Favour

 

In the car listening to a service on the radio the other morning - the focus was on Mary.  And a phrase I have heard a thousand times suddenly leaped out at me and made me stop to think.   ' Do not be afraid Mary , you have found favour with God'





Why had she found favour with God?  What had she done to find favour with God?  What does that mean exactly?  Later on in the same passage the angel tells her that Elizabeth is also with child - she too has found favour with God.  For some reason I'd never really noticed those words in this particular way before..... but then that's the joy of the Bible isn't it?   Always something new to consider.

So first off what IS this favour which Mary and Elizabeth both suddenly found themselves experiencing.   Time to delve into Strongs concordance.  Which says the word favour means

Cognate: 5485 xáris (another feminine noun from xar-, "favour, disposed to, inclined, favourable towards, leaning towards to share benefit") – properly, grace. 5485 (xáris) is pre-eminently used of the Lord's favour – freely extended to give Himself away to people (because He is "always leaning toward them").

I love that - God freely giving Himself away to His people,  sharing the benefits of being God with people.   Isn't that amazing?.   So that is what God was doing in Mary and Elizabeth - He was giving Himself to them.   But why?  Why them?  What was it that made these two women - one elderly and way past child bearing age and the other barely out of childhood - so special?
Well do you know what?  I suspect it was nothing at all.

The Bible tells us that Elizabeth was a good woman.  She had lived a good respectable life and she and her husband had prayed earnestly for years for a child.   But Im sure she was one of many women in her position in those days.   I dont think Mary was particularly sinless or holy or perfect.  I think she was just an ordinary girl from an ordinary town living an ordinary life.  She probably did all the religious things she should have been doing.  But then again so, probably, did most of her friends and family.   Yes, she was ' of the house of David'  and yes, she was distantly related to a temple priest.  But I really dont think those things gave her any qualifications for being chosen by God.  I think she was chosen because God decided to choose her.

Romans 9 ;15  referring back to Moses quotes God as saying '  I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy'.   In other words  ' I will be kind and gracious and show my favour to whoever I want and I don't have to justify myself to you '  !!    Nobody could be ' qualified' to be the mother of the Son of God.  Surely the whole point of the incarnation is that Jesus came, and still comes, to ordinary, sinful, imperfect people and ' gives Himself away' to them.

And surely this is the hope of Christmas.  That you and I can also find favour with God.  The birth of Jesus was a signpost, a prototype, a forerunner of what was to come.  The indwelling presence of God with everyone.  This Christmas God's amazing favour is available to all - as is the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit to bring to birth a new life of faith in us.   We don't have to have any special qualifications or jump through any hoops to earn or deserve it.  God freely gives Himself away to His people.

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