Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose I have been born, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”
John 18.37
This is a great Christmas text even though it comes from the end of Jesus' life on earth, rather than beginning. The uniqueness of the birth of Christ is that he did not originate at his birth. He existed before he was born in a manager. The personhood, character, and personality of Jesus existed before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born.
The theological word to describe this mystery is creation, but incarnation. The person--not the body, but the essential personhood--of Jesus existed before he was born a man. His birth was not coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world he himself created.
Micah 5.2 put it like this, 700 years before Jesus was born:
But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will come forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His times of coming forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”
The mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to witness to an even greater on--namely, that the child born at Christmas was a person who existed "from the days of eternity," the eternal, almighty God.
This is an excerpt from 'Joy to the World-Daily Readings for Advent' by John Piper.
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