Article December 18, 1995 Issue

The Christmas message about birth

Richard Biever

Many Christians will take time in December to contemplate what the Saviour's birth means to them. Interestingly, though, Jesus pointed to an entirely spiritual basis of creation. "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven," he said (Matt. 23:9). Likewise, John's Gospel records a glimpse of the true, spiritual creation: "At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning. All creation took place through him, and none took place without him" (1:1-3, J. B. Phillips translation).

This is not to say that there is any question of the importance of the human birth of Jesus. This human appearing fulfilled prophecy, and this babe became the Way-shower to all men. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Had his origin and birth been wholly apart from mortal usage, Jesus would not have been appreciable to mortal mind as 'the way'" (p. 30).

But it is what Jesus came to reveal that is the cause for true celebration—that the Father-Mother God is the only creator, and that because God, Spirit, made us, we are, in fact, spiritual and not material. Our spiritual nature is emphasized throughout the Bible, as this passage illustrates: "... we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Cor. 3:18).

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