Ask Mr Bible

A Diamond in a Clay Vessel

What really happened during that night of all nights in the Judean hills some 2000 years ago?

Two illustrations may prove helpful:

• The diamond/clay vessel illustration:
A perfect, priceless, and incredibly beautiful diamond is placed within a plain and lowly clay vessel.  One day, for a brief moment, a tiny hole appears in the container, resulting in the immediate outpouring of a dazzling beam of glory which temporarily blinds those who happen to see it.  This is, of course, exactly what happened in Luke 2 (Christ’s birth) and Matthew 17 (His transfiguration).

Note: 
1. The placing of the diamond:
“God was manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16)
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same (Heb. 2:14).

2. The appearing of the hole:
“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Mt. 17:1, 2).

A case could be made here that, in all the universe, the strongest object ever created by God was the earthly body of Jesus!  Ponder this amazing thought: for 34 years this vessel of clay actually contained and confined the resplendent glory of Almighty God Himself, only allowing for one brief moment a tiny ray to escape, which temporarily blinded Peter, James, and John!

• The Rolls Royce/ox wagon illustration:
The owner of a $175,000 Rolls Royce ‘Gray Ghost’ automobile is suddenly and mysteriously transported in ‘twilight zone’ fashion to Earth’s most remote area where the residents are still in the stone age.  After recovering from the initial shock, the man notices their only means of transportation involves the hitching of oxen to crude wooden carts or wagons.  Sitting in his Rolls, surrounded by luxury, the owner soon realizes there are two courses of action open to him.

1. He can place the auto in gear and, using its awesome power, literally leave those simple natives in the dust.

2. He can keep the motor running, ease the auto in neutral, and allow his magnificent machine to be pulled by a lowly oxen.

After some thought, the second option is decided upon.  But why?  For some reason, he feels a strong desire to know these people.  He wants to travel at their pace, learn their language, experience their pain, and to befriend as many as possible!  This is exactly what Jesus did when He came to our God-rejecting planet, carrying with Him all the glorious attributes of His Divine nature.  He then clothed Himself in human flesh, agreeing to eat our food, drink our water, speak our language, and die for our sins!

For With God Nothing Shall be Impossible

“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS … Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And 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. And, 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. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda”

(Luke 1:30, 31, 34-39).

Never in the history of childbirth did two expectant mothers have more to talk about than these two women.

A. Here was Elisabeth, well past the childbearing years, but anticipating a baby.

B. Here was Mary, a young virgin, but now with child. This was the case because “with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

It should be noted that Elisabeth’s unborn child is referred to twice as “the babe” (Luke 1:41, 44), indicating scripture’s position on abortion. From the beginning, John was not looked upon as a developing mass of human tissue or a fetus, but as “the babe.”

But what about a therapeutic abortion? Consider the following: A therapeutic abortion occurs when a pregnant woman is persuaded (often by her doctor) that her unborn child presents an emotional or mental threat to her general well-being. Therefore, the most practical and painless solution (for the mother at least) is simply to kill the offending baby. There are two well-known instances in history in which this attitude toward unborn human life could certainly have been applied.

The first case involved that of an older woman, the wife of a respected religious leader, living in a large southern city. Present-day advice to her would have been: “Do you really feel it wise to complete this birth?Consider your age. The psychological strain upon you will be much greater than it would be on a younger woman. Then too, as an older parent, don’t you think you’ll have real problems adjusting to this infant? I mean, it might even affect your relationship with your husband. No, all things considered, it would be far better to terminate the potential problem right now.”

The second case had to do with a teenage girl, engaged to a struggling young tradesman, living in a small northern town. Here there could be no doubt. A quick abortion would immediately solve the embarrassment and downright hostility, which would certainly develop if the unborn baby was not destroyed.

Two simple and clear-cut cases for therapeutic abortion. Not quite. Could even the most calloused present-day abortion mill operator stomach the thought of Elisabeth (the older woman) and Mary (the teenager) with trembling hands and hearts awaiting the sharp instrument of some ancient abortionist?

The Obedience of Christ

“And Jesus took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man.”  He thus agreed to join His heavenly, divine nature to that of an earthly, human nature, appearing at Bethlehem as a lowly servant!
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14).
“But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. 4:4).

This simple but absolutely staggering fact cannot be even remotely grasped by human minds.  The infinite, holy Creator suddenly becomes in the likeness of his finite and sinful creatures (yet without sin).  Who can comprehend such un-believable condescension?  It is as if a mighty and magnificent earthly king would determine to lay aside for a while his fantastic storehouse of wealth and, leaving behind an adoring and amazed court, take upon himself the body of a lowly ant.  The ‘Son of Man’ was, by the way, our Lord’s favorite name for Himself while on earth.  He took upon himself the form of a servant.  He did not come as a mighty human Caesar or some world-renowned human philosopher.  Even this would have been a condescension of colossal pro-portions.  He came, rather, as a lowly servant.

A number of years ago, some evangelical Bible scholars were asked:  “From a theological perspective, what Christian song in your opinion is the greatest ever written?”  Heading up the poll was Isaac Watts’ glorious hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”  Dear reader, ponder now (as I am doing) just how my pride and self-seeking stacks up as compared with the first two stanzas:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God;
All the vain things that charm me most
I sacrifice them to His blood.

Special Delivery

While a student at the Moody Bible Institute my Christian service assignment one semester was to conduct a Bible class for a group of junior boys and girls in the south side of Chicago.  In those days I was totally inexperienced in teaching (especially children) and was somewhat nervous as I prepared (for the first time) to tell them the Christmas story.  How could I make them understand what really happened at Bethlehem?  What illustration could I use?  As it turned out I had little need to worry, for one of the little girls in that group offered one of the most precious and profound bottom line statements ever heard on planet earth regarding the incarnation.  With incredible simplicity she said: “At Bethlehem, Mary was God’s envelope, and Jesus was God’s letter!”

Is the Virgin Birth Still Considered a Miracle?  In view of cloning?

The following response comes from Dr. Charles Detwiler, Biology Professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.

“Human beings will soon be able to cause a human egg cell with a somatic cell nucleus taken from another person to develop to full adulthood.  This adult will be a “clone” of the original adult from whom the somatic cell nucleus was taken.  If this sort of process is experimentally feasible, must we still view the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ as being dependent on a miracle?  Wouldn’t a slight alteration have occurred in the womb of Mary that would allow one of her ova to commence development and to produce the body of our Lord?”

Parthenogenesis, the development of unfertilized eggs to adulthood, is known to occur albeit rarely in the animal kingdom.  The main problem in viewing Christ’s birth in this way, is that the offspring of this process are invariably female in gender unless the maternal parent is able to store sperm within her body.  Scripture explicitly states (Luke 1:34) that Mary was a virgin—that she had not had a sexual relationship with any man.  It also states (Matt. 1:25) that she had no such union until after the birth of Christ.  If, therefore, it is not possible for a human sperm cell to have been within the virgin Mary’s body, and if Jesus was genetically and therefore biologically a male, clonal descent from his mother is simply not possible.  There is only one possibility left.

The maternal contribution of Mary must have received sufficient genetic information to have produced a normal male body for our Savior to inhabit.  This required the presence of biological information that simply could not have resided within Mary’s own genetic information.  Scripture clearly indicates that this information did not find its source in the body of Joseph or any other human male alive at the time.  The conception of Christ must have been, as always assumed in Christian teaching, a miracle.  Jesus Christ’s body could not have been a clone of anyone present on earth at the time.  Rather, in some miraculous way, the Holy Spirit of God, produced within the body of His precious “daughter” a deposit of information sufficient to generate, biologically, “the son of Abraham, and the son of David.”  And in a still higher miracle that same Holy Spirit infused that body with His own Being, such that our Savior was entirely, the son of Abraham, the son of David, and the son of God.

When we consider the soul of man, genetic cloning contains its own mysteries that biologists will not by their technical methods account for or explain.  But the conception of our Lord is a miracle of biological and theological proportions vastly beyond the scope and possibility both of cloning technology and normal conception of mortal human beings.  Could it have been the greatest miracle ever to have come from the hand of Almighty God?