Jesus Birth is No More Miraculous than Mine

"I have still less trouble in believing in the miracle of the virgin birth because for me to become a son of God is a human impossibility; this event, this miracle must be repeated in my life if it is to be at all! To be a Christian is not to subscribe to some code of ethics. It is certainly not to subscribe to the law of Moses. It is not to have one's name on a church roll. Is it not to take Jesus as my example and to seek to answer every day the question, What would Jesus do in these circumstances? That is not being a Christian.

Being a Christian is to be a new creation in Christ Jesus. It is to be born again. It is a miracle as great as the virgin birth of our Lord and Savior. If Mary in utter skepticism says, "How can this be?" – that is, the thing is biologically impossible; it can never be – it is equally true that for me, a sinner, to be made a child of God, for me in all my human depravity to have the nature of God Himself imparted to me so that at last, when His work is finished, I shall be holy as He is holy, lovable as He is lovable, beautiful as God is beautiful, is a miracle! Only the omnipotence, the infinite power of God can bring this about. "How shall this thing be?" Gabriel's answer to Mary was, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee"; therefore the child to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God."

The House of Christmas, p. 42
H. Harold Kent

So it was published in 1964. A few thoughts.

30 years later, give or take, the WWJD craze took off among Christian youth groups. Is there merit in reminding ourselves what Jesus would do in any given situation? Sure. It's just not the point. If you could do what Jesus could do with any reliability whatsoever you wouldn't have needed Jesus to begin with. We love to focus on what we can do for God; we fail, almost always, to realize that for us to do anything for God is a miracle in and of itself. It requires a complete transformation of our soul, a complete renewal of our old selves. We are made as new. Sinners made holy. It's a miracle, and we didn't do anything to deserve it, earn it, or make it happen.

I read a recent philosophical statement regarding the existence of God and the chief proof of the article was the experience of those who believe. Part of me felt like this was shaky proof; to be sure, our experiences or what we perceive to be true can lead us astray. On the other hand, one's own experience is undeniable; it is irrefutable; this happened, and I know it happened. So it is with the Christian faith. The transformation is so great and so undeniable that we can only say, "this is true. I believe."

Perhaps it's this low view of our own salvation–in essence, that we don't think it required that much to make it happen–that makes us minimize the true nature of the Gospel. I think it's the reason that the Gospel, the good news, doesn't take root as the life-giving message that it truly is. We're still hanging on to the old mentality that tells us that surely there is something we did to deserve whatever has transpired in our lives. Surely, belief was just the next step on the journey. Surely, there must be an explanation, and it must have something to do with me.

There is an explanation, of course, and it's the same one given to Mary. The difference is that Mary knew the thing was impossible, and therefore must have nothing to do with her. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you", was the angels' response. This thing is not of your doing. It's of God's.

That's how you know it's legit.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love

Annual "Christian" events are tough when you are a preacher. Christmas, Easter, Good Friday...everyone knows what you are going to preach on.

I remember one Easter Sunday back when I was a kid when the Pastor preached on something from the Heidelberg Catechism. My mom was ticked. Jesus rises to life and we open the dead catechism.

In any event, it also means that I spend more time thinking about the events themselves. What is fresh to me this year? What is new that I can share?

Our advent series in 2014 is called "the Canvas". The idea is that our lives are a canvas upon which and through which God is going to paint the story of salvation. He is going to use our very lives to demonstrate to the world what life in his Kingdom looks like; what faith looks like. I'm beginning to notice a theme as I consider the four topics of advent–hope, peace, joy, and love–and it's not necessarily an encouraging one. The theme that these traits have in common is that they require a corollary to truly be seen.

That is, if God's going to paint a picture of Hope on the canvas of your life, he's almost always going to do it by walking you through a period that would otherwise be hopeless. You have to need something or desire something to have hope. And it can't be something that is easily attainable. It's almost always something that is out of reach. "Who hopes for what he already has?", asks Paul in Romans 8. If you already had it, it wouldn't be hope. Which means that if Hope is going to be painted on your canvas, it's probably going to require that other things are stripped away. Most of that stripped-away-stuff is related to false hope; it's the stuff that might fool us into believing that something else can save us. Our money, our relationships, our comfort, our health, or whatever. When all of that is gone, why does the Christian still have hope? Because our hope is not in the temporary or the fading, but in the unchanging and unfading and unfailing God of the universe. Hope usually requires calamity if it is to be clearly seen.

Peace requires turmoil.

Joy requires trial.

Love requires the unloveable; it's seen most clearly when we love our enemies.

But then salvation requires a baby and forgiveness requires a cross and life requires death.

The Lion Aslan told Lucy and Susan that when a willing victim took on the death of another, the stone table would be cracked (the law) and death itself would begin to work backwards. I guess that's our story now. Everything is being reversed. The curse is being re-written into blessing.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love share another common bond, though. When you really have them, you wouldn't trade them for all that you have lost. Calamity, turmoil, trial, enemies. They are worth enduring if in the end you have Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. We'd love to have each of them without their corollary, of course, and someday we will (with the exception of hope! Someday, our hope will be fulfilled and will be no more.) Until the day we have perfect Peace, Joy, and Love, however, more often than not the way they will become evident in our lives is when they are held up against their alternative. The Christian's Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, are all more powerful than the forces that work against them, because they are rooted in the goodness of God himself.

That's the promise of the good news.