How Will This Be?: The Improbability of the Incarnation

Luke 1:30–37 “And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 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. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.””

Introduction

What are the chances?

When we try to estimate the probability of something happening, we usually look at how often it has happened before. A coin flip? Fifty-fifty. Rain tomorrow? Check the forecast. But what about events that are utterly unique—once-in-all-history, never-before, never-again kinds of moments? How do you calculate the odds of something that defies every category we know?

That is the question hanging in the air when the angel Gabriel appears to a young virgin in Nazareth and announces that she will conceive and bear a son who will be called the Son of the Most High, whose kingdom will never end. Mary’s response is immediate and honest: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

How will this be?

We still ask it today—not because we doubt God’s power, but because the thing He has promised is so staggeringly improbable to our finite minds. The promises of God are absolutely certain, yet the event promised here transcends comprehension. The improbability of the incarnation is not about uncertainty; it is about sheer unbelievability—that the eternal God would become a man.

Christmas carries a peculiar, mysterious awe that even many unbelievers sense. It commemorates the single most improbable event in all of history: God entering His own creation as a helpless baby, fully divine yet fully human.

Matthew and Luke give us the historical details of Christ’s birth, but John takes us further back—to the very beginning:

John 1:1–4, 14 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Tonight we will linger on this profound mystery in three movements drawn from John’s prologue:

In the Beginning Was the Word

The Word Was God

The Word Became Flesh

As singer-songwriter Michael Card beautifully reflects in his song “The Final Word”:

“You and me we use so very many clumsy words, The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard. When the Father’s wisdom wanted to communicate his love, He spoke it in one final perfect word… His final word was Jesus, he needed no other one.”

This Christmas, let us stand with Mary at the edge of the impossible and hear the angel’s reply anew: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

1. In the Beginning Was The Word

At the time of the beginning something already existed. John attempts to begin at the beginning, but even as he does so he finds that there is something which was before the beginning.

The Word was in the beginning because he had no beginning. As God he never began because he has never not existed. In all of eternity God has been the single constant from before time was. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, in perfect fellowship and unity existing simultaneously as one God in three persons all equally God, equal in power and glory.

We struggle to understand this concept of not having a beginning since everything we know in our lives is on a continual path of change. Things do not stay the same they change with age. We get older, we get bigger, and then smaller as time passes. We get wiser, our bodies get stronger and then weaker, always changing from the time we begin life as an individual entity at conception. Time is really a measure of change and everything around us in creation changes. It has a beginning and it continues to change.

But the Word was from before the beginning. In the beginning the Word already was. The beginning came after the Word. The Word’s existence and purpose predates the beginning. The beginning serves the Word’s purpose, not the other way around. The beginning was created by and for the Word.

What is that purpose?

The purpose was to showcase his glory, to display his stunningly beautiful, good, brilliant, wise, righteous, powerful, and holy nature. So he created the world and everything in it, and crowned it with creatures who were made in his image, human beings. But instead of worshipping him, loving him, adoring him and thanking him, they disobeyed and rebelled against him. They attempted to bend, distort, and mar the image. But despite all this, God had an even greater plan, before the beginning.

HIs plan had never been merely to reveal his wisdom, power, beauty, goodness, and holiness in creation, but to reveal it even more in redemption; in overcoming and undoing all the wrong that his image-bearers had done, and doing it in the most unlikely manner imaginable.

God’s Word, his perfect revelation of himself, was not just another creature who could portray God more accurately, but he is in fact, God himself.

2. The Word Was God

The church throughout history found it necessary at different points to battle heresies that strike at the heart of the person of Christ. Four main counsels have provided the venues for ecclesiological consensus and affirmation of the Bible’s teaching about who the Word is.

In 325 at Nicea the church affirmed that contrary to some false teachers, the Scripture teaches that Jesus is indeed fully God. Then in 381 at Constantinople the church reiterated that the Scripture teaches that Jesus is fully human. But those two concepts are very difficult to hold together in our minds and some people started putting those two ideas together in problematic ways.

So in 431 at Ephesus the church affirmed that the Scripture teaches that Christ is a single person. There are not two people, not Christ the God and Christ the man. There is a single unified person who is both fully God and fully man.

But almost immediately there were some who took things too far the other way and suggested that this meant the one person, Jesus Christ since he was both God and man must be some sort of hybrid. But that would defeat the whole purpose of his being fully man since he would be something different than the rest of us and could not pay for our sins. So 20 years later in 451 at Chalcedon the church reiterated that the Scripture teaches that Christ who is one person has two distinct natures, completely God and completely man, without being blended or mixed.

By the end the church had articulated the Scriptural outline of the person of Christ as Fully God, Fully human, one unified person, with two distinct fully intact natures.

If you had been one of the shepherds who left their sheep to go see what the angels were singing about you would have seen a little normal looking baby. The angels didn’t tell the shepherds that they’d know the baby was God the moment they laid eyes on him. They said you’ll find an ordinary baby in an unordinary place, a manger, and that will be the sign that God is doing something extraordinary.

Isaiah 53:2b says that there was nothing special looking about him. As Jesus walked around as an adult people didn’t fall on their faces in awe and worship. They saw just another normal looking Jewish rabbi. …until he spoke.

What did they say about him when he spoke? Matthew 7:28–29 “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” John 7:45–46 “The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!””

Christ was God’s Word and he was recognized as God when he spoke. His appearance was unremarkable, but his speech was unmistakeable. This ordinary looking man spoke like no man ever had because he was God.

People who dismiss Jesus as a good moral example, a wise teacher, but nothing more, have not seriously considered what he said. When considered carefully, Christ’s words leave only two options: either you love him or you hate him. His words by themselves leave 3 possibilities. Either he was crazy and possessed by demons as some of his enemies claimed, or he was a brazen liar taking titles to himself that weren’t his, or he was speaking with absolute truth and authority because he is the Lord of Lords, God himself.

The thing his enemies never even attempted to assert during his ministry was that he was a benign teacher or merely a bold prophet pointing to someone beyond himself. Jesus was the ultimate prophet who came speaking on behalf of God because he is God. So whatever he spoke was God’s speech. He came to reveal the one true God, not as a lesser being explaining what God was like, but as God himself who took on humanity. The Second Person of the Triune God who added a human nature to his eternal, preexisting, divine nature.

3. The Word Became Flesh

In defending the full humanity of Christ in 381 at the council in Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus said:

“For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole.”

We might put it as the hymn “Joy to The World” says: “He comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.”

Thanks to the actions of the first man Adam, you and I, all of us humans, are born with a human nature twisted towards rebellion against God. Instead of reflecting the beautiful glory of God in our lives we possess an inner darkness that despises God and seeks to make ourselves king. We long to be lord of our own lives and live according to our own rules rather than God’s. Unfortunately there is no part of our being that is free from this corruption, either body or soul. We need help.

Christmas is about God bringing that help. Fulfilling his promise to give us a way out. Coming down to our level, becoming like us, so that we might be like him.

Christ was born with a human nature: body, soul, mind, will, heart, and emotions, all of it. In order to redeem your whole body, soul, mind, will, heart, emotions, and all the rest. Christ didn’t skimp on assuming a single aspect of humanity, except sin. The sin that infects every part of your human nature failed to defile Christ, and this is good news. It means that if you become united to Christ instead of infecting him with your sinful human nature, you will find healing from his sinless human nature.

In Christ the union between God and his image bearers is restored and you can participate in that restoration by becoming one with Christ.

In Jesus Christ God and man became one again. Not as man became God, but as God became man. This perfect union between the human and divine natures finds unity in the person of Jesus Christ who perfectly holds them together. Within Christ there is no division, or confusion, or blending, or lack of distinction between the natures, but there is perfect harmony as Christ is both fully God and fully man.

“How will this be?” Mary asked—and tonight we have asked it with her. The incarnation is not merely improbable; from every angle of human reason, it seems impossible. That the eternal Word who spoke the universe into being should become a speechless infant… that the unchanging God should enter our world of constant change… that the Holy One should take on our frail flesh without being tainted by our sin—this defies every calculation of probability we possess.

Yet here is the glory of Christmas: the impossibility is precisely the point. “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). The God who spoke light into darkness has now spoken Himself into our darkness. He did not send a messenger, an angel, or a prophet—He came. The Final Word was made flesh, and in that flesh He has assumed everything that makes us human (body, soul, mind, will, heart, emotions) so that every part corrupted by the curse might be healed.

This is the good news of the incarnation: because Jesus is forever the God-Man, the breach between heaven and earth is closed. Sin separated us completely, but in Christ God and man are united perfectly—never to be divided again. And by faith, you can enter that union. Trust in this Jesus who became what we are so that we might become what He is: forgiven, restored, brought near to God.

So let us leave here tonight not with heads merely shaking at the improbability, but with hearts burning with wonder and worship. The One through whom all things were made lay in a manger. The King of glory cried as a baby. The Eternal Word learned to speak. And He did it all for you.

Come to Him. Behold Him. Believe Him. The impossible has happened—God is with us.

Amen.