As I was reading Luke chapter 1 this morning, one simple sentence arrested my attention. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son…” (Luke 1:13). We naturally think of John the Baptist as a miraculous birth, and indeed he was. Elizabeth had long passed the years when she expected to become a mother, yet God spoke, and life began where hope had almost disappeared.
The passage made me wonder whether we sometimes think too narrowly about conception itself. We readily acknowledge God’s intervention when a barren womb is opened. We rejoice with Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth, recognising that the Lord has done what only He could do. Yet when an ordinary husband and wife conceive a child, we often speak as though biology alone explains what has happened. Scripture never does.
David writes, “You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” Job declares that God’s own hands fashioned him, while Jeremiah hears the Lord say, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” Again and again the Bible attributes the formation of every child, not merely to natural processes, but to the personal activity of God Himself. Conception follows the ordinary laws of creation, for God has wonderfully designed the human body, yet those laws do not replace Him; they are simply the means by which He ordinarily works. The God who sends the rain through the processes of nature is the same God who forms every child through the marvels of human conception.
Perhaps we have created a distinction that Scripture never makes. We speak of “natural” births and “miraculous” births, whereas the Bible presents every birth as a work of the Creator. Sometimes He works through extraordinary intervention, as He did with Elizabeth. More often He works through the ordinary order He Himself established. In either case, the Author of life is the same.
Once we begin to see this, our view of humanity begins to change. No child is merely an accident of biology, no conception catches God by surprise, and no life begins unnoticed. Before any doctor confirms a pregnancy, before parents begin to dream of names and futures, before anyone else even knows that a new life exists, God already knows that tiny person completely. The One who upholds all things by the word of His power is already sustaining that hidden life, and the child who is still invisible to the world is already perfectly known to its Creator.
This understanding reaches far beyond the beginning of life, for every person we meet has been known by God from the moment their life began. Every face in the congregation on a Sunday morning, every neighbour, every stranger we pass in the street, every colleague, every political opponent, every lonely elderly person, every frightened teenager, every refugee, every wealthy businessman and every homeless beggar was once that tiny life hidden in the womb, known completely by God and lovingly sustained by Him.
Yet we are remarkably quick to reduce people to labels. We remember their opinions, their failures, their awkwardness, their appearance or the words that once wounded us. Before long we no longer see a person at all; we see only our own summary of them. God never does that. He sees the child He formed, the experiences that have shaped a life, the joys and sorrows, the wounds inflicted by others, the wounds caused by personal sin, the opportunities embraced and the opportunities missed. He sees the whole story at once, whereas we usually see only a single page.
This does not excuse sin, for Scripture never excuses Cain, Judas or Pharaoh. Each remained responsible for the choices they made, and each will answer to God. Yet it does help us understand that people are far more than the worst thing they have ever done. Every one of us has been shaped by living in a fallen world. We have all been influenced by our families, our disappointments, our successes, our failures and our own sinful choices. None of us is yet what God intends us to become, for His work of conforming His children to the likeness of Christ continues throughout this life until it is gloriously completed in His presence.
I wonder whether this is one of the great secrets behind the command to love one another. We can hear that command repeated countless times, yet unless our understanding changes our hearts often remain unmoved. Love grows as we learn to see people differently. The believer sitting beside us has been patiently cared for by God since before birth. The difficult neighbour has never spent a single moment outside God’s sustaining hand. Even the person who opposes us bears the image of God and owes every heartbeat to the Creator who first gave it.
The Lord Jesus saw people in this way. Where others saw tax collectors, sinners, lepers and enemies, He saw men and women whose lives were known intimately by His Father. He saw beneath the outward behaviour to the people they truly were, and because He saw them rightly He loved them perfectly. Perhaps our own failure to love one another does not arise simply because we lack compassion, but because we do not yet see one another as God sees us.
The more we begin to understand that every person has been known by God from the very beginning of life, the more difficult it becomes to dismiss them, despise them or write them off. Instead, we find ourselves becoming more patient, more prayerful and more gracious, because we recognise that we are looking at someone in whom God has invested His loving care from the very beginning and upon whom He is still at work.
In an age that increasingly measures human worth by usefulness, ability, wealth or influence, the gospel quietly reminds us that every human life possesses immeasurable dignity because every life owes its existence to the loving will of its Creator. Perhaps Luke intended us not only to marvel at the birth of John the Baptist, but also to recover our wonder at every birth and, indeed, at every person we meet. Every baby is another testimony that the Creator has not ceased His work, and every human being we encounter is someone whom He has known from the very beginning. If that truth were to sink deeply into our hearts, I cannot help wondering whether our churches would become gentler places, our prayers for one another more fervent, and our love for one another a little closer to the love with which Christ Himself has loved us.