The basic idea of the Epistle to the Hebrews is that Jesus Christ alone brings to us the full revelation of God, and that He alone enables us to enter into the very presence of God. The writer begins his letter by contrasting Jesus with the prophets who went before.

He talks about Jesus coming in these last days. The Jews divided all time into two ages -- the present age and the age to come. In between they set the Day of the Lord. So the writer says: "The old time is passing away. The new age, the age of God, has dawned in Christ." He saw the world entering into a new beginning with Jesus Christ.

In Jesus, God has invaded humanity and things can never be the same again. God who had formerly spoken through the prophets has spoken to the world a final word in His Son. How different is that Word from any uttered before or since.

1. He Was Different from the Beginning.

Why was Herod, a powerful king, so afraid of a tiny baby that, without awaiting developments, he had to murder all the male children in Bethlehem? What a sinister significance lies in the last lines of this verse by Mary Coleridge:

I saw a stable, low and very bare,

A little child in a manger.

The oxen knew him, had him in their care.

To men he was a stranger.

The safety of the world was lying there

And the world's danger.

How strange were the gifts of those astrologers at the end of their long and dangerous journey. God, the symbol of royalty; frankincense, the symbol of divinity; myrrh, the symbol of suffering -- strange gifts to bring to a child. He was so different from the very beginning that a star shone over His humble abode. The hills around Bethlehem echoed the voices of angels which filled the night with song. These things point to a difference from the beginning.

The Bible and the Church have taught that His birth was different from all other births because Jesus had no human father. There are those who tell us that it does not matter very much whether or not we believe in the Virgin Birth. The fact of Jesus' coming into the world is the main thing, they claim. The manner of His coming need not concern us.

Yet, as James Denney pointed out, the fact that in Christ we are confronted with someone unique in the annals of the race ought to dispose our minds to believe that there was something different about the nature of His birth. Once we have sensed the wonder of His personality, it becomes easy to accept the truth of the Virgin Birth.

Why did Jesus have to enter the world like that? Was it not that in His conception by the Holy Spirit of God something utterly without parallel in the history of mankind might take place -- God and man might be miraculously blended in one matchless personality? It was an unprecedented invasion of the world, ushering in a new era. It is fitting that such a miracle as the Incarnation should be marked by such an event as the Virgin Birth.