Now, to some of you, this will sound familiar, because I shared this on a Wednesday evening a year ago. But as with most of what is discussed on Wednesday evenings, it will be brand new to the majority of you. I have to begin by stating some assumptions that I hope are shared by all of you. They are assumptions, not because they cannot be demonstrated with reasonable argumentation, but because you want to at least have time to eat lunch before you come back at 5:00 tonight. So, for time’s sake, I am assuming the belief in absolute truth, the existence of God, and the possibility of miracles. Most if not all of you would have no problem with these assumptions, but many in our culture today would balk at all three of them. Yet, without truth, intelligent discussion is meaningless. Without God, the virgin birth is not only impossible, but it is unnecessary. And once we grant the existence of God, it is no far stretch to grant that this God is capable of performing miracles. So, we are not trying to beg the question of the virgin birth, only trying to work from a least common denominator.
Many well-intentioned religious people, many calling themselves “Christians,” have given up the effort of defending the doctrine of the virgin birth. They have gone so far as to say that the Bible doesn’t even teach such a thing, therefore why should we make it a hill on which to die? Some English translations of the Bible have been influenced by this thinking and changed the wording of “virgin” to “young woman” or something similar. But does the Bible clearly teach that Jesus was born of a virgin or not? I would hope that you know me well enough to know that I am going to say without hesitation or apology that it does.
We have read the passage from Matthew 1 already which presents the dilemma of Joseph who is wrestling with the fact that his betrothed wife has turned up pregnant, and Joseph knows only that the child is not his. But an angel appeared to Joseph and confirmed to him that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that a virgin would be with child, and that child would be Immanuel – God with us. And notice in verse 25, that Joseph kept her a virgin until that child was born. After they were fully married and had the opportunity to physically consummate the marriage, Joseph did not become physically intimate with his wife until this child was born lest there be any speculation that he had fathered the child. Notice as well how carefully Matthew records the genealogy at verse 16: Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. He makes it very clear that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, but was married to the mother of Jesus.
Additionally, we could look at Luke 1:26-35, where the beloved physician Luke records the events from Mary’s perspective. The angel Gabriel announced to her that she would conceive and bear a son, but Mary marveled and questioned the angel, saying, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel told her that the Holy Spirit would accomplish it in her. And Luke is also careful in recording the genealogy in 3:23 to say that Jesus was supposed to be the son of Joseph. He does not say that He was the son of Joseph, only that people supposed Him to be.
Some who do not uphold the integrity of the Scriptures ask, “But what about the silence of John, Mark, and Paul concerning the virgin birth?” The Gospel of Mark, as you are aware, begins with the baptism and beginnings of the earthly ministry of Jesus, and gives no space at all to any events preceding this. John begins his gospel with a discourse concerning the eternal activity of God in sending the redeemer into the world, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” But John does include an argument between Jesus and His detractors in Chapter 8 which speaks to the mysterious nature of His birth.
In John 8:18, Jesus says, “I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” But they say to him, “Where is your father?” And after insisting on their Abrahamic heritage, Jesus challenges them suggesting that their father is the devil because they are bent on destroying Him. The opponents say to Jesus in John 8:41, “We were not born of fornication (implied, like You were).” In verse 48 they say, “Do we not rightly say that You are a Samaritan?” The Jews looked down on the Samaritans because they traced their origins back to a cross-breeding of Jews and Assyrians. So they are accusing Jesus of being an illegitimate half-breed. This entire discussion would be a waste of space in the Gospel of John if there were not stories circulating in that day about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus.
As for Paul, we must bear in mind that he was not setting out to write a narrative account of the life of Christ, but rather to set forth Christian doctrine and practice and to answer specific questions for the new churches that were started during his missionary journeys. Yet he does not leave the matter of the virgin birth untouched, for he says plainly in Galatians 4:4, “When the fullness of the time came, God sent for His Son, born of a woman.” Jesus is the Son of God, born of a woman. Inherent in this statement is a reference back to that first promise of redemption that God gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15, when He said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Nowhere else in Scripture do we read of someone being born the seed of a woman. The seed is by definition of the man. But this Jesus was born without earthly seed – He was born by the Holy Spirit, through the woman. So Paul is not as silent on the issue as some would have us believe.
As we have already seen, Matthew’s account makes reference back to a specific prophecy from Isaiah 7:14, given 700 years prior to the birth of Christ. There, the prophet Isaiah announces to King Ahaz, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” The Hebrew word translated “virgin” in this prophecy is almah. It occurs in the text with the definite article, making it a reference to a specific virgin – The Virgin. But some Hebrew scholars have rightly pointed out that this word almah does not always refer to a virgin. It can mean simply a young woman. However, it can, and often does mean virgin.
There are seven occurrences of the term almah in the Old Testament. Write them down to look up later, for we do not have time to look at each one. Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:25; Proverbs 30:19; Song of Solomon 1:3; 6:8; and here in Isaiah 7:14. Of these passages, J. Gresham Machen has stated, “There is no place among the seven occurrences of ‘almah in the Old Testament where the word is clearly used of a woman who was not a virgin.” Willis Beecher adds, “In Biblical usage, the word denotes a virgin in every case where its meaning can be determined.” And when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in third and second centuries before Christ, the most able Hebrew scholars of the day chose the Greek word parthenos to render almah in Isaiah 7:14 – a Greek word which means only and exclusively a virgin. We cannot accuse them of reading the Christmas story back into the Isaiah text, as some accuse us of today, for the Christmas event would not take place for another couple of hundred years when they chose this wording! This is the word Matthew used in his gospel as well, showing not only his understanding of what happened at Bethlehem, but also his reliance on the scholars who had preceded him in the work of Biblical scholarship.
In addition, we must remember that Isaiah said that this birth would be a sign to Ahaz. By nature, a sign is something out of the ordinary that draws attention, not only to itself, but to a truth beyond itself. We have to wonder, if Isaiah had intended that a young woman would give birth to a son, what would be so unusual about that? It happens every day all over the world. But this would be a special case, in which God would assure His people that He had not rejected them or cancelled His promises, but would fulfill His mission to save and deliver them. And do not miss the significance of the promised name – “God with us.” Now, I have known people to choose some unusual names for their children. We have had many people scratch their heads about the names of our children. But I don’t know anyone who says, “I think we’ll call him God.” This would be a special child – God with us – born in a special way – to a virgin – for a special purpose – as a sign of God’s faithfulness and love to His people.
And so Machen says, “It is perfectly clear that the New Testament teaches the virgin birth of Christ; about that there can be no manner of doubt. There is no serious question as to the interpretation of the Bible at this point. … The only question is whether in making that representation the Bible is true or false.” This is the pressing question of our day. We know what the Bible says. We are even able to agree in large part on what it means. But the question remains, “Is it true?” While we could take up arguments concerning the entirety of Scripture and demonstrate in a reasonable way that we are confident that God has inspired the Scriptures and they are infallible and inerrant from cover to cover, we want to narrow that discussion to this one element: Is the Bible true when it says that Jesus was born of a virgin?
If it is not, then we have no other option than to believe that Matthew and Luke made up the story, or else passed it on to us from someone else who made it up – maybe even Mary herself. Now in order to establish that the story is made up, there has to be a motive. Stories about Jesus were quick to circulate during the first century, but why would someone make up this part of the story. Does it make the story more believable? We would have to confess that it does not. It makes the story harder to believe. So that cannot be their reason.
Some have suggested that they invented the virgin birth story to parallel pagan myths about the divine origins of certain people with special powers. These were the demigods – those born to one divine parent and one human parent. I am currently reading Homer’s Iliad, and though I am only half-way through the book, I have lost count of the number of them in that story alone. However, we must remember that the gospel accounts were written to distinguish Christianity from false religious beliefs, not to assimilate it with them. And in fact, you may be surprised to learn that there are no pagan stories of a virgin birth. The pagan stories about the births of the demigods involve a phenomenon that has come to be known as “divine rape,” meaning that the god actually had sexual relations with the human cohort, making her no longer a virgin. In more than a handful of these pagan accounts, the activity took place against the will of the human. Often in pagan accounts we find a double paternity: one human father (in some cases a king) and divine father. The demigod's mother will in these cases lie with both in the same night or else be visited secretly by the god, and the seed of the two fathers is mixed in her womb. The Gospel narratives of the birth of Christ could not be further from this! There is no hint of sexual intercourse between God and Mary, contrary to the Islamic caricatures of our beliefs and contrary to Mormon doctrine. There is no hint of “dual paternity” as both Matthew and Luke are clear to indicate that Joseph was in no way involved in the conception of Jesus. And remember that Joseph is no man of stature – he is a mere carpenter. And there is no hint of “divine rape,” since Mary sings in response to the revelation given to her, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior … For the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” One could scarcely imagine a pious young virgin saying this about one who had assaulted her. Rather, she said to the angel, “May it be done to me according to your word.”
The fact of the matter is that no God-fearing Jewish person would invent a story like this, because it would be the height of blasphemy – an arch-heresy of the highest degree. Winfred Corduan says it this way: “If the virgin birth did not happen, we have no plausible explanation for why it was ever recorded. …No pious Jew would have invented such a story. They could not have borrowed the idea from pagan parallels because there are no true parallels. Thus, the most likely explanation was that a virgin birth was recorded because a virgin birth occurred.”
Not satisfied with this explanation, many have said that the virgin birth story was added generations later to deify Christ. This is at the root of many popular accounts circulating in our day, most notably The DaVinci Code, and others who have piggy-backed on its popularity. However, the truth of the matter is that the story of Christ’s virgin birth was well-known by Christians from the earliest writings of the church. It would take generations for a story of this magnitude to circulate widely, and even longer for it to gain universal acceptance. Yet we have the statement of Ignatius in 105 AD saying plainly, “He was truly born of a virgin.” By 150 AD, we find reference to the virgin birth in creeds and confessions used by Christians in
So, we have established that the Bible teaches that Christ was born of a virgin. There is no apparent motive for inventing such a story. There are no pre-Christian parallels to the story. There is not enough time elapsed for a post-apostolic legend to spread as far as it did in the infancy of Christianity. Therefore we are left with the very reasonable and intelligent conclusion that the virgin birth did take place exactly as the Bible records it. But we are left with one further question: So what?
Several years ago, when asked who in history he would most like to interview, Larry King said that he would choose Jesus Christ. Asked what he would talk about with Him, King said, “I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin-born. The answer to that question would define history for me.” In fact the ramifications of the virgin birth are far-reaching. It does define history for all of us.
The virgin birth establishes Christ’s unique character. All humans naturally born have a sin-nature. Paul says in Romans 3 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. John says in 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Yet Christ claimed to have no sin. In John 8:46 He said, “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” By not having that sin nature, He is uniquely qualified to atone for our sins through His death on the cross. B. B. Warfield, the great theologian of Princeton’s glory days, said, “Assuredly no one, himself under the curse of sin, could atone for the sin of others; no one owing the law its extreme penalty for himself could pay this penalty for others. … It was imperatively necessary that He should become incarnate after a fashion which would leave Him standing … outside that fatal entail of sin in which the whole natural race of Adam is involved. And that is as much as to say that the redemptive work of the Son of God depends upon His supernatural birth.”
The virgin birth also bears on the divinity of Christ. No person naturally born can have pre-existence. No naturally born man or woman can become a god. Yet Jesus claimed both for Himself. In John 8:58, He shocked his audience by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” They understood that He was not just using poor grammar, but was taking upon Himself that divine and unspeakable name, “I AM,” and therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him believing Him to be a blasphemer. The central message of the early Christian church is that Jesus Christ is God, and this fact cannot be established apart from His virgin birth.
Just as important is the bearing of the virgin birth upon the humanity of Jesus. We do not proclaim that He is half-God, half-man, but that He is fully God, and He became fully man. He experienced fatigue, hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, and joy, all of which are very human.
How else could He identify with mankind and bear our sins for us unless He became one of us? How else would God become a man besides through a miraculous birth such as this?
We would also note that the doctrine of the virgin birth has implications on the reliability of Scripture. We have established that the Bible clearly teaches a virgin birth. If we discount this portion of Scripture, what other portion will we discard with it? James Orr said, “Rejection of the Virgin Birth seldom, if ever, goes by itself.” And this raises the question of who has the authority or the special insight to declare which parts of Scripture are true and which are not, if it is not all true?
So, you can see, it is a doctrine of the utmost importance for us today. Is it an optional belief for Christians? Does a person have to believe in the virgin birth to be saved? Well, we confess that Paul does not include it in 1 Corinthians 15 as an essential element of “the gospel,” and in Romans 10:9-10, he does not specify the virgin birth as he does the resurrection as a necessary belief to be saved. Jesus did not preach about His virgin birth in evangelistic encounters, nor is it included in the sermons of the book of Acts. We might even say that it is possible for a person to be saved without ever even knowing about the virgin birth. HOWEVER, it does seem improbable that a person who comes to Jesus by faith, believing that He has the ability to atone for sin at the cross and that He has conquered death in the resurrection, would persist in denying the virgin birth once it became known to him or her. And it seems that it would be necessary for anyone claiming to believe the Bible to be God’s word that he or she also believe that the virgin birth is a true account. And, after all, if a person does not believe the Bible, we have to wonder why on earth they would want to be a Christian anyway? If we believe part of it to be untrue, why should we choose to hold on to the parts which describe salvation in Christ?
So, it was most appropriate for those in the early decades of the twentieth century who were fighting against the influence of liberalism in the church to articulate a list of “fundamentals,” and to include the virgin birth as one of the fundamental doctrines of biblical Christianity. Those fundamentals were the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and His bodily resurrection and second coming. So Loraine Boettner said concerning the virgin birth, “No statement of the Christian system which ignores or denies it can be considered consistent or complete.”
So what do we believe about the virgin birth? We believe that Christ was conceived supernaturally by the efficient cause of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary while she remained in a state of virginity until after the birth of Jesus. And thereby we reject false notions of the virgin birth, such as: A) That there were actual sexual relations between God and Mary (as Mormons believe); B) That Mary herself was conceived in a divine way (as taught in the Catholic doctrine of Immaculate Conception); C) That Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life (the Catholic doctrine of perpetual virginity fails to explain how the Scriptures record Jesus having other brothers and sisters – were they virgin born too?).
We join in affirmation of the doctrine of the virgin birth, and say Amen to the voices of the early church like Tertullian, who said in 197 AD: “The ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descended into a certain virgin. And He was made flesh in her womb. So, in His birth, God and man were united.” Again, in 207 AD, he said, “Whoever wishes to see Jesus, the Son of David, must believe in Him through the virgin’s birth. He who will not believe this will not hear from Him the commendation, ‘Your faith has saved you.’”
Remember what that angel said to Joseph: Now all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, "BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD, AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US.” Truly, nothing is impossible with God, and we see afresh how it is that we can sing with such enthusiasm at Christmastime, “Joy to the World, the Lord has come!”
Wikipedia on "demigod"
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