Who God is

107. The Virgin Birth (Part 2)

The incarnation of God! Or to put it another way, God becoming man!

How could that be?

John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

E.W. Kenyon, in Chapter 7 of his book “The Father and His Family,” covers the incarnation of God through Jesus in a very interesting manner. This quote is copyrighted material used by permission only from Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society.

The incarnation or the humanity and deity of Jesus

THE question of the Humanity and Deity of Jesus was contested more bitterly during the early days of Christianity than almost any other question.

It has been the battleground of speculators, meta-physicians, philosophers, and theologians. Jesus puzzles them.

To the natural mind He is a mystery no man has ever produced such startling results in the human.

He changed liars to truth-tellers, lazy men to workers, thieves to honest men, caused corrupt society to become clean, wholesome, and safe.

In China today thousands of the Literati, Mandarins, principals of academics and Colleges, political leaders, officers in the army, and heads of the local governments are turning to Jesus Christ, and the miracle is that it changes their lives, their hearts.

There is something in this man Jesus that changes one's nature the moment one takes Him as his Savior and crowns Him Lord.

What is it? The writer knows what it is by experience. Most of the readers likely know what it is.

Now what is there about this man Jesus that makes Him and every man who embraces Him so different? You may read Shakespeare, and it does not change your nature.

You may study the works of any man, and your nature will not be changed by it, but you cannot embrace Jesus as your Savior without having a miracle performed in your spirit.

Why is this?

It lies in the fact that Jesus was different.

He was not generated after the common laws of nature.

John says, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth" (or reality).

The Incarnation is the most striking miracle of creation; yet from Heaven's point of view and man's need it is inevitable.

AN INCARNATION FACT

Could the Son of God have been Incarnate if His body had been conceived by natural generation?

Would it have been possible for God to have come into a child born of natural generation and dwell in the child and be Incarnate?

We cannot see how this is possible, for Paul tells us that "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and that "death (spiritual) has entered into all men for that all sinned."

If Jesus had been born of natural generation and God had come into Him, He would have been a fallen spirit, a being subject to the Devil with God dwelling in Him; that would not be an Incarnation.

This would utterly destroy the idea of a perfect Incarnation of God. The seed must be of divine origin instead of human.

Man is subject to the Devil; his seed only produces a fallen man.

The Incarnate One could not he a subject neither of death nor of the Devil; so we believe that Jesus during His earthly walk was not a subject of death, neither was He a subject of Satan.

Death had no dominion over Him until the sins of the world had been laid upon Him on the Cross, and not till then did He become a mortal being.

Jesus was not immortal, but He was a perfect human as Adam was a perfect human before the Fall.

If God could have changed the nature of a child after birth so that He could be Incarnate in the child, He could as well have changed the nature of the whole human race in the same way,

But to do this would have been an injustice to Satan and unfair injustice to Himself, because the sin problem had not yet been settled and the penalty of man’s transgression had not been paid.

The Redeemer must be one, over whom Satan had no legal claims or authority, and this could only come by a Redeemer's being conceived and born as was the Babe of Bethlehem. The teaching of Incarnation is not out of harmony with human desire or tradition. All tribes and peoples have believed it in some form.

The Universal Man has craved Incarnation.

This is proved by man's drinking blood and by cannibalism, by the naming of his kings after the titles of his deities, and by the universal reverence of the thing offered on the altars of the gods.

Incarnation is supernatural, but all peoples believe in the supernatural. Education cannot eliminate man's fundamental yearning for and belief in the supernatural.

Incarnation is God's answer to the cry of the Universal Man for a visit of Deity to the earth and for a union with Deity.

Incarnation means that Deity has become united with humanity in an individual. The Incarnation is the only solution of the human problem.

Since the fall of man the human has steadily been sinking lower and lower intellectually, morally, and spiritually, and the only hope is for Deity's union with humanity to bring man back to his lost estate.

The Incarnation should be desired by every sane man when he understands it, for it offers to humanity a hope, and without it man is hopeless.

Every false religion that deny the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth has attempted to provide a theory of universal Incarnation in order to stimulate to a higher moral and spiritual life.

Theosophy tries to make us believe that all men have the nature of Deity.

The same thing is held by practically all our modern liberal theological teachers and preachers! That the so-called "Spark of Divinity" dwells in all men, that the New Birth is simply the awakening, the blowing-into a flame, of this spark of Divinity.

If man had a spark of Deity or any part of Deity abiding in him, then man was already God Incarnate.

We know that this theory is fallacious, for humanity has experimentally proven it false. The entire New Testament contradicts it.

If we accept any of the Bible, we must accept it all.

The Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth is no more difficult to believe nor to understand than the creation of the first man or the birth of child. If God is Almighty, He had power to beget a child in the womb the Virgin Mary.

If Jesus was Incarnate, Man and God can become united; God can dwell in these human bodies of ours; God can impart His own life and nature to our spirits, and we may have God's life in these human bodies.

If Jesus was Incarnate, then immortality is a fact.

If we do receive Eternal Life for our spirits, then we have positive assurance that these bodies will become Immortal at the return of Lord Jesus.

If the Incarnation is a fact, Christianity is supernatural.

Every man who has been "born again" is an Incarnation, and Christianity is a miracle. The believer is as much an Incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot conceive of any man's desiring to doubt the Incarnation, as it offers the only solution of life's mystery; it gives the reason for man's being; it makes life with its burdens, sorrows, and grief which culminate in death tolerable; it throws light upon this human problem that can come from no other source.

The Incarnation has been the craving of the Universal Man, and Jesus of Nazareth was Incarnate, the universal cry has found its answer in Christianity.

The Incarnation is the basic miracle of Christianity.

It proves the Pre-existence of Christ and is the foundation and reason for all subsequent miraculous manifestations of divine power. Man's condition demands an Incarnation, because he is spiritually dead and without an approach to God.

The Incarnation of Deity with humanity will provide a Substitute of Deity and humanity united on such a ground that the Incarnate One can stand as man's mediator, being equal with God on the one hand and united with man on the other; He can bring the two together.

Again, being Deity and humanity united, He can assume the obligations of human treason, satisfy the claims of justice, and thereby bridge the chasm between God and man.

Gen. 3:15 is God's first promise of Incarnation. It is given in His conversation with Satan just after the Fall. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel."

Let us notice four remarkable promises or statements in this sentence. First, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman," that is, there will be enmity between Satan and the woman.

This is proved by woman's history; she has been the special object of Satanic hatred and malice in all ages; she has borne the brunt of the Fall; she has been the burden bearer among all peoples; she has been bought and sold as common chattel.

In India today she is not worth as much as a cow in the open market; only where Christianity has reached the hearts of a country has woman ever received any treatment that would lift her above the brute creation.

She is unwanted at birth, the plaything of man's passions, the neglected, the outcast, the sufferer, and in Christian countries she is the heir of our diseases and the victim of the divorce court.

Doctors tell us that 95 per cent of all the hospital cases are of the women; 22 per cent of the married women of this country suffer on account of their husband' having sowed "wild oats"; and "sowing wild oats" means sowing our manhood for Satan's reaping. "I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed", Satan's seed is the unregenerate human race; woman's seed is Christ.

Christ was hunted from his babyhood by Satan's seed until finally they nailed Him to the Cross, and from the Resurrection of Jesus until this day, the Church has been the subject of the bitterest persecutions and enmity of the world.

Second, I want you to notice that remarkable term, "the woman."

We know that woman has no seed; the seed is of the man; therefore what can this mean?

It is a Prophecy that woman shall give birth to a child independent of natural generation, that it shall be called the "seed of woman. "

This is not a Hebraism for the term does not occur anywhere else throughout the entire Hebrew Scriptures.

This is a direct statement of fact. That there shall be a "seed of' Woman," and that seed, Paul tells us, is "The Christ."

"And He shall bruise thy head," that is the head of Satan.

In all Oriental languages, "bruising the head" means breaking the Lordship of a ruler.

Satan has just come into his Dominion; he has the Dominion that God had given to man, and he is going to exercise this Dominion without any interruption until this wonderful Seed of woman comes, who is going to break his Lordship.

This is a remarkable Prophecy, and how clearly it found fulfillment: first, in Jesus' bitter persecution which finds its culmination in His death on the Cross, and then in the persecution of the Church which is the Body of Christ, and which is carrying out the will of Christ on the earth.

The long ages of persecution of the Church by the seed of Satan is today merely a matter of history.

"His heel, " is the Church in its earth walk.

In the 20th verse of the same chapter, "The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living."

The word Eve in the Hebrew is "Hawah," which literally means the living one, or the mother of the life-giver.

Here God tells man that his wife shall be the mother of life, or the mother of "the life-giving One," our Christ.

BORN OF A VIRGIN

Isaiah 7:13-14, "And he said, Hear, ye now, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye will weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."

This child is going to be born of the House of David, and "the Lord Himself will give you a sign." God Himself will show you a miracle, a wonder. Something out of the ordinary is going to take place, and we say, "What is it?" And he says, "the virgin," as though He had marked her out, "shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be Immanuel." It is a son that a Virgin is going to give birth to in a supernatural way, and she is going to call His name Immanuel, God with us, or Incarnation.

Take this in connection with Luke 1:31-35, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his Kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also the holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." This child you notice is conceived of the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural birth.

The prophet Isaiah had looked down through the ages and had marked out Mary, the daughter of Heli of the family of David. She was a cousin of Joseph who was also of the family of David; and so the prophet exclaimed, "O house of David, is it a small thing that you weary me; I will show you a sign." He is marking out this daughter of David, who is going to give birth to that wonderful being in a manger cradle in Bethlehem 750 years later.

Jer. 31:22, God declares, "A woman shall encompass a man, " more literally, "A woman shall encompass a man-child."

This Incarnate One could not be born of natural generation, because man is a fallen being and his seed is subject to Satan.

The seed must be of one who is not a subject of Satan, and so this wonderful being must be conceived of the Holy Spirit, and the womb of the Virgin is to be simply the receptacle of that Holy thing until the day it is brought forth.

Isaiah 42:6 says, "I Jehovah have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will form thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles."

Adam was created; the rest of the human race were generated by natural processes, but this child that is going to be born, is to be "formed" by a special act of Divine power.

Paul speaks of His birth in the following words, Phil. 2:6-8, "Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross."

Notice these terms: He had existed always in the form of God, but now He empties Himself and takes the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man.

All these suggest a separate and distinct operation of God, different from natural generation.

Here is a being with whom God performs a miracle: first by taking Him out of the Godhead or from the Godhead in Heaven and placing Him in the womb of a Virgin to be unioned with flesh by a unique conception.

Again Paul says, "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice thou wouldest not, but a body didst thou prepare for me."

God prepared a body, a special body, for this being called the Son of God.

PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST

Psalm 107:20 declares, "He sendeth his word, and healeth them, and delivereth them from their destructions"; and John says (1:14) that "The Word (the Eternal Logos, the expression of God) became flesh and tabernacled with us."

Paul tells us in I Timothy 3:16 that God "was manifest in the flesh."

Romans 8:3 says that "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh."

Galatians 4:4-5, "But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law."

The Incarnation presupposes that this being who became Incarnate had an existence previous to His coming to the earth.

Seventeen times in the Gospel of John, it is declared that Jesus was sent forth from the Father and came into the earth, and that He again left the earth and went unto the Father.

The entire Gospel of John is based upon the fact that Jesus had a previous existence with the Father, and that while He was walking the earth He remembered His experiences in the other world, and spoke to the Father of these experiences, and also of when He would go back and take up again life with the Father: John 3:16; 8:42; 13:3; 16:28, 30; 17:3-8.

Micah 5:2 is a remarkable prophetic utterance of the pre-existence of Jesus, and His coming to earth: "Out of thee, Judah, shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting."

Here there is one going to be born of the family of Judah to be a ruler in Israel, and His goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

He has traveled up and down through the eternities, and has left His foot-prints on the ages.

From these Scriptures, both prophecy and fulfillment, with the wonderful story of Jesus, the Incarnation seems a very simple and reasonable thing.

We know the reason for the Incarnation: Man is spiritually dead and a servant of Satan, and no man by natural generation could redeem him.

The Incarnation is absolutely necessary, because humanity must be delivered by a human, and any human born of natural generation must be under Satan's dominion.

This quote is copyrighted material used by permission only from Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society.

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