And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Luke 1:6-7
The story of the first advent revolves around the scene of a mother and her baby. For some, this sight, majestic and wonderful as it is, produces a prick in the heart. Those who are barren, have miscarried, or experienced the loss of a child may feel less joyful than others at the reminder of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. For these precious people with heavy hearts, we turn to Elizabeth, who Luke describes as: righteous, blameless, barren, and advanced in years (Luke 1:6-7).
Elizabeth and her husband were “righteous before God” (Luke 1:6). The term righteous in both the Old Testament and New Testament carries the sense of conformity to a standard.[1] Their conformity manifested itself as the couple went about “walking blamelessly,” a phrase Luke used to display Zechariah and Elizabeth’s obedience to God’s law, or standard. In Romans 6, Paul captures the very essence of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s lives: obedience leads to righteousness and righteousness leads to sanctification (vv. 17-19). They conformed to God’s standard of holiness through obedience.
In Luke 1:5, just before he called Elizabeth righteous, Luke provided a detail about her ancestry that highlighted the distress of her childlessness. She was “from the daughters of Aaron” (Luke 1:5), which meant she descended from a long line of devout Jewish priests (Lev. 8-9), who were experts in the Levitical Law. “Leviticus 20:20-21 shows that the Hebrews thought childlessness was a sign of divine punishment.”[2] In the eyes of Elizabeth’s family and the society she lived in, her barrenness must have been divine punishment because they thought one could not simultaneously be blameless and barren.
Luke also revealed that Elizabeth was “advanced in years” (Luke 1:7). Her age added hopelessness to her plight. She referred to her state of elderly barrenness as “my reproach[3] among the people” (Luke 1:25).
Luke’s four descriptions of Elizabeth were: righteous, blameless, barren, and advanced in years (Luke 1:6-7). This description brings into focus the picture of a woman who was deeply aware of her barrenness and society’s view of her state (Luke 1:25), yet never allowed the circumstance to compromise her love and devotion to God or her husband. There is no biblical indication that she blamed, cursed, or disobeyed God because of her barrenness. She was simultaneously blameless and barren. She was not at fault for her infertility despite a historic notion to the contrary. God was not punishing Elizabeth, but rather he was executing his plan in her life.
Even though Elizabeth and Zechariah were blameless, they were not painless. They were image-bearers of God with real feelings and emotions. It is likely that they felt sorrow and sadness. They may have even perceived a sense of emptiness and loss. Despite anything hurtful that they felt, it is evident that the pain of childlessness brought the couple closer to God. In their pursuit of righteousness, they certainly prayed for a child (Luke 1:13). They did not allow their emotions to become their God. They did not let childlessness dictate their treatment of God, themselves, or others. They took their pain, displeasure, distress, emptiness, sorrow, and hurt to the throne of grace for help in a time of need (Heb. 4:15-16). They were without a child, but they were not without a God.
Miraculously, Elizabeth went on to conceive at her advanced age. While pregnant, she became the first person to ever publicly declare that Jesus is Lord (Luke 1:39-45). She did not make this insightful proclamation because she was pregnant, but because she was “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41; cf. Matt. 16:16-17). Even though her dreams of being a mother were finally becoming a reality, the joy of her salvation was in her Lord, not her child. Her hope was in a baby boy, just not her baby boy. Read Luke 1:39-45 and pay particular attention to Elizabeth’s source of joy, the arrival of her Lord:
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
The transcending lessons of Elizabeth’s story encourages all believers to:
- endure affliction righteously (2 Timothy 2:12-13)
- pray and seek God in the midst of difficulty and trials (Philippians 4:4-9)
- use reproach as an opportunity to grow closer to God and our spouses/family instead of a reason for isolation and abandonment (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
- realize that nothing is too hard for God (Jeremiah 32:27)
- recognize that God’s goodness is still present in affliction (Psalm 119:67-68)
- determine that your source of joy is rooted in the coming of our Lord Jesus and look for that second coming often (Luke 2:10)
[1] John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Biblical Truth (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2017), 184.
[2] Trent C. Butler Holman New Testament Commentary: Luke,ed. Max Anders(Nashville, TN, B&H Publishing: 2000), 7.
[3] Another appropriate word for reproach is the term “disgrace.” Elizabeth’s situation was seen as more than an unfortunate occurrence, but rather a disgraceful one.
The Twelve Days of Advent 