October 23 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
²⁷To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
²⁸And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
²⁹And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
³⁰And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
³¹And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
³²He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
³³And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
³⁴Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
³⁵And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
³⁶And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
³⁷For with God nothing shall be impossible.
³⁸And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Devotional:

There was a time when you could use the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ as a gauge of faithfulness to the teachings of the Scriptures. A man might hedge on or spiritualize many of the teachings of Scripture in order to be able to assent to them and yet at the same time entertain mental reservations about their authenticity. But the virgin birth? There was only one thing you could say about that: a woman gave birth to a child without having had intercourse.

The day we have described has passed. Now the Christian has to be more wary in accepting the word of theologians at large. The virgin birth itself can be assented to without being regarded as we have described it. There is a whole widening school of thought which would claim that this event, along with many of the other events of Scripture which we hold dear, occurred in a different plane. Their truth is not denied. It is just said that they happened on a different historical plane.

'I cannot understand that,' you say. Neither can we. But many claim that they can, simply because they refuse to believe that God's Word is everywhere true.

To the Christian, however, the virgin birth is the perfect answer to God's dilemma! He wanted to send into the world One who was fully God, in order that His perfect life and substitutionary death might be of infinite value and become the groundwork of salvation. And He Himself was the eternal Father of the eternal Son. He wanted to send forth One who was fully man, so that He could really represent us. He chose a human being to give birth to the Son whom He sent from heaven. It is beautiful! It is so integral to the Christian faith that to remove it from the Bible is to do violence to the perfect scheme of God.

We cannot accept the Barthian view expressed in paragraph two. Nor can we understand how such a conception as Isaiah prophesied (7:14) and Matthew and Luke define, could take place. Mary could not understand either, but she sang in verse 37, ' ... with God nothing shall be impossible!'