The virgin birth of Jesus is
recorded in Matthew and in Luke (Matthew 1:18 -25;
Luke 1:26 -38; 2:1-38), but neither gospel explains its meaning.
The lack of explanation is surprising given that the virgin birth was no
ordinary event. How ought we to understand it if no explanation is given for
it? In Luke’s account of the virgin birth, one verse stands out, however:
Luke 1:35: And the angel
answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy; the
Son of God” (ESV).
Genesis 1:2: The earth was
without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God was hovering [or brooding] over the face of the waters. (ESV)
The Holy Spirit’s
overshadowing of Mary in Luke 1:35 ,
has a parallel in Genesis 1:2 which says that at the creation of the world,
“the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters”. Many OT
scholars note that in the Hebrew text, “hovering over” literally means
“brooding over” (the word “brooding” refers to a bird’s sitting on eggs to
hatch them).
The two parallels between
Luke 1:35 and Genesis 1:2 (namely, Holy Spirit // Spirit of God and
overshadowing //
hovering/brooding) bring out a vital truth:
The overshadowing of Mary by
the Holy Spirit hads to do with the new creation whereas in Genesis, the
Spirit’s brooding over the as yet unformed earth has to do with the “old”
(physical or material) creation.
The overshadowing of Mary
by God’s Spirit indicates that the new creation is primarily a spiritual
creation brought into being by being “born of the Spirit.”
The meaning of the virgin
birth is brought out not only in Jesus’ teaching of being “born of the Spirit”
(John 3:5) but also in Paul’s teaching of the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17;
Galatians 6:15), a term that, like the virgin birth, would be unintelligible if
it were given “out of the blue” without explanation or precedent.
There is no
doubt that the word, “overshadow” (episkiazō) in the account of the virgin
birth points back to the Spirit’s involvement in the Genesis creation (“the
Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,” Genesis 1:2). Here the
word “hovering” (Hebrew rachaph, used elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 32:11)
brings out the idea of “overshadowing”.
The Spirit of God brought
into being a new creation in Mary, replacing a sperm from Adam’s descendants.
In this way Jesus is a descendant of Adam via Mary but also the beginning of a
new creation by the creative power of the Spirit of Yahweh. This would explain
Paul’s teaching of the “new creation” in God's anointed one (2 Corinthians 5:17 ; Galatians 6:15 ;
cf. Revelation 21:5) and of Jesus as “the man of heaven” or “the spiritual
man” (1 Corinthians 15:45 -49).
Jesus came into being by the
creative power of God’s Spirit. Hence believers are, as a result of being in God’s
anointed one, incorporated into the new creation, becoming new persons through
God’s transforming power. Just as Jesus was born of the Spirit at his birth, so
everyone needs to be born of the Spirit, as is stated in the well-known words
to Nicodemus: “You (plural) must be born from above” (John 3:7), and “Unless
one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (3:3); that is, he
cannot inherit eternal life.
What God has accomplished in
Jesus, He intends to reproduce in every human being such that he or she becomes
a new creation or a new creature by being born of the Spirit into a new life
that is lived by the power of God’s indwelling Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians
6:16). God has in view that we grow into a “mature manhood, to the stature of
the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13 ).
In the New Testament, being a
Christian is not just a matter of believing in Jesus or believing that he died
for us, but is crucially a matter of becoming a new person who is like Jesus in
the way he lives and thinks. This is what constitutes true believing or what
Paul calls “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26 ). True faith includes obedience to the Father that
mirrors the way Jesus lived in perfect obedience to Him. In the New Testament,
any claim to faith is spurious if it is not accompanied by wholehearted
obedience.
Chang, Eric H.H.. The Only
Perfect Man: The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ (p. 283).
Edited by Bruce Lyon
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