Made Known By The Message Of An Angel
MADE KNOWN BY THE
MESSAGE OF AN ANGEL
Two separate Angels, one to Mary, one to Joseph, declare who the adorable Agent was, by whom this miracle was wrought. “Joseph, thou son of David,” an Angel said to him, “fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit;” and what followed from this? He proceeds, “And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His Name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Because He was “incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary,” therefore He was “Jesus,” a “Savior from sin.” Again, the Angel Gabriel had already said to Mary, “Hail, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” And then he proceeds to declare that her Son should be called Jesus; that He “should be great, and should be called the Son of the Highest;” and that “of His Kingdom there shall be no end.” And he concludes by announcing, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore, that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Matt. 1:20, 21. Luke 1:28-35). Because God the Holy Spirit wrought miraculously, therefore was her Son a “Holy Thing,” “the Son of God,” and “Jesus,” and the heir of an everlasting kingdom.
This is the great Mystery which we are now celebrating, of which mercy is the beginning, and sanctity the end: according to the Psalm, “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” He who is all purity came to an impure race to raise them to His purity. He, the brightness of God’s glory, came in a body of flesh, which was pure and holy as Himself, “without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish;” and this He did for our sake, “that we might be partakers of His holiness.” He needed not a human nature for Himself—He was all-perfect in His original Divine nature; but He took upon Himself what was ours for the sake of us. He who “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” so that in the sin of one all sinned, and in the death of one all died, He came in that very nature of Adam, in order to communicate to us that nature as it is in His Person, that “our sinful bodies might be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood;” to make us partakers of the Divine nature; to sow the seed of eternal life in our hearts; and to raise us from “the corruption that is in the world through lust,” to that immaculate purity and that fulness of grace which is in Him. He who is the first principle and pattern of all things, came to be the beginning and pattern of human kind, the firstborn of the whole creation. He, who is the everlasting Light, became the Light of men; He, who is the Life from eternity, became the Life of a race dead in sin; He, who is the Word of God, came to be a spiritual Word, “dwelling richly in our hearts,” an “engrafted Word, which is able to save our souls;” He, who is the co-equal Son of the Father, came to be the Son of God in our flesh, that He might raise us also to the adoption of sons, and might be first among many brethren. And this is the reason why the Collect for the season, after speaking of our Lord as the Only-begotten Son, and born in our nature of a pure Virgin, proceeds to speak of our new birth and adopted sonship, and renewal by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
–Parochial and Plain Sermons, V