Mary and Jesus by Ron Unruh, 2011 |
Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called
the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father
David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom
will never end."
What immediately comes to my mind is the divine sovereignty of
the baby who will be born to this unwed virgin woman, a girl really, to whom
the angel Gabriel announced this unprecedented, never to be repeated event. Her
name is Mary and God's Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters at creation, will
come upon her, overshadow her really, and when he does, conception will occur,
immaculate to say the least, impeccable, flawless, faultless, without a trace
of sexuality, simply divine origination, the Word becoming flesh. The Word, who
spoke and without whom nothing was created that was created, became a human
being to grow up and to live among our kind. He became part of our history. His
name would be called Jesus. Without sin of any kind in word, deed or even
thought, he, the Son of God, entered earth's population in order to be put to
death in a most public manner, not for the purpose of exacting human justice,
but for the inexplicable purpose of atoning for human sinners' sins. God gave
his Son. Everyone who believes in the Son receives not only forgiveness but
life in the name of Jesus. Life that will transcend this life and thereafter to
live forever with the Father, just as Jesus himself does now. And even when he
was here, Jesus encouraged us to call his Father, our Father. Christ's kingdom
will be forever, the angel told Mary, and the Bible instructs us that this
kingdom is now, already, here in us, over us, around us. It's a secure place in
which by faith we live while within the cultures of this world we serve as
kingdom lights and kingdom salt. We help people see and taste that the LORD
Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God when he was here and that he
is presently the one who will gather us home where there is in store for us
more than our minds can imagine. In the meantime, he is able to do for us very
much more than everything that we may ask of him.
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