Maybe you’ve heard someone say that your mother and father brought you into the world. They had a part in it, they cooperated with God in doing it, but the One who brought you into the world was God Himself. Your father and mother knew nothing about how to make you!
The Bible says to your father and mother, “You can no more understand what [God] does than you understand how new life begins in the womb of a pregnant woman” (Ecclesiastes 11:5). If He “makes all things,” that means He made you!
And who is God?
He is the Father also of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means straight off that God has intended you to be a brother or a sister of Jesus Himself. You are a very important person. And that means that you want to do and say things that are right. God Himself gave you that desire.
Here are some neat words that you can say to God (they are a prayer that anyone can say to Him. You can make them your prayer tonight before you go to sleep):
“You created every part of me; You put me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because ... all You do is strange and wonderful. I know it with all my heart. When my bones were being formed, carefully put together there in secret, You knew that I was there—You saw me before I was born. ...” (Psalm 139:13-16).
If you can’t sleep at night, start thinking about how God fitted every nerve in your body and in your brain before you were born. You are more complex than any computer anyone has ever made. If your father had red hair, more than likely you have red hair. Why? No one knows. Tiny little things that no one has ever seen are passed on from father and mother to the child, all of it somehow in what we call the DNA. It makes each of us different.
Can you imagine a cord that no one can see that stretches all the way back through your parents and grandparents on and on to Adam and Eve, our first parents on earth? That’s our DNA; and little threads smaller than a spider’s web are added to it by each new father and mother along the way. But God knows every tiny little nerve cell that went into making you what you are.
When Jesus was born as a Baby, was He a part of that mysterious cord that no one can see, our DNA?
Or did God start from scratch when Jesus was to come into the world as our Savior and make a new Baby like He made Adam in the beginning—out of the dirt in the ground? Remember, the Bible says, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,” Genesis 2:7. Is that how God formed Jesus as a Baby? Or did His mother conceive Him in her womb with all the DNA we have all inherited from the fallen Adam? And did Jesus grow as a tiny baby there for nine months until she was ready to give birth to Him?
The Bible tells us “Yes.” Jesus was conceived in the womb of a woman named Mary. She was a virgin, that is, she had never slept with a man. Her Baby had no earthly father such as everyone else in the world has had. But except for that, Jesus took part in all that same DNA that we inherit from our parents all the way back to Adam. (You can read all about it in Romans 8:3, 4 and Hebrews 4:14-16.)
The Bible says that just as “the children ... are people of flesh and blood, Jesus Himself became like them and shared their human nature” (Hebrews 2:14). It also says “that He had to become like His brothers in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in His service to God, so that the people’s sins would be forgiven. And now He can help those who are tempted, because He Himself was tempted and suffered” (verse 1 7). That means that as a Child, Jesus knew how you feel. When He fell down and skinned His knees, that hurt just as much as it hurts for you.
It also means that He was just as much tempted as you are tempted to be selfish, but He never gave in to that temptation. He is the only Baby ever to grow up to be a Boy who was never selfish. Often as a Child He would give His own lunch to someone who was hungry. He looked just like you—no one would have guessed by looking at Him that He was the Son of God! The difference between Him and you and me is that He was God in human flesh, and the Bible says that always “God is love” (1 John 4:8). What was different was His character.
The Bible says that you and I are standing before the Lord dressed in tattered, filthy old rags; but Jesus takes His own spotless, beautiful robe of perfect character and covers us with it.
But does He force us to wear it?
No, He will force no one. If you squirm and resist Him and tell Him, “No, I like my filthy rags” (I am sorry, many do), He will not force you.
But I tell Him, “Thanks, Jesus, my Savior! Let me have those nice new clothes.” Won’t you tell Him the same?