Chapter 29: Why Jesus had to be born of the Virgin Mary
Is this just a nice to have doctrine? Or is the virgin birth someone we need to hold on to tightly?
How do you know if a church is declining or turning away from true Christianity? One of the surest signs is that the church has started to waver on the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Jesus. Since the earliest days of the church, Christians have confessed their faith together with the words of the Apostle’s Creed, and one of the key statements in that creed is that Jesus was “Born of the Virgin Mary.” However, sadly, many so-called Christian leaders have begun to question the virgin birth. Perhaps the most surprising but influential of these came from David Jenkins, the Anglican Bishop of Durham from 1984-1994. He once announced on a BBC radio show that “I wouldn’t put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if he wanted. But I don’t think he did.”[1]
But the virgin birth is a central doctrine in the Christian faith, and once we understand that the Bible has been telling a single story from start to finish, we can easily see why Jesus had to be born from a virginal mother. Let’s examine these together:
If Jesus was born by human descent, he would be born sinful
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command not to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, sin entered the world. As we saw, the effects of this were far-reaching, and every aspect of creation has been affected by it.
Remember that God had appointed Adam as the ruler over the earth when he made him. He gave Adam authority over the world and commissioned him to bring the world into order. This authority was not just physical in nature but also spiritual. We see this especially in the effects of Adam’s sin. Yes, it is true, physical death enters into the world through sin, but also the spiritual nature of humanity that gets corrupted through sin. As a result of Adam’s sin, humanity’s nature becomes sinful, and in fact, we inherit this sinful nature from our universal Father Adam. In a very real sense, you and I inherit our sinful nature from our fathers, and they from their fathers, all the way back to Adam.
This is what Paul refers to in the book of Romans:
Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.
The point is this: a massive part of the problem humans have is that we cannot be saved by someone who is just a normal human being. Because every human being conceived in the normal way inherits sin. We need someone who is born “abnormally,” with a spiritual father that is different from Adam. That is why the immaculate conception is so important. Immaculate means perfectly clean, unstained, and spotless. Jesus’ conception had to be perfectly clean and free from the stain of sin. How can this happen? Mary asked the same question:
Luke 1:34-35
Mary asked the angel, “How can this be since I have not had sexual relations with a man?” The angel replied to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
Fulfillment of Prophecy
The second aspect we need to consider is that Jesus had to be born of the virgin is that God himself promised that this would happen – as a sign that God was enacting his promise of salvation. This entire book has been about tracking God’s promise that he would deal with the problem of sin. It stretches right back to Genesis 3, where we get the first hint that one day someone would come who would destroy the serpent – the tempter and, in so doing, undo the problem of sin. As we have seen, this promise is progressively developed over the course of the Bible and all throughout we get hints and pointers about who this person would be and how we can know for sure that he is going to be the one to fix the problem.
One of the most important signs we have ultimately come from the writing of the prophet Isaiah who tells us specifically that the savior would be born to a virgin.
Isaiah 7:14:
Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.
In his gospel account, Matthew links Jesus’ birth directly to this prophecy given by Isaiah:
Matthew 1:22-23
Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”
If Jesus was not born of the Virgin Mary, he would not be the promised and prophesied Messiah.
The incarnation of God
The final but vital aspect of why Jesus had to be born of the virgin Mary is that it was the means by which the 2nd person of the Trinity, God the Son, became a human being – something that is of vital importance for our salvation.
A virgin birth is obviously a miracle of God, but this is not just that God allowed a virgin to conceive a child with another human being. No, this is God the Son becoming fully human in order to be the new Adam, the new spiritual head of all those who would believe. This has two important facets:
Firstly, Jesus had to be fully human which is why he had to be born of a woman, in order to live a perfect life as a human being. Paul makes this clear in the book of Galatians
Galatians 4:4-5
“…God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Jesus had to come and live a fully sinless life as someone under the law. As we saw, all of humanity ever, who were born of Adam, are guilty of breaking God’s law and sinning. But to be a perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, Jesus had to be a perfect human. Therefore, Jesus had to be fully human.
But secondly, he also had to be fully God.
For Jesus to be able to bear the weight of our sin on the cross he also had to be fully God. For no mere human could withstand the full wrath of God poured out on one person for the sins of all believers. Someone who was only human would be obliterated and so he would not be able to suffer to the full extent our sin requires, bear it and survive. But because Jesus is fully God, he does have that ability. When Jesus finally dies on the cross he doesn’t die until Jesus had completed his work. Notice his words in John 19:30.
John 19:30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
It was not until he had fully borne the wrath of God, that he could say it is finished. He would not be able to do that unless he was both fully human and fully God. And it was not until he did that, that he gave up his spirit and died. Only someone who is both fully God and fully human could do that.
So the doctrine of the virgin birth is not just a nice-to-have doctrine. It is an essential and foundational doctrine that has far-reaching implications. It speaks to how God constructed the spiritual world, with sin being inherited through the male line. It shows and authenticates the prophecies about Jesus given by the Old Testament prophets. It is essential for Jesus to have been both the right type of sacrifice, while simultaneously giving him the power to go through the wrath of God on our behalf. Jesus had to be born of the Virgin Mary for us to be saved.
Exactly how does this salvation work, and how does Jesus actually live a perfect life to stand in our place? Well, that is a story for next time…
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/04/david-jenkins-obituary, accessed 20/11/2023.