Sermon Tone Analysis

! Introduction

 

     The teaching on the person of Christ can be summarized as follows:

 

*/Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person, and will be forever./*

*I.

**The Virgin Birth*

 

*A.

**The Virgin Birth Proven by Scripture:*

1.      Gen is 3:15 is referred to as the /protevangelium/ since it is the first prophecy about Christ.

The phrase “her seed,” rather than “his seed” is unusual and points to the fact the Messiah was ultimately born of Mary alone, thus predici8ng the virgin birth.

2.      Matt 1:18 Mary was pregnant before she had been with Joseph.

3.      Matt 1:18 Mary was with child by the Holy Spirit.

4.      Matt 1:20 Joseph was told by the angel that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

5.      Matt 1:22-23 The virgin birth was a fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14.

6.      Matt 1:24-25 Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary until after Jesus was born.

Mary was clearly a virgin

7.      Luke 1:34 Mary herself, and she would be the first to know, that she had not been with a man.

8.      Luke 1:35  The child was the result of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.

9.      Isaiah 7:14:  The Hebrew word here is */almah/* which can mean a young maiden, but the word used by the LXX and the N.T. is */parthenos/* which can only refer to a virgin.

The word almah in the O.T. can, and often does refer to a virgin as seen in Gen 24:16.

According to Gleason Archer in Encyclopeida of Bible Difficulties (pp.

266-288) the term virgin (Heb.

/almah/) “never refers to a maiden who has lost her virginity.”

10.

The Greek term for begot (gennao) is used in Matt 1:2-15 and is in the active form, but there is a deliberate change in verse 16 to the passive form (egennethe).

The translation “by whom was born Jesus” draws this point out in the English.

Also the Greek uses (hes) a feminine relative pronoun (instead of hou which is masculine) here to emphasize that Jesus was born without Joseph’s participation.

The point is that Joseph did not beget Jesus: The whom in verse 16 is a reference to Mary and not Joseph.

11.

The Greek term used of Mary for virgin in Matt 1:23 (parthenos) clearly refers to a virgin.

According to Arndt and Gingrich’s Lexicon, it could have no other meaning (see p. 627)

12.  Gen 3:15 is referred to as the /protevangelium/ since it is the first prophecy about Christ.

The her seed is a reference to Mary and supported by the fact the phrase in Matt 1:16 “by whom” (Greek /hes/) is a feminine relative pronoun.

These two passages point to the fact Jesus was born without the participation of Joseph.

13.

Two other possible references are Mark 6:3 where the townspeople refer to Jesus as “the son of Mary,” where you would expect them to say son of Joseph.

When a man was identified by his mother, it was only due to the fact that his paternity was unknown.

Also, John 8:41 the Pharisees say, “We were not born of fornication,” where the ameis is emphatic, thus suggestion they are accusing him of this point.

*B.     **The Importance of the Virgin Birth*

* *

1.

The Scriptures claim that it happened, thus to reject this doctrine would also be to reject the authority of the Bible.

ARGUMENT FROM THE LESSER TO THE GREATER: If we cannot trust the Bible on this subject, how can we trust it in relation to eternal life.

2.

It guaranteed the sinless of Christ, without which His sacrifice on the cross would have been worthless (2 Cor 5:21).

Luke 1:34-35 refer to the fact the offspring would be holy, thus showing us that somehow the Holy Spirit did not allow the human nature of Jesus to be polluted with sin!  Karl Bath, (/CD/ 1956, vol. 1, part 2, pp.

151-155) suggests that Jesus took upon Himself the same depraved human nature that we possess, and that His sinlessness is that He didn’t commit actual sin.

The problem is that this view is that it fails to recognize the sin nature as sin itself.

He also believes that the sin nature was passed on by the man and not the woman (/Credo/ pp.

70f.)

Brunner says that he is not interested in it at all and rejects the idea.

It makes it possible for Christ to be completely human and not inherit a sin nature (Rom 5:12ff): 

 

a.

Every person born inherits Adam's sin, which constitutes a sinful nature, guilt, death, condemnation and corruption (Rom 5:12-21).

Every person inherits the guilt and moral corruption which we call original sin.

b.

The fact Jesus did not have a human father partially broke this line from Adam.

c.       Lk 1:35 clearly states that the child to be born was holy.

3.

Without it, there would be no union of God and man (Tert- Ag Marc 4. 10).

Carl Henry writes, “It may be admitted, of course, that the Virgin Birth is not flatly identical with the Incarnation, just as the empty tomb is not flatly identical with the resurrection.

The one might be affirmed without the other.

Yet the connection is so close, and indeed indispensable, that were the Virgin Birth or the empty tomb denied, it is likely that either the Incarnation or Resurrection would be called in question, or they would be affirmed in a form very different from that which they have in Scripture and historic teaching.

The Virgin Birth might well be described as an essential, historical indication of the Incarnation, bearing not only an analogy to the divine and human natures of the Incarnate, but also bringing out the nature, purpose and bearing of this work of God to salvation.”

(“Our Lord’s Virgin Birth,” /CT/, 7 Dec 1959, p. 20).

4.

It proves that salvation must ultimately comes from God: Salvation must be from the work of God and not man as prophesied in Gen 3:15.

Jesus spoke of the two types of births in John 3:3-5.

See also John 1:13.

Salvation is from the Lord alone, man is not even able to introduce the very first step in the process of introducing the Savior into the world.

It demonstrates the need for and expresses the work of the Holy Spirit.

5.

God is at work among us and not a by-stander- immanence vrs. a deist mentality.

*/Think of the other possibilities: Jesus would not seem to be fully God, if He was born in the exact same manner as us; or, He would not appear to be fully human, if He merely descended from heaven as a man./*

*Objection: Didn't Jesus inherit a sinful nature from Mary? *

 

*/Answers:/*

 

*The Roman Catholic View:*

 

1.

Mary was free from sin and thus Christ was not touched by sin due to this fact.

2.      They refer to this as the immaculate conception, that is, Mary was conceived in her mother's womb free from inherited sin.

On Dec 8th, 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed, "The Most Holy Virgin was, in  the first moment of her conception .........  in view of the merits of Christ..... preserved free from all stain of original sin."  

3.

The Church also teaches that "in consequence of a Special Privilege of Grace from God, Mary was free from every personal sin during her whole life."

4.      Millard Erickson describes this viewpoint as “Catholics interpret the virgin birth as meaning that Jesus was not born in normal fashion.

In their view, he simply passed through the wall of Mary’s uterus instead of being delivered through the normal birth canal, so that Mary’s hymen was not ruptured.

Thus, there was a sort of miraculous Caesarean section.”

(p.

741).

5.      A fourth century formula described Mary “/as ante partum, in partu, et post partum/”/ /(before in and after birth).

6.

They would explain the brothers and sisters of Jesus as either cousins or children from a previous marriage of Joseph.

*The Protestant View:*

 

1.

Scripture nowhere teaches that Mary was free from sin.

2.      Lk 1:35 Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and was thus described as holy.

3.      The work of the Holy Spirit in Mary somehow prevented the transmission of the sin of Mary.

4.      Remember: Nothing is impossible with God (Lk 1:37).

!! Church History Support

 

1.

Tertullian in /Against Marcion/ 4. 10 also support the need for the virgin birth of Christ in relation to the incarnation.

2.

Celsus (a Greek Philosopher) who wrote an anti-Christian polemic (177-180) describes Jesus as the illegitimate son of Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera and that Jesus Himself had invented the story of His virgin birth (see Against Celsus 1. 28, 32, 69.).

According to the informant of Celsus the mother of Jesus was a poor seamstress, and engaged to a carpenter, who plunged her into disgrace and misery when he found out about her unfaithfulness.

3.

Against Celsus 1. 28: born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgraceful gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God.”

 

4.

The Talmud also refers to the Lord as a son of a “pndira.”

5.

The Apostle’s Creed, produced in Gaul in 5th or 6th cent yet it roots go back much further, the virgin birth is affirmed.

This document probably has its roots in an old Roman baptismal confession.

By the early second century the early form was already in use and Tertullian in North Africa and Irenaeus in Gaul and Asia Minor.

6.

Ignatius, writing approx 117, referred to the virgin birth as one of the “mysteries to be shouted out” (See Eph 18.2-19.1).

7.

Opponents Celsus, Cerinthus, Carpocrates and the Ebionites.

YET, we do not have one person who would be labeled as orthodox as denying this truth.

!

II.

The Incarnation

 

A.

The Term (John 1:14)

1.

The term itself literally means “in flesh,” thus showing that God the Son took upon Himself an additional nature, humanity through the virgin birth.

B.