Question and Answer 1: The Virgin Birth

Q & A 1

“Is the virgin birth necessary? What is at stake in affirming or denying it beyond the method God chose to bring Christ into the world?”

Yes. Salvation is at stake from the forgiveness of sin to the continued forgiveness of sin. The integrity of the biblical text is at stake. Understanding and belief in the supernatural is at stake.

What has influenced the questioning of the virgin birth in our time?

Worthy reading:
Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ
John Piper, Justin Taylor, Voddie Baucham, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, The Supremacy of Christ in a Post-Modern World

1. Philosophical world view of modernity
- No super-natural
- Only history
- Jesus Seminar set the standard for mainline Christianity’s take on Jesus

2. The integrity of the text and belief
Matthew 1:23 from Isaiah 7:14

Mark Driscoll:

“If the virgin birth of Jesus is untrue, then the story of Jesus changes greatly; we would have a sexually promiscuous young woman lying about God’s miraculous hand in the birth of her son, raising that son to declare he was God, and then joining his religion. But if Mary is nothing more than a sinful con artist then neither she nor her son Jesus should be trusted. Because both the clear teachings of Scripture about the beginning of Jesus’ earthly life and the character of his mother are at stake, we must contend for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.” (The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, 136)

The text means what Matthew meant for it to mean: Jesus was born of a virgin.

“First-century folk knew every bit as well as we do that babies are produced by sexual intercourse. When, in Matthew’s version of the story, Joseph heard about Mary’s pregnancy, his problem arose not because he didn’t know the facts of life, but because he did.” (Who Was Jesus? 78)

3. What is at stake?
1. The virgin birth affirms the supernatural
Since when did we have to prove the faith as part of the Great Commission?

2. The virgin birth shows that salvation must ultimately come from the Lord
Galatians 4:4-5
Man can not save himself.

God had promised that the “seed” of a woman (Genesis 3:15) would ultimately destroy the serpent, so God brought it about by his own power, not through mere human effort.

“The virgin birth of Christ is an unmistakable reminder that salvation can never come through human effort, but must be the work of God himself.”

- Man cannot do enough to save himself
- Man must not try to save himself with mere effort at holiness, but lean on Christ’s
sufficiency and trust in him for salvation
- Man must not try to keep his salvation with mere human effort at holiness, but as
we received Christ Jesus as Lord we continue to live in him by that same faith.

3. The virgin birth made possible the uniting of full deity and full humanity in one person
“Jesus is fully human and fully God and will be so forever”

4. The virgin birth makes possible Jesus’ true humanity without inherited sin
Luke 1:35
- Jesus is called holy because of being conceived of the Holy Spirit
“All humans have inherited and legal guilt and a corrupt moral nature from their first father, Adam (inherited or original sin). But the fact that Jesus did not have a human father means that the line of decent from Adam is partially interrupted. Jesus did not descend from Adam in exactly the same way in which every other human being has descended from Adam. And this helps us to understand why the legal guilt and moral corruption that belongs to all other human beings did not belong to Christ.” – Wayne Grudem

Why did Jesus not inherit a sinful nature from Mary?
- The Roman Catholic Church answers this question by saying that Mary was free from
sin.
- The Scriptures do not teach this anywhere.
- The best solution is to say that the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary must have
prevented not only the transmission of sin from Joseph (because Jesus had no
human father) but also, in a miraculous way, the transmission of sin from Mary:
Luke 1:35 “…therefore the child to be born will be called holy.”

5. The virgin birth makes us rely on the text to determine truth and not science, logic or reason

The best reason for believing this doctrine is simply because the Scriptures teach it.

To believe it impossible for Jesus to be conceived and born of a virgin is to confess one’s own unbelief in the God of the bible.