By the time you finish reading this article—assuming you read the whole thing—approximately 1350 babies will have been born—or, 267 per minute. By the time today is over, around 385,000 babies will have come into the world.1 When I was born, it happened to be the young doctor’s first delivery. By all accounts, he was so pleased with himself that he declared I was such a special baby that I was bound to be the prime minister of Australia! Aside from forgetting my mother had done the lion’s share of the work, his hopes for my life still haven’t come true. Among so many thousands of babies born every day, the odds I would be prime minister are vanishingly small.
The likelihood that any one of us would have an impact on a national level is tiny—but not impossible. There are a handful of babies who go on to have a global impact. Most of the names I can think of are all from the past 100 years or so. However, the child who had the greatest impact on human history without any overstatement would be Jesus.
dirty nappies
It’s odd to think of Jesus as a child, or even as a baby. Nevertheless, He was. We are told He was born in the shed out the back of a motel—certainly not an auspicious start to life. Anyone watching wouldn’t predict greatness from this low-born Baby. Jesus certainly wasn’t a child prodigy. He was just an average Kid born in a small Judean town to working class parents. His dad was a tradie and He had a stay-at-home mum. His upbringing could describe many of us. It certainly reminds me of my own childhood.
That includes the time I got lost at the Broken Hill Show. I had wandered off, following some shiny thing and found myself amongst strangers, So, I did what most kids would do—I cried until an adult did something. They read my name out over the speaker and soon my parents came to find me. Imagine my astonishment when I read that Jesus as a child was so ordinary that He also got separated from His parents!
found in the temple
After the family had been in Jerusalem for a festival, “the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it” (Luke 2:43). They searched for Him for three days, not having access to a loudspeaker, eventually finding Him in the temple. When they found Him, He was doing something remarkable, something they didn’t expect—Jesus was teaching the teachers! “Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). When His parents asked why He had done this, He said, “Why were you searching for me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).
Honestly, I wouldn’t have gotten away with talking back to my parents like that. We don’t know how Mary or Joseph reacted—aside from the fact that “they did not understand what he was saying to them” (Luke 2:50).
“So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35)
This is what sets Jesus apart from me—and everyone else in history. Though my doctor prophesied I would be prime minister, before Jesus was born, we are told His mother Mary was visited by a messenger from God and was told that her Son would be special: “So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
Mary was to give birth to the Son of God. Talk about high expectations! But Jesus’ words in the temple were a reminder that He was that Son, and that His life was going to be very different. It wouldn’t happen for decades, though. He was Jesus, Joseph’s Son, the Son of a tradie. It’s likely His father Joseph taught Him the family business, that He worked with His hands alongside His dad. Then when Jesus was about 30 years of age (Luke 3:23), He was baptised in public and began His public ministry. That in itself wasn’t that unusual. What was unusual was what happened next.
miracles on miracles
Jesus attended a wedding and performed His first miracle: He transformed water into the most extraordinary wine. Then Jesus started healing people and when they were healed, they stayed well. He could heal things that no doctors could, including leprosy. We are told “the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses” (Luke 5:15).
While Jesus healed people, He told them about the kingdom of God and that they were welcome in it. He healed the blind, the lame—even those who had died were brought back to life. Huge crowds followed Him. What He was doing began reminding some of the ancient old prophecies of the long-awaited Messiah: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped” (Isaiah 35:5). Jesus drew a group of followers around Him to help Him in His work and for three-and-a-half years, He travelled around Israel sharing the news of His Father’s kingdom.
This message caused some consternation for the ruling Romans. They didn’t like this talk of other kingdoms as they believed theirs was perfectly fine. Soon, in concert with the leading religious figures, a plan was formed to put a stop to Jesus and His ministry—in the way that only the Roman empire could.
one-in-a-billion
But the remarkable thing is that Jesus not only knew about this plan—but was anticipating it. Predictably, He was arrested, convicted and put to death on a Roman cross. Now, for the truly remarkable twist.
For any other person, this would be the end of the story. But not for Jesus. He knew that through His death, He would have ultimate victory over death and evil. Witnesses attest to the tomb being opened, to Jesus’ body being missing and more, to Jesus being alive again. “He is not here; he has risen!” (Luke 24:6).
This is what sets Jesus apart from every other name in history. No-one else has predicted their own death and resurrection—and pulled it off. But for me, some of the most convincing arguments about the resurrection of Jesus come from the way those closest to Him were changed by it. His disciples hid out of fear they would be killed as well, but Jesus went to them and showed them He was still alive. “He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day’” (Luke 24:46).
No-one else has predicted their own death and resurrection—and pulled it off.
From that moment, rather than hiding away or running, the disciples acted boldly, many of them holding to the truth of a resurrected Jesus even to the point of losing their own lives. They didn’t shake their heads and disavow Jesus—what they saw made them firmer in their belief, and while Jesus only ever lived and ministered in Israel, soon the incredible truth that the Son of God Himself had come to save us spread across the globe like wildfire. More than 2000 years later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world—all because of the truth of the resurrection.
Not bad for a tradie’s Boy from Bethlehem, hey?
1. <theworldcounts.com/stories/how-many-babies-are-born-each-day>
