The Astonishing Miracle of the Incarnation

Every December, we return to a story so familiar that we often forget how utterly strange, how breathtakingly disruptive it really is. The birth of Jesus is not merely a charming tale to warm the winter nights. It is the moment the cosmos held its breath.



But to see the miracle, we must ask the right question:

What or where is the miracle? What will be the nature of this son?

Where the Miracle Begins

Luke tells the story with almost disarming simplicity: a young girl, a divine messenger, and a promise that feels too large for the fragile space of human history.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” Gabriel says—the same phrase used at Pentecost, and reminiscent of the Spirit at creation, hovering over the waters. Except now it is not hovering: it is a descent. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The miracle, the power of the Most High—the Holy Spirit is God!—will overshadow you. The implication is of a cloud that will shadow Mary. It evokes the cloud of God’s presence:

• the cloud of Daniel 7,
• the cloud Jesus references in Mark 14:62,
• the cloud of His Transfiguration, and
• the cloud of His Ascension.

It is the unmistakable signature of the Most High.

So far, this story is different from any other divine birth narrative: Zeus, Pharaohs, and their myths. There are no sexual connotations. This is a kind of creation narrative—but on a personal, individual level. Mary will be where God reenacts, in miniature, the creation of humanity. A new Adam will be created, but this is a creation of a new kind of being; the eternal Son will become a human Son, and this union will never end.

This is God creating again.

The incarnation, in these verses, is not primarily a rescue operation. It is an invasion that will bring liberation, because the true King is coming into his rightful realm. The rightful High King is coming, as it were, from below.

And it all hinges on a teenage girl saying:

“Look here I am, the maidservant of Yahweh, let it happen to me just like you said.”

A new creation, not on a cosmic scale, but in the hidden, holy interior of a young woman’s womb.

Martin Luther once pointed out that Christmas contains three great miracles:

1. That God and man are joined in Christ.
2. That a virgin should conceive.
3. That Mary believed the angel.

And of these, Luther said, “the greatest is that a human being believed.”

Mary: Eve Redeemed

In Mary, God reenacts His Genesis project in miniature. Mary is Eve redeemed. Here is a new Eve who obeys the voice of God’s own messenger, and the stage is set for the offspring of Eve to finally defeat the offspring of the serpent.

A new Adam will be formed, but this Adam is different.

Why did God want to become human? It wasn’t plan B. It was always Plan A.

“Let us make human in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.”

(Genesis 1:26)

That is the grand design.

Genesis 2 adds a crucial personal and relational element. God does not leave humans on earth to hash things out on their own. God literally takes things into his own hands and forms human. Then he stands next to human as human takes their first steps into identity and calling as earth-beings who bring the heavens to earth. Human, with Yahweh at their side, names and participates in creating the animals.

This is a family business.

Another way to view this is that the great King invites a little king to rule with him. The great King does not need the little king—but He loves to share His rule, loves to see what the little king will do.

But then came the part where a divine rebel seduces Eve and Adam to “start up business on their own,” independent of Yahweh. That is the beginning of the Fall, which ends in the flood. Humans, exercising their unavoidable rule by themselves instead of with Yahweh, plunge themselves—and the earth—into a kind of abyss.

God Restores Humanity

The entire Old Testament can be viewed as God recovering, for human, with human, human’s rightful place as the bringer of heaven on earth. Israel is the special human population through whom Yahweh God will bring this about, for the sake of all humans. Israel becomes the divine infection of right-rule to reverse the curse, an infection of God’s love where humans once again rule with God in bringing the order of heaven to earth.

There is a catch: the only way back into life would be through death, because the sting of death is sin. Sin—the rebellion baked into human thinking—cannot be reformed or rehabilitated. It can only be stopped by death.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

A rescue that restores humans to their original status requires that sin be trapped and terminated in a human person who dies. But that would leave only a dead human. So this human sin-trap must have God’s own un-die-able life in him. That is, he would die as a human but still be alive because he is God.

This human is two species simultaneously: real God—uncreated, immortal, omniscient, omnipotent, consisting of love—and real human, born in a body of flesh, mortal, limited in knowledge and ability. The Creator takes permanent residence in a body as a creature. This God-Human brings a new kind of life—the un-die-able life of God grafted permanently into human life.

The model for such a person is the Son of Man figure in Daniel: a human who is also God, who fights dark powers, defeats them, and takes his place beside the Ancient of Days.

The Yes That Changed History

But all of this could only happen when a human woman would agree to become the mother of this amazing, never-before-happened human. This God-Man would need to be conceived in her womb, born through her body, nursed at her breasts, bounced on her knee, educated by her voice and words, and released into an earth that would hate him and in the end kill him so that he could restore human, bring human back to his side and let human be once again, but in a whole new way, the little kings ruling next to the great king.

That’s what’s going on in these few words and phrases as Mary says:

“Yes. Do it. Go for it.”

Sin, death, and the devil are defeated at least in part because a little Jewish teenage girl trusted and obeyed God. She had no real idea what would happen but it would not be long before she found out.

This is what we celebrate at Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

- Dr. Bill Griffin