The month of December is always an exciting time. Merchants are displaying their wares in hopes to finish the year on the profit side of the ledger. It is a time of families planning and participating in the celebrations that the season brings. Throughout the world religious observances will be held. A passage in Isaiah brings to mind the reason for the season … “for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isa 9:6a KJV). What a remarkable prophecy given some seven hundred years before it came to pass.

Isaiah had the privilege of prophetically seeing the entire panorama of God becoming flesh, going to the Cross and finally establishing His kingdom on earth. It would begin with the incarnation … “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 KJV). John would write in his gospel the witness of another John, the forerunner of Messiah … “This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me” (John 1:15 KJV). This was a declaration of the Divine Plan, designed in eternity past, before the creation of the worlds of a Savior. The all-knowing God would enter the human race in time to redeem fallen humanity because of sin. 

This union of God and man in one Person and that forever, was only revealed in Scripture. It would require both a unique pregnancy birth. This uniting of God and man is called theologically, the hypostatic union. God’s plan demanded a supernatural act whereby God could become a man, and yet remain truly God. It would require that the sin nature passed through the male in conception be bypassed, so that the One born would be without sin. Only born in a state of sinlessness and free of personal sins, could the God-Man go to the Cross, bear the sins of every individual and restore man’s relationship with God.

The opening phrases of John’s gospel staggers the imagination of the human mind and though volumes have been written to expound on the text, it remains an inscrutable Truth. John wrote … 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2 KJV). The human mind is incapable of fathoming eternity past, where time does not exist, and a God who has no beginning. Nevertheless, that Truth becomes the basis for our faith … “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9 KJV).

The Apostle John declared the result of believing by faith – possessing the gift of salvation. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13 KJV). 

During Jesus’ ministry, a teacher of the Law named Nicodemus inquired … “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born” (John 3:4 KJV)? Though alive physically and honored by the people of his day, Nicodemus was spiritually dead. He like all men needed a Savior. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:5-7 KJV). Physical birth would not qualify him as a child of God, a spiritual birth was necessary. 

Harry Martinez, a resident of Albany, is a retired minister who served a nondenominational congregation in Florida. His weekly column appears in several South Georgia newspapers.