assyrian mythology, Semiramis, wife of Nimrod, gave birth to Tammuz, who was supposedly conceived by a sunbeam. That leged was absorbed into Egyptian mythology, with the names changed to Isis and Osiris. In India it is Isi and Iswara. In China this myth was known at Shing Moo-with artwork eerily similar, if you did not know the source, of a picture of Mary and Jesus. In Phonecia it was Ashtoreth and Baal. There is even one legend about Buddha that claims he was miraculously conceived when an elephant entered his mother’s belly. Ten months later Buddha was born. Even Olympia, the mother of Alexander the Great, asserted he was conceived by the gods. Some scholars want to dismiss the Virgin Birth of Christ as just another in a long line of legends. But all the bizarre myths of human religions stand in stark contrast to the simple reality of Jesus’ conception, and more than that, they are myth, Jesus’ birth was rooted in history!
Then again, scientists today are experimenting with what they call partheno-genesis. Parthenos-means “virgin”. Genesis means “birth, or beginning”. Parthogenesis is the science of the virgin birth. Their efforts in the laboratory have revealed that in some cases parthogenetic life can be generated in some animals. Among honeybees unfertilized eggs develop naturally into drones. Artificial parthenogenesis has been used to produce silkworms since 1888. Many forms of invertebrates and plants may be reproduced fairly easily through parthenogenesis. In recent years frogs and rabbits have been reproduced by parthenogenesis in laborotory experiments. The results of all of these experiments fall short of genuine virgin births. The frog births are of only female frogs genetically identical to the mother who laid the eggs. All attempts on the human level have proved impossible!
But in the face of modern science Jesus’ conception and virgin birth remains unique. Science can never explain how a virgin, a woman who had never had a sexual relationship with a man, could give birth to a male child. It was a miracle of God, the greatest miracle of conception the world has ever known. This miracle was called by C.S. Lewis “the central miracle of Christianity”. He went on to say, “every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this!”. Merrill C. Tenney called it “the stupendous miracle of the Incarnation”. Gene Getz affirmed this truth as “the miracle by which Jesus became a complete man while remaining genuinely God”. Kenneth Gangel places this miracle beside the miracle of creation. He asserts that “in the miracle of creation, God made man. In the miracle of the Incarnation, He gave man the God-man”. Erich Sauer, In Triumph of the Crucified, explained the Virgin Birth/Incarnation this way-“Leaving the free, unconditioned, world-ruling absoluteness of the divine form, the Son entered the limits of time and space of the creature!” But as we celebrate this we must first and foremost remember this is not a myth. His birth was not an experiment. It was a reality! He really was born. Born after a miraculous conception. Born in a purely human birth. But the product was the divine-human God-man-Jesus.
In the movie Second Hand Lions, Two Old Curmudgeons, Hub and Garth assume the care of Hub’s ten-year old nephew, Walter, after his mother abandons him. The two men are at first reluctant hosts, especially Uncle Hub. He begrudges Walter the little food he eats, the small space he takes up. The two old men live in a dilapidated farmhouse, the fields roundabout gone to seed, and spend most days sitting on their tumbledown porch, shotguns straddling their laps, nursing a giant grudge against the world, and taking potshots at any traveling salesmen foolhardy enough to venture near. They want to be left alone, to die quietly in their misery. They don’t care about nothing. But the boy’s presence works a miracle: their withered hearts grow young again, and learn to love again. They start to hunger for more. They start to spend their enormous fortune on everything from garden seeds and garden tools, to a catapult that flings plates skyward for shooting practice, to a Red Baron-style airplance, to a second-hand lion, a mangy old feline who just wants, like they did, to finish her days in undisturbed idleness. As the old men’s hearts awaken, they tell Walter, slowly, their story. Uncle Hub was once a swashbuckling adventurer, a poet-warrior, and Garth was his side-kick. Together, they lived an enchanted, dangerous life, routing armies, plundering treasures, rescuing a damsel in distress. Together, they outwitted a cunning and noble enemy, an Arab sheik, Uncle Hub’s rival for the love of his beautiful Jasmine. Walter is never sure whether to believe these stories. He wants to but they are so out-sized and exotic…these two arthritic cranky old men bear little resemblance to the legendary heroes they describe in their stories! But to tell stories is to re-inhabit them. These two old men, in their closing years become every bit as adventurous and reckless as they had been. They end up dying in their nineties, full of days, joyriding their plane with such reckless abandon they crash it upside down into the barn door. They punch that door so clean and hard that they cookie cut a hole, perfectly plane-shaped, right through it.
In the last scene of the movie, Walter, now grown, comes to survey the scene of their death. A helicopter rises over the trees and comes down beside him. A handsome young man, around his age, steps out. Walter realizes it is the grandson of Hub’s rival, the sheik. Both men grew up hearing fantastic tales of sword fights and narrow escapes and buried treasures, and both wondered if the tales were true. The Sheik’s grandson looks at the farm, the barn, the hole where the plane hit. “So”, he says astonished, “It’s true after all. They really lived!” Walter smiles. He responds, “Yes. They really lived!” That is my hope for these messages on the Christmas story. When we get through may the Spirit of God convince you so thoroughly you will be saying-“They lived. They really lived!” The Virgin Mary. The Miraculously conceived Jesus. The Shepherds. The Wise men. Herod. They lived. They really lived. Because He lived, and lives, we can and will live too!