WAS JESUS BORN 

OF A VIRGIN?
Chapter 17

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A Fact of History

 

he miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ has perplexed many people, and actually has kept them from accepting the truth of Christianity. However, the Bible declares that God decided His Son would have a miraculous entrance into humanity.

 

Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah said, "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14, NASB).

 

The New Testament records the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy:

 

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin's name was Mary ... And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary: for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus... "

 

And Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?"

 

And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit, will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God ... For nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1:27-37, NASB).

 

The virgin birth is set down in the Bible as an historical fact. The writers who recorded the story were Matthew -an eyewitness to the events in the life of Jesus-and Luke, the doctor, who presents many things in the life of Christ from Mary's viewpoint. The passages in both Matthew and Luke are authentic, with no evidence at all that they were later additions to the text.

 

The doctrine of the virgin birth has been believed by the church from its inception. Ignatius, who lived at the start of the second century, wrote to the Ephesians: "For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived in the womb by Mary, according to a dispensation, of the seed of David but also of the Holy Ghost."

 

A Necessary Fact of History

 

There are several reasons the virgin birth was a necessity. The Bible teaches that the Word who became flesh was with God from the very beginning (John 1:1). The fact of the pre-existence of Christ is confirmed many times in the New Testament (John 8:58; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:15,16).

 

When Jesus came into the world, He was not a newly created individual such as we are, but was rather the eternal Son of God. To be born into this world, of the virgin Mary, required divine intervention, and this is exactly what the Gospels record.

 

Another reason Jesus needed to be virgin-born was His sinless nature. A basic New Testament teaching is that from the day He was born until the day He died, Jesus was without sin. To be a perfect sacrifice, He must Himself be perfect -without sin. Since our race is contaminated with sin, a miraculous entrance into the world would be required, hence the virgin birth.

 

Moreover, if Jesus had been sired by Joseph, He would not have been able to claim the legal rights to the throne of David. According to the prophecy of Jeremiah 22:28-30, there could be no king in Israel who was a descendant of King Jeconiah, and Matthew 1:12 relates that Joseph was from the line of Jeconiah. Jesus would have been of the cursed lineage.

 

The virgin birth of Christ is not only an historical fact, but it was also a necessary historical fact when one considers all the data.

 

 Objections to the Virgin Birth

 

The main problem people have with the virgin birth is its miraculous nature. Scripture does not treat this event as an ordinary occurrence but rather as a supernatural act of God. The miracle of the virgin birth should not pose any special problem if one grants the possibility of miracles.

 

Why, we may ask, is the virgin birth any greater miracle than, say, the feeding of the five thousand or Jesus walking on water? If an all-powerful God who spoke all creation into existence does exist, a virgin birth would not be beyond His capability.

 

A common objection to the virgin birth is that it is a biological impossibility, acceptable only because of people's ignorance of these things. C. S. Lewis made some pertinent observations on this view:

 

Thus you will hear people say, "The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility." Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when men were so ignorant of the course of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it.

 

A moment's thought shows this to be foolish, with the story of the virgin birth as a particularly striking example. When Joseph discovered that his fiancée was going to have a baby, he naturally decided to repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as any modern gynecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have lain with men.

 

No doubt the modern gynecologist knows several things about birth and begetting that Joseph did not know. But those things do not concern the main point -that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature. And Joseph obviously knew that.

 

Some have attempted to account for the virgin birth by tracing it to Greek or Babylonian mythology. They argue that the Gospel writers borrowed this story from the mythology of their day. This view does not fit the facts, for there is not any hero in pagan mythology for which a virgin birth is claimed, and moreover it would be unthinkable to the Jewish mind to construct such a story from mythology.

 

Many deities among Greeks, Babylonians-and Egyptians were reported born in an unusual manner, but for the most part these beings never actually existed. The accounts are filled with obvious mythological elements which are totally absent from the Gospel narratives. They are reports of a god or goddess being born into the world by sexual relations between some heavenly being and an earthly woman, or by some adulterous affair among the gods and goddesses.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Thomas Thorburn comments appropriately:

 

All these various stories of supernatural conceptions and births, which we meet with in folklore and the history of mythology, have this one point in common -they serve to point not so much to the similarity as to the complete contrast and dissimilarity which exists between the Christian birth story and the tales which are current in various pagan circles. 78/158

 

Thus when we closely consider the objections to the virgin birth, we become more convinced that it did indeed occur just as the historical record in the Gospels states.

 

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE SOURCES ON THIS SUBJECT

 

Arthur Custance, The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976).

 

Robert Gromacki, The Virgin Birth (New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1974).

 

J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1930).

 

Wilbur Smith, The Supernaturalness of Christ (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co., 1943).

 

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