The Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and said, “Take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:20-21
In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see
the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
John 3:3
His Birth In History. Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of history; He came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being He is a Being who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is not man becoming God, but God Incarnate, God coming into human flesh, coming into it from outside. His life is the Highest and the Holiest entering in at the Lowliest door. Our Lord’s birth was an advent, a coming.
His Birth In Me. Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a “Bethlehem” for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. “You must be born again.” This is not a command, it is a foundational fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.
God manifest in the flesh – that is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the Redemption. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
