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But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.” - Matthew 1:20-23
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. - Isaiah 7:14
These passages raise a theological question that I don’t think many Christians really understand – Why the virgin birth?
Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to be born of a virgin? Why couldn’t God just appear as a grown man or have two regular old human parents? Why did he need to do it this way?
I remember once being told by a fellow minister (from a totally different church and denomination) that you didn’t have to believe in miracles in order to believe in Jesus. His statement surprised me, and I asked him if he thought it was necessary to believe in the virgin birth, he said no, not really.
Let me give you three simple reasons for the necessity of the virgin birth that might help you to understand Jesus better and to love Jesus more.
First – Jesus is our Savior!
This is made wonderfully clear in verse 21, "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins,"
Joseph was told to name the child, Jesus. The name Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Yeshua, or Joshua, and it means “Jehovah Saves”. It is God who is our Savior; the Bible repeats this over and over again, in passages like 1 Timothy 4:10, “that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.”
Second – Jesus had to be the perfect substitution and sacrifice for our sin.
You see if Jesus had no human parent then he couldn't have been a man. He couldn't have taken on human flesh, he wouldn't have been of David's lineage and he couldn't be our substitute, man dying for men, so he had to have a human parent. But if Jesus had two human parents he could not have avoided the contamination of sin that is in every human being, and therefore he could not have been the perfect, spotless sacrifice that satisfied God. In other words, he could not have been God. So, you see that he had to have one human parent and one Divine parent.
Third – Jesus had to fulfill the prophecies about him.
Matthew connects the Virgin birth to the most important thing in the life of the Jews, and that is the Old Testament. We should not think of the Virgin birth as something novel or new, it is connected to the Old Testament. Notice that he says, "All this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the Prophet might be fulfilled, it might be accomplished." What was prophesied is now accomplished and Matthew actually quotes directly from Isaiah chapter 7 (Isaiah 7:14). That would be a prophecy 700 years before any of this took place!
Oh Lord Jesus, if I cannot fully understand you, it is only because you are the eternal God far beyond my human comprehension. And yet you also came to our world as one of us, to live, love, teach, suffer and die for us! You are both our perfect example and our perfect sacrifice. All praise to you Jesus, now and forever – amen.
Jeff Frazier
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4 comments:
Thank you for that ending prayer.
A lot of "fear of God" has blown through my head this last year, and it hasn't felt like the "beginning of wisdom type", but rather the "I'm done for" type.
Being reminded that God does so much that is totally unexplainable to the human brain, gives me a little peace. He makes clear the parts that we have to understand. The rest, he invites us to explore in faith, but proves (through Jesus) that he wants to be with us, regardless of our less than perfect understanding of all his ways.
The scared shepards, proclaiming his message while running through town in the middle of the night, likely couldn't have broken down the historical, scriptural, and theological engineering of what came to them that night in the fields, but they were the first to get the message straight from God's messengers and shouted what they saw to anyone who would listen.
Jeff, your second argument leaves me on shaky ground. The conclusion I must draw is that Mary was perfect, without sin. But that violates your statement that every human is contaminated with sin.
Tom
Tom, I think it is because sin is imputed to man through the seed of Adam.
Tom,
There is no need to draw the conclusion that Mary was without sin. The immaterial (the Spirit) and the material (Mary’s womb) were both involved. Mary, of course, could not impregnate herself, and in that sense she was simply a “vessel.” Only God could perform the miracle of the Incarnation.
However, denying a physical connection between Mary and Jesus would imply that Jesus was not truly human. Scripture teaches that Jesus was fully human, with a physical body like ours. This He received from Mary. At the same time, Jesus was fully God, with an eternal, sinless nature (John 1:14; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 2:14-17.)
Jesus was not born in sin; that is, He had no sin nature (Hebrews 7:26). It would seem that the sin nature is passed down from generation to generation through the father (Romans 5:12, 17, 19). The Virgin Birth circumvented the transmission of the sin nature and allowed the eternal God to become a perfect man.
Happy New Year!
Pastor Jeff
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