Douglas Wilson » God Biblical Theology Study Biblical People Holy Spirit Culture

A virgin by any other name . . .

You don’t need to be a Bible reader to know that the prophet Isaiah prophesied that a time would come when a virgin would conceive and bear a son. The passage has been included on countless Christmas cards, and so many non-believers of many stripes manage to get a dose of this doctrine just by opening their mail: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14).

Theological liberals like to point out that the word rendered as virgin here is the Hebrew word almah, which can mean “virgin,” but it can also be legitimately rendered as “young woman.” So then, the thinking goes, “You conservatives ought to think about this a bit harder, and join the rest of us in the 21st century as soon as you are able.” But centuries before Christ, when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek by Jewish rabbis (70 of them, according to tradition), the Greek word they chose to render this word almah was parthenos—and parthenos means virgin, as in a literal virgin. The famous Parthenon was a temple built in Athens to the virgin goddess Athena. With the use of this word, there is no wiggle room whatsoever.

If Jesus had been born into the human race naturally, he would have been an object of wrath also.

So this means that centuries before there was any Christian agenda around to influence the story, the expectation among the Greek-speaking Jews (at a minimum) was that a virgin would conceive and bear a son. This is certainly how Matthew takes Isaiah’s words (Matt. 1:23). And Luke records the fact that Mary was a virgin as well (Luke 1:27), and Mary herself objects to the angel’s promise to her on the basis of it (Luke 1:34). So we know that the Bible teaches this doctrine. But why does it matter?

Why the sacrifice had to be sinless

It is not an incidental point—our salvation actually depends on it. In order to serve as a sin sacrifice, the Lord Jesus had to be a true human being, and the Lord Jesus had to be sinless. If Jesus were not truly human, the sacrifice could not have been the work of our representative priest (Heb. 4:15). And if Jesus were not entirely sinless, then like the Levitical priests, he would have had to make an offering for his own sin first. This means Jesus would not have been in a position to die for ours (Heb. 7:27). Jesus could not be the sacrifice for us unless he was a sacrificial victim entirely without blemish (1 Pet. 1:19). And so—for the sake of our salvation—it was necessary to find a man who was a true man, and yet who was without sin.

Where can you get one of those? So how can God fashion a true human being out of this existing human stock without that “new man” being corrupted? The Bible says that we are objects of wrath by nature (Eph. 2:3). So if Jesus had been born into the human race in accord with the normal, natural process, he would have been an object of wrath also. So God needed to perform a supernatural act, but perform it with a true man-child. He did this through what we call the virgin birth.

The virgin birth is not just a random miracle story.

The Bible is clear that Jesus had a genuine human lineage, all the way back to Abraham (Matt. 1:1–16), who was himself descended from Adam. But the Bible is equally clear that Jesus never sinned (2 Cor. 5:21). The fact that Jesus was sinless was obviously related to who his Father was (Luke 1:35), but also because of who his Father wasn’t (Luke 3:23). The other sons of Joseph were sinners in need of forgiveness just like the rest of us. For example, James the Lord’s brother tells us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), and then he goes on to tell us that Elijah had “a nature like ours,” including himself in this (James 5:17). And earlier in the Gospels, we even told what one of those sins was, the sin of unbelief (John 7:3–5). Joseph was father of one who became a great and godly man, a pillar in the church, but Joseph was not the father of a sinless man. If Jesus had been born to Joseph and Mary in the ordinary way, he could have been a great apostle—like his half-brother was—but he could not have been our Savior.

While we shouldn’t start speculating about the half-life of original sin, one acceptable answer from all of this is that sin is reckoned or imputed through the male line. This is the position I hold and I believe it’s fitting because Adam was the one who introduced sin into the world in the first place (Rom. 5:12).

From beginning to end, the story God is telling is a story of power.

The necessary miracle

Because Jesus did not have an immediate human father, he was not entailed in sin with the rest of us. Because he had a true human mother, he was as human as we are; because he was without sin, he was more fully human than we are. From this we can see that the virgin birth is not just a random miracle story, designed to impress the gullible. It is a miracle, all right, but it is a miracle like the other miracles connected with the person of Jesus Christ. Like the Incarnation itself, this miracle is necessary for the salvation of lost and sinful men.

Jesus Christ was “descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3–4). The Spirit who worked powerfully in that resurrection was the same Spirit who exercised his power when Mary first conceived. It was the same person, the same purpose and plan, and the very same power (Luke 1:35).

The Spirit still dwells

And the glorious thing is that this same Spirit is not done. ^“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).

From beginning to end, the story that God is telling is a story of power. It begins with a virgin birth—but it certainly doesn’t end there.

 

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