“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
Was Jesus really one of us? Yes…and no. He was fully human like us, but he was also “the holy one.” Jesus is made like us in every respect except one. He’s without sin. Not only did he not commit any sins, but he was not even drawn to sin.
Man’s desperate struggle
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Romans 7:24
The apostle Paul was a man who desperately wanted to live a holy life, but the nature he inherited from his parents was far from holy. I have no doubt that his father and mother were respectable people. Paul was a Roman citizen, born into a privileged family. His parents educated him in the finest schools, and surrounded him with every advantage that they could give him in life.
They gave him everything he could ever want, but they could not give him holiness: “My nature gives me all kinds of struggles. If I try to pursue a holy and a God-centered life, I find myself swimming upstream, going against the flow,” he says. “I find that I’m in a battle against myself. How am I going to get free from this?”
Finally, a holy man
For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19
This struggle against sin that all of us are born with goes all the way back to Adam. But Christ breaks the chain. He takes our flesh, even though he is holy.
But if Christ doesn’t have the pull of sin ingrained in him, has he really taken our flesh? Is it possible to be fully human and yet never sin? Yes, this has always been God’s plan. Is it possible to be fully human and yet never die? Yes, this too has always been a part of God’s plan. And it would have been true of Adam and Eve, if sin had not entered the world.
Invitation to a new life
As far as his nature is concerned, Christ began where we will end. He entered at birth what we shall not enter until our death. But by his grace we shall at last end where be began “the holy one to be born.”
The enemy has no hold over him. Without sin, death has no hold over him. The only reason Jesus died was that he chose to lay down his life. Nobody could take it from him. He is the Son of God. He does not struggle to attain holiness. He is holy, and this is the life that he offers to you.
This LifeKey is based on the message (Mar 18, 2000) called: “The Manger,” by Pastor Colin S. Smith, from the series, “10 Keys for Unlocking the Bible.”
Colin currently serves as Senior Pastor of the The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He is committed to preaching the Bible in a way that nourishes the soul by directing attention to Jesus Christ.
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