Pastor Powell's Column

December 2010

The Christmas Gospel

At Christmas we celebrate the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Of all our beloved Christmas carols, few capture the gospel meaning of the virgin birth as profoundly as Philip Brooks’ fourth verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem:

O holy child of Bethlehem,
descend to us we pray,
Cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.

Across nearly forty years of Christmas ministry, I still thrill on the Sunday when our journey through the carols brings us to this stanza. Brooks engages us in contemplating the connection between the virgin birth of Christ and the new birth of a believer.

Certainly both are divine miracles. There’s always some skeptic in the December crowd to remind us that the odds of a virgin birth are zero. Precisely! The action is not odds, but God’s! Only Almighty God can suspend the laws of nature he has created. He does so to mark this birth as unique, this child as the only begotten Son of God.

So, too, it is a miracle when anyone is born again. The new birth cannot be achieved by human efforts at self-reformation. At New Year’s, many promise to break habits and “turn over a new leaf.” But spiritual rebirth is not a new leaf, but a new life, a miraculous gift from God that cannot be traced to any of our human abilities. Not to our intellectual, emotional, spiritual, societal or artistic resources. It is the undeserved, unmerited gift of God’s grace alone.

Both the virgin birth and the new birth are part of God’s plan to deal with sin, as reflected in our carol. “You will call his name Jesus [=savior], for he shall save his people from their sin.” God took on human flesh to live, to die, and to rise again in order to defeat sin and death. That victory is implanted in the person who experiences the new birth. We become alive to righteousness and dead to the old life of sin. The only way out of the trap of sin is this faith relationship that God quickens in the heart.

Holiness is at issue in both births. “The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.’” The gospel also tells us that the new birth is an action of God the Holy Spirit. He is at work at the deepest levels, both to birth, then to bring to maturity the holy character of Jesus within each believer.

Isn’t this the spiritual breakthrough you have been needing in your life? The Good News is that all you need is in Jesus. Turn from sin to faith in Jesus Christ. Trust and follow him as your Savior and Lord. This is God’s call to you in the Christmas Gospel.

(Let God’s Word make this clearer to you. Look up the Bible verses quoted or alluded to above:
Matthew 1:21
Luke 1:35
John 3:5-8
Colossians 2:9
Titus 3:4-7
Hebrews 2:14-15
1 Peter 2:24
Galatians 2:20; 4:19; 5:22-23
Mark 1:14-15
Acts 3:19.

Read these in context and let God speak to your heart.)