The Miracle of Jesus’ Birth
By Rick Renner
Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from Rick Renner’s book Christmas — The Rest of the Story.
Believers all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ — a time when God Almighty laid aside His glory to appear temporarily in the earth as a man. How wonderful, how beautifully marvelous, to think that God would momentarily discard His divine appearance to actually take on the flesh of man! Yet this is precisely the miracle that manifested the day Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
In John 1:1, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The word “Word” in this verse is a reference to Christ in His pre-incarnate existence. Speaking of Him, the apostle John wrote that “…the Word was with God….” The original language uses the words pros ton theon, which pictures a face-to-face relationship and portrays the unity that existed in the Godhead before Jesus’ manifestation as a baby in Bethlehem. This emphatically means that Jesus is not merely a component of God or a symbol of God, but He is God. And just as the Father has always existed, Jesus, who is called the Word, has always existed.
John continued his description of the preexistent Christ by saying, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). Thus, we find that Jesus Himself is the Creator. The apostle Paul repeated this truth in Colossians 1:16 when he wrote, “For by him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible…all things were created by him, and for him.”
But John 1:10 says that “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” This amazingly means that when Jesus came into the very world He created, the very people He created did not recognize Him. However…
- When the Master spoke to the wind and the waves, those elements recognized the voice of the Creator and obeyed Him (see Matthew 8:26; Mark 4:39).
- When Jesus saw the multitude was hungry and the need to multiply loaves and fishes to feed them, the atomic particles in the food recognized the voice of the Creator and multiplied miraculously so He could distribute food to all the people (see John 6:5-13).
- When Jesus spoke to the fruitless fig tree, it recognized the voice of the Creator and withered at its roots as He commanded it (see Matthew 21:18,19).
- When Jesus needed to get to His disciples, who were out at sea being battered by a storm, the water recognized the Creator, and the atomic particles in the water solidified for the Master to walk on the water He had created (see Matthew 14:25).
John 1:14 declares, “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.” The word “dwelt” in the original text describes a tent or a tabernacle. Jesus’ physical body was a “tent” that God lived in during His earthly life. God literally pitched a tent of human flesh, took on human flesh in the form of Jesus Christ, and tabernacled Himself among us.
God exchanged His royal, celestial robes for the clothing of human flesh. Out of His deep love for you and me, He was willing to leave His majestic realms of glory to enter the sphere of humanity. That little baby in Bethlehem was the eternal, ever-existent God Almighty, who dressed Himself in human flesh so that He could dwell among men and purchase our salvation on the Cross as the Lamb of God that would take away the sin of the world and render its punishment powerless. That is the miracle of our Savior’s birth!