Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

(Matthew 1:18, NASB)

That Jesus came into our world is a fact made clear in the pages of Holy Scripture; it is a truth that is utterly central to our understanding of Christianity. Without the Incarnation, we could not joyfully sing Charles Wesley’s great line, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell. Jesus our Immanuel.” Without the God-Man there could be no Calvary, no appeasing of God’s just wrath, and, consequently, no resurrection. Without the Incarnation there would simply be no hope.

The question before us today is not the fact of the Incarnation. That is indisputable; it is the question Why? Why did Jesus come to us in such an unusual way? Our text tells us that before Mary and Joseph cohabited, she was pregnant. It was not a pregnancy born of promiscuity; that would have been grounds to discontinue the betrothal arrangement, but it was a pregnancy! Who was equipped among their peers to understand such an anomaly? It was impossible, at least as far as our minds can fathom. Mary could have had a normal conception, avoided a lot of embarrassment and fright on Joseph’s part, and eliminated criticism by the nation’s leaders. Could it have been to preserve the baby from the stain of sin? She had a real mother and grandmother. Unless all mothers in Mary’s lineage from Eve were without sin, how could maternal chromosomes be devoid from sin’s taint?

The answer is wonderful. Jesus came to us in a way no one else has ever come to help us understand that He is special. That He is unlike every child we have held in our arms. He is God incarnate. God’s gift to us to accomplish what no other child could ever do. “Come, let us adore Him!”