1 John 4:7-21
God is LOVE and Love Came from God
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Genesis 1:26-31
God Creates Man
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Luke 1:26-38
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
26 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 favored! 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.
Jeremiah 1:4-5
God Knows Us Before We Are Born
4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Acts 17:24-31
We Are God's Offspring
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
I have heard people say they find it difficult to believe in the virgin birth of Mary, and a virgin having a baby...Some say they cannot believe in the virgin birth at all...Yet, these believers are able to believe that God created Adam and that He created Eve, in a most unconventional way...Some who cannot believe in the virgin birth, however, do believe that Jesus could have turned water into wine and could have brought sight back to the blind, or could have healed a lame and crippled man...So it seems for some of us is that we can believe in some miracles, but we cannot believe in all kinds of miracles...Our minds and our thinking won't let us believe in all kinds of miracles...A miracle is defined as an extraordinary event not explainable by nature and is therefore considered divine...Miracles are beyond our current ways of thinking...A miracle is something we cannot explain with the current laws and the knowledge or current scientific knowledge we currently have...A miracle is outside the realm of the way, in the way as we humans think...
God created mankind, which was a miracle...He first created Adam and then He create Eve...He also created mankind in His own Image...He is part of everyone of us...He has been a part of each of our births since the beginning, and in the beginning...God knows us before we are formed in our mother's womb, therefore He knows us before we are even born...We are His offspring...So to believe this -that God knows us before we are in our mother's womb -it takes a miracle of belief, I think...But this is what believer's believe in...So believers believe that mankind, namely Adam and Eve started without a "normal" mother and father union...Adam and Eve were created or we could also say conceived by God...And as we read the amazing story of Jesus' conception, we see that He too was created and conceived by God, His Father, and that Mary, a virgin is His mother...
Man's thought process and thinking sometimes, if not always, thinks that to be born we need to be conceived by a man and a woman...But that is not true at all!...That statement cannot be true no matter what you believe or what one believes in...This is because in the beginning because the very first man and the very first woman just happened or just happened to be born...This is true no matter what...This is true if you believe in God or do not believe in Him...The non-believer must ask him or herself, "Where did the first man come from and who were the mother and father of the first man?"...Just as the believer must ask this same question...
As we study first man and first woman, what we see is that there are many that do not believe in the virgin birth or that God is involved in any of our lives...The non-believer believes that we came from a warm water, or primitive-type soup with just the right amount of chemicals of carbons, amino acids, and a huge bang of sorts created us...So (if one believes this) that we were created from this warm little pond theory that Charles Darwin wrote about or that we came from the sea from this primitive soup -and we can out as a living creature without a mother or a father...The scientist Stephen Hawking writes "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,"..."Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist..."It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."...When I think of this type of universe and world...It is a world without design, without organization -but most importantly without meaning and purpose...There is no good or no evil, if we just happened...Who, if this did happen, is to say what is good and what is evil?...
The non-believer believes in the beginning and we just happened into existence -on our own and out of nothing...No mother and no father, just some primitive warm soup...And out of the soup, here we came...I might call this type of theory for the beginning of man also a virgin birth, because neither a mother or a father was involved in the process...
In Jesus' case, we have a Loving Father, and at least a mother named Mary...We do not have this (mother or Father) in the alternative belief system that we have and most often compare what might have happened in the beginning...And also in Jesus' birth, we can see that His Loving Father, "our" Loving Father gives us reason and logic and meaning...By believing in God, we can see that our Loving Father and Jesus give us meaning and purpose...But if one rejects and does not believe, the world becomes an inexplicable riddle...The world becomes a random event with no right or no wrong, no good or no evil...Even LOVE cannot be explained if we just became at random...Believers believe that there is good and evil, and created by God...Believers believe that God is LOVE...And love came from God...The history of our race is satisfactorily explained through God and His Son...