The Miracle of Life
The Miraculous Conceptus
The initial, quickening, zinc-ignited, spark occurs with the fusion of the male gamete and the ovum of the female. The zygote then produces, by a process of cell division, an unformed morula. As this ball of cells multiplies further, a blastocyst is formed - its cell populations are, as yet, undifferentiated and identical to each other. Shortly after this a triple-layer of specialized embryonic tissue is detectable - from this three-tier cell sandwich of endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm, all the essential rudimentary body structures of the human body will emerge - intestines, liver, lung, skin and nerve and other organs derive from these lines. Truly, even before considering the precious souls we have, every human frame is an anatomical miracle of divine creative genius. We are, in the words of David "fearfully and wonderfully made." Yet, to the naked eye, if visible at all, there is nothing of the aesthetic or anatomical beauty, wisdom, harmony or structure of the fully-developed, image-bearing, species-specimen to behold - life at this stage is just a seeming, jumbled, disorganized mass.
The Miraculous Cosmos
The seeming insignificant, unattractive, disorganized, unstructured, raw material of the earliest unformed human life, has a physical, cosmic, parallel in the original, ex-nihilo Creation of God - this is mentioned in The Origin of all things in in Genesis 1:1-2.
The way it is expressed by the Holy Spirit, through the pen of Moses to Israel, is striking and arresting - not, as yet, is their any indication that this early earth is a wonder to behold: the phrase that is used is "formless and void". As yet there was no light - all there was, in fact, was just the entirety of the stockpiled building blocks of the globe in a dark, disorganized, state. No doubt, to the penetrating gaze of the creative Agent, Divine Logos, His microscopic analysis of the glory of the case was self-evident: sub-anatomic integrity, harmony and symmetry along with laws of particle physics, chemical bonds both ionic and covalent were all sustained by His Word, in a soup of time and space, with nothing present by chance.
This was the clay that the Father-Potter would mold for, by and through the hands of His Word - for the moment, however, there was no vessel or sculpture at his wheel: the architect of the universe had the plans on His drawing board, with all building supplies at hand, but no beam or hinge, as yet, had been lovingly and skillfully positioned in the house of the earliest Earth. Nothing was wrong. Evil was absent. All was pure, if still incomplete. Yet, in the short-space of six busy days, when the Carpenter did His work, something even more amazing, and pristinely and irreducibly complex, would emerge - sky and sea, hills and lakes, continent and beach, grain and fruit, herds and flock, beast and man (its crown). Yet, even from the start, if the zenith had not been scaled, nothing jarred, at all, in the morula of muddy, unformed, earth - when the Spirit brooded over the face of the dark deep, it was a miracle of life itself.
Such considerations should help us get a handle on the sheer, invisible, goodness of the Cosmos, which is mentioned in Genesis 1:2. It also bangs a nail in the coffin of the now-unpopular, once-widespread, so-called Gap Theory (formerly popularized by Arthur Pink in His little booklet "Satan and His Gospel"). If creating a vacuum of time seems attractive to some, it is a vain enterprise designed to dig up archaeological billions of years: simply put, there is no clue in the text to give any hint of that: in other words, there was no pre-Creation lapse, or fall of a former earth, which resulted in the state described in Genesis 1:2. Only if we could dismiss an embryo as a mistake (which would be a blindness to beauty, order and wonder of the foremost rank), would it be possible to imagine that the original globe had gone to rack and ruin before the entrance of sin. It would be to call into question the goodness of God Himself, or throw doubt on the glory of God, as mirrored in Creation (it would only be a faulty, disreputable builder who would erect the world with unsafe building materials). The Bible just does not discuss the fall of the Devil at this point. All the materials used in creation of earth were without defect. All that God created is good - to be used and enjoyed with a mind, heart and soul of celebratory, humble, thanks.
The Miraculous Christ
But above all, it would be to denigrate the first-flush of incarnation, of the Most High and Most Excellent, Divine Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself. Though hidden away from our gaze, His entrance into this world stage was, with certainty, a most glory-filled, creative, act of the blessed and over-brooding Holy Spirit: it was this that united the Divine Logos to His pre-prepared holy humanity, in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Even at this earliest, embryonic, unformed state, the morula of the God-Man, was most dearly loved by the Father and to be early adored by angels. The One who was born with the purpose of bearing our sin, whose fully-formed tissues would later hang from the Tree, was, excepting, sin, made like us in every respect - this is our Great High Priest who has propitiated God's wrath (Hebrews 2:17).
The Miraculous Chant
It is this Virginal Conception of Messiah Jesus which, as a singer of the Psalms, our Lord owned for Himself, in Psalm 139:13-18: He is the antitypical Son of David, who originally wrote this Psalm, by the Spirit of Christ.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If the Lord Jesus Christ could stand in Zion's courts and lift up His full heart, will we not bless His Name for every single, numbered, law-obeying and sin-bearing moment of His shortened three and thirty years and prolonged three dark hours? To fail to give thanks is to be blind beyond belief - all our numbered days of bliss and peace are found in union with Christ who was once, as yet, unformed for us.
The Miraculous Christian
Thus we see how this most stupendous Miracle of Life became the most wondrous Miracle of Death - all was done so that, by grace, through faith, in God-Man, once-morula, Christ Jesus, we might die and live, in, through & with Him.
