Merry Christmas from askanyquestion.info
First of all, let me compliment you on how you have asked this question. People have questioned this event for as long as the story has been told.
Your question is huge, and it gets to the heart of other questions. Did Jesus really exist? Was He created in Mary’s womb? How can we know for sure that He was both God and man? And, I will put another question to you in a moment.
I agree with the great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who said that, “If Jesus was anything, then Jesus was everything.” Jesus was either a total fraud, or He was/is who He said He was/is. And historians prove that Jesus really existed. There are Greek historians, and Roman historians, and pagan historians, and Jewish historians, and yes, Christian historians.
One historian was Josephus, with whom many are familiar. He grew up in a priestly family in first-century Palestine and wrote only decades after Jesus’s death. Jesus’s known associates, such as His brother James, were contemporaries of Josephus. The historical and cultural context was second nature to Josephus. “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus,” according to theologian and educator Robert Van Voorst.
Another was the former Roman Senator turned historian, Tacitus. He referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44. Scholars generally consider Tacitus’s reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to be both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source. Scholars state that it is now “firmly established” that Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.
So as to the question if Jesus existed, you may choose to ignore the evidence in history, but to me, Jesus was at least “something.” To me, that makes Him everything. Jesus wasn’t just a nice guy, good teacher, and important philosopher. He was born of the Virgin Mary and, to me, everything else I know about Him in the Bible, as well as existentially, must also be true.
But was Jesus created in Mary’s womb? The Bible has more to say about this than some realize.
Jesus was the only begotten son of the Father (John 3:16). To beget is to propagate someone as your son, someone who is one of a kind. Conversely, to create is to make something entirely new, unlike the creator. And yet, the Bible says that Jesus was in the beginning with God, was God, and present at all of creation. The prophet Isaiah tells us that a “son is given” and yet not created. In fact, the Bible says that “without him, nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3). Jesus had already been in existence, and yet God chose to “beget” Jesus as His only Son for His good purposes and our future salvation. Immanuel, God with us, is exactly who was born that night in Bethlehem. He was/is both God and man. This was an event of the supernatural.
No one can know for sure how God did it. Why would you really want to know that anyway? Natural law explains mechanisms, but God is not a mechanism. He wasn’t meant to be a naturalistic explanation. He is supernatural. God is not meant to be an explanation at all. He is not meant to be a substitute for things of the world and universe.
Yes, God chose a willing young woman, the virgin Mary, to be the way He would enter the world of human hearts. That story gets better and better, but we’ll leave that here. For now, I have a question for you. Is there room in your heart for Jesus, the Son of God? I live with a blessed hope of a future with Him. The really good news at Christmas is that you can have that same hope, too. Let every heart prepare Him room.
When we don’t have all the answers, and I certainly don’t, our faith must lead us. The Bible says we come to the Father by His grace through faith. And while history can prove to us that Jesus lived and died, the real question for our faith would be this: Did He die and live? I know that answer for me. How about you? Let’s have a conversation about faith—your faith, and mine.
Let every heart prepare Him room. Let Earth receive her king.
Merry Christmas.