The New Testament’s description of Christ’s miraculous conception, virgin birth, and childhood are fulfillments of the Old Testament’s hope. This includes hope for the Messiah, for David’s son, for Abraham’s heir, for the seed of woman. It includes hope for the restored temple, for the restored land, and for the restored people of God. As Putman explains, “From Genesis to Revelation, we see that the birth of Jesus was not an arbitrary act of God—but an event that looked back to the garden of Eden and forward to the New Jerusalem” (249).

I was raised in a family that loved Christmas. Every December after school ended, my mom took me and my little brother to a small town in west Tennessee to spend a couple of weeks with her family. We’d help close up my granddad’s furniture store around noon on Christmas Eve. Then we’d have a potluck lunch with his employees. My aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins would come to my maternal grandparents’ house after the candlelight service at church.

This was Christmas in my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, the Christmas I experienced every year for 22 years. Thinking about it brings so much nostalgia and sentiment.

But nostalgia and sentiment are, for me and almost everyone else, also colored by brokenness, hurt, and loss. Most notably, my brother died of a drug overdose in March 2021. But before that, several key members of the family passed away: my mom’s father (the patriarch of the family), my paternal grandmother, and my mom’s younger sister. The happy memories of my childhood Christmases are shaded, even marred, by loss.

For those of us who have experienced such deep pain, how can we still find joy during the holidays? How can we still love Christmas, despite the acute emotional pain we may feel at this time of year?

This is where Rhyne R. Putman’s book Conceived by the Holy Spirit: The Virgin Birth in Scripture and Theology comes in. The way out of our hurt isn’t to ignore it or wallow in it but to trust in the one who willingly stepped into it and saved us from it.

Christmas’s True Meaning

As Putman, associate vice president of academic affairs at Williams Baptist University, repeatedly shows, the triune God’s work in the incarnation of God the Son doesn’t ignore sin’s effects. Instead, it’s in that work that Jesus encounters and overcomes the source and consequences of sin and death on our behalf.

The true meaning of Christmas is that the one true God, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, becomes one of us to free us from what ails us and restore us to our purpose: dwelling with God and glorifying him forever. It’s this fundamental reality of God’s redemptive work on our behalf that can produce love in our hearts for the celebration of Christ’s birth. Sorrows remain. Yet there’s hope that God has done what’s necessary to redeem us from sin’s effects far as the curse is found. This brings joy to the world.

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