Why is the virgin birth so important?

In all this there is only one hope for Israel, or indeed for any of us, and that is, God himself stepping into the scene by way of the virgin birth. Thus was fulfilled the earliest prophecy of all, that "the Seed of the woman" should be He, who would bruise the head of the serpent, the originator of all the sin and sorrow. The virgin birth of Christ is not just a mere detail, an insignificant side issue in the Divine plan. It is fundamental and essential. By it the entail of sin and death, inherent in the race of Adam, was broken. Christ was not "of the earth, earthy," but "the Second Man … the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47). In Him, risen from the dead, a new race of man is begun.

At this point we may perhaps appreciate more fully the immense importance of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin. There was a hint of this great fact in the first prediction concerning Him ever given. It was the Lord God Himself who spoke of "the woman" and "her seed" (Gen. 3:15). Hence, "when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman" (Gal. 4:4), yet conceived under the direct action of the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35). Therefore it is that while the Deliverer was by the woman He was not an ordinary son of Adam at all. The virgin birth means that the Lord Jesus while truly Man was yet a Man of a new order.

We come now to the account of His birth. Here He is presented as human and divine, born of a virgin and at the same time Jehovah-Saviour, Emmanuel, God with us. If Matthew 1:1-17 were all that could be said of His birth, He might then have had a legal right to the throne, but He could never have been He who was to redeem and save from sin. But the second half before us shows Him to be truly the long promised One, the One of whom Moses and the prophets spake, to whom all the past manifestations of God in the earth and the types, pointed. To accomplish the work of salvation, to suffer the penalty of sin and to put away sin He had to be divine and human.

But now for the real significance of the Virgin Birth. Of all the millions of the human race only ONE has been born of a virgin, for if born of a virgin we have a miracle of the first magnitude. If there were no human paternity then the Virgin Birth could only take place if Mary were the passive agent of none less than God’s Holy Spirit. No one can give life but God, and if the ordinary channel of procreation was set aside, then it must be by creation—the creative act of God Himself.

Like produces like. This is one of the fundamental laws of nature as established by God. It is stamped upon the Creation chapter—fish, fowl, and flesh were all ordained to bring forth each “after his kind.” And man could do no other than this. “Adam,” we read, “begat a son in his own, likeness, after his own image” (Gen. 5:3). And so it has been throughout all the generations of men. Sinful men beget sinful children. Therefore it is written, “They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies” (Ps. 58:3), and “all we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. 53:6), and “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). In the great penitential Psalm, David confesses, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” which simply means, ‘I have come of a sinful stock, my very nature is sinful, ‘ and this is true of every man born into the world. Does it matter then or does it not, how the Lord was born into this world? Had He come by natural generation, would He not have been as every other man? To deny the Virgin birth is to deny His pre-existence in the Godhead, and to deny the holiness of His Manhood, and apart from these two great truths as to His glorious Person, He could not have been the Saviour.

It is said that nothing is based upon this great truth in the New Testament. But everything is based upon it; it is the foundation of everything that follows. I stress the fact that it meets us on the first page of the New Testament, that it is the door through which we enter into the full revelation of God. Apart from it, we have no intervention of God for His own glory and our salvation; Jesus is not the great I AM, but a mere man like the rest of men, and we have no sinless Saviour. How, apart from the miraculous conception and the Virgin birth, could the Lord have said, “I know whence I came. I proceeded forth and came from God. . . . Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8); or how could Peter have applied to Him the words of the Psalm, “Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27), or the Apostles have spoken of Him as God's Holy Child , Jesus (chap. 4:30). Or how could Paul have spoken of Him as “Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever” (Rom. 9:5), or as “the Second Man, the Lord out of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47); or how could John have insisted with such persistence on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, and is now the great object of faith, the true God and Eternal Life?

Like produces like. This is one of the fundamental laws of nature as established by God. It is stamped upon the Creation chapter — fish, fowl, and flesh were all ordained to bring forth each "after his kind." And man could do no other than this. "Adam," we read, "begat a son in his own, likeness, after his own image" (Gen. 5:3). And so it has been throughout all the generations of men. Sinful men beget sinful children. Therefore it is written, "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Ps. 58:3), and "all we like sheep have gone astray" (Isa. 53:6), and "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). In the great penitential Psalm, David confesses, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," which simply means, 'I have come of a sinful stock, my very nature is sinful,' and this is true of every man born into the world. Does it matter then or does it not, how the Lord was born into this world? Had He come by natural generation, would He not have been as every other man? To deny the Virgin birth is to deny His pre-existence in the Godhead, and to deny the holiness of His Manhood, and apart from these two great truths as to His glorious Person, He could not have been the Saviour.

It is said that nothing is based upon this great truth in the New Testament. But everything is based upon it; it is the foundation of everything that follows. I stress the fact that it meets us on the first page of the New Testament, that it is the door through which we enter into the full revelation of God. Apart from it, we have no intervention of God for His own glory and our salvation; Jesus is not the great I AM, but a mere man like the rest of men, and we have no sinless Saviour. How, apart from the miraculous conception and the Virgin birth, could the Lord have said, "I know whence I came. I proceeded forth and came from God. … Verily, verily I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8); or how could Peter have applied to Him the words of the Psalm, "Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27), or the Apostles have spoken of Him as God's Holy Child, Jesus (Acts 4:30). Or how could Paul have spoken of Him as "Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Rom. 9:5), or as "the Second Man, the Lord out of heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47); or how could John have insisted with such persistence on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, and is now the great object of faith, the true God and Eternal Life?

Like produces like. This is one of the fundamental laws of nature as established by God. It is stamped upon the Creation chapter — fish, fowl, and flesh were all ordained to bring forth each "after his kind." And man could do no other than this. "Adam," we read, "begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image" (Gen. 5:3). And so it has been throughout all the generations of men. Sinful men beget sinful children. Therefore it is written, "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Ps. 58:3), and "all we like sheep have gone astray" (Isa. 53:6), and "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). In the great penitential Psalm, David confesses, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," which simply means, "I have come of a sinful stock, my very nature is sinful," and this is true of every man born into the world. Does it matter then or does it not, how the Lord was born into this world? Had He come by natural generation, would He not have been as every other man? To deny the Virgin birth is to deny His pre-existence in the Godhead, and to deny the holiness of His Manhood, and to rob mankind of the one and only Saviour.

It is said that nothing is based upon this great truth in the New Testament. But everything is based upon it; it is the foundation of everything that follows. I stress the fact that it meets us on the first page of the New Testament, that it is the door through which we enter into the full revelation of God. Apart from it, we have no intervention of God for His own glory and our salvation; Jesus is not the great I AM, but a mere man like the rest of men, and we have no sinless Saviour. How, apart from the miraculous conception and the Virgin birth, could the Lord have said, "I know whence I came … I proceeded forth and came from God … Verily, verily I say to you, before Abraham was, I am (John 8); or how could Peter have applied to Him the words of the Psalm, "Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27): or the Apostles have spoken of Him as God's Holy Child, Jesus (Acts 4:30). Or how could Paul have spoken of Him as "Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Romans 9:5), or as "the Second Man, the Lord out of heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47); or how could John have insisted with such persistence on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God and the great object of faith, the true God and Eternal Life?

In a recently published book a popular preacher gives his views as to the great facts of our Christian faith. He begins with the birth of our Lord and questions the miraculous conception and Virgin birth. His reasons are that only two of the New Testament writers speak of it: that nothing is based upon it, that the notion arose in the early church because it as supposed that natural conception was sinful, for which he quotes Psalm 51:5. There is nothing new in these views. Men who have pledged themselves to preach and testify to "the Faith once delivered to the saints," have become bold and more bold in rejecting the truth as to our Lord's entrance into the world. To quote from one of them: "I cannot help including the birth stories among things that do not matter. There are some things that matter a great deal. There are some life and death matters, if it comes to that, but this is not one of them. It does not matter." It is my purpose to show that it does matter, that it is one of the foundation stones of our faith, and that apart from it the whole edifice of the truth must collapse and fall. Indeed, if it is not as revealed to us in the Word, there is no truth at all except that which would condemn us for ever, for apart from the miraculous conception and birth of our Lord there is no Saviour for men.

In a recently published book a popular preacher gives his views as to the great facts of our Christian faith. He begins with the birth of our Lord and questions the miraculous conception and Virgin birth. His reasons are that only two of the New Testament writers speak of it: that nothing is based upon it, that the notion arose in the early church because it as supposed that natural conception was sinful, for which he quotes Psalm 51:5. There is nothing new in these views. Men who have pledged themselves to preach and testify to “the Faith once delivered to the saints,” have become bold and more bold in rejecting the truth as to our Lord's entrance into the world. To quote from one of them: “I cannot help including the birth stories among things that do not matter. There are some things that matter a great deal. There are some life and death matters, if it comes to that, but this is not one of them. It does not matter.” It is my purpose to show that it does matter, that it is one of the foundation stones of our faith, and that apart from it the whole edifice of the truth must collapse and fall. Indeed, if it is not as revealed to us in the Word, there is no truth at all except that which would condemn us for ever, for apart from the miraculous conception and birth of our Lord there is no Saviour for men.

Does not every detail recorded of this blessed Person in the gospels show that the power and mind of God was behind all? How wonderfully unique His birth was! "the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee;. the word "Wonderful" in Isaiah 9 might be translated "miracle," and truly His birth was in full accord with His name. In these days of departure from the truth let us hold tenaciously to the truth, the all-important truth, of the virgin birth of our Lord. Upon it the whole fabric of Christian faith depends. It affected the stars; it moved the magi; it caused the angelic host to burst into praise; it astonished and rejoiced ordinary men like the shepherds; it caused consternation to a whole city and troubled beyond measure a monarch. Above all else it made redemption possible, and secured a company of sons for God, (Galatians 4:4-5). Never was there a birth like it!