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JESUS IS BETTER THAN SANTA
Depending on one’s beliefs, either Jesus or Santa Claus is the main character of Christmas. Here are ten reasons why Jesus is better than Santa:
Santa lives at the North Pole
Jesus is everywhere.
Santa rides in a sleigh.
Jesus walks on water.
Satan comes but once a year.
Jesus is an ever present help.
You have to stand in line to see Santa.
Jesus is as close as the mention of His name.
Santa’s little helpers make toys.
Jesus makes new life, mends wounded hearts, and builds mansions in heaven.
Santa fills your stocking with goodies.
Jesus satisfies your deepest needs.
Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly.
Jesus has a heart full of love.
Santa says, “You better not cry.”
Jesus says, “Cast all your cares on me for I care for you.”
Santa comes down your chimney uninvited.
Jesus stands at your heart’s door and knocks.
Santa puts gifts under your tree.
Jesus became our gift and died on a tree.
A MIRACULOUS BIRTH
Luke 1:26-38
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town of Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendent of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “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. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
Matthew 1:18-25
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
“Some theologians have stressed that the main significance is virginity in conception, not birth, and so offer the more precise term virgin conception. This may be helpful in capturing the key emphasis, but we likely are in no need of a new term because Matthew 1:25 states that Joseph ‘had no union with [Mary] until she gave birth to a son.’ Mary was a virgin at Jesus’ conception, and she was still a virgin at his birth.” (David Mathis, “The Virgin Birth”)
Here is the accounts of Matthew and Luke tell us about the virgin birth of Jesus:
• Jesus was conceived in the womb of His MOTHER MARY.
Mary contributed to Jesus exactly what any human mother contributes to her child. He was “the fruit of [Mary’s] womb” (Luke 1:42 ESV).
• Jesus was conceived by a miraculous work of the HOLY SPIRIT.
Christ’s humanness was not created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), but ex Maria (“out of Mary”). As Adam was made from “the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7), Jesus was made from the substance of Mary. Jesus is called the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). His humanity was a new creation in the womb of Mary.
• Jesus was conceived without a HUMAN FATHER.
“[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph” (Luke 3:23).
“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4).
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). This prophecy is sometimes called the protoevangelium, which means “first gospel.” Many Christians believe the reference to “her Seed” looks beyond Adam and Eve to Mary and Jesus. The seed of the woman (Jesus) would crush the head of Satan.
On one end of Jesus’ life lies His supernatural conception; on the other, His supernatural resurrection. From start to finish, the earthly life of Jesus was extraordinary, supernatural, miraculous.
“The virgin birth is posted on guard at the door of the mystery of Christmas; and none of us must think of hurrying past it. It stands on the threshold of the New Testament, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order as itself and that if we find it offensive there is no point in proceeding further.” (Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ, p. 37)
If we can’t accept the virgin birth, than how will we accept the feeding of the five thousand, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection?
“Dismissal of the virgin birth is seldom the end of an individual’s spiritual pilgrimage.” (MacLeod)
THE PROPHECY
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).
Does this prophecy really refer to the birth of Jesus?
• A boy born in Isaiah’s day may have PARTIALLY fulfilled the prophecy.
“The virgin” may refer to a young woman betrothed to Isaiah (8:3), who was to become his wife. The child born to the woman was to be called “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” This name was meant to convince King Ahaz that God could rescue him from his enemies. (NIV Study Bible)
• JESUS was the final fulfillment of the prophecy.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us” (Matthew 1:22-23).
The word for “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 is the Hebrew word alma. Does the Hebrew word alma really mean “virgin”? Some sceptics argue that alma means a young, unmarried woman, not a virgin.
• In the culture of Israel, a young, unmarried woman would be expected to be a virgin.
• The Septuagint (the Jewish 250 B.C. translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek) translates almah as parthenos, which clearly means “virgin.”
• A “sign” is a miracle. How would the birth of a child to a young woman be a sign?
• Matthew (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) saw the birth of Jesus as a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.
Some people argue that the virgin birth is a myth taken from other religions. “In mythology there are stories such as Zeus begetting Hercules and Apollo begetting Ion and Pythagoras. As a result, some have speculated that Christians stole the virgin birth story from such myths. This speculation must be rejected on three grounds. First, some such myths came after the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 and therefore could not have been the origination of the story. Second, the myths speak of gods having sex with women, which is not what the virgin birth account entails. Third, the myths do not involve actual human beings like Mary and Jesus, but rather fictional characters similar to our modern-day superheroes in the comics.” (Mark Driscoll & Gary Breshears, Vintage Jesus, p. 95)
WHAT ABOUT MARY?
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:34-35a).
• Mary did not have sexual relations with GOD.
The Mormons actually believe that God the Father had sexual relations with Mary. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35).
• Mary had a normal DELIVERY.
• Mary was not a PERPETUAL virgin.
God designed marriage to include physical union (Genesis 3:24). Paul writes that not fulfilling one’s “marital duty” is wrong (1 Corinthians 7:3-5).
Matthew 1:25 says, “[Joseph] had no union with [Mary] until she gave birth to a son.” The words “until she gave birth” imply that Joseph did have sexual relations with Mary after the birth of Jesus.
Jesus is described as Mary’s “firstborn” child (Luke 2:7), which implies that she had additional children. The NT repeatedly makes this claim (Matthew 12:46-50; 13:55-57; Mark 3:31-35; 6:3-4; Luke 8:19-21; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5; Galatians 1:19). Jesus conception was unique; the conception of His brothers and sisters was ordinary.
• Mary was not SINLESS.
Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the idea that she was born without any stain of original sin. However, Mary herself declared, “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47). A sinless person does not need a Savior.
• Mary deserves our GRATITUDE, not our ADORATION.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH
Three reasons why the doctrine of the virgin birth is important:
1. It made possible the uniting of full DEITY and full HUMANITY in one person.
God could have created Jesus as a complete human being without any human parent. But then it would have been very hard for us to see how Jesus could be fully human as we are, nor would He be part of the human race.
It probably would have been possible for God to have Jesus come into the world with two human parents, both a father and a mother, and with His full divine nature miraculously united to His human nature at some point early in His life. But then it would have been hard for us to understand how Jesus was fully God, since His origin was like ours in every way.
“God, in his wisdom, ordained a combination of human and divine influence in the birth of Christ, so that his fully humanity would be evident to us from the fact of his ordinary human birth from a human mother, and his full deity would be evident from the fact of his conception in Mary’s womb by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 530)
2. It made possible Christ’s true humanity without inherited SIN.
All human beings have inherited legal guilt and a corrupt moral nature from their first father, Adam. But the fact that Jesus did not have a human father means that the line of descent from Adam was partially interrupted. Jesus did not descend from Adam in exactly the same way in which every other human being has descended from Adam. And this helps us to understand why the legal guilt and moral corruption that belongs to all other human beings did not belong to Christ. (Scripture nowhere says that the transmission of sin comes only through the father.)
But why did Jesus not inherit a sin nature from Mary? The Catholic Church answers this question by saying that Mary herself was free from sin, but Scripture nowhere teaches this, and it would not really solve the problem anyway (for why then did Mary not inherit sin from her mother?). A better solution is to say that the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary must have prevented not only the transmission of sin from Joseph (for Jesus had no human father) but also, in a miraculous way, the transmission of sin from Mary.
“Certainly such a miracle is not too hard for the God who created the universe and everything in it—anyone who affirms that a virgin birth is “impossible” is just confessing his or her own unbelief in the God of the Bible.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 532)
3. It shows that SALVATION must come from God.
The virgin birth of Christ is an unmistakable reminder that salvation can never come through human effort, but must be the work of God Himself. Our salvation only comes about through the supernatural work of God.
[The material in this section was borrowed from Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pp. 529-532.]
RESOURCES USED
Mark Driscoll & Gerry Breshears, Vintage Jesus
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
John MacArthur, God in the Manger
Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ
David Mathis, “The Virgin Birth”
