“’And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kinddom will never end.’ ‘ How will this be?’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.’ “ – Luke 1:33-35
“Virgin birth” is a misleading expression, suggesting that there was something unusual about Jesus’s birth, whereas his birth was entirely normal and natural. It was his conception that was abnormal, indeed supernatural, for he was conceived by the operation of the Holy Spirit, without the cooperation of a human father.
Matthew and Luke make an ambiguous affirmation that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. It is evident, moreover, that they were writing prose, not poetry, history, not myth. Why, then, did Mark and John not do the same thing? Answer: because they both chose to begin their narrative with John the Baptist. Their silence about the virgin birth no more means that they did not believe in it than their silence about his childhood means that they thought that he had none. The important point is that the only two evangelists who recorded his birth both declare that he was born of a virgin.
We move on now from the historicity of the virgin birth to its significance. Does it matter? It does. The angel’s annunciation was in two stages.
The first (vv. 31-33) stressed the continuity that Mary’s child would enjoy wth the past, because she would bear him, and he would occupy the throne of his father David. That is, he would inherit from his mother both his humanity and his title to the messianic kingdom. The second section (v. 35) stressed the discontinuity between the child and the past, because the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary, and the creative power of God would overshadow her, so that her child would be unique, sinless (“the holy one”), and the Son of God.
In this way what was announced to the Virgin Mary was her son’s humanity and messiahship, derived from her, while his sinlessness and deity would be derived from the Holy Spirit. As a result of the virgin birth, Jesus Christ was simultaneously Mary’s son and God’s son, human and divine.
Some questions you might get at this time of the year:
- But is belief in the Virgin Birth fundamental to Christian doctrine?
Certainly, the belief that Jesus is both God and man is vital to the doctrine of the atonement. God could not offer up an innocent man as a sacrifice for the sins of others, He could only take that upon himself. But only a human could bear the punishment for human sin. No animal sacrifice would have sufficed for such a great sin. So Jesus had to be both man and God. The Virgin Birth produces a human child who has God as a literal father, Joseph as an adoptive father, and Mary as a real mother. The child is "born of a woman" in the normal way, and is entirely human. But also, in a mysterious sense divine. One could argue forever as to whether God could have achieved this some other way, but this is the way the Bible suggests God did achieve it.
- Is this not a hard thing to believe? People often argue about the virgin birth, whether or not it really happened in this way. Review my following thoughts about the virgin birth and see what you think.
Rumors of Jesus’ possible illegitimate birth were being spread during his public ministry in an attempt to discredit him. For example, when he declared that certain unbelieving Jews had not Abraham but the devil as their father, they retorted, “We are not illegitimate children,” which sounds like an innuendo that he was (john 8:41). These rumors persisted long after his death. In the Jewish Talmud they became explicit. How on earth could these hints and slanders have arisen unless it was known that Mary was already pregnant when Joseph married her? Distasteful as this gossip is, it is supporting evidence of the virgin birth in my opinion.
- How can you magnify the Lord during this holiday season? In what ways can you give back to the God who gave us so much in the birth of His Son Jesus Christ?
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