I am writing this post a couple of days before we celebrate Christmas Day in the US. Christmas means different things to different people. For people of faith, it is the day we celebrate the birth of Christ as our Savior.
A distinctive of the birth of Christ is that He was born of a virgin. The Bible refers to Jesus as the seed of David. But in reality, Jesus had no earthly father.
Isaiah the prophet prophesied of the virgin birth of Christ approximately 700 years before Christ was born. God had sent the prophet to encourage Ahaz, the king of Judah. The king of Israel and the king of Syria had joined together to make war against king Ahaz. Those two kings had vowed to destroy Jerusalem and to replace Ahaz with another king.
God Promises a Sign from Heaven
King Ahaz and the people of Judah were afraid. To encourage King Ahaz to believe that God was with Judah, Isaiah said these words to Ahaz:
Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Isaiah 7:14, KJV
Hence, the sign from heaven was that a virgin would bear a son.
Note that this child would be called Immanuel. This word as we know means God with us. Let’s talk about that for a minute. What happened on that first Christmas was beyond and still is beyond our human comprehension. You see, on that day, God Almighty, God the Creator, God the One and only was literally with us.
Think about how big God is. He is too big for heaven to contain Him. He is everywhere at the same time. But on that first Christmas day, God was with us in the form of a little baby.
No, I don’t mean that when Christ was born that the person of God in heaven ceased to exist. But according to Colossians 2:9, “In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (NASB). Think about that. It means that when Christ was born, He was the embodiment of everything that makes God deity!
Hence, for all practical purposes, when Christ was with us, God was with us.
Now what I just said messes up some people’s theology. They don’t believe in the virgin birth of Christ or the deity of Christ. I can’t begin to understand the mystery of the birth of Christ, but I believe it because I believe the Word of God. I believe that on that first Christmas day that Christ was born of a virgin, that He was the fullness of God in human form, and that He came to save us from our sin.
What This Means for Us
Remember that the birth of a child by a virgin was a sign from heaven that God was with His people. This prophecy was given to King Ahaz who was king of Judah. Jesus came as the Messiah of the Jews. But what does the birth of Christ mean for us non-Jews?
Because Jesus was the fullness of God in human form, He was both human and deity. We sometimes refer to Him as the God-man. He was and is the bridge between God and man. His birth was a sign from heaven that this is the acceptable year of the Lord–for Jews and Gentiles. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NASB).
This is the amazing good news of Christmas. When humanity was lost with no hope in this world, God came to earth and dwelt among us in the person of His Son to be our Savior. For us who believe, that is the true meaning of Christmas.
Copyright © 2021 by Frank King. All rights reserved.