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The Gospel of the Messiah
according to Luke |
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Chapter 1:34-35
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34Mary said to the
angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you; and for that
reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of
God.
Mary's question to Gabriel is very pragmatic
since everyone would assume that if a woman is
to have a son she would first have to have
sexual relations with a man. Since she was only
betrothed to Joseph and not fully married, Mary
was a virgin and understandably couldn't
comprehend how she would be able to become
pregnant. Gabriel gave her the answer in verse
35, an answer which should illuminate our
understanding of the nature of Jesus. In some
way, God, through His divine presence, referred
to here in parallel fashion as the Holy Spirit
and as the power of the Most High, would create
in Mary a new man. For that very reason, the
child that was to be produced would be called
the son of God. Jesus is the son of God because
Jesus was created not through the union of a man
and woman but because of an act of sovereign
creation by God in Mary. While the NASB
correctly shows the causal relationship between
the work of the Spirit and Jesus’ status as son
of God, it leaves out the word "begotten."
Young's Literal Translation translates verse 35
this way:
"...the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee,
therefore also the holy-begotten thing shall be
called Son of God."
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The word "begotten" means to bring something
into existence. If we truly believe that
Scripture is a revelation of truth then we have to
conclude that Jesus was brought into existence.
If Jesus actually pre-existed his birth, then
the writers of Scripture should have used
different language to explain to us that what
happened in Mary was not a creative act but a
sort of transition. The miracle here was not
that a pre-existing person came into the womb of
Mary, something more akin to pagan mythology,
but rather that God's Holy Spirit came upon Mary
and God created in her a new person without the
agency of a sexual union. Amazingly, this is a
direct fulfillment of 2 Samuel 7:14 and Psalm
2:7, which predicted that God would bring an
ultimate son of David into existence.
The child that was brought into existence was to
be holy, which refers to Jesus being set apart
as the only one to have never sinned. The one
produced in Mary was different from all other
people that have been born because he was not
born with a sinful inclination, an inclination
that is a result of being a natural son of Adam.
Through his mother, Jesus is a part of the
humanity that descends from Adam (cf. Galatians
4:4) but since his Father is God, Jesus was born
with a free will, much like the freedom to obey
or sin Adam enjoyed before the fall. In
Christian circles, there is a need to make Jesus
into more than a man but this is because
Christians unknowingly think man is evil. The
Bible does not teach that man himself is evil
but rather man's choice to disobey God is evil.
Adam was created in God's image, which refers to
the ability to reflect God's character,
specifically in the area of being a benevolent
ruler. Adam, though he was a son of God (cf.
Luke 3:38), distorted the image he was intended
to bear through sin. Jesus, on the other hand,
never sinned and therefore "...he is the
radiance of His glory and the exact
representation of His nature..." (Hebrews 1:3)
and "...he is the image of the invisible God..."
(Colossians 1:15). Jesus is God's supreme human
representative and we are to be like him. |
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