The Virgin Birth

“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). (Matthew 1:20-23)

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God (Luke 1:34-35).

The virgin birth was something that came under attack from skeptics during the modern era. Those who have sought to reinterpret the Bible and the Christian faith according to modern presuppositions must do away with the virgin birth, just as they also do away with the resurrection of Christ and every other miraculous narrative in Scripture. It is not that the Bible is ambiguous about these things. But modernism refused to accept any supernatural explanations for events and this presupposition made the reinterpretation of the text of Scripture necessary.

The most popular explanation was that the story of the virgin birth came from pagan sources about mythological heroes who were virgin-born. So many modernists simply accepted that the Bible also reflected an ancient and superstitious mythology that had nothing to do with actual, historical events.

But the Gospel accounts do not read like a mythology. In fact, most scholars today would tell us that the Gospels do not read like any other ancient documents but have their own unique form. These same modernists who reject the account of the virgin birth and other miracles recorded in the Gospels want to keep the so-called ethical teaching of Jesus. And so these unbelievers tell us more about themselves and their agenda than about how to properly interpret Scripture.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and true believers throughout the ages have accepted this event as a crucial part of the Gospel.

We would expect the Son of God to be born in a special way. No other major religious figure in history was born like Jesus. God is clearly setting His Son apart from all other men. Jesus is absolutely unique. The way of salvation that Jesus brought is also unique and cannot be compared to any other philosophy or religion.

Christians are under no obligation to criticize other religions. The thing that has to be seen is the uniqueness of Christ. Even His birth points to who He really is. Jesus was not Joseph’s son, He is God’s Son. By saying that Jesus is the Son of God, the Scriptures are showing us His unique identity and relationship with God. Jesus has a relationship with God that no one else can rightfully claim.

To the ancient Jewish mind this kind of claim would amount to blasphemy against God. The Son would share the nature of the Father and be equal with God. This very claim of equality with God is made by other Gospel writers and by the Apostles in the rest of the New Testament Scripture.

Today we have perhaps heard Jesus called the Son of God so many times that it has lost its original power. If Jesus is the Son of God then that means God Himself has come down to us in human flesh (See John 1.1-18)!

The virgin birth was the fulfillment of a prophecy. Matthew connects the angelic announcement of the virgin birth to Isaiah’s prophecy (See Isaiah 7.14). We might even go further back to the prophecy that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head (See Gen. 3.15). The virgin birth shows us that Jesus was indeed the “seed of the woman” having been conceived without the help of a mortal man and his seed. In this way the identity of the Christ is made known without any ambiguity. If you want to know who the Savior is, you just have to look for the man who was born of a virgin. That narrows the field of possible candidates very quickly!

The early believers who were eyewitnesses of these things came to believe that Jesus was the Christ promised by the prophets. They began to see that everything in the Scriptures, which for them would have been what we now call the Old Testament, was really pointing to the coming of the Christ. The Gospel writers are quick to point out that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophetic Scriptures and is the hope of Israel.

Today we can look back and see how God has made good on all of His promises, going all the way back to Abraham (See Gen. 12.3). These things help us to put our faith in God and His written word.

The source of our salvation is God alone. Obviously God had to be involved in a virgin birth, which is something not possible in nature. There must be no ambiguity when it comes to the source of our salvation. God Himself would provide for the salvation of the human race. If we could have provided our own salvation then there would have been no need for the Son of God to come into the world and no need for something like a virgin birth.

Though it was absolutely necessary for God Himself to provide this way of salvation, it is also equally important to see that this way of salvation had to be made by a human being. An angel could not save us. The bloody sacrifices of animals could not take away our sins. But there was no man who was able to save men. Every man is himself subject to weakness and sin. The only way to solve this problem is for God Himself to become a man. Jesus is the union of God and humanity and this may be the most important lesson to learn from the virgin birth.

Before He was placed in the womb of the virgin, Mary, the Son of God was the eternal Word of God who was equal with God (See John 1.1). The virgin birth was a thing of great humility for the Son of God (See Phil. 2.5-11). The humility of becoming human was something God the Son was willing to do for our salvation.

Nothing is impossible with God. This is one of the great lessons taught throughout the pages of holy Scripture. When the angel appeared to Mary, she wanted to know how she would conceive, being a virgin. This account makes it very clear that Mary herself understood that she would conceive without being intimate with a man. The angel said that the Spirit of God would work this miracle. Even Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who was old and was barren her whole life, was enabled to conceive and would give birth to John the Baptist. And the angel reminded Mary that “nothing is impossible with God.”

These words were said many years before by an angel to Abraham and Sarah regarding the promise that Sarah would also bear a son in her old age. And so Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac, the child of promise, in her old age when the natural age for bearing children had passed. But nothing is impossible with God. God can make an old, barren woman conceive. And God can cause a virgin to conceive. Those who disbelieve the virgin birth are really disbelieving God Himself. With God in the picture a virgin birth is possible and so is the salvation of fallen sinners.