“…Conceived by the Holy Spirit”

A Sermon Based Upon Galatians 4: 4-7

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

January 29^st, 2017, Series: Apostles Creed 5/15)

Now long ago, a High School classmate of mine, now living and working in a New Orleans Psychiatric Hospital, posted on Facebook his response to the increasing violence in America.   His post stated that our greatest enemy is ‘within ourselves’.   When I read his words, I immediately commented this is, “sad, but true.”   Someone else commented that the violence in the world would be stopped if we got rid of religion, because religion is ‘the original us versus them dynamic’.

It is most obvious, that ‘religion’, of any kind, is becoming less and less respected, and even made a ‘scapegoat’ because it is less and less understood.  Some of this, of course, is because of what a few are doing in the name of religion.  Also, it is because in an increasingly secular world, the ‘spiritual’ side of is being less and less appreciated.

In today’s section of the Apostle’s Creed, we come to the core Christian belief, which speaks of Jesus as being ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary….’    We should not be surprised that a secular, scientific, technologically oriented world has great difficulty accepting such pre-scientific, spiritually focused language.  Most of us in churches, accept such a belief ‘by faith’ because we know ‘with God all things are possible’.  But an increasingly number of people, and even some of the faithful, struggle to understand how such a unique, exceptional, one-time event, even if it is was true, could have any real meaning for us today.

Beyond question, the ‘virginal conception’ as it should be properly named, resides at the core of the gospel story, especially noted at Christmas time.   This mystery we call Incarnation is the message that in Jesus Christ, ‘the word’ whom John names as God, ‘became flesh, and lived among us’ (John 1:19).   While it is conceivable and possible that God could have entered human history some other way, it is inconceivable that you can have the gospel we have, without Jesus being ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary.’   This is the only gospel we have and it is the true story because there is no ‘good news’ in this ‘bad news’ world, that lives under the ‘curse of the law’ (Gal. 3:13) and in ‘captivity to the law of sin’ (Rom 7:23) without God’s intervening and overruling truth, grace, and love.  

HOPELESS:  BORN UNDER THE LAW…TO REDEEM (v.4-5a)

Writing about the gospel we do have, the apostle Paul explained to the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

 5 in order to redeem us…”  (Gal. 4:4-5 NRS).   Obviously, here nor elsewhere, does the greatest apostle ever specifically name the ‘virginal conception,’ but he asserts and assumes its meaning, saying ‘God sent his Son, born of a woman’ pointing direct to God’s saving initiative.    It is this divine initiative that Matthew affirms, even when he runs the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, whom he names as ‘the husband of Mary’ (Matt. 1.16) but not Jesus’ earthly father, because he explained, Joseph ‘had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son’ (Matt. 1.25).  

How could a ‘Son’ be born to a woman, who only carries a female Y chromosome, without the male X chromosome, which only a man carries?   This is the question an advanced scientific, world still asks.  This fact about our natural world has caused some Christians to struggle and even to lose faith in this ‘conception’ by the Holy Spirit.   Science-minded Christians have responded with the biology of ‘parthenogenesis’ where lower life-forms are given life without the normal process of fertilization.    But it is important, for all Christians to be reminded that a ‘one-time-in-history’ event cannot be put into a ‘test-tube’ and proven through scientific inquiry—then or now.   In fact, what is most important about the ‘virgin birth’ is that it can’t be conceived any other way other than as a miraculous, unique, intervening act of God.  If you can’t conceive of a God who could do this, as J.B. Philips once said, “Your God is Too Small”.

It is exactly unique ‘act of God’ Paul meant when he said “God sent his Son...born under the law in order the redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4.4-5a).  Paul’s implies that without God’s unique, saving initiative, there is no hope of redemption.   Without God’s intervention, humanity remains hapless and hopeless, living ‘under the curse of the law’ and ‘in captivity to the law of sin’.   But the moment Jesus was conceived through ‘the Holy Spirit’ by ‘the power of the Most High’ (Lk. 1.35), Mary was told ‘nothing will be impossible with God’ (1.37).   Mary goes on to name what only God can make ‘possible’: …‘the knowledge of salvation …the forgiveness of their sins… light to those who sit in darkness …in the shadow of death’ and ‘to guide our feet into the way of peace” (1.78-79). 

Here is why we too must affirm ‘Virgin Birth’.   We can see it in our own world still, that without God’s saving initiative and without the ‘hope’ we find in God’s power to redeem our own situations; we will have all kinds of knowledge, but without salvation; we all kinds of sin, but without forgiveness; we will walk through all kinds of darkness, but without any light, and we our ‘feet’ will go all kinds of ‘ways’, but without finding any real peace.  

Recently, with all of the racial tensions rising up in America, and with the increasing violence and lack of respect for authority in our nation, African American football star and tight end for the Baltimore Ravens, Benjamin Watson, wisely wrote on his webpage, entitled “Under Our Skin” that even though he is angry, frustrated, fearful, embarrassed, sad, sympathetic, offended, confused, introspective, hopeless and hopeful, he is still ‘ENCOURAGED’ because ‘ultimately the problem is not a SKIN problem, it is a SIN problem….  He said he is ENCOURAGED because God has provided a solution for sin through his son Jesus and with it, a transformed heart and mind….The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner Tragedies is not education or exposure.  It’s the Gospel… I’m ENCOURAGED because the Gospel gives hope.” (https://www.facebook.com/BenjaminWatsonOfficial/posts/602172116576590)

Do you see that the Christian story of the ‘virginal conception’ is a story that points us to the ‘hope’ that not only was Christ was born to Mary by the Holy Spirit, but that also ‘Christ in you’ is ‘the hope of glory’ (Col. 1.27).  The hope is that you too can live ‘in Christ’ because, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ can also get ‘under your skin’ and live in you.  

HELPLESS:  THAT WE MIGHT RECEIVE ADOPTION (v. 5b)

When Paul insisted that Jesus was ‘born of a woman’ (4.4), he was affirming his humanity of Jesus, not denying it.   The ancient world was filled with mythical stories about ‘gods’ who came to earth with divine, ‘superhuman’ powers and traits, but this is exactly not who Jesus was nor what Jesus did.  Jesus Christ named himself the ‘Son of man’  ‘who must suffer’, ‘be killed’ (Mark 8: 31) and ‘after three days rise again’ in order to prove ‘God’s love for us’ (Rom. 5.8).    God proves his love, Paul told the Romans, by reconciling us through Jesus’ ‘death’ and saving us ‘by his life’ (Rom 5.10).  Paul puts God’s saving truth in most practical and relational terms when he says ‘God sent his Son’ (4.4) ‘so that we might receive adoption as children’ (Gal. 4.5). 

 ‘Adoption’, as a metaphor of your salvation, may not appeal to you, unless you were adopted or have adopted a child.   This image of adoption especially resonates with me, because not only was I ‘adopted’ as a child, my wife and I adopted a child, and most recently, due to our daughter’s illness, we had to give our grandchildren up for adoption.   What speaks to me through each of these situations is how ‘helpless’ the child is who is being adopted.  The child depends solely on the courts, the parents, and the responsible people who will ‘do right’ by the child to make sure they are loved and protected.

I recall my mother telling me, that when she brought me home as a nine-month old baby, that I still could not set up alone.  Most babies are able to at least ‘sit up’ by that age, and many are already able to walk.  I was able to do neither.  But with the right kind of love, attention, and care, it wasn’t long that I was absolutely ‘helpless’, but I was running around all over the place.

When Paul speaks of salvation like ‘adoption’ he is, of course speaking of God’s love and care for us, but he is also speaking of how, as ‘children’ we are fully and completely helpless to ‘save’ ourselves.  This is another way, Paul is indirectly pointing back to the virgin birth.  Humanity is fully and completely helpless to save itself.  We are spiritually, morally, and even emotionally dependent, unable to ‘sit up’ and ensure our own future.  This is why God ‘sent his Son,’ so that God could do for us, what we cannot do for ourselves.  This is why Jesus was ‘conceived’ of by the Holy Spirit, because humanity was helpless to conceive of such a loving, caring, forgiving, redeeming, and dying savior, by themselves.

HEARTLESS:  SENT THE SPIRIT…INTO OUR HEARTS (v.6)

This brings us to the third way Paul’s words take us back to the meaning of the Virgin Birth.  He says that when God sent his Son to adopt us as children, he also ‘sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4.6).

Here, the virgin birth comes full circle.  Do you see it?  Mary ‘conceives’ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that God can also send ‘the Spirit of his Son into our hearts’.  Again, the ‘proof’ here is not found in ‘science’, but in ‘spirit’.  Jesus does not get into our ‘hearts,’ or as the Football player said, ‘under our skin’, through an exact scientifically, analyzable,  method or process  (with apologies to Methodists), but God’s Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus, gets into our hearts by the same spiritual power that  ‘conceived’ Jesus in the first place.   It is God the Father who ‘sent’ Jesus and this Father who also sends the ‘Spirit of his Son into our hearts.’ 

Whatever we can or can’t say, explain, or can’t ever explain and probably should never even try to explain about the virgin birth, is that without God’s intervention, we humans tend toward ‘hopelessness’, are left ‘helpless’, and become ‘heartless’.   This is why God sent ‘his Son’ not just to touch our hearts, but to change our hearts.  It is this ‘change of heart’ that the virgin birth is mostly about.   Although I don’t think struggling with belief in the Virgin Birth, especially on scientific grounds, will condemn you, I also don’t think believing in the Virgin Birth will save you either, because the Islamic Koran teaches the Virgin Birth of Jesus, but still denies the that Jesus was God become flesh.  

What can condemn you, what will condemn any and all of us,  is to fail to realize the great spiritual reality  the Virgin Birth always affirms.   Writing about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Birth, the great British physicist turned Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne wrote:  “Let me say again that I believe our need is for transformation, not just information.  Jesus is the second Adam (the seed of a new humanity), not the second Moses (the conveyer of a new revelation) (From “The Faith of Physicist”, p. 141, Fortress Press, 1996).    His point is exactly what Paul means, when he says, through the miraculous conception of Jesus,  God now sends the possibility of the miraculous conception of ‘the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.’   We do not have to continue to live, with what the Old Testament prophet called ‘the heart of stone’ but God promises to give us ‘a new heart’ and a ‘new spirit’ (Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26).

HOMELESS:  NO LONGER A SLAVE, BUT…AN HEIR (v. 7).

Finally, Paul’s last what it means to say that ‘God sent his Son’ to be ‘born of a woman’  is pictured as being ‘no longer a slave’, but now becoming a ‘child’ who becomes an ‘heir’ to inherit everything God gives.   Because none of you have been a slave, nor homeless, this might be most difficult for you to feel emotionally.   But if you have ever been a ‘slave’ to some bad habit, some addiction, some sin of your own, or in some oppressive situation that you could did not cause or cannot escape, you are getting close to the experience of Paul’s words.   

Just the other day, I received an email from a medical website which helps me keep up with medical news and medical advancements.  This is in no way a religious, nor theological website; as it is purely medical and scientific.  But right in the middle of the page of headings of medical news, was an article about America’s addiction problem, by FDA chief, Robert Califf, where he speaks about America’s prescription Opioid drug problem, which is being cause by both doctors who prescribe and patients who abuse: “We Are All Sinners”, Califf said, recalling the words of South Carolina ‘Baptist Grandfather’   And in this case, he said, ‘there is a lot of sin to go around.’ (http://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/addictions/58950).  

I find it very interesting, if not enlightening, that in an America that has increasing, even quadrupling addictions to drugs, medicines, and other mind controlling, evil powers that ‘enslave’ rather than ‘heal’, some political leaders are having to revert to mostly unused, left-over, biblical language, to communicate the nature of our great human weakness and our constant human need of God’s saving, redeeming power.

This is exactly what the apostle Paul meant when he said ‘God sent his Son’ to be ‘born of a woman’.  Believing that Jesus was ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary’ is not about trying to make you go against your science teacher.  It is not about trying to make you go against all human knowledge of biology.  This would make no sense, because what God did in Jesus, can’t be examined, can’t be proved, but can only be experience and known through what God did ‘once and for all’ (Heb. 10:10). 

No, what the New Testament story about the Virgin Birth is about and what this wonderful creed asserts, is that in Jesus, ‘God sent his Son, born of a woman… to redeem’ and to save us with a transforming, redeeming power that is now made possible to us.  What God intervened to do physically and miraculously once through Mary, now many times, and just as miraculously and spiritually, God can and will conceive in us the “Spirit of his Son” in us.   When you have ‘received’ God’s Spirit, you will have no trouble confessing ‘that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’ (1 Jn. 4.1) even if you still wonder at the mystery of it (Col. 2.2).   

For the greatest mystery is not how Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary, but ‘this mystery’ becomes even greater when you consider how ‘Christ in you, is the hope of glory” (Col. 1.27).  It is not how Jesus came once, but how Jesus keeps coming to us, in us, and keeps coming through us, again and again, and again---this is the mystery we should never solve, but must continue to live with unending wonder and hope.  Amen.