Do we really mean it when we say, each week, that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary? Do we really believe that Jesus was born to a virgin? That Mary conceived Jesus supernaturally? Or doesn’t it really matter?
This is one of those areas of doctrine that most people outside the church are likely to question, if not dismiss outright. After all, we all know how life comes about. It either happens the natural way or else, these days at least, by artificial insemination, but either way you need a man and a woman. You need an egg and a sperm. Spontaneous generation of a fertilised egg by a woman is just plain impossible! So it can’t be true can it?
And in any case why does it matter? Would it make any difference to our belief in Jesus if it weren’t true?
Well, we’ll see in a few minutes why it does matter whether it’s true, but first let me just address this question of whether it could be true. I don’t want to spend too much time on this because I’m sure some of you just won’t care But there will be some for whom this is an important question.
Let me ask you first of all, why do people have such trouble with the concept of a virgin birth? It’s because it’s never happened in their experience isn’t it? This is a unique and unrepeatable event. We’re so used to the scientific principle, that we can’t cope with something that’s outside normal experience. We want to be able to run an experiment to prove it. And by definition a unique event can’t be repeated. So we dismiss it purely on the grounds that it’s unique. But think about that. If we dismissed something just be cause it was a unique event, we’d never discover anything new, would we? Because every new discovery is a unique event to start with.
When Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin growing on some jelly in his lab, it was a unique event. It had never happened before. There was no scientific explanation for it. But if he’d let that deter him where would we be today?
So the fact that this is a unique event in the history of biological science isn’t an argument that it didn’t happen. All we can say is that the odds against it were very high.
In fact if you think about it, the same could be said, and often is, about Jesus’ miracles. And of course the greatest of those miracles was the resurrection. Which is harder to believe: that Jesus was born to a virgin or that he rose from the dead? I don’t think you can separate them can you? Both are equally unique. Both are equally inexplicable as far as our scientific understanding of the world is concerned. Yet both form the foundation of our Christian belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world.
I think most Christians would agree that the evidence for the resurrection is convincing. The man who wrote "Who moved the Stone" was an English lawyer who set out to disprove the resurrection from the point of view of a court of law, but in the end came to the conclusion that in fact the case was proven. Jesus’ resurrection was the only feasible explanation that fitted all the facts. So if such an unlikely and unique event as the resurrection took place the way it’s described, why not the virgin birth? After all, God was involved. Let me read you what Wayne Grudem says in his Systematic Theology (1994): "Certainly such a miracle [as the virgin birth] is not too hard for the God who created the universe and everything in it -- anyone who affirms that a virgin birth is ’impossible’ is just confessing his or her own unbelief in the God of the Bible" (p. 532).
Well let’s think about where we get this idea of Jesus being born while Mary was still a virgin. What about the textual evidence? The argument is often made that the stories of Jesus’ birth were just made up to fit with the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. But the trouble is, the word that’s used there for virgin is actually the word for young woman, which is how the NRSV translates it. It was a word that was used for a young unmarried woman so the idea of virginity fitted with it, but it wasn’t the technical word for virgin. So when Matthew picks this prophecy is he making up the story about Mary and Jesus to fit Isaiah, or is he going from the account he received from Joseph & Mary and finding a correlation with Isaiah. Well, I must say I think the latter explanation fits better. It certainly doesn’t require him to jump from young woman to virgin for some reason.
But there’s more to it than just that. Most of the gospel records have close parallels with each other. You can often see where one gospel writer has used either another writer’s record or at least the same source material for their work. Often the suggestion is that Mark contains the original or close to the original material and the others have followed him. But here we have two quite independent accounts, one by one of Jesus’ own followers and the other by Luke who’s both a careful historian, and a physician, who presumably knew something about how births came about. Both accounts give the same information, but they’re clearly independent. And both go to some effort to give evidence that this was a birth out of the ordinary.
Matthew reports Joseph’s initial reaction and the change that occurred after the visit of the angel. He also reports the angels words, then gives his own theological interpretation. Matthew realises that this event correlates with the prophecy of Isaiah, but he goes further in picking up the second part of that prophecy. The child will be called Immanuel, that is, "God with us". We’ll think about the significance of that name in a moment.
Luke on the other hand has obviously used Mary as his source and she reports the words of the angel Gabriel to her. The message is similar. God has chosen her to bear a child who will be called the son of the Most High, that is the Son of God.
It’s Mary who points out that she’s a virgin. In fact the words she uses are literally that she’s never had sexual relations with a man. So there’s no possibility in Luke’s account that he really meant a young woman and we’ve misinterpreted it. She makes it quite clear what she means. And the explanation given to her builds on that fact. It’s the power of the most high that will bring about her pregnancy. The child will be called the Son of God.
I guess you can see from that very short introduction to the issue that I don’t have any problem with the possibility that this event happened the way it’s been reported to us.
But what’s the significance for us of this statement in the creed: "conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary"?
Imagine you were a first century person living somewhere in the vicinity of Israel. You would have heard the stories about Jesus, how he had these miraculous powers. He’d healed people of all sorts of illnesses. He’d cast evil spirits out of people. He’d done amazing things like stopping storms and walking on water, if you believe that sort of thing! You’d have heard about the amazing way he taught. The new things he’d been teaching people about God. You might even have heard the sorts of claims he’d made for himself. But what would you make of all that? How would you explain it to yourself, or to your kids?
Well, let me suggest two ways you might explain it.
You might take the realist approach. That is, Jesus was a great man, a great teacher who for some reason had access to some sort of supernatural power. God was at work in him. You might even go so far as to say that God had chosen to adopt him as his son. After all he did claim to be the son of God. There was the story of a voice from heaven, just after his baptism by John, saying: "You are my Son, whom I love." So maybe he’s a great human being who’s been taken by God as a son. If you were to take Heb 1:3-4 out of context you might think that’s what the writer there is saying: "When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs." (NRSV) Though of course that would be to ignore the previous few verses. But maybe you might think that Jesus was a man who did things in God’s power.
On the other hand being someone who was familiar with Greek and Roman mythology you might have taken the opposite view. Jesus was actually a divine being, truly the Son of God, who had appeared on earth masquerading as a human being. He merely appeared in human form to help us understand what God wanted to teach us.
So which is it to be? A man with divine abilities, or a God in a human disguise?
Well neither does the biblical evidence credit does it? That passage in Hebrews 1 begins by pointing out that Jesus is the Son of God by whom God made the universe. Col 1:15-20 says the same thing. Then again, the gospels make clear that Jesus had real human feelings and emotions. He gets hungry (Mat 4:2). He weeps (John 11:33f). He suffers anguish (Lk 22:44). He gets thirsty (Jn 19:28). On the cross he bleeds real blood (Jn 19:34).
So the only answer as to how we might explain the evidence about Jesus is this: he was, at the same time, both human and divine. He gets his genes if you like, from both God and humanity. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary. And that’s important, not just for understanding the evidence, but also because of the theological implications that arise from it.
Think about what we believe about Jesus. What was it that he came to achieve? It was the salvation of the world wasn’t it? It was the redemption of humanity from their slavery to sin.
So here’s the problem: if Jesus was just a human being, how could he save the rest of us from sin? He would have had just as big a problem as we have. He himself would have been in need of redemption. He would have been part of the problem, not the solution. So if Jesus was to save us he had to be different from us in some essential way. He needed to have the sinless nature of God. He needed to be truly born in the image of God.
But at the same time he still needed to be truly human. If he was to correct the mistake made by Adam and Eve, he had to be one of us. If he was to bear the punishment that we deserve he had to be one of us. If he was to restore the image of God to humanity, he had to be bearing that image as one who was truly human.
What’s more, to change the metaphor a little, he had to be in some way connected to both God and us in order to be the one to reconcile us with God.
Imagine you have 2 people who are in a close relationship, but for some reason that relationship breaks down. They have a falling out that’s so bad that they’re no longer talking to each other. A familiar story? So how can that situation be resolved? How can they ever get back together again if they won’t speak to each other? What’s needed is a mediator. But who’s going to be able to act as a mediator for those 2 people? Clearly, the best solution is for someone who knows both of them well, who’s connected to both of them, to act as a go-between. This person needs to understand both of them well. They need to be close enough to each of them to be able to represent them well. They need to be able to empathise with both of them without being unduly identified with one side or the other.
Now can you see that the same applies to the situation between us and God? We’re separated from God by our sinful natures. There’s a huge gulf fixed that means we can never get to God, and he can’t let us into his presence without first dealing with our sinful nature.
But here’s the solution. 1 Tim 2:5 tells us: "There is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human." ( NRSV) We have Jesus Christ born of a woman but conceived by the Holy Spirit. At the same time both human and divine. Able to represent both humanity and God. As human he’s able to take our humanity and raise it once more to where God intended us to be, to bring us back into personal relationship with God. As God, he’s able to deal with sin and its effects once and forever.
But Jesus, as God in human form, as someone just like us, provides us with assurance that we have a God we can relate to. God is no longer remote, unable to appreciate what we go through. Through Jesus Christ God has experienced first hand what we go through. He can sympathise with us in our weakness.
If you’ve ever suffered some great loss in your life, you’ll know that there were people who were very good at expressing their understanding of your loss, even though they’d never experienced it themselves. They were very good at empathising with you. But the people who really understood you were those who had experienced the same sort of loss. That’s because they were able to sympathise with you. So too, God is able to sympathise with us when we’re tempted because he’s been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:14-16).
So it matters that Jesus is both God and human, not just because it fits the historical evidence better, but for theological reasons.
But finally I just want to reflect on something I noticed last week when Danny was talking about Jesus as the Christ. If you were here you’ll remember that he pointed out the prophecy in Daniel 7 about the Son of Man coming in the clouds and being given all dominion and glory and kingship, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. Now I’d never understood why the NRSV translates the description in that passage as "one like a human being" when it consistently uses "Son of Man" for Jesus’ self description in the gospels. But then I realised how much more power that passage has in the NRSV than when it’s translated "son of man." Think about this. The vision in Daniel is of a human being being brought into God’s presence where he’s given all dominion and glory and sovereign power. These are the things that belong to God. Yet they’re given to a human being. How can this be? It can be only for one reason. That is, if that human being is also divine. If that human being is Jesus Christ the only son of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit, but born of the virgin Mary.
For further reading on the virgin birth go to gear.dyndns.org/~spencer/JesusChrist/virginbirthchrist.html
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