Christmas Questions
Was Mary Really a Virgin?
Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23
The answer to the Christmas question I want us to consider today is probably obvious to most of us, but to many people it is preposterous to suggest that Mary the mother of Christ, was a virgin.
While the Virgin Birth is a doctrine often taken for granted in conservative churches like ours, from the very beginning there have been those who have doubted. The truth is, there were doubters and skeptics, even during the life of Jesus.
But for the most part, the church's acceptance of the doctrine of the virgin birth was as fundamental to our faith as the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. But toward the beginning of the 20th century, the controversy over the Virgin Birth tore the Christian church apart as liberals denied it and conservatives defended it.
Liberals called it an unnecessary and irrational doctrine. Harry Emerson Fosdick said, “Of course, I do not believe in the Virgin Birth … I do not know any intelligent minister who does.”
I had a friend who pastored in Texas while attending seminary. A Methodist minister in the same community was attending SMU. He told my friend he had a professor who said in class it didn’t matter if Jesus was hatched from an egg.
Back in 1985, and extending through 1998, a group of liberal scholars known as the Jesus Seminar began meeting to try and determine the true words of Jesus. They voted on the sayings and teachings of Christ using colored balls. Black meant the statement was definitely not genuine, pink meant it probably was, red meant it definitely was genuine.
They black-balled the Virgin Birth as a legend that has no historical validity. The scholars decided that Mary must have had intercourse with Joseph or with some unknown person before she became pregnant with Jesus. In fact, W. Barnes Tatum from Greensboro College in North Carolina called the gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth “theological fiction.”
And lest we be tempted to laugh it off as the work of a few radical kooks, it deserves to be taken seriously because the attack is on a central truth of Christian faith, that being that God became a man in the Person of Jesus Christ. Mary was either a virgin or she wasn’t and which she was determines the validity and authenticity of the Savior you are trusting with your eternity.
And it’s just a short step from denying the Virgin Birth to denying the deity of Jesus Christ. First you attack the birth, then you attack the baby. First the miracle, then the man. Once you deny his miraculous entrance into this world, it a short distance to travel to denying his deity, or that he ever existed at all.
In contrast to those who mock and doubt, consider these ancient words from the Apostles’ Creed:
“I believe in Jesus Christ who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”
They point to a fundamental fact of the Christian faith: That in Jesus Christ, God became one of us. The New Testament clearly declares that the Virgin Birth actually happened in time and space. Matthew and Luke both tell the story as sober, historical reality.
You can say it isn’t true if you want to. But you can’t deny that the Bible clearly teaches it. And you can’t deny that the early church believed it. Furthermore, this doctrine has always been considered one of the fundamental doctrines of the faith. It is something that all Christians have always believed.
So let's ask the question again this morning: Was Mary really a virgin? Let's begin with some
1. Reasons to Doubt
Why does anyone doubt the Virgin Birth? Some doubt simply because it is a miracle and many don't believe in miracles. By definition, a miracle defies human explanation, and if it can't be explained in human terms or by human logic or understanding, it must be discarded.
Miracles are hard to understand and even harder to believe. After 2000 years we, tend to forget how strange it must have been.
Mary didn't understand it. That was the very first question she asked? How can I have a baby when I'm a virgin? I haven't been with a man.
Joseph didn’t understand it. That’s why he intended to arrange a private divorce. Evidently he assumed she had been unfaithful to him. It wasn’t until the angel informed him in a dream that he came to believe her.
Furthermore, no one really knows how it happens. Gabriel uses very discreet, non-specific language to describe the actual conception. Listen, for instance, to
Luke 1: 35
The verb “overshadow” speaks of the direct, personal presence of God. It is reminiscent of Genesis 1:2 where we find the Spirit of God hovering over the waters prior to creation.
In fact, it is the same verb used in all three accounts of the Transfiguration to describe the cloud that enveloped Jesus, Moses and Elijah (and Peter, James, and John) on the mountain. From that cloud came a voice saying, “This is my Son,” even as Gabriel told Mary, “The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”
So that's the theological answer to how it happened. But physically, how did the conception happen? We don't know. Through some means unknown to us, during the “overshadowing”, the Holy Spirit created within Mary’s womb the unborn, yet fully human and fully alive Person of Jesus Christ.
It is a pure miracle of the highest order. No one can explain it or duplicate it. The Virgin Birth of Christ stands absolutely alone.
Nothing can be compared to it because no other birth has been or ever could be like it. And even those who believe the Bible and accept that the Virgin Birth happened, nowhere does the Bible explicitly tells us why it had to happen that way. We are given no details as to why Jesus was born this way. And some people doubt it's true, just because it is this unexplainable miracle.
Another reason to doubt, we are told is that it is only mentioned by Matthew and Luke. If it is so essential and so important, then why do only two of the four gospels mention the Virgin Birth? It's not explicitly mentioned in Mark or John. It is mentioned in Acts or the letters of Paul or Peter or John.
Nor is it mentioned as part of the evangelistic sermons recorded in the book of Acts. While there are certain texts that seem to imply the Virgin Birth (especially Galatians 4:4) and while it is certainly compatible with the picture of Jesus presented in John 1, it is never directly mentioned outside of Matthew 1 and Luke 1-3.
It's also worth mentioning that other ancient cultures have stories of miraculous births. The Romans, for instance, invented legends surrounding the births of various emperors. The Greeks concocted crude stories regarding their gods and heroes, including Hercules.
It is said that Buddha was born of a union between a woman and an elephant. There was a myth about Alexander the Great that says he was born of a woman and a snake.
The pagan mythologies are crude and crass, but when you read what the New Testament says about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ it is altogether beautiful and lovely.
But how can we be sure that early Christians didn't just concoct the story to compete with the other mesmerizing tales that were floating around? Maybe the Virgin Birth of Jesus is simply a sanitized version of those ancient myths.
In fact, one of the most common reason liberals advance for doubting the virgin birth is that the early
church made up the story of the Virgin Birth in order to enhance the uniqueness of Christ. They wanted to believe he was the Son of God so they created the legend of the his miraculous conception in order to prove he was more than a man.
So before going any further, let’s just stop and ask what remains if you deny the Virgin Birth? You really have only two choices.
First, you can say that Joseph was the real father of Jesus and that the Virgin Birth was invented to make Jesus seem divine.
Or you can argue (as certain Jews did) that Mary had an affair with someone other than Joseph, which was certainly what many of those who knew about the birth of Jesus believed.
There is a conversation that Jesus had with the Jewish leaders found in John 8 that records the time that Jesus told them that they were children of the devil. What prompted that response was their comment about not being "born of fornication".
That was their way of attacking the character of Mary and the legitimacy of Jesus. They knew about His claims to be God and the Son of God, But they also knew how babies are conceived. So what they say is, "We're not illegitimate children" like you are.
And that really is the heart of the issue. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or not?
Was Mary really a virgin when Jesus was conceived? Let's think about some
2. Reasons to Believe
Perhaps the primary reason to believe she was is because the Bible says she was. People argue, "But there are only two references to the Virgin Birth in the New Testament."
So how many times does the Bible have to speak for something to be true? After all, both Matthew and Luke are reputable men who give independent
accounts of the event and both testify to the fact
that Christ was virgin born.
Matthew, one of the twelve disciples, got his information directly from Jesus Himself or from Mary herself.
And it's rather interesting to note that in genealogy of Jesus as recorded by Matthew, the word
"begot" is used thirty-nine times, but it is omitted
after the name of Joseph.
Notice Matthew 1:16
Why didn't he follow the same pattern with Jesus? Because Jesus was not "begot" by Joseph of human conception, but was begotten by God, miraculously conceived within Mary by the Holy Spirit.
Luke was not only a doctor, but a prominent historian who talked with eyewitnesses according to his Gospel as stated in 1:1-4.
As a competent medical doctor who attended one of the most famous Greek medical schools, he carefully researched the evidence and arguments for the virgin birth of Christ and came to the logical conclusion that Jesus indeed was born of a virgin.
Listen to Luke's account
Luke 1:34-35
Matthew and Luke both use the terminology, but the teaching of the virginity of Mary is implied in many other places in Scripture.
The first hint that Jesus would be virgin born occurs
early in the book of Genesis where we have the first
promise of redemption. In chapter 3 verse 15 we read, "And I will put enmity between you and
the woman, and between your seed and her Seed."
Virtually everyone agrees that this prophecy of our Lord to Satan, after our first parents fell into sin, was that Satan will one day be crushed and destroyed by the Savior and Messiah Who would come from God.
But take note of the words, "her Seed." Isn't it interesting that this One Who shall deal a fatal blow to the head of Satan will be the seed of a woman.
That really creates a conundrum because everyone knows the seed for procreation is always provided by the male of the species. But in this case, it would be the seed of a woman, impregnated by the Holy Spirit of God, making it possible for a virgin-born conqueror to bring ultimate defeat to Satan.
The prophet Isaiah, some seven hundred years before the actual birth of Jesus wrote: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14).
The Hebrew word used here for virgin is almah meaning "a young woman of marriageable age." By the way, there are no scriptural examples of that word ever being used in Scripture to refer to someone who was already married.
Now that is an important distinction that needs to be seen because there are some who would tell you Isaiah is prophesying about himself and his wife, and the reference is just to a young woman in general.
However, there is no recorded evidence that Isaiah's
wife ever gave birth to a son named Immanuel. She
could not have been a virgin for she was already
married. In fact, she had already given birth to another son, as we see in Isaiah 7:3
Instead, what we find is a prophecy by God through Isaiah found its fulfillment in the words of the
angel when Jesus was born.
Concerning the other gospel writers, Mark and John, even though they do not outwardly mention the virgin birth of Christ in their writings, there is no question they believed it.
Mark in his Gospel spoke of Jesus as the "son of Mary" as set forth in Mark 6:3, but nowhere in
his writings does he speak of Jesus as being the son
of Joseph.
By the time John wrote his Gospel which was about 90 A.D. he did not have to mention the virgin birth because everyone believed it. You can be sure if the virgin birth as told by Matthew and Luke in the Gospels was a story not founded on fact, John would have refuted it.
The virgin birth of Christ is also testified to by the
Apostle Paul who goes on record as believing it when
he wrote in Galatians 4:4 that Christ was "made of a
woman."
There is no other way that the incarnation of God the Son could happen than by the way declared by the angel: "The Holy spirit will come upon you, and
the power of the Most High will overshadow you..."
(Luke 1:34).
It was the supernatural conception by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary that made the virgin birth of Christ possible.
To reject the virgin birth of Christ is to reject the very witness of Scripture itself. By the way, God knew she was a virgin. That's why He chose her.
And Mary knew she was a virgin. That's why she asked the angel how she could have a baby.
She was a holy, pure, chaste Jewish virgin, chosen by God to deliver the Savior to the world, and she knew she was a virgin.
Joseph knew she was a virgin also. Even though it took some convincing, he came to believe her story, convinced by the visit of an angel and take her as his wife.
We can add to the biblical testimony the historical record. For 1800 years, the Christian church has universally believed and accepted the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Some of you are familiar with the Apostles’ Creed. It was a statement of faith put together in the 5th century to state accepted Christian doctrine. It included this statement concerning the birth of Jesus: "Conceived by the Holy Spirit; born of the
virgin Mary."
And not just the Apostle's Creed, but every other major Christian creed of the first 1800 years also contains the Virgin Birth. Outside of a very few heretical groups, every branch of the Christian church has always affirmed the Virgin Birth.
No Christian denomination even thought to question the idea until the rise of scientific rationalism during the Enlightenment when men such as Thomas Paine and the French philosopher Voltaire led the charge against the Virgin Birth.
In fact, every major branch of the Christian church still believes it. Evangelicals of every stripe believe in the Virgin Birth. The Catholic Church strongly affirms this doctrine. So do the various Orthodox Churches. In fact, the only churches that don’t believe it are the denominations that have thrown away their Biblical roots in order to embrace liberalism and politically-correct theology.
In countries where the faith has most recently traveled, and is growing the fastest, such as Asia and Africa, I am told that virtually 100% of those Christians believe in the Virgin Birth and would be shocked to hear anyone deny it.
There are well over 1 billion professing Christians in the world today, nearly all of whom believe in the Virgin Birth.
As one writer put it, “It is extremely difficult to make the terminology of the Virgin Birth refers to something other than the Virgin Birth.” In fact, I would change “extremely difficult” to “impossible.”
3. What's at Stake
Some may be asking, "But does it really make any difference whether or not Mary was a virgin?" After all, Jesus is the main thing, not Mary. Let's think about that.
It's very difficult to separate the virginity of Mary from the character of Jesus because the virgin birth is essential to the two natures of Jesus.
When Jesus was born He was God and He was man. Jesus needed to be both God and man.
He needed to be man to understand us and identify with us, but He also needed to be God in order to meet our needs and to have the power to meet those needs. It is essential to His divine and human nature. He had to be the God man. He had to be able to lay hold of God because He was God and He had to be able to lay hold of man because He had the nature of man apart from human sin and bring the two together.
Not only that, the virgin birth was essential to the sinless life of Jesus. If He hadn't been virgin born, He couldn't have been sinless.
Let's look again at
Luke 1:35
"That Holy One". Old King James says "That Holy thing".
That little baby born at your house, you might call her or him that sweet little thing. You might even call him or her that cute little thing. You might call him or her that cuddly little thing. But you aren't going to call him or her for long that holy thing, at least not for very long!
Sometime in the middle of the night he or she is going to come out with a holy scream and get you out of bed. You're going to get your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on and have you're baby on your shoulder coming to church, and that precious little holy thing is going to spit up on you, and I promise you, you will not be in a place of worship when it happens.
But when Jesus was born, He was "that Holy One", the One Who never committed any sin. And the only way to account for the sinless life of Jesus Christ is that He was born of a virgin, and it was the very blood of God that flowed through His veins.
But let's go a step farther. Does the virgin birth really matter? It does in that it is essential to His sacrificial death on the cross for our sins.
There are three essentials that come together to qualify Christ as the sacrifice for sin. For Jesus to be your Savior required His virgin birth, His sinless life of Christ, and His sacrificial death. They are all essential, they are inseparably linked and they all stand or fall together.
Jesus Christ could not have died sacrificially on the cross for our sins if He had not been sinless and if Jesus Christ had not been virgin born He would not have been sinless.
When we are born we are tainted with a fallen nature. Romans 5, verse 12, says, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world."
What that means is we are all born with a sin nature. Why does your child act like you do? They've got your nature. Why do you act like you do? You've got your daddy's nature. And more to the point, we've got Adam's nature. It is a sin nature and we're all born with it.
But when Jesus was born the Holy Spirit short circuited the sin cycle so that Jesus Christ was the only person ever born without a sin nature.
Therefore, He is the only one ever born who never committed a sin. He had no sins to die for of His own. He was qualified then to die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. This is where it all comes together.
The virgin birth was essential because we needed the Savior. When Jesus died on that cross He was paying a price not for His sins, but for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way of not, but God performed a miracle so you could be saved and it was the miracle of a virgin birth. God arranged a birth to provide you with a Savior.
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this miracle is like any other in that you can believe it or deny it. There is enough to believe for those who wish to believe. There is enough reason to doubt for those who care to doubt. Miracles are like that. They don’t force us to believe. They invite us to make our own decision.
In fact, Martin Luther once remarked that the Incarnation consisted of three miracles: “The first, that God became man; the second, that a virgin was the mother, and the third, that the heart of man should believe it.”
If you say, “Miracles can’t happen,” then you will find some way to explain away the Virgin Birth. And you won’t be the first person to do so. From the very beginning, some found the story too incredible, too mysterious.
But if you choose to believe the Bible and live by faith, then the Virgin birth makes perfect sense.
I heard this story many years ago about two doctors in New Orleans. One was a Christian and one was a non Christian. The doctor who was not a Christian said to the other, "If we had a woman in this hospital who claimed that she was a virgin and was going to give birth to a son, would you believe her?"
The Christian doctor said, "Well, if her little son grew in favor with God and man, and if her son healed the sick and raised the dead, and if her little son who became a man never said a sinful word or committed a sinful deed, and if her son died on a cross for the sins of the world, and if her son was buried and three days later he rose again from the dead, then I'd believe her."
For unto is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord! On the human side, his mother is Mary and on the divine side, his father is God and the baby that is born is God with us. And for that reason, we hang a banner at Bethlehem’s manger that says, “Not made by man.”
The wisest scholars and the simplest believers bow together before that manger to proclaim that the infant Jesus, born of a virgin and laid in swaddling clothes, is their Lord and Savior. And today, we give you opportunity to join them,
Let's pray.
