The Holy Spirit in the Birth of Jesus
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35-36; John 1).
King David is the prophet who foretold the Heavenly Father has a Son (Psalm 2:7). A thousand years after David’s prophecy, the process is both fascinating and mind boggling that brought about the birth of God’s Son and moved Him in flesh and blood into the neighborhood of human need (John 1:14, 29, 36, MSG). The angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary, possibly a fifteen-year-old teenager, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). To make the incarnation happen, it was the job description of the Holy Spirit to serve as the power source. This included, of course, Mary’s conception and the Spirit sending an angel to Joseph, who was engaged to marry Mary. The angel’s mission was to tell Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her pregnancy was of God.
The Holy Spirit and DNA
The incarnation of Jesus, defined as God becoming a man, a human being, without question is one of the greatest miracles of all time. Joseph had “no union with [the virgin Mary] until after she gave birth” to Baby Jesus (Matthew 1:5, 18, 20). Mary conceived because of the “overshadowing” of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). It refers back to the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters in the creation (Genesis 1:2).
The modern discovery of DNA arguably illustrates how it might have happened. It can be pictured as the genetic structure – the DNA supplied by a father in conception. This meant the father’s contribution to Jesus’ DNA had to be created for Baby Jesus to come into the world both as truly a human being and as God’s Son.
Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), was a German scientist, astronomer, mathematician, and a trained Lutheran theologian. He understood his work as thinking the thoughts of God after Him.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the term that describes the billions of microscopic-size molecules that hold in their nuclei the instructions an infant must have to develop fully, live healthily, and reproduce. In this sense, DNA is the discovery of the building blocks of life. These directives are found inside every human molecule and are handed down from parents to children. A full set of genes, known as the genome, includes some 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA. Said another way, the DNA formed by the union of a man’s and a woman’s cells contains the commands for a lifetime of orderly growth. If Kepler were living today, he would surely revel thinking about DNA, imagining the thoughts of God after Him.
For Baby Jesus to come into the world as truly a man, it was in the job description of the Holy Spirit to create miraculously His genetic system. Then Baby Jesus could be born without sin, grow up, and move into the neighborhood of Adam’s seed as one of us, sin only excepted. God alone could do it!
As you ponder the grand miracle and mystery of the incarnation of Jesus, let yourself consider the sovereign dominion of the Holy Spirit that was required to make it all happen. When you have absorbed the miraculous power and divine genius God revealed in the incarnation, you will have no trouble believing all the other miracles in the Bible. Yes, Gabriel had it right: “Nothing is impossible with God.”
A person cannot be a Christian without believing in miracles, and the birth of Jesus lives to this day as one of the greatest miracles in human history.
When the angel Gabriel made the announcement to Mary, she sought more information, giving Gabriel a lesson in Biology 101: “How will this be since I am a virgin?” (Isaiah 7:14). Gabriel responded with his own lesson in Theology 101: “Nothing is impossible with God!” (Luke 1:34-38). What an Ahh! moment.
Like Mary, we too are to release our impossibilities to the Lord. We can only begin to imagine the power and divine genius required to conceive a child without a sexual union.
Baby Jesus was truly Mary’s flesh-and-blood baby. He was also King David’s greater Son. At the same time, He was God’s sinless Son. We honor Jesus as having two natures in one Person, God and Man, with both natures blended perfectly so that the Lord did not have a split personality. He is the God-Man and the last Adam. Never again will there be a need for another Adam; Jesus’ death and resurrection settled that. This understanding gives fresh meaning to Paul’s teaching that Jesus Christ is the last Adam, a life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45).
At the great rapture of the church, however, the redeemed will rise from their graves having glorified bodies like Jesus manifested at His resurrection as the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Thessalonians 4:17, KJV). This body will be immortal and incorruptible.
Modern science using DNA has opened the door to consider the what or the building blocks of life – but not the who, the divine genius who created DNA and makes it work (Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:3). This process has been true in the birth of billions of babies, generation after generation, millennium after millennium, amid all ethnicities and peoples around the world. Understanding this illustrates the divine genius behind God’s creation. But this understanding of what God did, great as it is, remains vastly different from being able in fact to create it.
Only God!
Indeed, if it were possible to get the world’s top one hundred scientists into the world’s best equipped lab and give them the assignment to create the building blocks of life they would surely be like Nebuchadnezzar’s wise men: “What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men” (Daniel 2:11).
Only God – the Babylonian wise men were partly right. They were also very wrong. Not gods, but the one God, Jehovah, existing in a Trinity that has one substance or essence. He held the power and divine genius to accomplish the incarnation of Jesus. The Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity was the divine genius who made it happen.
The implications are far reaching. God created Adam and then Eve, making each of them compatible as male and female. When Eve gave birth to baby Cain, their first-born child, Eve understood enough to give God the honor. “With the help of the Lord,” she said, “I have brought forth a man” (Genesis 4:1).
Every mother and dad should see the births of their children as gifts from God.
Without question, the incarnation of Jesus is one of the greatest miracles of all time.
Away in a manger no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head.
The stars in the sky looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
By James R. Murray, 1887
