The Virgin Birth of Christ

Introduction

Back in 1930, J Gresham Machen wrote an extensive work on the virgin birth of Jesus Christ defending it against the arguments of the liberals, but I am finding out more and more that the fight against liberalism has not really been concluded though it may have changed forms a little. This past week, Frank gave me an article by Rev Lori Walke from Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ. In this article, she claimed that there are errors in the book of Job about Ostriches and so the bible should not be taught in our public schools. And so we see how much these fundamentals are still under attack even today. I am working on a rebuttal that I will try to get published in the same newspaper Lord willing.

But the central problem with Liberalism and its stepchild Liberation theology is when something miraculous is mentioned in the bible; the reasoning mind must reject it. Let’s not be mistaken, when we talk about the virgin birth we are talking about something that is miraculous. The bible teaches that Jesus conception was the result of the holy Spirit coming upon Mary and that she conceived without a man. The possibility of a woman getting pregnant without a man involved is outside the natural order of the world. So the virgin birth is another miracle in the bible which liberals find too impossible to believe. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary which was mentioned in my brief history of fundamentalism made this comment in a NY times interview:

“I find the virgin birth a bizarre claim. It has nothing to do with Jesus’ message. The virgin birth only becomes important if you have a theology in which sexuality is considered sinful. It also promotes this notion that the pure, untouched female body is the best body, and that idea has led to centuries of oppressing women”- Serene Jones

What you will find is that Liberal and Liberation theologians often miss the importance of the virgin birth to Christianity and make it about Mary instead of the child that would be born. We take this doctrine for granted in our churches because we believe what scripture tells us. Sometimes that has been to our detriment because we have not explained why it is so important to our faith. After all can’t we just agree to disagree. Liberation theologian Dorothy Solle gave this testimony in her book Thinking about God: an Introduction to Theology

I can remember the doubts about Christianity which I had when I was eighteen; one of the problems which I could not crack (not the biggest, but one of them) was this virgin birth, which I found incomprehensible. I did not know why I should believe it; whether Jesus would be better had he been born of a virgin than if he had a father. I did not understand what that would contribute to my redemption, to my liberation from sin and grief. I still remember clearly how liberated I felt when I learned from liberal theology that this part of faith was only a Hellenistic interpretation and was not essential to my being a Christian. The liberal paradigm has often liberated people from false stumbling blocks to faith (40-41)- Dorothy Solle

What this testimony shows is that when she was a kid she wasn’t under solid preaching. She specifically says, “I did not know why I should believe it… I did not understand what that would contribute to my redemption, to my liberation from sin and grief.” She goes on to say she found it liberating to believe this doctrine was not essential to being a Christian. As Fundamentalists, we assert that it is and this evening I would like to give you four reasons why the virgin birth is important to our faith.

Scripture declares it to be the case

The first reason is one they would mock. In fact Lori Walke in her newspaper article mocks those who would claim, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” I agree that our faith should not be blind faith and yet we must still approach scriptures with a mindset of faith. Before we can really see why the virgin birth is so important we must wrestle with whether the bible actually claims Jesus was virgin born. Briefly, let’s look at the passages that make this truth claim:

Luke 1:26–38 “And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost sha…”

Luke 1:34 “Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”

Mary asks the obvious conclusion. Liberal theologians will often argue Mary must have been raped by a Roman soldier or else Joseph and Mary had had sex together. If we are to take scripture for what it says, Mary is claiming here that she had not been with a man either by consent or by force.

The angel responds that God can do the impossible in Luke 1:37 “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” If it was in some way a natural conception, we would not need to worry about God doing the impossible.

Let’s look at the other main birth narrative in the gospels:

Matthew 1:20–25 “But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.”

Matthew Quotes a passage from Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, And shall call his name Immanuel.”

Jews and Liberals alike have argued that this passage is not about a virgin birth. The argument is that the word virgin is the Hebrew almah which can refer to a young unmarried woman. The normal Hebrew word for a virgin is betulah. However, a word study of both these word’s brings us to the conclusion that neither are definitely referring to virgins in every case; so context must be looked at. There is reason to believe promise here is off a virgin birth for three reasons:

when Matthew quotes this verse he uses a word in Greek which could only refer to a virgin.

When the LXX translators translated this verse into Greek they used the word parthenos the same word that Matthew used

This birth was intended to be a sign to the king.

Jesus was the Son of God

The second reason for a virgin birth is to maintain the deity of Jesus Christ.

Luke 1:35 “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Without the potential for the miraculous, Jesus must have a natural birth which would make him a normal human being and not the god-man. The verse says that this virgin conception happened because the Holy Ghost came upon Mary. The Holy Spirit was involved in an active way in enabling Mary to conceive and God’s power would make it to happen. The end result would be that the child would be the Son of God. The Jews recognized this term as a claim of divinity. John 5:17–18 “But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.”

According to Heb 1:3 Jesus was the express image of his person meaning that Jesus was the physical embodiment of the very nature of God. Everything that God is Jesus is only in human flesh. While there are possibly other ways God could have chosen to maintain both deity and humanity, this is the method that God chose. God could have chosen to create a fully human body up in heaven and sent it down whole, but then Jesus would not have been a descendent of Adam.

This is one of the inevitable conclusions liberal theology forces one to conclude: Jesus must have been just a really good man, but he wasn’t God. If he was merely another human being, he could not have saved anyone from their sins. The deity of Jesus Christ becomes an essential part of our belief as Christians.

On Wednesday nights, we recently looked at the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ and gave four scriptural evidences to prove his deity. I am not going to rehash them in detail, you can check the notes if you would like, but the four reasons for a belief in the deity of Christ are these:

He possessed the names of God

He possessed the attributes that are uniquely Gods

He did things that only God could do

He claimed to be God- even ex-evangelical Bart Ehrman admits that the book of John clearly includes two passages that have Jesus affirming his own deity. He argues that John wrote his gospel later so this was all made up as a later development. The problem is that arguments like that is that all the disciples were heavily persecuted and most died for these claims. John didn’t die a martyrs death. While they suffered and died, John suffered and lived. According to tradition, John was boiled in oil but did not die. Later he was forced to drink poison but it did not kill him. Eventually, he was exiled to Patmos under the emperor died. Finally, he died in Ephesus of natural causes. Men who are propagating a lie that they know is a lie don’t live and die like this.

Jesus was sinless

Luke 1:35 “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

The sinlessness of Jesus Christ is essential if he is going to pay the penalty for our sins. One sinner cannot payoff the infinite debt that we owe. So how is it that Jesus being human can be sinless. On Wednesday's, we discussed how being human does not inherently mean being a sinner. We looked back at creation and saw that Adam and Eve were fully human without sin prior to Genesis 3 and then we looked forward to our resurrected state without sin. But the reality today is that we are all sinners. Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”

The Bible teaches that that the propensity toward sin and the guilt of sin is passed down from generation to generation by our parents.

Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”

1 Corinthians 15:21–22 “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

There are three views as to how the sin nature and our guilt are passed down:

The Father’s genetic line- MR De Haan made this view popular in his book the Chemistry of the Blood. His argument was that the sin nature is passed down through the blood of the father and so Jesus sinlessness is guaranteed because he had no human father. It seems like a logical argument from the virgin conception, but the problem is that this is not what scripture says. Sin is a matter of the heart and not biology. Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:” This view leads to a gnostic view of the evil material world and is a denial of basic biology.

Sin nature is passed down but not sin or guilt- Others deny the idea of original sin that we inherit sin and guilt from Adam. They believe that a propensity to sin is passed down, but we are only guilty because we individually choose to sin. There is some merit to this argument since temptation does not make one a sinner. Hebrews 4:15 “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus was tempted but did not sin. The problem with this argument is that scripture tells us In Adam we all sin and in Adam we all die. So there is some connection passed down from Adam to us related to sin and guilt. In Psalms David even concludes that he was a sinner at conception before he had had a chance to act on his sin.

Sin nature and guilty are passed spiritually- The best solution is that sin is passed down spiritually from one person to another. So in some way, that spiritual connection passing down a sin nature from Adam to Christ was broken by the virgin birth. Luke concludes that the child would be a holy thing. So the holy Spirits work in the virgin birth overcame that spiritual connection from Adam to Christ. While Adam brought spiritual death, Christ brought eternal life.

Jesus was our sacrifice

Galatians 4:4 “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,”

The final reason the virgin birth is necessary is that Jesus was our sacrifice for sin. Galatians teaches that in some way the virgin birth, allowed Jesus to redeem us or purchase us from under the law. The reason we are all guilty is because we have transgressed God’s law. 1 John 3:4 “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.” We could never keep the law.

So Jesus came and was born in a fully human body under the restraints of the law; so he could redeem us from the curse of the law. We have already seen how that virgin birth maintains Jesus’ sinlessness. Romans 10:4 “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” The word end there could carry one of two meanings: 1) termination 2) goal. However, both word’s find meaning in what Christ has done. Think of this word like a finish line in a race. Not only is the finish line the end of the race, but it is also the goal. Every step you take is to reach that line. So Christ in his perfect obedience is what the law looks forward to and he fulfills its every restraint.

Jesus did what we couldn’t do and he paid the price we couldn’t pay.

Conclusion

This evening I pray that none of us would walk out of here like Dorothy Solle did year after year wondering why the virgin birth has anything to do with me. Once we grasp the reason for its importance, I think we are more likely to fight for it as an essential doctrine to our faith. This isn’t one of those things we can just agree to disagree.