Christ has saved us! This is the best Good News you'll ever hear. Christ's taking a sinful nature is not equivalent to participation in sin. Sin has to do with the will, a volitional exercise, however unconscious or embryonic it may be. And Christ refused "decidedly" to sin in any form, in feeling, in thought, in purpose, in imagination, in fantasy, in word, in deed.
His mother was not a sinless woman, for she confessed that she was a sinner in need of a Saviour (Luke 1:47). The Immaculate Conception theory is not biblical. But Mary was unusual in one respect: she had unusual faith to believe. That's why "all generations" call her "blessed."
Christ's being conceived of the Holy Spirit did not lessen His complete identity with us through His sinful mother, or ameliorate the power of the temptations to sin that we know; but it did provide Him with a power greater than any unconverted human being has to resist the impulse or temptation to sin that has swept us all into its power. And we can have that same power by faith.
It was demonstrated in Christ's complete victory over sin in His flesh which was identical to ours, for "He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in His flesh the enmity." "You that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight" (Eph. 2:14, 15; Col. 1:22).
While Christ grew to what we call the age of accountability, He laid aside all divine prerogatives and fought the battle as we must fight it—by faith alone. He grew into a perfect identity with the human family until it could be said that God "hath made Him to be sin who knew no sin." Stronger and fiercer became the temptations that assailed Him; and He met them in increasing agony of conflict. Thus His righteousness was not static or "natural," innate, or "exempt" from our struggle. It was dynamic, the result of conflict with the enemy more terrible than imaginable.
The fact that this victory began in His infancy, yes, even in His prenatal state, is not to be wondered at. Before He knew "to refuse the evil, and choose the good," the Virgin's Son in some way "condemned sin in the flesh," for He was "Immanuel, which is being interpreted, God with us" (Isa. 7:14-16; Rom. 8:3). If He were in any way excused from that infantile confrontation with the temptation to sin, He could not be our Saviour, for He could not then be our perfect Substitute or Example. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder."
Was it on an Infant's shoulder that the "government" lay? Yes; the government of earth and heaven lay on a Baby's "shoulder," and had He sinned even once as an infant through a temper tantrum or a selfish manifestation of disposition, the "government" would have crashed, and the plan of redemption would have failed. Even as "a child" "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9:6). We tread softly here on holy ground.
But never could it be said that "the government shall be upon His shoulder" had He been exempt or excused from the problem that "the government" faced—the problem of sin taking residence in fallen, sinful human flesh. The Child was "born unto us" especially that He might solve the problem of sin and redeems us from the penalty and power of sin. For this reason He was sent "in the likeness of sinful flesh," yes, even from the moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Our problem is not our babyhood. For all of us who read this, those days are gone forever. The great issue now to be settled is not how we can relive our prenatal or babyhood days, or change our heredity. No need to cry about the past. To blame others or ourselves for our past is futile. Christ is a Saviour who meets us where we are at this moment, and saves to the uttermost.
What will we do from now on with "so great salvation"? For all of us, this is Good News not to be trifled with.