Claiming to be Christiam but with reservations about the authenticity of the virgin birth of Jesus the Christ, is a little like being half pregnant. Either you are or you're not -- either you do or you don't. You can't be half-Christian!
The virgin birth—like Jesus' resurrection from the dead—ranks as one of the Bible's more amazing miracles. Many people reject the idea outright, while others shrug it off as nonessential to their understanding of the Savior. But a person can't believe the Word of God while rejecting its claim that the Lord was born to a virgin.
In my last Wrights Lane post I alluded to an old friend newspaper columnist who upheld Christian beliefs with the exception of the virgin birth. More recently, TV evangelist Alan Stanley said in a shocking and unsurprising turn that the virgin birth of Jesus isn’t a big deal.
Two direct quotes from Stanley: 1) “If somebody can predict their own death and their own resurrection, I’m not all that concerned about how they got into the world.” 2) “Christianity doesn’t hinge on the truth or the stories around the birth of Jesus.” It is interesting to note that Stanley has since modified his contention, yet I sense his views are shared by many who still call themselves Christian.
It would seem that Stanley, an extremely effective orator, is embracing the theological Liberalism movement.
Scripture is emphatic about the nature of Jesus' unusual conception. It is mentioned in both the Old Testament and the Gospels. In Genesis 3:15, God warned the serpent that enmity would exist between Eve's seed and his. The choice of words is meant to catch the reader's attention since a woman does not have "seed." Later, through Isaiah, God speaks a clear prophecy: "Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son" (Isaiah 7:14).
When Matthew recorded Jesus' genealogy, he crafted a sentence that paid tribute to Mary—not Joseph—as Jesus' biological parent (Matthew 1:16). Then, Luke's gospel relates Mary's encounter with the angel Gabriel, who explained that the Holy Spirit would place God's Son in her womb (Matthew 1:35).
Simply stated, rejecting the virgin birth is the equivalent of calling God a liar. The Bible is His revealed Word (2 Timothy 3:15). Suggesting one portion is false places the whole document under suspicion. So, yes, belief in the virgin birth is essential to the Christian faith.
Understanding the Virgin Birth
Whatever the Word of God proclaims -- and the virgin birth is emphatically acknowledged throughout Scripture -- Christians are to believe it. We are not free to pick and choose which portions of the Bible we will believe or interpret for our own benefit.
We do not have to fully understand the virgin birth in order to be saved i.e. teenagers. Certainly, there is a difference between being ignorant or uneducated and deliberately rejecting Scripture's testimony about who Jesus was. When a person dismisses the Jesus presented to us in the Word of God, they cannot be saved in the true Bibical sense of the word.
People who deny the truth of the virgin birth also reject other foundational truths in the Bible. Some find it more comfortable to select the parts of Scripture that suit their lifestyle or opinions rather than to apply the entire Word of God to their life. When we limit which passages we will consider true, our susceptibility to Satan's lies grows. We drift further and further from the narrow path of obedience to God.
To believe in the Jesus of the Bible is to accept Him as the virgin-born Son of God -- the sinless Christ who gave His life at Calvary in order to take our sin upon Himself. Our freedom is greater when we accept God's truth instead of fighting for our own opinions.
Jesus Christ did not have His beginning in Bethlehem. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word (Jesus). And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Jesus was the One who spoke the world into existence. And then God translated deity into humanity. That little baby in a manger is the great God who created the universe. The little baby of Luke 2 is the great God of Genesis 1. God became flesh.
You may say, "I don't understand that." Well, I'd be surprise if you said you did understand it. None of us understand it. You see, the miracle of the ages is the virgin conception of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But you don't have to understand it to believe it. If you have difficulty believing in the virgin birth, you really have difficulty believing in God. Why would you have difficulty believing that a child could come into this world without an earthly father when God made the first woman and the first man out of nothing?
If you doubt the virgin birth, you really have difficulty with the character of the Word of God that plainly teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin.
You see, if there was no virgin birth, there would be no sinless Christ. No sinless Christ ... no atonement. No atonement ... no forgiveness. No forgiveness ... no hope of heaven. No hope of heaven ... we would all die and go to hell. If you take away the virgin birth, the whole house of Christianity collapses like a house of cards.
There were no other examples of virgin births and no reason for the early Christians to make up the story. Some might think that this was a mythological addition to the Christian faith or something that was embellished over time, but when we look at other somewhat similar things in mythology, most all of them seem to assume some sort of a physical union of a god perhaps with a woman. This is not what we find in Christianity. The accounts are very simple, very understated, and very simply stated that this happened through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Of all the objections that can be raised to the virgin birth, we should point to the truthfulness of scriptures in showing us that this was surprising to those in the first century too. It would certainly have been a hard thing for both Mary and Joseph to accept, but they trusted what God said by faith because it was an amazing thing for Him to speak into this world and not just to speak but to send his own son. In fact, it was the most remarkable thing that had happened in human history to that point.
That's the same message of trust that confronts us today and the same response is in a call of faith to believe that God sent his Son in a supernatural way to redeem us from our sins.
The Bible is full of miracles. We simply cannot believe the Gospel and edit, or dilute, the miraculous.
"To remove the miraculous from Christmas is to remove this central story of Christianity," said Gary Burge, a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. "It would dismantle the very center of Christian thought and take away the keystone of the arch of Christian theology."
For Burge, an evangelical and author of Theology Questions Everyone Asks, the virgin birth is essential. His thinking goes like this: If Jesus was not virgin-born, then he was not the son of God; if he was not the son of God, then he was just another crucified man and not the sacrifice that would redeem the sins of the world.
1 comment:
This is very well said. Thank you, and I shall quote you!
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