“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matt 1:18-19).
A virginal conception is impossible. A woman cannot get pregnant without the involvement of a man. Everyone knows this. Joseph certainly knew this — that’s why he assumed Mary was unfaithful. Virgin births don’t happen. And yet one did.
It’s hard to say that the virgin birth of Christ is an essential doctrine. People can be saved without ever having heard of it. They can be saved without believing it. Two of the gospels don’t mention it. Millard Erickson points out that the evangelistic sermons in Acts never mention it.1 Yet I will maintain that it is still a primary doctrine. The creeds insist that all Christians everywhere must believe it. Why?
Before we get into why it’s important, we should be clear about what we mean. Muslims distort our teaching that Jesus is the Son of God as meaning we believe that God the Father and Mary had a physical union, like something out of a Greek myth. When Mary was told, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35), what was meant was that the Spirit would make something in her body that was not previously there. No one “entered” Mary by the conventional meaning of the term. But God created. Some skeptics will try to equate the conception by the Holy Spirit as something akin to rape, but this was not forced upon Mary as an unwilling victim. Her response to the angel was: “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38). She was a willing participant in a supernatural, not physical, event.
So why is the virgin birth important? In telling us how the incarnation came about, the scriptures assure us of Christ’s full humanity. He did not just appear; he was born of a woman. He was not only a spirit — Mary gave birth in quite the usual way, so docetism is untrue. JI Packer says, “The Fathers appealed to the virgin birth as proof, not that Jesus was truly divine as distinct from being merely human, but that he was truly human as distinct from merely looking human as ghosts and angels might do.”2
But it also tells us his conception was special, so he was not a mere man who became the Christ as various heresies such as adoptionism have suggested. Moreover, since his beginning was unique, he is unique. We cannot become christs like the Ebionites taught.3
So the virginal conception of Christ puts boundaries on our theology. It keeps us from wandering onto the wrong path, so we have to hold onto it.
We also have to hold onto it because it’s true. The gospels tell us that Jesus was conceived by a virgin, so we believe it.
The only reason people reject the virgin birth is that they’ve allowed naturalism to creep into their theology. They simply cannot accept this miracle. Why do they doubt it? Because it’s impossible? Many things in the Bible are “impossible.” That’s pretty much the definition of a miracle. Which is the problem.
Rarely does it stop with the virgin birth. People who reject this teaching typically soon reject every other miracle in the scriptures. If the other miracles are untrue, then the Bible is full of lies. And if miracles don’t happen, Christ was not raised from the dead. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1Cor 15:17).
As Packer points out, “The Bible says that the Son of God entered and left this world by acts of supernatural power.”2 The supernatural forms the bookends of Christ’s earthly life and fills much in between. What do we do with that? We own it. We embrace it. If Genesis 1:1 is true, if God created the universe out of nothing, any other miracle in the Bible is a parlor trick. We shouldn’t be ashamed of a miraculous birth because “miraculous” is what God does. And the same power that formed Jesus in the womb of a virgin, the same power that raised him from the dead, lives in us. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
As for the virgin birth, J Gresham Machen said it well: “Even if the belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every Christian, it is certainly necessary to Christianity.”3
For a detailed defense of the virgin birth, see J Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ.
1 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
2 JI Packer, Growing in Christ
3 J Greshem Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ
image credit: Christopher Cook
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