the virgin birth

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THE VIRGIN BIRTH What is the virgin birth? The Apostle’s Creed says that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary. The virgin birth is another doctrine full of mystery. It is an enigma that has generated much debate and argument. Martin Loyd Jones said “People get in trouble about this doctrine of the incarnation, because they set up their puny minds as the ultimate test of truth, and because they cannot understand a thing, they will not believe it.” Consequently, we only know of the virgin birth because of revelation through the Scriptures. Additionally, attempts to explain it in terms of human understanding have been the start of numerous cults. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the virgin birth is absolutely essential to the incarnation. To dispense with it, is to dispense with the incarnation. To dispense with the incarnation eliminates our redemption. The virgin lies within the first promise of God regarding our redemption. In Genesis 3:15 the Lord, speaking to Adam and Eve after they had sinned, promised that there would be enmity between the woman and Satan, and his seed and her seed, and He (the seed of woman) would bruise Satan on the head (a fatal blow) and Satan would bruise his heel. Centuries later, Isaiah declared that the Lord will provide a sign; a virgin shall be with child and bear a son and name him Immanuel. Isa. 7:14. Skeptics have pointed out that the word for “virgin” in Hebrew also meant young woman, not necessarily a woman who had not experienced sexual intercourse. However, if Isaiah 7:14 only refers to a young woman, how is that a sign? Most babies are born to young women. Moreover, Matt. 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-28 state that virgin referred to a young woman who had not had sexual intercourse. In Luke 1:26-38 the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to have a child. She is surprised and asks how, when she is a virgin in the sense of sexually chaste. Gabriel tells her that the Holy Spirit will come upon her. In Matthew 1:18-25 Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, learns that she is pregnant and makes arrangements to break the betrothal quietly. But in a dream an angel informs him that the child Mary is carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This illustrates the total inability of Man to deliver himself. God intervened on his behalf. No one with a sin nature could atone for the sin of all men. Atonement could only be made by one without sin who became a substitute for us to bear our sin. Jesus had to be without sin to be an acceptable substitutionary sacrifice, bearing our sin and paying its penalty for us. Scripture does not say that the sin nature is passed down only through the male sperm. That may be the case, but Scripture does not say that it is. When Adam sinned, his sin was imputed to all of his descendants because he was our federal representative. It is clear however, that the descent through Adam was interrupted in Jesus’s case, so that He was not born as everyone else. When a husband and wife conceive a child, that child is a new person. But the virgin birth did not result in a new person. Jesus Christ had always existed in eternity past. Adam was not His federal representative.

How did Jesus avoid receiving the sin nature through Mary. It was not by the immaculate conception. Mary, a descendant of Adam, had a sin nature like the rest of us. She needed a savior as well. This is part of the mystery. In Luke 1:35 Gabriel told Mary that because the Holy Spirit would come upon her the child would be holy. In Luke 1:37 Gabriel said “For nothing shall be impossible for God the Holy Spirit in the process of conception was evidently able to prevent the impartation of Mary’s sin nature to Jesus. Consequently, as to the Lord Jesus’s divine nature, He had no mother, so that his human nature had no father.” Thus, if He had been born of a natural father, He would have been in Adam’s line of descent. He would have been polluted with sin from Adam and would have had a sin nature. As such He could have been an adequate sacrifice and we would all still be in our sins.

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