I knew a deacon in a former church who, when he prayed, he always stressed Jesus’ divinity by calling attention to the fact that Jesus took on flesh in His incarnation but that Jesus was and is eternal. Jesus is the eternal God the Son. There was never a time when the triune God was not. I used to think to myself sometimes when I heard this man pray, Why does he always stress this?

This morning as I was reading through Matthew’s gospel again as part of studying, Matthew 1:18 hit me like a splash of cold water: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18, ESV). Well, there it is, Jon, in black letters on white paper. That’s why the deacon prayed like he did.

Encouragement: The Trinity is eternal. Jesus is eternal. The Father is eternal. The Holy Spirit is eternal. One God in three Persons. The incarnation happened via God the Holy Spirit. It was God the Son condescending to take upon Himself human form, to come down as it were, to us sinners. In theological terms, it was part of Christ’s humiliation. Mary was “with child from the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18). The reason the deacon constantly stressed Jesus’ divinity is because the bloodline of sin was broken via the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing Mary. This was God the Son in eternity, and only Joseph’s son in the temporal. The incarnation was not a human work but a divine work. The work of the gospel is a divine miracle, not a human machination. Only God’s gospel is sufficient for these things, the coming of the God-man and the conversion of sinners.