From the Incarnation to the Cross: God Proved His Love For You (Matthew 1:17-21)

God Proves His Love For You

Love is the theme of our culture today. If we would just love each other enough, it would solve all of our problems. The Beatles song, “All you Need is Love” is the national anthem of our day. McCartney and Lennon brilliantly capture the heart of the movement of the “Love Aways Wins” people when they sing:

“There's nothing you can do that can't be done Nothing you can sing that can't be sung Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game It's easy”

“Nothing you can make that can't be made No one you can save that can't be saved Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time It's easy”

Now follow the lead of Steven Stills, of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and just “Love the One you Are With.” There are not boundaries to your love. The irony is, in some way the culture is right. Love is the answer. Love does solve all of our problems. The conflict between the Bible is the culture is how love is defined and demonstrated. Our culture has a confused and even cynical understanding of love. Its confused in that love has become arbitrary, meaning love is subject to the ones will or judgment. Whatever you decide is love, that is love to you and everyone desires to love you, should love what you love. Its cynical in that whenever love is defined with any boundaries or fences, like a life-long covenant, then we are skeptical and stifling.

The Bible describes love very differently than our culture. The Bible says things like

The fundamental characteristic of God is His love.

1 John 4:7–8 ESV

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Everything God does is compelled or influenced by His love. God’s love is also selfless and benevolent toward is wayward people. Paul beautifully captures this in his love chapter, 1 Cor 13. The Bible says it was God’s love that motivated Him to save the world (John 3:16). Furthermore,

Romans 5:8 CSB

8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That is God best demonstrates his love for us through the sacrifice of His Son. When you start to compare the arbitrary nature of the cultures love, and the love of God, you realize the magnitude of depth and absoluteness of God’s love obliterates the cultures notion of love. The cultures notion of love can not be stretched as far, go as deep, or shoot as high as God’s love.

The Christmas story is about God demonstrating to the world the length, and width, and height is if love in Christ Jesus for sinners like you and me. The birth narrative proves God’s love for you is not arbitrary. It is deep, abiding, eternal, and good for you. Let the word of God show you how God proves his love for you this Christmas.

God Proves His Love By Keeping His Promise (Matthew 1:17)

Matthew 1:17–18 ESV

17 So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

For twenty eight generations God ensured what he promised in the Garden of Eden would come to pass. In Genesis 3:15, God told the serpent that Eve’s seed would one day come and crush his head. From that time forward, the seed of the serpent spent their days looking to destroy the seed of the woman. For twenty eight generations, God foretold a day when he would send his Messiah, His Suffering Servant, His Begotten Son, into the world to destory sin, death, and Satan. In the midst of those generations, God made a special promsie to King David, that he would always have a descendent on the throne. So the Messiah must have a direct linage to David. God made sure of that by choosing Jospeh and Mary. In verse 19, you will see, the lineage was in jeopardy.

Matthew 1:19–23 ESV

19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

The conception of Jesus took place while Joseph was betrothed to her. Betrothal acted like a marriage contract. The bride would stay her father for one year. After a year, the bride would leave her father’s house for her husbands. The only way to break a betrothal legally was through divorce. So, when Joseph saw his future bride several months pregnant, he rightly assumed she had been unfaithful. He resolved to divorce her quietly.

Matthew records that Jospeh was a just man. He was devote to the Torah. Old Testament law required stoning for those who committed infidelity before marriage (Deut 22:13-21). By this time, however, divorce was the norm based on Deut 24:1. Jospeh could humiliate Mary with a public trial, but the text says that he was unwilling to put her to shame. Joseph loved Mary. He chose to show mercy and pursue divorce quietly before only two witnesses.

God quickly intervenes on Mary’s behalf. An Angel of the Lord appears to Joesph in a dream. The angel explains how Mary and the child fit into God’s plan of redemption. He reminds Joseph of the messianic linage we spoke of pertaining to God’s faithfulness, calling the child the “son of David.” Joseph was commanded to not divorce Mary, but in fact to marry her. The child must be connected to both Joseph and Mary. As John MacArthur recognizes,

In Matthew, the genealogy is paternal, going through Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph; and Joseph’s father, Jacob; back to David. In Luke, the genealogy is maternal, going through Jesus’ mother, Mary; and Mary’s father, Heli; back to David.

John F. MacArthur

Jospeh and Mary together keeps Jesus’ lineage to David in tact so that He would God keep his promsie to David, that he would have a son on the throne forever. In keeping His promise to David He Kept his promise to the world. Through the genealogy in Matthew, D.A. Carson points out that one of Matthew’s aims is to show that Jesus Messiah is truly in the Kingly line of David, heir to the messianic promises, the one who brings divine blessings to all nations. The Divine blessing is God’s peace on earth through His gracious redemption of His wayward people; a redemption that would come through the Messianic King, a king born in the line of David.

There lies the miracle of God’s faithful promise keeping to us. The Messiah would be an image bearer, a human being. God worked sovereignly worked through twenty eight generations of human lineage to ensure His Messiah would be on the one hand would fall in line with the human lineage so that connected him to Adam, Abraham, and David, as promised, and on the other hand the Messiah King would be human.

God Proves His Love Through Holy Incarnation (Matthew 1:18)

Matthew 1:18 ESV

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Luke says,

Luke 1:35 ESV

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

Luke reveals that Mary is a virgin (Luke 1:26), meaning she had never been sexually intimate with a man. The prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would come through a virgin.

Isaiah 7:14 ESV

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The virgin birth is important because it reveals that God’s salvation of man can only come through His divine work. God would ultimatley be responsible for bearing the seed of the woman who would defeat the seed of the serpent. You cannot save yourself. Salvation is a supernatural work of God which the virgin birth makes evident.

Another reason the virgin birth is important is that it is the means God connects the divine to humanity. The child in Mary’s womb was Joseph’s child legally, but not biologically. Both Luke and Matthew say the child was conceived when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary with power. Wayne Grudem explains the significance of the virgin birth connecting Jesus’ divinity to humanity. Grudem says,

“God, in his wisdom, ordained a combination of human and divine influence in the birth of Christ, so that his full 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: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Second Edition. pg 664)

The consequence of The power of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary to conceive the child is that the child would be born fully human but without a fallen nature. Jesus was not a son of Adam. The line of inherited sin was interrupted. Jesus would be born a full human being, and yet would also be born with God’s nature. Jesus was fully man and fully God, the God-man.

This does bring up a problem. Mary was still sinful. How did Jesus not inherit any of Mary’s guilt? The Catholic Church contends that Mary was free from sin. The problem there is the Bible is clear; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Mary was not sinless, nor was she made sinless. The better answer, in my humble opinion, is that the power of the Holy Spirit protected Jesus. Luke says

Luke 1:35 (ESV)

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

The Holy Spirit came upon Mary with power, therefore the child will be called Holy! The power of the Holy Spirit prevented Mary’s sin corrupting Jesus’ divine nature, and therefore He is called the Son of God.

Where is the love of God in this? How does this demonstrate the love of God?

God’s love for his image bearers knew without a doubt that we could never come to Him, that he must come to us. His love so moved him to shake the very foundations of heaven and earth by taking on the very flesh he created. He voluntarily sent his Son to become us so that we can know and enjoy Him.

The incarnation demonstrates the love through weakness.

The writer of Hebrews says,

Hebrews 4:15 ESV

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Taking on flesh he was able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus, the living God, had to endure a human body, with a human mind, and human emotions, all of them. He got tired. He suffered hunger. He wept when Lazarus died. Jesus endured the hardship of being human in a fallen world. When his image bearers saw Him, the did no see Him as God, as the One who deserves all their worship. They saw him as a man, and many saw him as a lunatic and liar. His own brothers and sisters thought he was crazy. He entered our world the same way we do, weak and vulnerable, and we leave the world weak and vulnerable through death. Its because the broken world often proves us helpless; helpless to fight sin and helpless to conquer death. Jesus knew our humanity well, even the pains of death, and yet he knew it without sin.

The writer of Hebrews double down on Jesus’s holiness. He says,

Hebrews 7:26 ESV

26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

The writer of Hebrews holds the incarnation tension beautifully. Jesus was very much us, and yet he was separate from us.

I grew up watching Saturday Night Live when it was actually funny. Adam Sandler, Christ Farley, David Spade, and later Norm McDonald. Norm McDonald could make jsut about anything funny. Later in his life, as I read interviews of him, I learned that he had a another side of him that thought deeply on life and religion. It's interesting to hear about Norm Macdonald's perspective on Christian doctrine and his thoughts on the paradox of humanity. It's clear that he saw both the beauty and complexity of human nature. He acknowledge that human beings had the potential for both goodness and wickedness within us. He said he marveled at how humanity can both at the same time create amazing aesthetically rich art, and then turn around and create weapons of mass destruction.

McDonald at some level knew we were marred image bearers of God. So to say that a human being was sinless was insane to Norm McDonald, and I would agree with him until we looked at Jesus. Jesus’s life was marked by holiness. The child in Mary’s womb was going to be a special human being with two full natures; one human and one divine. The child born would be the God-man. Very much us, and yet separate from us.

This is vital to demonstrating God’s love. Remember the scripture we started with;

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus being very much us and yet separate from us is going to put God’s love on display for heaven and earth and everything in between to awe struck.

The incarnation reveals to love of God in many ways, but one in particular raises our attention. James Montgomery Boice once said,

The atonement is the real reason for the Incarnation.

James Montgomery Boice

The atonement is proof of God’s love!

God proves His love Through Atonement (Matthew 1:21)

Matthew 1:21 ESV

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

The God man who is very much us, and yet separate from us, incarnated so that he could save His people from their sins. His life and death with atone for the sins of His people, making Him the Savior of the World.

God’s love substitutes himself for us

The angel reveals to Jospeh that the child in Mary’s womb is the promised Messiah. The angels commands Joseph to call the child Jesus-for he will save his people from their sins. How will this child save his people from their sins? He will be an atoning sacrifice.

The atonement is as Gregg Allison defines it

“ is the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, on the cross and what it accomplished. Because of human sinfulness, a sacrifice for sin is necessary to avert condemnation and restore people to God. Old covenant sacrifices made provisional atonement, looking forward to the work of Christ to accomplish atonement fully and forever.” Gregg Allison

The Bible says

Hebrews 9:22 ESV

22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

In the Old Testament God required animals to be slaughtered on the alter for atonement. However, their sacrifice was never enough to completely satisfy God’s holy justice. The penalty for sin needed to be paid in full if God was going to save His people and live with them forever.

For the penalty to be paid in full, God would have to do something radical and special. No sacrifice on earth was perfect enough to satisfy his holiness and remove his wrath. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). We need someone to be our propitiation, someone who could turn away the wrath of God with a perfect offering.

The Holy conception and the virgin birth of Christ was necessary. Jesus must be fully human if he is going to shed his blood to purify your sin. God must take on flesh and unite himself to the human race if he is going to save his people. At the same time, he cannot be merely human. He needs to be divine in order to be the righteous sacrifice that is able to: remove the wrath of God from sinners: remove our guilt by cleansing us from sin and giving us complete forgiveness, redeem us from the power of sin, reconcile us to God so that we are now sons and daughters and not his enemies, and provide cosmic victory over sin and death so as to restore all of creation so that we can live with God forever. A perfect offering can only come from heaven. Needing the blood and the perfection to be our substitute, the incarnation was settled for Christ.

J.I Packer wonderfully notes,

It is in the word “propitiation” that “we reach the real heart—the heart of the heart, we may say—of Christianity; for if the incarnation is its shrine, the Atonement is certainly its holy of holies.”

J. I. Packer

Andreas Kostenburger says

Thus the purpose of the incarnation is Jesus’s substitutionary atonement.

Andreas J. Köstenberger

The substitutionary atonement is the way God demonstrates his love for you. The child in Mary’s womb was Jesus, the incarnate God, the Savior of the world. This child was fully a human being with blood flowing through his veins. He is also God, fully divine, holy, and without sin. Because of his two natures, the child would one day grow up and offer himself as the atoning sacrifice on a cross. He would take the place of sinners and receive the wrath he did not deserve and die. God would accept his sacrifice as perfect and would raise him from the dead. Jesus would ascend into heaven from where he came as a resurrected God man, and he now sits at his Father’s right hand.

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 6:23 ESV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Romans 8:1 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:33–39 ESV

33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

They were right, all you need is love!

All you need is the never stopping, always and forever lasting, love of God! We have none of those precious truths and promises if we don’t have the incarnation of Jesus Christ; fully God and fully man. Christmas is about celebrating the Love of God toward wayward sinners like you and me. We celebrate how he demonstrated his love for us by coming in the flesh as a sinless savior who would, for the joy set before Him endure cross as our substitute to atone for our sin. From the incarnation to the cross God demonstrates his love for you. Never forget it, and celebrate the fire out of it this Christmas.