In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
In Romans 12:1 Paul writes:.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Mary is a living example of what this mean. She offered her body:
- She offered her body that Jesus might come into her life (be conceived in her);
- She offered her body that Jesus might grow in her;
- She offered her body that Jesus might come to totally fill and dominate her;
- She offered her body that she might bring Jesus into the world (by the power of the Holy Spirit).
Mary is a working model of ‘consecration’ in action. She surrendered all; yielded herself to God; submitted fully to His Word and will.
Paul writes what he does in Romans 12 ”in view of God’s mercy”. He is looking back over His shoulder to everything God has done for us in Christ. Although Paul doesn’t specifically mention the Incarnation in Romans, its reality is implicit in everything he writes about Jesus. If He hadn’t come into the world, He couldn’t have gone on to do everything else Paul outlines and celebrates.
A true and fitting response, then, to all that Christmas means, is to offer ourselves To God. Maybe we may need to do this afresh on this Christmas day?
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering (Romans 12:1: ‘The Message).
Such a posture will make for, not only a happy Christmas, but also a happy life. There is no real happiness in living your own life and having your own way.
‘…we shouldn’t miss the contrast between muddled, puzzled Zechariah in the previous story and the obedient humility of Mary in this one. She too questions Gabriel, but this seems to be a request for information, not proof. Rather, faced with the chance to be the mother of the Messiah, though not yet aware of what this will involve, she says the words which have rung down the years as a model of the human response to God’s unexpected vocation: ‘Here I am, the Lord’s servant-girl; let it be as you have said.’ Tom Wright: ‘Luke for everyone’, p.12.