Six Reasons for the Virgin Birth
[In a recent companion post to this one, I answered six objections to the virgin birth.]
God’s acts are purposeful. If the Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit overshadowed the womb of the virgin Mary so that she conceived and bore a son, we should reflect on reasons for this virginal conception.
First, there seems to be a connection between the virginal conception of Jesus and the sinlessness of Jesus.
Exactly how that connection exists is debated. According to the angel Gabriel’s words in Luke 1:35, “the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”
The human nature of Jesus is without corruption, without sin, like Adam’s nature when God created him in Genesis 2. The sinless and uncorrupted nature of Jesus is important to the New Testament authors (see Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22), and it’s normal to wonder about an explanation for this teaching. The doctrine of the virgin birth has explanatory power for the sinless nature of Jesus.
The language of Luke 1:35 doesn’t mean that sin is only biologically transmitted through a human father. Mary was a sinner with a sinful nature. However, the work of the Holy Spirit ensured that the human nature of Jesus in the womb of Mary was holy and without corruption.
Second, the virginal conception ensures that Jesus was not born “in Adam.”
This second point builds on the first. Because the conception in Mary’s womb was not the result of intercourse between a man and a woman, the lack of a human father seems significant. In fact, no conception in the history of humanity had occurred in the manner of Luke 1:35.
Something distinct was evident in Jesus’s birth. He was not born “in Adam” like we were. Everyone before us had descended from Adam and “in Adam.” But Jesus was not “in Adam,” spiritually speaking.
Jesus was a new Adam.
Third, the virginal conception brings together both deity and humanity.
According to the angel’s words to Mary in Luke 1:26–38, Jesus is the “Son of God” (1:35). And, at the same time, Jesus is someone who will be born—and offspring are born. The virginal conception invites us to reflect on the presence of true deity and true humanity.
If Jesus was conceived in the same way everyone else is conceived, then who was his dad? And if Jesus had a biological father, then Jesus was fully human and only human.
Let’s work this out logically. If Jesus was only human, then he had a sinful nature just like everyone else. And if the human nature of Jesus was corrupted by sin, then Jesus was not sinless. If Jesus was not sinless, then his death on the cross could not be a death that satisfied divine justice on behalf of sinners.
The unique work of God in the womb of Mary brought together both deity and humanity without one nature conflating with or negating the other.
Fourth, the virginal conception reminds us that God is the creator.
The Spirit overshadowing Mary’s womb recalls the work of creation in Genesis 1, when the Spirit of God overshadowed the waters (Gen. 1:2). The event in Luke 1 was an act of creation, not an act of sexual intercourse.
As the creator of all things, the Lord can do what man cannot do. Nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:37). If you can believe what Scripture teaches in Genesis 1, you can believe what it teaches in Luke 1.
As Millard Erickson explains in his book Christian Theology, “Jesus was not produced after the genetic pattern of Mary alone, for in that case he would in effect have been a clone of her and would necessarily have been female. Rather, a male component was contributed. In other words, a sperm was united with the ovum provided by Mary, but it was specially created for the occasion instead of being supplied by an existent male human.”1
Fifth, the virginal conception reminds us that salvation is supernatural and miraculous.
Mary’s pregnancy was not a normal situation, for it did not result from natural means. It was miraculous—like salvation! And God initiated it with a promise so that he could then accomplish it by his power.
The Bible is full of miraculous stories. If you’re going to isolate a biblical miracle and say, “That didn’t happen,” then how long will it be before you’re getting rid of other miracles too? As Christian readers of the Bible, we should embrace the reality of the miraculous. There is a God, and he does wonders.
Millard Erickson said, “The doctrine of the virgin birth is a reminder that our salvation is supernatural. . . .The emphasis is that salvation does not come through human effort, nor is it a human accomplishment. So also the virgin birth points to the helplessness of humans to initiate even the first step in the process.” P. 774
Sixth, the virginal conception is the climax of the Bible’s previous miraculous conceptions.
Miraculous conceptions don’t begin in the New Testament. The Old Testament authors report various barren women, in whose lives the Lord miraculously worked to grant conception. Their situations were not like Mary’s, though. These Old Testament women were married, and conception happened with their husbands.
In his Systematic Theology, John Frame puts it this way: “In the history of redemption, miraculous births typically signify major developments: for example, the births of Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. In these cases, God graciously opens the wombs of women who had been unable to have children. But a virgin birth is a far greater sign than these, and indicates that something far greater is to take place.”2
Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 769.
John Frame, Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2013), 886.
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