POST OVERVIEW. A commentary on the conception and birth of Jesus Christ as given in Matthew 1:18-25, emphasizing how these are utterly unique in human history and serve to separate Jesus from all of Adamic humanity.

Matthew 1:18-25. Jesus’ “ordinariness” abruptly ends with the end of His genealogy, for it is exactly in Matthew 1:18 that Jesus is separated from all Adamic humanity. For while Jesus, like every other human being who has ever lived (except Adam and Eve), began His earthly life by conception in a mother’s womb, His conception was completely unlike any other conception. Every other human being is conceived in the womb by the human seed of Adam, but Jesus is twice declared to be conceived by the Holy Spirit (1:18, 20). From this point in the gospel, Jesus will continuously be displayed as the unique Son of God.

1:18. “before they came together (i.e., had marital relations), she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit” (v. 18). Notice that ordinary human conception is explicitly ruled out. Jesus could not have been conceived in the ordinary way because Mary and Joseph had not known one another sexually. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ conception and birth, Mary asks Gabriel, “How will this be (i.e., her giving birth to Jesus), since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). But “before they came together,” Mary was found to be pregnant. Well, how did that happen?

The Bible tells us how this humanly impossible event happened. We need not be in any doubt. The inspired Word of the living God tells us that there was (literally in the Greek) “found possessed/held in her womb by (or ‘from’) the Holy Spirit.” Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb by the work of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity. Jesus, who is Himself God, was conceived in the human by God the Holy Spirit. There is immense mystery here as we consider how God could become Man, but there is no mystery or ambiguity as to how Jesus was conceived. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the virgin’s womb.

1:19. At this point in the narrative, we have information that Joseph does not. We know that the holy Child in Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but Joseph knows of no such possibility. Knowing only about ordinary conception, Joseph wants to send his adulterous wife away secretly and discretely. We can only imagine the emotions that Joseph must have felt when Mary was found to be with child “before they came together.” Embarrassment, anger, thoughts of being betrayed and deceived, disappointment, shock must have flooded his mind. “How could she be so cruel and unfaithful!”

1:20. Ordinarily, these feelings would have been completely justified. But remember, Jesus is no ordinary Man. Even at the very beginning of His human likeness, Jesus manifested His deity. At His conception Jesus was God. And now an angel tells Joseph in a dream about this Child conceived in Mary. “Joseph, son of David, Mary has not been unfaithful! The Child in her womb has been ‘begotten of the Holy Spirit.’” Consistent with the words of the Nicene Creed, “He (Jesus) became incarnate by the Holy Spirit.” Even in His human conception, Jesus is “God from God, true God from true God.”

1:21. The angel goes on to tell Joseph things about this Child which testify that He is the Anointed One (Messiah). “The Child will be a Son, whom you shall call Jesus.” “Jesus” is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name “Yeshua.” The meaning of the Hebrew name Yeshua is “Yahweh saves.” So the Child will be named “Yahweh saves.” But from what danger will Jesus save His people? “He (Jesus) will save His people from their sins.”

We must take a moment to consider the profundity of this small and simple sentence. We will do this in three steps. 1) He will save. 2) His people. 3) From their sins.

“HE WILL SAVE.” “Jesus will save.” But if God is sending His Son as a Savior, it must mean that there is some extreme danger from which people need to be rescued. If there were anyone else who could save people, then Jesus would surely have remained in heaven. But Jesus is sent because He and He alone is able to save from sins. 

“Jesus will save.” There is no mention of any other agent of salvation in this verse because there is no other Savior to mention. “There is salvation in no other name” (Acts 4:12). “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). “There is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

“HIS PEOPLE.” Jesus left the glories of heaven for the agonies of the cross in order to accomplish the mission given to Him by the Father, and that mission was to save His people from their sins.

INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE. To understand the significance of this, we need to see that His people is both inclusive and exclusive. It is inclusive because Jesus came to save all of His people. Every single member of the group called “His people” is saved by the finished work of Jesus on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, He accomplished full atonement for all of His people. There is not a single one of Jesus’ people, from the Garden to the white horse (Rev. 19:11), for whom Jesus failed to propitiate their sins. Jesus’ atonement on Calvary’s cross included all of His people.

But we also need to understand that Jesus atoned for only His people. Notice that the angel of the Lord said, “He will save His people from their sins.” This means that Jesus came to die for a very specific group of people and He did not die for anyone else. Jesus will save all who are His people, but He will not save any who are not His people. His salvation is exclusive in that Jesus’ atonement excludes all those who are not His people.

Who, then, are “His people?” Who are the people for whom Jesus died? Whom did Jesus save by His death on the cross? “His people” must be that group known as God’s elect, those whom God sovereignly chose for salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). By the singular act of His death on the cross, Jesus has “purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). So, the Son of God was conceived in Mary’s womb for the purpose of saving the elect.

“FROM THEIR SINS.” This Child will receive the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. Ever since Adam disobeyed the Lord and ate from the tree, all of mankind has lived under the condemnation of sin (Romans 5:12). “There is none righteous, not even one.” “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “The wages of sin is death.” “The soul who sins will die.” And ever since Adam sinned, the question that mankind has sought to answer has been, “How can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2). How is it possible for my sins that are scarlet to be made white as snow (Isaiah 1:18)? Can burnt offerings, thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oil remove the guilt of my sin (Micah 6:6-7)? While no work or sacrifice can remove the guilt of even one sin, this One, this Jesus is going to save all His people from their sins. Jesus is the long-awaited Savior.

1:22-23. Matthew now comments on the words of the angel and declares that these events of the birth of Jesus took place to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah made 700 years before when the prophet said, “Behold, the virgin shall be with Child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), which translated means “God with us.”

Perhaps no more spectacular prophecy exists in the Old Testament than this word from Isaiah that a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and that this Child will be God in human flesh, “God with us.” Virgins do not conceive children, and God does not become Man. But Matthew is testifying that the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was the literal fulfillment of this entire prophecy in every detail. God the Son was conceived in Mary’s virgin womb.

1:24-25. Joseph proves to be a model of obedience and faith as he believed what the angel told him in the dream and obeyed what he was called to do. Thus “he took Mary as his wife and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.”

SUMMARY – CHAPTER 1. We have presented Matthew 1 in two parts, one talking about His genealogy and one talking about His conception and birth.

First, in His genealogy (1-17), Matthew displays Jesus as the promised Davidic King, as the rightful heir of the throne of David and, therefore, as the King of Israel. Also, by tracing Jesus’ lineage back through forty-two generations, Matthew demonstrates that Jesus is the son of Abraham and the Son of David.

By His divine conception and virgin birth (18-25), Jesus is displayed as being the completely unique Son of God. Although He appears as man in His physical form, this Man is utterly separate from all Adamic humanity, a heaven-sent Savior who is “God with us.”

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 11/22/2024                 #713