The Historical Reality of the Virgin Birth of Jesus

The Historical Reality of the Virgin Birth of Jesus
Sermon from 12/5/21
Galatians 4:4-5
Rich Lusk

Unedited

Today we are going to look at the historical reality of the virgin birth of Jesus. The virgin birth. What does it mean? Why did it happen this way? Even though we celebrate Jesus’ birth to the Virgin Mary at Christmas, it makes sense really to talk about the virgin birth during Advent as well because the virgin birth was the ultimate miraculous birth in a long series of miraculous births that paved the way for it and pointed to it. The virgin birth was promised and prophesied in the Old Testament. Numerous Old Testament types and shadows clearly indicated the Messiah would be born in a miraculous way.
The church has always held that the virgin birth is essential to the Christian faith. It is a core gospel doctrine. You cannot remove it and still have the gospel intact. The virgin birth is necessary to make the incarnation intelligible. Jesus is not God in the flesh if he is conceived and born in the ordinary way. If there is no virgin birth, there is no incarnation. If there is no incarnation, there is no God-man to save us, no Christ. If there is no Christ, there is no Christian faith and no salvation. And so clearly, the gospel stands or falls on the virgin birth, on this truth, this reality. The virgin birth is not an optional belief among Christians. The virgin birth is essential to orthodoxy. And that’s why it’s included in the great creeds that come to us from the early church. In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. In the Nicene Creed, we confess he came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. So you see this truth is there. It’s a core piece of orthodoxy. It’s a key piece of the biblical story, the gospel story.

But I don’t have to tell you that many people have rejected the virgin birth. Indeed, many people have mocked it. In the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson predicted a day would come when everyone regarded the virgin birth as a fable, no different than the pagan myths. About 100 years ago, in the early 20th century, the virgin birth came under harsh attack, fierce attack, from progressives, modernists, liberals, who were very skeptical of the supernatural and the miraculous, who worked very hard to deconstruct the authority of the Bible. And so they mocked the virgin birth, saying, well, maybe early Christians invented this teaching because they were embarrassed by sex. Maybe they adopted it from pagan mythology. Maybe it’s a piece of superstition. Maybe people back then didn’t know where babies come from, and they were ignorant. They were living in a pre-scientific world. They were pre-scientific people. In our enlightened scientific age, people cannot be expected to believe such nonsense. We know virgins do not give birth.

Well, of course, all of those objections are just prejudice against the Christian faith. They’re really nonsense. They all can be answered. We could actually answer all of them. Certainly, first century people might not have had the benefits of modern science, but they knew a thing or two about how the world works. They knew where babies come from. When the angel tells Mary she will conceive a child, she asks, “how can this be since I do not know a man?” She is just as astonished by this as any modern person would be. She knows the birds and the bees. Further, Joseph was going to quietly put Mary away. He’s going to divorce her. He’s going to end their engagement because the only conclusion he can come to is that she has been unfaithful since she is now with a child. That’s the only sensible conclusion. He knows that. He knows that. Until the Lord appears to him in a dream and explains that this child has been miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. He only accepted it because he saw it as a miracle.

Now, what does the virgin birth, or more technically, the virgin conception, of Jesus mean? Some have focused on its practical significance, what it tells us about womanhood, about motherhood, about the child in the womb, about marriage. Herman Bavinck, one of the greatest of Reformed theologians, saw Mary as the model of femininity and the ultimate proof that the Christian faith honors women. He wrote, “When the Son of God deemed a virgin worthy of being his mother, when he has been carried under the heart of a woman, when he has been nursed by a woman, there can be no more talk of contempt for women in Christianity.” The doctrine of the virgin birth sanctifies womanhood. More specifically, it sanctifies motherhood. It honors motherhood. C. S. Lewis said that “Motherhood is surely the most important work in the world, the one job for which all other jobs exist.” And Mother Teresa, speaking to wives and mothers, said, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” And she pointed to Mary as the exemplar and model for Christian wives and mothers. In the virgin birth, we see that God has made the woman, indeed he has made motherhood, essential to his work of salvation. Paul echoes this in 1 Timothy 2:15, where Paul says, “She will be saved through the childbirth, if they, that is Christian women, continue in faith and love and holiness.” God has given the woman an indispensable role in salvation history. And practically speaking, that sanctifies womanhood. It sanctifies motherhood. Mary is the prototype and representative of all believing women. God’s remedy for sin comes into the world through the woman. The childbirth. The seed of the woman. The one born of a woman. She becomes an instrument of salvation. She is saved through the child born to her. All of humanity, all those who will be saved, are saved through the child born to her.

But the virgin birth not only sanctifies womanhood, it also sanctifies childhood. The child Mary carried in her womb was the God-man from the very moment of conception onwards. And this too is something that Christians have noticed throughout the ages. The church father Irenaeus put it this way, speaking of how Jesus passed through each stage of human development to sanctify each stage of human life: “Christ passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants. A child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age. A youth for youths, becoming an example to youths and just thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise, he was a mature man for mature men that he might be a perfect master for all.” The great Lutheran theologian at the time of the Reformation, Martin Chemnitz, put it this way: “The Son of God united to himself personally, an individual human body in the very moment of his conception and made it his own. Thus, the Son of God, in assuming his own flesh, though without sin, also endured those things which commonly befall man in conception, pregnancy, and birth. So that from his very beginning, he might first restore in himself our depraved nature and so cleanse and sanctify our contaminated conception and birth, that we might know that Christ’s salvation applies even to man’s fetus in conception, gestation, and birth.” And then here’s how T.F. Torrance put it: “The virgin birth is crucial to our grasp of the nature and status in Christ’s eyes of the unborn child. Think of the importance of the incarnation then for our understanding of and regard for the unborn child. Every child in the womb has been brothered by the Lord Jesus. In becoming a human being for us, he also became an embryo for the sake of all embryos. And for our Christian understanding of the being, nature, and status in God’s eyes of the unborn child.” See, in the virgin birth, the personhood of Jesus is revealed as the God-man. And that obviously begins at conception. That was not a blob of tissue in Mary’s womb. It was a divine human person.

So the virgin birth shows us the sanctity of womanhood and motherhood. It shows us the sanctity of childhood. But it also shows us the sanctity of marriage. And this is actually contrary to the Roman Catholic view of Mary’s perpetual virginity. We’re told in Matthew 1:25, she remained a virgin until Jesus was born. Matthew 1:25 implies she and Joseph had normal marital relations afterwards. Indeed, it would have been sinful for them not to. And this is actually confirmed for us in Matthew chapter 13, verses 55 and 56, where we learn Jesus had at least six siblings. Because it speaks there of four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. And it speaks of sisters in the plural. So at least two sisters. So Mary and Joseph had a nice-sized family. So the virgin birth sanctifies all of these aspects of human life. Womanhood, and specifically motherhood. It sanctifies childhood. It sanctifies marriage. The virgin birth has implications for how we live, how we see human life.

But the most important thing to see about the virgin birth is how it brings to culmination a major redemptive theme in Scripture. The Old Covenant has a long string of miraculous births to barren women. And of course, the ultimate barren womb is that of a virgin. This is the ultimate miraculous birth. But really, there’s more going on. And we need to see this in light of the whole biblical context. The original gospel promise is, of course, found in Genesis 3.15. God promises the seed of the woman will have his heel bruised, but he will crush the head of the serpent. And from that moment on, it becomes clear. The hope of salvation rests with the seed of the woman. A child that would be born, a son that would be born to a woman will be the one who brings salvation.

Now, in Genesis 4, it seems that Eve believes she had given birth to this promised seed of the woman. She says in Genesis 4, as her first son is born, she says, “I brought forth a man, even the Lord.” Or as some would paraphrase that “I have brought forth the God-man” — a child, even the one who is the Lord, the Lord incarnate. She thought perhaps her son would be the Messiah. How disappointed she must have been when he turned out to be a murderer. And so God’s people would have to keep looking for that seed of the woman.

God furthered the people’s understanding of the promise with Abraham and Sarah. They were far too old to have a child, and Sarah had always been barren. But God had made them this promise. God had said, you will have a son. Abraham’s name meant mighty father. God changed it to Abraham, meaning father of a multitude, promising him a great, glorious, worldwide family that would come from him. But in order for that family to come into existence, he’s got to have one son. They’re the chosen line for the seed. But here they are in their old age, and they still do not have a child. Well, Sarah got impatient and decided to give her maidservant Hagar to Abraham, thinking maybe we can bring the promised seed into the world this way, in our own power, through the strength of the flesh. But God says, no, the child born that way, Ishmael, that will not be the promised seed. The promised seed will not be born of the flesh, as if man could produce the promised seed by the strength of his flesh. Instead, the promised seed will be born miraculously by the power of God’s Spirit. That’s the promise. It will be a miraculous birth. And to drive the point home, after Ishmael is born in Genesis 16, in Genesis 17, God institutes the sign of circumcision as a reminder that flesh cannot produce the seed. In the Old Covenant, male circumcision is really the equivalent of female barrenness. Both of these are signs of the weakness of the flesh. Both are signs that the promised seed must be given as a gift miraculously by God.

And this is reinforced again and again and again. Every one of the patriarchs and so many of the leading men in Israel has a barren wife. It’s not just Sarah. There’s a pattern. It’s Rebecca. It’s Rachel. It’s Hannah. It’s Manoah’s wife. In Luke’s Gospel, then we meet Elizabeth, who is an old and barren woman, but becomes miraculously the mother of John the Baptist. This is no coincidence. This is happening for a reason. God is showing again and again the promised seed cannot come through ordinary generation. It’s going to take a miracle. And thus, each one of these births, each one of these miraculous births to a barren woman, proclaims the Gospel in advance.

We’ve got another picture of this in Isaiah chapter 7, which Matthew quoted from in his birth account. In the original text, Isaiah says, the Lord will give King Ahaz a sign. See, Ahaz was fearing a foreign invasion. And God told him he had nothing to fear. And God even says, ask me for a sign as confirmation that you have nothing to fear, that I will take care of you. But Ahaz, in an act of false piety, refuses to ask for a sign. And then God gives him a sign anyway, telling him a young woman will conceive a son and give birth to him and call him Emmanuel, meaning God with us. Now, in the Hebrew original of Isaiah 7, that word there for young woman could mean a young virgin, a young unmarried woman, or it could mean a young woman who has been married. The point is, the woman will give birth, and before the boy grows up, the enemies that Ahaz is worried about will be gone. Before the boy grows up, they’ll be dealt with. But when Matthew quotes Isaiah 7, he draws from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which uses a term that specifically refers to a virgin. And so Matthew sees the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah’s words in Jesus’ birth to Mary. He is the one born of a virgin. The one who becomes to us a sign of God’s presence with his people, a sign that they will be delivered from their enemies, that God’s going to deliver his people, that God is with his people.

But there’s more we can say. We not only need to see the promises and precursors to the virgin birth in the Old Testament, we need to see the logic of the virgin birth, the necessity of it, why it’s so integral to the gospel. God promises the seed of the woman. Note, it’s not the seed of a man. Jesus is never called that. It’s always the seed of the woman. God promises the seed of the woman. Galatians 4 echoes that by telling us, in the fullness of time, Jesus was born of a woman. There is no mention of a man here. A man is totally out of the picture.

Why is that? Well, it was necessary for the Messiah to be born of a woman. God couldn’t just make a man from scratch if he was going to redeem us. He couldn’t just parachute this man down from heaven to earth because this man had to be one of us in order to save us. He had to be born of a woman. And so Jesus derives his human nature from his mother, Mary. He is made of her stuff, as it were. He is fully human, just like us, just like Mary. He derives his human nature from his mother. And so he’s one of us. He’s just as human as I am, just as human as you are.

At the same time, he could not be one of us. He could not be a sinner. If he was conceived and born in the ordinary way, he would be a sinner just like us, but that would disqualify him from being our savior. We need a sinless sacrifice to offer himself in place of a sinful people. That’s what we have to have. You see that? He has to be one of us, a human, so he can represent us, but he can’t be one of us, a sinner, if he’s going to rescue us. He has to be one of us as a human, but he can’t be one of us, a sinner. Well, after Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve sinned, where are you going to find a sinless human? Where are you going to find a sinless man after Genesis 3? How can a sinless man ever be born into a fallen world? Once Adam and Eve pollute the river of the human race in Genesis 3, how can you ever have a sinless man enter into that stream? A man who is one of us, yet not one of us. A man who is like us in every way except for sin. He’s got to be a lamb like the other lambs in the flock, but he has to be a lamb without spot or blemish so he can be the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. That is the dilemma. He has to be truly human without being truly sinful.

Well, the solution to that dilemma is the virgin birth. Jesus was born of a woman, just like every other man since Adam. He is, again, just as human as you and me. But he does not have a human father. If he did, he would be a sinner. It seems that we inherit original guilt and corruption through our fathers. The covenantal guilt is passed through the covenantal head, through the man. And so Adam, as the original head of the human race, is the one who passes on original sin. Even though the woman sinned in Genesis 3 as well, the human race fell in Adam. In Adam’s fall, we all fell. Romans 5 does not tell us through one woman sin entered the world. It does not even tell us through one couple sin entered the world. It tells us through one man sin entered the world. And through that one man, from that one man, sin spread to all. And so even if the woman sinned before the man did, still the fall of humanity happened when he sinned. Because he was the head. He was the representative. The human race was summed up in him, not in her. Sin and guilt are inherited from our fathers. Sorry, dads, it’s true. Your kids are sinners because of you. Okay? Obviously, there’s more to that. There’s more that could be said. It’s a little more complicated than that. But that’s the basic picture.

So get this. If you’re going to have a sinless man, he must be born of a woman. And he must get his humanity from her. But he must be fathered miraculously, supernaturally, by God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, so he will not inherit Adam’s guilt and corruption. And that’s exactly what we have in the virgin birth. One who is truly man, deriving his humanity from his mother, and yet one who is truly God, deriving his deity from his father. And because he is conceived by the working of his father through the Holy Spirit, he’s protected from that inheritance of original sin and original guilt. And again and again, this is what the stories in the gospel call attention to. Matthew 1.18, Mary was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit, not of a man, of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 1.20, that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Luke 1.35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the child born to you will be called holy, the Son of God. See, that’s the virgin birth. The virgin birth means Jesus is both Son of Mary and Son of God. He gets his humanity from his mother and his deity as the only begotten of the Father. He is one with Mary and one with God the Father. One with humanity and one with deity. He has a human mother and a divine father.

When Adam sinned, the whole human race died spiritually. In Mary’s womb, God’s eternal Son joined himself to our humanity to bring that corpse back to life. And so in her womb, he really inaugurates a new creation. He becomes a new Adam, a new head of humanity, the inaugurator of a new world. Just as the Holy Spirit overshadowed the creation in the beginning in Genesis 1, so the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary to form in her womb a new man, the beginning of a new world. Again, he’s just as human as us. Indeed, the church fathers had a saying. They said, what is not assumed is not healed. And so the eternal Son of God had to assume to himself a complete human nature, body and soul. And in his earthly life, that means he was subject to all of the problems and pains and limitations that come with living as a man in this fallen world. He got hungry and tired and sick. He was susceptible to temptation. He could suffer. He really felt pain and sadness. He was subject to all the same frailties as every other human living in this fallen world. But while he was born of a woman, he was not begotten of a man. He was begotten by a divine Father through the Holy Spirit. And thus he had no sin. He lived a sinless life. He was born of a woman. Scripture says that again and again. Born of a woman, but not through ordinary human reproduction.

See, the virgin birth is really a Trinitarian event. This is a revelation of the Trinity. The Father sent the Son into the world through the Holy Spirit. And the Son entered this world as a fertilized egg, as an embryo in Mary’s womb. See, the virgin birth is not just a random miracle God performs to show off his power, to show that he can do anything. No, there is a logic to it. There is a rationale. It served a very specific purpose. There can be no salvation without it. If you deny it, you gut the gospel of its very heart.

I think a good test of this, a good test for how well we understand this, is what we are willing to say about Mary. Because what we’re willing to say about Mary really is an indicator of who we understand her Son to be. Now, to be sure, there’s a lot of danger here. The Roman Catholic Church has turned Mary into an idol. And those Roman Catholic Marian doctrines of her immaculate conception and her assumption into heaven are clearly false and have no foundation in Scripture. Likewise, the notion of her perpetual virginity is also false, as I’ve shown. Further, she’s not any kind of mediator. Sometimes she’s treated as a mediatrix, some kind of mediator between God and man alongside of Jesus. That also is false. The Pope even recently said that Mary is a bridge joining us to God. No. No. No. Mary was a sinner in need of salvation, just like everybody else.

Nevertheless, she did play a special role in redemptive history, and we need to understand that. The church rightly calls her the mother of God. That language should just roll off our tongues because it’s true. Mary is the mother of God because she gave birth to the one who is God in the flesh. Further, she’s called by the church fathers the God-bearer. For nine months, Mary carried Jesus in her womb. And so for those nine months, she was like an alternative Ark of the Covenant. In fact, there are all kinds of parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. She was like an alternative holy place. There are all kinds of connections between Mary during her pregnancy and the most holy place. During those nine months, she contained within herself the Shekinah glory of God. We have to recognize that.

Further, Mary may be regarded as a new Eve. Now, she’s not the only new Eve figure, but this would be one way of understanding her role. She becomes the mother of the living, the one who gives birth to the promised seed who will crush the serpent’s skull. See, Mary is the person and the place where God most fully entered into our history and our humanity. So don’t worship her. Don’t pray to her. Don’t trust in her as some kind of savior or alternative mediator, but certainly honor her as you do all great saints who live lives of exemplary faithfulness. The angel Gabriel, when he comes to greet Mary to tell her this news that she has been chosen for this role, he calls her blessed among women and declares that she is highly favored. Some translations say full of grace, and then people got this idea that we can tap into grace through Mary. That’s not what full of grace means. It just means she’s the recipient of divine favor. Grace is not a substance poured into her. Grace is just a matter of God giving his gifts, God showing favor. And she is favored. She is highly favored because she will give birth to the Messiah. There’s this long line of women throughout Israel’s history that have been giving birth to the one who would carry on the seed line. And finally, that culminates with Mary. She is a recipient of grace because she carries in her womb the very embodiment of God’s grace. And in her submission to God’s will, in her submission to God’s plan and God’s command, she becomes a model, not only of what every woman should be, but really a model of what every creature should be, living in submission to God.

But see, everything about Mary really points us to her son. The virgin birth is a foundational piece of the gospel. Again, it shows us Jesus is not just the founder of the Christian faith. He’s the founder of a new creation, a new world, a new humanity. He is the sinless savior of sinners, the substitutionary sacrifice God’s people were waiting for.

The bottom line then is this. The virgin birth means humanity cannot save itself. More than anything else, perhaps that is what the virgin birth means. We cannot be our own saviors, whether individually or collectively. The human race cannot produce its own savior. The human race cannot produce the hero who will deliver us. Salvation can only come from the outside. It must be a gift God gives. Humanity cannot produce its own redeemer. God must give the redeemer. He must send the redeemer into the world. Remember several years ago when President Obama said, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Politicians are always saying that kind of stuff, but no, it’s not true. Jesus is the one we’ve been waiting for. He’s the one Adam and Eve waited for. He’s the one Abraham and Sarah were waiting for. He’s the one David and Isaiah and Daniel were waiting for. He’s the one Simeon and Anna were waiting for. However, all the hopes of all the ages, all the hopes of all the nations rest on him.

He sums up his people in himself, just like David summed up his people in himself, so when he went to fight Goliath, he defeated Goliath on behalf of the whole nation of Israel. So it is with Jesus. He sums up his people in himself. He represents us in all that he does. And so he fights our battles. He fights on our behalf. He fights as us and for us. He defeats our enemies. He takes our punishment. He wins the victory on our behalf. He does what he does for our sake. He does for us what we could never do for ourselves, but what must be done if we are to be saved. He came to live a life we could not live to bear a curse. We should have to bear ourselves for all eternity. But he came to bear that curse for us. He came to bring us new life and to give us new status. He came to restore and heal and to mature and glorify the creation. He is God’s grace to us. It is sheer gift. It is sheer mercy. That’s what you see in the virgin birth.

The virgin’s son has won the great victory on our behalf. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Unto us a son has been given, the prophet Isaiah says. That’s salvation. That’s the gospel that God has given us a son. Not that we could produce that son we’re waiting for. No, God has given us that son. In the virgin birth, God has entered our family so we could enter his family. He was born of a woman, born under the law to redeem us from the curse of the law so that we might be adopted and become sons of God ourselves. The one in Mary’s womb was and is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. He had and indeed still has a human body and a human soul. And at the very same time, he was and is the eternal God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign ruler over all. Even as he was being held in his mother’s arms, he was the one who was upholding the universe.

See, the Advent and Christmas cycle in the calendar reminds us that the Bible really tells one story. The history of the world is really one unified story centered around one heroic figure. One called the seed of the woman. Mary’s son, God’s son. The one who was born into this world, born of a woman. As God in the flesh. And who came to break the skull of the serpent.

People today will tell you, life is what you make it. You write your own story. You are the author of your own life story. Life is what you make it. No. Life is not what you make it. You are not authoring the story you’re living in. That’s not what life is about. We are already in a story. A great and glorious story, but not one we authored. We’re in a story that contains the whole creation, including you and me. And the author of this story is none other than God himself. He is the great storyteller. And we are characters in his story. And he has determined the plot, the way the story is going to go. The way the tension in the narrative is going to be resolved. And in the virgin birth, what do we find? The author of this story has written himself into the script. The author of this story has written himself into the story. The author becomes the leading character in the drama. He is the hero of his own story. You can’t be the hero. You can’t rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done to bring about your salvation. But God has written himself into the script. The author has become the leading character, that he might be the hero who delivers us. The author has entered his own story to bring it to a happy ending.

In this season of the church year, this is the mysterious and magnificent miracle we are celebrating. The author entering his own story. The birth of God into the world as a man. The birth of the God-man to the virgin Mary. The virgin birth is the gospel. I want to tell you, the virgin birth is the gospel. It’s not the whole of the gospel. Obviously there’s more to say, especially Christ’s death and resurrection. But it is crucial to the gospel. So much so we can say there is no gospel without it. That’s why it’s in our creeds. That’s why Mary and the virgin birth show up again and again in our hymns this time of year.

The virgin birth, the incarnation, means God has skin in the game. Literally, God has skin in the game. And he’s playing the game to win it. He entered into the corpse of fallen humanity in order to bring it back to life. He took on everything it means to be human while giving up none of what it means to be God. And as the God-man, he has won the great victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil on our behalf. As the God-man, he has triumphed over death. And now he invites us to dance on death’s grave as well. Death is dead. Long live the King — King Jesus. That is God’s promise to us. Through the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the gift of gifts. The world’s one and only Savior and King. The God-man. Born of a virgin to become your redeemer, your victor, your champion.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Grok’s rewrite of the sermon:

The Virgin Birth: Historical Reality and Theological Necessity

The virgin birth of Jesus Christ—more precisely, the virgin conception—stands as one of the most profound and indispensable doctrines of the Christian faith. Though commonly associated with Christmas celebrations, it is equally fitting to reflect upon during Advent, for it represents the culmination of a long biblical pattern of miraculous births that anticipated and prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah. Prophesied and prefigured in the Old Testament, the virgin birth is not a peripheral detail but a core gospel truth without which the incarnation, and thus the entire Christian message of salvation, collapses.

From the earliest centuries, the church has affirmed the essential nature of this doctrine. The Apostles’ Creed declares that Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary,” while the Nicene Creed confesses that he “came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.” These creedal statements underscore that the virgin birth is foundational to orthodoxy. Remove it, and the incarnation becomes unintelligible: Jesus cannot be God in the flesh if conceived and born in the ordinary human manner. Without the incarnation, there is no God-man to redeem humanity—no Christ, no salvation, no Christian faith. The gospel stands or falls on this reality.

Yet the virgin birth has faced persistent rejection and mockery. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson predicted it would soon be dismissed as a fable akin to pagan myths. In the early twentieth century, modernist and liberal theologians, skeptical of the supernatural, attacked it fiercely, suggesting it was invented out of embarrassment about sex, borrowed from pagan mythology, or rooted in pre-scientific ignorance. Such objections, however, betray prejudice rather than serious engagement. First-century Jews were well aware of basic biology; Mary’s astonished question—“How can this be, since I do not know a man?” (Luke 1:34)—and Joseph’s initial resolve to divorce her quietly demonstrate that the miraculous nature of the conception was as startling then as it would be today. Only divine revelation convinced them otherwise.

Practical and Ethical Implications

Beyond its doctrinal centrality, the virgin birth carries profound practical significance. It sanctifies womanhood and motherhood. Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck observed that when the Son of God chose a virgin to be his mother, carried beneath a woman’s heart and nursed at her breast, all talk of Christianity’s contempt for women is silenced. Motherhood, as C.S. Lewis remarked, is “the one job for which all other jobs exist,” and Mother Teresa urged wives and mothers to change the world by loving their families, holding Mary up as the exemplar. Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:15—“She will be saved through the childbirth”—point to the indispensable role of women in salvation history, culminating in Mary, through whom God’s remedy for sin entered the world.

The doctrine also sanctifies childhood and the unborn. From the moment of conception, the child in Mary’s womb was the God-man. Irenaeus noted that Christ passed through every stage of human life to sanctify each: infant for infants, child for children, youth for youths. Martin Chemnitz emphasized that Christ assumed human flesh from conception to redeem and cleanse even the earliest stages of human existence. T.F. Torrance underscored the virgin birth’s importance for recognizing the personhood and dignity of the unborn: every child in the womb has been “brothered” by the Lord Jesus, who became an embryo for the sake of all embryos.

Finally, the virgin birth affirms the sanctity of marriage. Contrary to Roman Catholic teaching on Mary’s perpetual virginity, Scripture indicates that Joseph and Mary enjoyed normal marital relations after Jesus’ birth (Matt. 1:25), and Jesus had siblings (Matt. 13:55–56). The virgin conception exalted marriage rather than undermining it.

Biblical Typology and Redemptive Theme

Most crucially, the virgin birth fulfills a major redemptive theme woven throughout Scripture. From Genesis 3:15 onward, salvation is tied to the “seed of the woman” who will crush the serpent’s head. Eve mistakenly hoped Cain was this promised deliverer—“I have brought forth a man, even the Lord”—only to be disappointed. The pattern of miraculous births to barren women—Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Manoah’s wife, Elizabeth—repeatedly demonstrated that the promised seed could not arise through ordinary human effort or the “strength of the flesh.” Ishmael, born of human initiative, was rejected; Isaac, born miraculously, was accepted. Circumcision served as a perpetual reminder of human inability to produce the redeemer.
Isaiah 7:14 provided another sign: a young woman (alma in Hebrew, parthenos or “virgin” in the Septuagint) would bear a son called Immanuel. Matthew recognizes the ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, born of the virgin Mary. Each miraculous birth proclaimed the gospel in advance: salvation requires divine intervention.

Theological Logic and Necessity

The virgin birth is not an arbitrary wonder but the logical solution to a profound dilemma. The Messiah must be fully human—born of a woman (Gal. 4:4)—to represent and redeem humanity. Yet he must also be sinless, for a sinful savior cannot atone for sin. After Adam’s fall, original sin and guilt are transmitted through the human father, as Romans 5 teaches: “through one man sin entered the world.” A human father would have passed on Adam’s corruption. The virgin conception resolves this: Jesus derives his full humanity from Mary, yet his divine paternity through the Holy Spirit shields him from inherited guilt. He is Son of Mary and Son of God, truly man and truly God.
This Trinitarian act—the Father sending the Son through the Spirit’s overshadowing—inaugurates a new creation, echoing Genesis 1. As the church fathers said, “What is not assumed is not healed”; Christ assumed complete human nature from conception, experiencing every human frailty except sin, in order to redeem it fully.

The Role of Mary

Understanding the virgin birth clarifies Mary’s proper place. She is rightly called “Mother of God” (Theotokos) and “God-bearer,” having carried the incarnate deity for nine months, akin to a new Ark of the Covenant containing the Shekinah glory. She is a new Eve, mother of the living through the seed who crushes the serpent. Highly favored and blessed among women, she models submissive faith for all believers. Yet Roman Catholic excesses—immaculate conception, assumption, perpetual virginity, and mediation—are unbiblical. Mary was a sinner in need of salvation, not a co-mediatrix or object of worship. Honor her, but direct all worship to her Son.

Conclusion: Salvation as Divine Gift

Ultimately, the virgin birth proclaims that humanity cannot save itself. We cannot produce our own redeemer; salvation must come from outside, as sheer gift. Jesus is the one Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, David and the prophets, Simeon and Anna awaited. He represents us, fights our battles, bears our curse, and wins our victory. In him, God enters our family so we may enter his, adopting us as sons and daughters.

The Advent and Christmas seasons remind us that history is one grand story authored by God, centered on the seed of the woman—Mary’s son, God’s Son—who became flesh to defeat the serpent. Modern claims that we author our own stories ring hollow. We are characters in God’s narrative, and in the virgin birth, the Author writes himself into the script to become the hero who delivers us.

The virgin birth is the gospel in miniature: God has skin in the game—literally. As the God-man, born of a virgin, he triumphs over sin, death, and the devil, inviting us to celebrate the defeat of death itself. Death is dead. Long live the King—Jesus Christ, the gift of gifts, the world’s one and only Savior.