Luke 1:34, “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
This is a very proper and knowledgeable question. How are we to understand the birth of Jesus? It is essential to understand the birth of Jesus in order to understand the Christian message. Was the birth of Jesus really an incarnational miracle of how God chose to enter the world through a young virgin girl?
You’ve heard the saying, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” What does that mean? The Barna group recently conducted a national survey for The Lutheran Hour. They found that only 37% of adults in the survey said the birth of Christ was the most important aspect of Christmas. The percentage is only 26% for 18-34 year-olds.
Our culture is constantly trying to remove Christ from Christmas. But the real meaning of Christmas and Christianity hinges upon the identity of that baby in a manger. Who was he? Was he the son of Mary and Joseph—or was he something else?
We must know the truth of Jesus’ parentage. It is crucial to Christianity. This morning we consider three possible options regarding Christ’s birth. We ask the question, “Whose son is he?”
Joseph initially thought so. He thought that Mary had been unfaithful. Yet, even more so…
Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees, twisted the story of His miraculous birth. They implied that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary’s infidelity. John 8:41 41“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
Jesus put up with this kind of gossip and innuendo all of his life—that his mother was unfaithful and he was illegitimate. This would not have been a big deal if, when Jesus was a man, he hadn’t claimed to be God. The real rub was that Jesus claimed that he could forgive people’s sins.
This was blasphemy to the Pharisees, the religious leaders. Only God could forgive sins, and Jesus certainly wasn’t God. After all, he was just the illegitimate child of a poor family from Nazareth.
Note that 30 years after the fact the Pharisees knew all about his birth. That shouldn’t surprise us. Just like in politics today the media dredges up anything and everything negative about someone, so the Pharisees had their agents investigate Jesus’ life.
After all, on the night of his birth the shepherds went into town rejoicing and telling everyone they met about his birth. Two years later the wise men also talked about what they had seen. Most of all was the gossip of the neighbors. They knew something fishy had happened to cause the quickie wedding.
So the Pharisees used the facts surrounding Jesus’ birth against him. They would stop at nothing to quiet his message of love and forgiveness.
As early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries, opponents of Christianity centered their attacks on the virgin birth. But early church fathers like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, and Tertullian, defended the virgin birth against the pagan challengers.
The virgin birth is one of the pillars of our faith. The virgin birth was thought to be critical enough to the faith to be included in several early creeds of the church and in baptismal formulas.
For instance, the Apostle’s Creed, though not written by the apostles, contains a brief summary of their teachings and doctrines. It has been widely used in the church since the very early centuries.
It begins this way: I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, Our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary…
The attacks have not stopped, today coming from liberal, so-called “Christian” theologians. Remember the Jesus Seminar a few years ago? These self-proclaimed liberal theologians were so full of themselves that they voted on the parts of the New Testament they thought true or false.
You can imagine the results of their vote concerning the virgin birth of Jesus. These pseudo-Christians are like King Herod. He told the wise men that he, too, wanted to worship the new king. But his true purpose was to destroy the baby Jesus.
Many today are trying to do the same thing—trying to destroy Jesus by creating false notions about him and saying the virgin birth is nothing but a fable. In truth they are enemies of Christianity.
You and I know the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very cornerstone of Christian faith. It is also the most attacked doctrine. The virgin birth is the second most attacked doctrine.
Think about a three-legged stool with each leg representing the essential doctrine of Christianity: One leg represents the virgin birth. Another Christ’s death on the cross as atonement for our sins. And the third leg is his resurrection. Satan want us to doubt, so he attacks the virgin birth.
It has been called nonessential, irrelevant, and questionable. We have been told that Jesus’ birth doesn’t matter—what matters is his life. Satan knows that if he can persuade us to doubt even one of the foundational truths, he can eventually collapse the entire Christian structure.
How can that happen? If he can convince us that the virgin birth is not true, can we trust the rest of the Bible! We will begin to doubt everything and Satan will have succeeded in causing doubt into our minds.
You’ve heard this before, haven’t you? This is a strong attack. In fact, most attacks of the virgin birth imply that Mary had sexual relations with Joseph before their wedding.
This is an attractive argument in our world today. Men and women reject commitment to one another and to marriage vows, yet think nothing of living together out of a mistaken notion of what love is.
They shrug their shoulders and say, “What’s the big deal if she got pregnant before the wedding? They were engaged. They loved each other. So they slept together—so what! We do it all the time.”
To them Jesus was Joseph and Mary’s son. He was not divinely conceived by the Holy Spirit. As an adult he was just a well-meaning, good teacher. He certainly was not the divine Son of God.
Well, it is a big deal. Here’s why:
It is a denial of the very core of the Christian faith. When Joseph first heard that his future wife was pregnant, he considered putting her away because he thought she must have been unfaithful to him. He knew he was not the father. Look at his actions and thoughts. Matthew 1:19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
Do you see what I see? Even Joseph thought Mary was unfaithful. It wasn’t until after God’s angel explained to him that Mary had not been unfaithful, and that she, in fact, would give birth to the Messiah, that Joseph married her. By his actions we know that Joseph was not the father.
If Joseph was the father, then the Bible is. Even Isaiah the Prophet said in Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Again, if the Bible is wrong about this, how can we trust it in other areas? At the very heart of the virgin birth is the integrity of the Scriptures. Isaiah said that the virgin birth was a sign to us of God’s grace and working in human affairs. No child before or since Jesus’ birth could lay claim to the name Immanuel—God with us. Only Jesus fulfills the prophecy.
Enemies and liberal scholars have attacked the virgin birth on the grounds that it is biologically impossible. They’re absolutely right! Of course it is impossible. That’s the miracle of Christmas.
God is supernatural. The virgin birth is a supernatural biological miracle. To deny the virgin birth based on the assumption that it is too difficult of a miracle for even God is not scholarship—it is unbelief! The virgin birth was no more difficult for God than any other miracle of the Bible.
If Jesus was the biological son of Joseph, or the result of Mary’s infidelity, then Christianity is false, a cruel joke. The most important question of the Christmas story is, “Whose son is Jesus Christ?”
The deepest meaning of Christmas is—Jesus is the Son of Man and the Son of God. He is both human and divine.
To reject the virgin birth is to reject Christ’s Sonship—the Son of God and the Son of Man. To reject his sonship is to reject his deity, which means Jesus cannot be the Savior. Which means he cannot be your Savior.
The message of the virgin birth is either one of the greatest truths or one of the greatest of all lies. He is either the virgin born Son of God, or he was simply another man who gave his life to a cause he believed in. Surely you know how important it is to get the question of Jesus’ birth right. Thus we come to the third option.
By now you know that this message is about the virgin born Son of God. What is the significance of the virgin birth? It lies at the very heart of the Christmas story. Jesus is the Son of God because…
Two-thousand years ago the people of Bethlehem did not realize the significance of what happened; just another baby born.
I’m afraid today there are those who, at Christmas, see only the birth of another baby instead of God’s Son given. If we were doing it Jesus would have been born in a palace rather than in a manger in Bethlehem. At least then he would have gotten some respect. But God’s ways are not our ways.
Of the billions of people born on this planet something happened that night that has never happened before or since. Even our calendar is dated by that event.
It wasn’t merely a child that was born—He was God the Son. This is the supreme litmus test of Christmas. If Jesus is not God’s Son, then the wise men traveled too far for nothing. They need to take back their gifts. The shepherds need to return to their sheep. If he is not God’s Son, the Christmas star must recede into darkness and our worship should be given to another. But in fact, he is the Son of God.
Unlike other human beings, Jesus was born without sin—a requirement if he were to be the Savior of the world. He said to his enemies in John 8:46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? Jesus made the claim that no other religious leader has ever made—He never sinned.
He lived his life without sinning, even once. He died on the cross without ever having sinned. You see, it is impossible to have a sinful savior. The world’s various religions have prophets, but none have sinless saviors. Budda certainly wasn’t. The prophet Mohammed wrote in the Koran of his need for forgiveness.
Only Jesus has the credentials to be the Savior of the world. Jesus Christ alone is the way of salvation; no other savior exists. All other religious leaders are disqualified because of their inability to meet the qualification of sinlessness. All were disproved by their sin.
It wasn’t merely another baby that was born that first Christmas 2000 years ago God gave us His Son. The angel said to Joseph, Matthew 1:20-21 20bJoseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
If you believe that through the virgin birth God’s Son was given for you, will you give yourself to the Son? His name is Jesus.