“Born of the Virgin Mary”
Every time you say, “born of the Virgin Mary” in the Apostle’s Creed, words that can easily flow from the lips, do you give pause and truly marvel at that statement? Jesus being born of a virgin is miraculous enough, but being born at all even more so! God the Son, born! The One eternally being Begotten of the Father is conceived by God the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and is BORN. God born! The only greater moments in history that literally shook creation itself and caused heaven to marvel was when God made flesh Jesus died on the cross and then rose from the tomb.
We find ourselves in the Advent season, looking forward to celebrating God’s incredible gift to us of sending His only Begotten Son into our very flesh to be our substitute – the One Who would fulfill the Law we could never follow, and pay the Life we could never offer to remove the debt of our sinfulness.
Now, I know that I’ve mentioned the following legend that Martin Luther speaks of in one of his sermons, but I can’t help but share it once again:
“We read that once upon a time a dunce and dolt happened to be standing in church while people were singing the words: et homo factus est (and He was made man). He did not take his cap off, bow his knees, or accord the word honor; but he stood there like a stick, though the entire multitude of the people present had knelt down while these words were being sung in the Patrem [the Nicene Creed] and offered a devout prayer.
Then the devil stepped up to the man, slapped his mouth so hard that he saw stars, cursed him terribly, and said: May the infernal fires consume you, you coarse fool! If God had assumed my nature and become an angel such as I was, and people sang: God has become an angel, I would bow not only my knees to the ground but my whole body, nay, ten ells deep I would crawl into the ground. But you wretched man stand there like a stick or stone; you hear that God did not become an angel but a man like you, and it's all the same to you.... Now whether this happened or did not happen is neither here nor there. At any rate it is in accordance with our faith that the holy fathers wanted to advise young people with an example such as this how great and unspeakable a thing it is that the true Son of God became man. They wanted us to open our eyes and consider these words well.”
My family in Christ, God did not become an angel to save angels, but became man. He became like you to save you. If God had become an angel to save those who had rejected Him, they would have had hope. They would have had a Promise to hold onto and believe unto salvation. Perhaps even the devil would have been awestruck and humbled by that, as the legend above suggests. But there is no promise, no such hope for the devil and the rebellious angels. The angels that rejected their Creator are lost forever. Hell was created for them. If God had not become man, you would have had no hope as well, but only eternal suffering and condemnation alongside the devil and his angels.
But we know that in the person of Jesus, God has become like us so that we can once again be made like Him and live with Him, as we were designed. How humbled and awe struck we should be at this truth! God enable us these Advent and Christmas seasons to truly marvel at His love for us – that we indeed marvel at Emmanuel, that God is with us in the flesh that we can be with Him for eternity. God grant that we NEVER take this miraculous and most incredible truth for granted.
Marvel now, O heaven and earth, That the Lord chose such a birth
Pastor
