The Empty Womb

"We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen." Isaiah 26:18

This verse sums up the end of man trying to save himself: nothingness. There is no victory, no peace, and all of your enemies still exist. When it comes to producing a deliverer, all wombs are empty. This is the key to earth's history: Great, noble, and wise men have risen out of the sea of humanity, and done great, noble, and wise things. In the end, however, their works fail, becoming monolithic corruptions that are overthrown by the very people they originally tried to save, and those people come under the banner of the next "big thing." What was thought to be deliverance was just the next wind blowing by.

Anything born of man is destined to fail. Everyone born of man's seed is a being whose inner nature is based on corruption and rot, and anything they touch is affected thereby. History is filled to the brim with institutions (even Christian institutions) that were solely works of man, forged and sustained by their own might and power, and they all fell into ruin. It is a truth we will see over and over again: man cannot save himself.

Now, Jesus Christ was not born of man; He was born of God, i.e., He was not born of our history, but came into it from the outside. That is what we needed: someone standing on the shore outside the water we were drowning in who could reach in and pull us out. Only one womb in earth's history ever produced deliverance, and it had never been touched by man. Christ was God stepping into this world, because this world was dead, and all born on it were spiritually stillborn. No man could save us because all men were dead. We needed a life transplant, someone outside ourselves to come and infuse their life into us. That is what Christ did: He brought us the Life of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

There was one womb, however, that Christ's presence did make empty, and that was death's womb. Whereas all other wombs bring forth life, this one takes it, swallowing it whole into darkness. All men go there, and if all men are dead, then death is a dreadful mother, for she eats her children. However, when death tried to swallow Life Himself, she found her limitless void filled to the brim with His presence, and she could not contain Him. She spat Him back up like Jonah out of the whale. The tomb was the womb of death, and on the third day she too joined the helpless ranks of man as her emptiness proved her impotence. She held nothing but the warm wind of the dawn.

"Cursed be the man that trusteth in man." (Jeremiah 17:5) All that is born of man is destined to fail. Only that which is born of God and has His life within him has hope. Those who believe it will inherit life, while those who think differently will truly inherit the wind.