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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman God's
Role In Human Conception Every Christmas we
celebrate the fact that God became human in the form of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Deists, who believe in
God's existence but do not believe He interacts with His creation, thus,
reject the birth of God in a human form.
As Christians, then, we cannot be Deists.
We believe that God does involve Himself in creation which is seen
in the conception of Jesus. Theologically
speaking, that is called the "Incarnation of Christ."
Over the years I
have struggled over to what degree God interacts with creation.
It's been a debatable issue for centuries.
Despite the debate, I now believe God is more involved in creation,
and that includes the affairs of men and nations, than what most of us
think. There is, however, no
debate over God being "omnipresent," meaning, He exists
everywhere at all times. There
is no place where He is not. Logic
would dictate that God is involved to one degree or another in creation.
It is Biblically
obvious that God was involved in Jesus being conceived, as we read in Luke
1:35. "The angel
[Gabriel] replied to her [Mary]: 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and
the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore,
the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.'" It was not Mary's
intimacy with Joseph that conceived Jesus in her womb.
It was God's interaction with Mary that conceived Jesus within
Mary, thus, making Jesus the Son of God. Christians
acknowledge that God played a part in Jesus being conceived, but, does He
play any part in humans being conceived?
I believe that He is involved in a person being conceived.
I am not saying that humans are divine like Jesus.
I am saying that God is an unseen third partner in the process of
conception. There is more to
the biology of conception than a sperm cell uniting with an egg cell.
Zechariah 12:1 in the NIV might well make this point.
"A
prophecy: The word of the LORD
concerning Zechariah
prophesied, as seen in the NIV, that God "forms the human spirit
within a person." I
realize that some Bible translations put the formation of the human spirit
by God in a person in the past tense; perhaps at creation, as seen in the
Genesis account. The Septuagint (the
Greek Old Testament that was translated from the Hebrew Old Testament a
couple centuries prior to Jesus' birth) states the formation of the human
spirit by God as a present tense action, not a past tense action.
If we are to understand that God presently forms, as the Septuagint
states, the spirit of a person, then God is actively involved in the
creation of all human embryos. At
the moment of conception, God, who is everywhere at all times, completes
the process of conception by implanting the human spirit within the
embryo, making it a human being.
As you think about
the birth of Jesus this year, thank God for His active involvement in His
creation. Know that you are
not a Deist. Know that the
omnipresent God was actively involved in both Jesus being conceived and you
being conceived. Know that as
you were created in the image of God, some day you will be recreated into
the image of Jesus. 1 John 3:2
reads: "Dear
friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been
made known. But we know that
when Christ appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is." Whether it was when
you were conceived, born, reborn as a Christian, or when you will be
recreated into the likeness of Jesus; thank God for His involvement in
your life.
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