Born in sin.
cf. Genesis 3:16; Psalms 51:5; Luke 2:21; 1 Timothy 2:15. From the division of the animals into clean and unclean, and the sanctity thereby inculcated, we are invited to proceed to those personal liabilities to uncleanness for which due rites were provided. The first of these takes life at its fountain-head, and refers to the uncleanness connected with birth. Motherhood involved a longer or shorter period of ceremonial separation—forty days in the case of a son, seventy days in the case of a daughter, after which a burnt offering and a sin offering are to be presented to the Lord, and atonement made for her that she may be clean.
I. LET US START WITH THE PHYSICAL FACT THAT NATURE HAS ASSOCIATED WITH CHILDBIRTH A SENSE ON THE MOTHER'S PART OF PERSONAL UNCLEANNESS. The "issue of her blood" (1 Timothy 2:7) stamps the physical process with defilement. No mother can avoid this sense of personal uncleanness, not even the blessed Virgin (Luke 3:22-24). Upon the fact it is needless to dwell.
II. THE MORAL COUNTERPART TO THIS IS THE FACT THAT SIN IS TRANSMITTED BY ORDINARY GENERATION. As David puts it in Psalms 51:5, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." From generation to generation is the legacy of evil transmitted. Hereditary sin must be recognized as a much wider phenomenon than "hereditary genius." The law of heredity must be accepted as at the bottom of human experience, if the mother, in spite of all her fondness for her babe, finds that she has transmitted sinful qualities; if this is the universal experience in ordinary generation, then the sense of uncleanness, physically induced, contracts a moral significance.
III. THERE IS AT THE SAME TIME A SENSE OF JOY AND TRIUMPH ASSOCIATED WITH THE BIRTH OF CHILDREN. If there is an element of sorrow and of judgment, as God indicates by his utterance at the Fall (Genesis 3:16), there is also an element of triumph, caught from the "protevangelium," which speaks of victory through the woman's seed (Genesis 3:15). Our Lord even speaks of it as an appropriate figure of the coming apostolic joy: "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world" (John 16:21). The sorrow is the preliminary of joy, the joy is its crown.
IV. THE TWO ELEMENTS OF JOY AND JUDGMENT HAD THEIR EXPRESSION IN THE BURNT AND SIN OFFERING THE MOTHER WAS DIRECTED TO PRESENT TO THE LORD. The ritual is the same whether it be a son or a daughter. The difference in the time of separation was due to a supposed physical fact that "a female child causes the mother more labour and a longer illness. This belief," continues Ewald, ", was itself caused by the well-known primitive disfavour with which the birth of a girl was regarded." £ No moral significance is to be attached, therefore, to the difference in the duration of the mother's separation. But at the end of either period there is to be brought a burnt offering and a sin offering. The burnt offering is to be, if the mother can afford it, "a lamb of the first year," while the sin offering is only to be "a young pigeon" or a "turtledove." It is evident, therefore, that, while a poor mother might bring as her burnt offering a "turtledove" or "young pigeon," the ritual attaches emphasis to the burnt offering rather than to the sin offering. It has even been supposed that the burnt offering took precedence in the order of time in this particular instance. At all events, the joy of consecration, which the burnt offering expresses, is more emphatic in this ritual than the atonement for unavoidable defilement, which is expressed by the sin offering. The undertone of judgment is certainly discernible, but high above it sound the notes of grateful, holy joy. The mother rejoiced that, though unavoidably unclean in her child-bearing, the Lord had put away her uncleanness, and she was ready to dedicate herself and her child unto the Lord in the rite of the burnt offering.
V. THIS RITUAL RECEIVES PECULIAR EMPHASIS FROM ITS CELEBRATION BY THE 'VIRGIN' MOTHER. Mary had the usual physical concomitants in the birth of Jesus, we have every reason to believe, the termination of which this ritual of purification was intended to celebrate. The sense of uncleanness was manifestly hers, since she enters upon the ritual as no exception to the general rule and law. Not only so, but Luke boldly states, "when the days of their purification, according to the Law of Moses, were fulfilled" ( τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῶν, not αὐτῆς), including Jesus along with Mary, for Oosterzee's notion that it is Joseph and Mary, not Jesus and Mary, will not satisfy the case. In what sense, then, was Jesus associated with his mother in a ritual of purification? It is certain that there was not transmitted to Jesus any sinful disposition or qualities, as in ordinary generation. His whole life belied this idea. He was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." But this does not prevent the idea being accepted that there was transmitted in his extraordinary generation responsibility for human sin. In other words, Jesus Christ was born with a liability on account of the sins of others. Having entered into the human family, having condescended to be born, he became liable for the responsibilities and debts of the human family, and the ritual so regarded him. Not only so, but our Lord had entered upon his "bloody passion" when at eight days old he had passed through the painful operation of circumcision. The rites in the temple thirty-three days after only expressed in legal form the liability on account of human sin upon which he had already entered. But if the atonement of the sin offering has thus a distinctive meaning in this exceptional case, the burnt offering had also its fulfillment. Mary dedicated, not only herself, but her Son, according to the Law of the Lord, "Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord." Simeon and Anna recognized in the infant the dedicated Messiah. Thus did Mary, as mother of Jesus, fulfill all righteousness.
VI. WE ARE SURELY TAUGHT HERE THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE THAT IT IS THROUGH SORROW AND HUMILIATION THAT TRIUMPH IS REACHED. The hope of a triumphant woman's seed sustained Jewish mothers in their sorrow. They looked for salvation through child-bearing, according to the idea of the apostle (1 Timothy 2:15). God's meaning was through the child-bearing ( διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας), that is, the motherhood of the Virgin. Yet the hope sustained multitudes of mothers in their agonies. At length the Conqueror of the devil appeared. He came as an infant, and braved the dangers of development, and became "the Man of sorrows," and passed through death to victory. To the same law we must constantly conform. Humiliation is the price of exaltation in the case of Jesus and of all his people. The apostles had their season of sorrow in connection with Christ's crucifixion, and so sore it was that our Lord does not hesitate to compare it to a woman's travail; but at Pentecost they got the joy and exhilaration which compensated for all. The law of the kingdom is that we enter it through much tribulation. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Luke 14:11). When we humble ourselves under a sense of sin, when we humble ourselves under a sense of unprofitableness, then are we treading the path which leads to power and triumph.—R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON