Luke 1:26-38 Why the Virgin Birth Matters: “Conceived by Power of the Holy Spirit and Born of the Virgin Mary”
Begin by reciting the Apostle’s Creed
The Fundamentals
The end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century was a time of great scientific progress and optimism. The theories of Charles Darwin were taking hold, great technological achievements (like the light bulb and the telephone) were being made, and belief that humanity could unlock all the mysteries of the universe was high.
In an environment of such robust intellectual activity, many in the church began to wonder if their message was still relevant. In a world so governed by the rules of science, how could anyone expect people to take seriously a story in which virgins gave birth and dead people came back to life? Many church people decided that if Christianity were to survive, it would have to divorce itself from the more supernatural aspects of its story.
And so something called Higher Criticism came into being. Higher Criticism set out to trace the development of the Scriptures, claiming that very few of the books of the Bible were the works of any single author but rather a compilation of many narratives cobbled together over time. Higher Criticism claimed the ability to sort out the accumulation of legends and myths and thus get back to the bare bones, non-supernatural truth of what happened.
Thus the new, modern church advocated a version of Christianity that was high on moral lessons but left little room for the direct involvement of God in the affairs of humanity.
Not everyone was happy about this, however, and something called the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy took place. The main controversy occurred in the Presbyterian Church, and centered around Princeton Seminary, but most denominations were affected and it changed the landscape of American Christianity significantly.
The precipitating event came in 1909 when the Presbytery of New York ordained three new pastors who refused to assent to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. The national assembly upheld the ordinations. But those opposed drafted a document called “The Five Fundamentals,” and at the 1910 assembly they declared that five doctrines were “necessary and essential” to the Christian Faith. Those Five Fundamentals were:
- The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit.
- The virgin birth of Christ.
- The belief that Christ's death was an atonement for sin.
- The bodily resurrection of Christ.
- The historical reality of Christ's miracles.
Now, I should mention that today someone who is labeled a “fundamentalist” is considered to be on the extreme edges of religion. Today, “fundamentalist” is a pejorative term. But then, a fundamentalist was simply someone who argued for the integrity of the Biblical story as the Bible told it. Today, the term would be “evangelical.”
For the next 15 years or so, the modernists and the fundamentalists wrestled for control of Princeton seminary and the Presbyterian church. The fundamentalists were led by men like J. Gresham Machen and B.B. Warfield and William Jennings Bryan. The modernists were funded by John D. Rockefeller and led by the New York preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick.
In the end, the modernists “won.” Princeton became a liberal seminary. J. Grehsam Machen left Princeton to begin Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. And several mainline denominations broke into pieces, reflecting more liberal and conservative schools of thought.
The Creed
So why am I telling you this story?
Well, first of all, let me say that I affirm all five of the fundamentals, so I could be considered a fundamentalist.
But I tell you the story because we are in a series about the Apostles Creed, and today we come to the part about Jesus that says: “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.” I find it interesting that this particular point of belief became such a major dividing point in the church.
Let me back up a bit and review what we’ve said about the Creed. Remember, it was not written by the Apostles, but is called the Apostles’ Creed because it is believed to be an accurate reflection of Apostolic teaching. As such it is like a Treasure Box, containing the riches of the gospel. It has been around for at least 1500 years and serves as a sort of Ruler against which the teaching of the church should be measured. And it is a Padlock that secures the truth of the gospel against error.
And so, when we recite the Creed we are standing with Christians from across the centuries and across continents and we are taking a stand against the God-denying, popular narratives of the world and we are confessing a common faith in the God described in the Bible. When we say “I believe” we are saying: 1) I agree—I believe these things are true 2) I pledge—I give my allegiance to this God and 3) I trust—I give my life to the Triune God of the Bible.
It’s interesting that when agreement with this Creed begins to erode, it is the line about Christ’s conception and birth that is often attacked first. “After all,” the argument goes, “we are sophisticated and intelligent people, and we know that women cannot just get pregnant. We understand the facts of life. So the notion that a young maiden could just suddenly turn up with a child inside of her womb is not plausible. It’s like believing the Greek myth about Perseus being the illegitimate son of the god Zeus. It makes us look silly to believe in such superstitious fairy tales.”
Besides, the modern mind would argue, it’s easy to see how this kind of fable could have worked its way into Jesus’ story. The people telling Jesus’ story would have wanted to increase His street cred, they wanted to make Jesus larger than life, so they might have exaggerated the circumstances of His birth. You know: “Jesus is so cool that there wasn’t even a man involved in His birth. God just put Him inside Mary’s womb. He really is from God!” They hype that story a few times, and eventually it gets written into Matthew and Luke’s gospel. That doesn’t mean it is true.
And then there’s the question: does it really matter? It’s not like the circumstances of Jesus’ birth are vital to salvation…
A few Christmases ago, Andy Stanley, pastor of one of the largest churches in the U.S. and someone I respect quite a bit, stirred a bit of controversy when he said that he could sympathize with those who have a hard time believing in the Virgin Birth. He said:
If somebody can predict their own death and resurrection, I’m not all that concerned about how they got into the world. Christianity doesn’t hinge on the truth or even the stories around the birth of Jesus. It hinges on the resurrection of Jesus.
Stanley’s point was that he could see why some people had doubts. After the internet rumbled for a couple of weeks, he came back and made it very clear that he does believe in the Virgin Birth.
But the question still lingers, does the Virgin Birth matter?
An Initiating God of Love
My answer, just to relieve the suspense, is “Yes.” Yes, the Virgin Birth matters. My sermon title “Why the Virgin Birth Matters” probably gives that away. I affirm the Five Fundamentals. I mean it when I recite the creed and I say “I believe…he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.” Yes, it matters.
And in a little bit, I’ll give you three reasons why I think it matters. Three reasons I think it is important to continue to believe in the Virgin Birth. But before we do that, let’s take a look at the Bible. There are two main passages that talk about Christ’s miraculous conception. Matthew 1 and Luke 1. We’ll look at the story in Luke 1. Luke 1:26-38:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Let’s pause here a moment. The story begins on a supernatural note. Gabriel is an angel. He is sent from God. God is breaking into the world, He is acting in the world.
And Mary is a virgin. Luke uses the word twice in verse 27. It’s the Greek word “parthenos” and it means exactly what you think it means. Mary is a young woman, pledged to be married, who has been chaste. Even though she is legally bound to Joseph, the conditions of their betrothal mean that they will not come together until they are married.
She is not, in other words, in any position to become pregnant by normal means. Verse 29:
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Now, we need to set what is happening here within the larger context of the Bible and the Jewish world. The fundamental problem with humanity, according to the Bible, is sin. We are in rebellion against God. We break His law and we fall short of His standards.
This is the fundamental problem, and it is not something we can fix on our own.
If you go to a bookstore—they’re hard to find anymore, but there’s still a Barnes and Noble in Waterloo—one of the biggest sections of books will be the self-help section. There are all kinds of books proposing ways that you can help yourself get better. If you have weight issues, you can go on a diet. If you have relationship issues, you can learn how to understand the other sex better. If you have financial issues, you can get a book that will help you get out of debt fast. That’s what self-help is, right? Basically, give us $30 bucks and we’ll tell you what is wrong with you and then we’ll tell you what to do to fix yourself.
But the Bible says our fundamental problem is not something we can fix ourselves. It’s not a self-help kind of problem. Our problem is sin. And it’s in us. It is us. We are in rebellion against God and we can’t fix it on our own.
So what is happening here, in Luke 1, is the angel Gabriel is making the announcement that God is sending help. This is God breaking into our world. This is God, through no help from mankind, taking the initiative to come and fix our fundamental problem.
“You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.” In Matthew, the angel’s announcement to Joseph is similar, but adds the meaning of Jesus’ name: “Give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)
This is the initiating God of love. In our rebellion against Him, instead of leaning away, God leans in. God sends. The Holy Spirit conceives and empowers. And Jesus comes.
This isn’t central to my sermon today, but it is too important to just skip past.
Part of what the Virgin Birth teaches is that God has not abandoned us in our mess. He could have. He could have looked at the mess we’ve made of things ever since Adam and Eve, He could have looked at the brokenness and pain and said “You’ve made your bed, now you gotta sleep in it”, He could have left us in our rebellion, but he didn’t.
Psalm 40 is a song by David that got new life when Bono and the band U2 sang a version of it on their live album, Rattle and Hum. It talks about being in a slimy pit, being stuck in the mud and mire. But then God reaches down and pulls us out. He sets our feet on a rock.
That’s what God is doing here, that’s what Gabriel is announcing: God is reaching down into the muck and the mire. He’s getting his hands dirty. He’s taking the initiative to come and get us.
A God Who Knows Nothing of the Impossible
But there’s nothing that requires a Virgin Birth at this point. What I mean to say is: if Mary is pledged to be married to Joseph, maybe what the angel is predicting is that she will get married, she and Joseph will move in together, nature will take its course, and then when she gets pregnant it will be with this very special child. There have been several other special children predicted in the Bible who were still conceived in the common way.
But that’s not what Mary hears the angel saying. So she asks the obvious question. Verse 34:
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The people of the Bible were plenty sophisticated. They knew where babies came from. And so Mary points out the one, big glaring problem with Gabriel’s plan: “I can’t get pregnant. I’m a virgin.”
And here’s where we enter into the miraculous. Verse 35:
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month.
This is not going to be a child conceived in the normal way. This is going to be an act of God: the initiative of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Most High. The life beginning in Mary’s womb is not going to be the result of a female ovum fertilized by a male sperm. This child is placed in Mary’s womb by God Himself.
Actually, referring to this as the Virgin Birth is a little misleading. It’s not really the birth of Jesus that is miraculous. As far as we know, Jesus was born as all other babies have been: with labor pains, placenta and umbilical cord. The miracle is in His conception. That’s the part that has no precedent and no equivalent. Virginal conception. That’s why the Creed emphasizes that Jesus was “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
So how is this going to work? How is a child going to be conceived with no human agency? How can Jesus have no human, biological father? Verse 37:
37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
Now, here’s a case where the new English translation—this is the 2011 NIV—does not match up with the Bible I grew up with. Most older translations have “nothing is impossible with God.” To be honest, I prefer the older version. But to be fair, this is actually closer to the phrasing in Greek. Both say the same thing.
Essentially, if God says it, it will happen. God is able to do whatever He says He will do.
This is the God who gave a son to Abraham and Sarah in their old age (100 years old!), the God who parted the Red Sea, the God who brought down fire on Elijah’s water-soaked offering, the God who spoke the creation into existence. If God wants to conceive a child inside a virgin’s womb, then He certainly can do that. God can step outside the rules of nature, because He wrote the rules of nature. He is a God who knows nothing of the impossible.
And so, there can be very little doubt that the Bible teaches the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ. Mary knows how improbable it is. Even Gabriel knows how improbable it is. And yet, God said it, and God’s word will not fail. The baby in Mary’s womb is going to get there in an utterly unique, unrepeatable way. It is God Himself breaking into the muck and mire of humanity’s sin. It is the God of creation doing what for anyone else would be impossible.
Why It Matters
So, now: does it matter? If someone finds the virgin conception a little hard to believe in, can they still be a Christian? 100 years ago, when the church was trying to decide what the fundamental truths of the faith are, why did the virginity of Mary get included? What difference does it make?
I’ve got three reasons why it matters.
1) Bible’s Reliability
First, the trustworthiness of the Bible is at stake. Is the Bible a reliable witness to the story of Jesus or not? Clearly, proponents of Higher Criticism want us to believe the Bible is just a patchwork of legends and fables, but is that what we believe? If we begin to treat the Bible like a cafeteria, where you pick and choose the parts that are true, how can we believe or trust anything it says? More than that, what authority on our lives can the Bible have if some parts are made up and others are not, especially if there are no real clues as to which parts are which?
Some people will point out that the Virgin Birth is only taught in two places in the Bible: in Matthew and Luke. Mark and John don’t include it in their gospels, and Paul and the other New Testament writers say nothing about it. Can it really be that important, critics say, if it gets mentioned so rarely?
There are a couple of responses to this. For one thing, the rest of the New Testament may not mention the Virgin Birth directly, they don’t deny it. More than that, I would argue that the gospel of John shows a strong awareness of the special circumstances of Jesus’ birth when it says “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Paul mentions, in Galatians, that “when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” Even the book of Revelation seems to be alluding to Christ’s miraculous birth when it describes the Woman and the Dragon in chapter 12.
But more importantly, even if the Virgin Birth is mentioned only twice, so what? How many times must the Bible say something for us to believe it? 3 times? 5 times?
- Gresham Machen, one of the leaders in the fight against the modernists, wrote:
Everyone admits that the Bible represents Jesus as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. The only question is whether in making that representation the Bible is true or false. If the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any high sense, is gone.
And Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a leader of a recent fight against modernization in the Southern Baptist conference says:
If Jesus was not born of the virgin then the Bible cannot be trusted when it comes to telling us the story of Jesus, and that mistrust cannot be limited to how he came to us in terms of the incarnation. The fact is that biblical Christianity and ultimately the Gospel of Christ cannot survive the denial of the virgin birth. Because without the virgin birth, you end up with a very different Jesus than the fully human, fully divine savior revealed in scripture.
If we doubt the Virgin Birth, then we doubt the Bible.
2) God’s Ability
Second, God’s ability is at stake. If we doubt that God could make a virgin pregnant, then we need to doubt every miraculous occurrence described in the Bible. If we find it hard to believe that God could send Jesus into the world without a human father, then we have to seriously question God’s ability to do anything in our world. Why pray? Why worship? What good is God if we don’t believe He can influence the way things work in our world?
Obviously, this was part of the motivation of the modernist movement. They found the notion of supernatural and miraculous activity too superstitious for their scientific world. They wanted to believe in a God who never did anything God-like. But is that the kind of God you want to believe in? Honestly, what’s the point?
And, of course, if we doubt the miracle at the beginning of Jesus’ life then we have to seriously doubt the miracle at the end of His life as well. Ray Pritchard says:
The problem for us can be stated this way: Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus entered the world in a supernatural way—through a mighty miracle of God. These same writers tell us that Jesus’ earthly life came to a climax with another mighty miracle—his bodily resurrection from the dead. Regarding the latter, we all understand the significance of the Resurrection. Because he lives, we too shall live. His resurrection guarantees ours. But it’s not the same with the Virgin Birth. His supernatural birth doesn’t tell us anything about our physical birth. And since we’ve already been born, it’s easy to discount the Virgin Birth when we compare it to the Resurrection. But that is a major mistake. If you can’t believe the first miracle, how can you believe the last miracle? If you doubt the Virgin Birth, how can you be certain about the Resurrection? The Bible doesn’t present the life of Christ as a kind of “pick your miracle” cafeteria where you can pick this miracle and reject that one. The story of our Lord’s earthly life comes to us as a seamless whole. We either take it all or we reject it all. There is no suitable middle ground option.
http://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/why-the-virgin-birth-matters/
3) Christ’s Identity
Then, third, the Virgin Birth says a lot about Christ’s Identity. An essential part of historic Christianity is the belief that Jesus is both divine and human. He has a fully divine nature. And He has a fully human nature. It’s as mysterious as the doctrine of the Trinity, but it is important to our faith that Jesus was not just God pretending to be human, neither was he a human who was specially touched by God. No, we believe He was 100% human, 100% God.
And the only way that works is if the Virgin Birth is true. Jesus needed to be born to a woman, and He needed to be conceived by God. Kevin DeYoung writes:
If Jesus had not been born of a human, we could not believe in his full humanity. But if his birth were like any other human birth—through the union of a human father and mother—we would question his full divinity. The virgin birth is necessary to secure both a real human nature and also a completely divine nature. https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2016/12/08/is-the-virgin-birth-essential/
Throughout this series on the Apostle’s Creed, I’ve been making reference to the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a standard of faith in our denomination. When it talks about the significance of the Virgin Birth, the Catechism narrows in on the matter of Christ’s identity. Here’s question and answer number 35:
- What does it mean that he “was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary”?
- That the eternal Son of God,
who is and remains
true and eternal God,
took to himself,
through the working of the Holy Spirit,
from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary,
a truly human nature
so that he might also become David’s true descendant,
like his brothers and sisters in every way
except for sin.
This is important, because the Bible says it is only by being both God and human that Jesus can serve as the mediator between sinful humanity and a holy God (1 Timothy 2:15). The next question in the catechism says:
- How does the holy conception and birth of Christ benefit you?
- He is our mediator
and, in God’s sight
he covers with his innocence and perfect holiness
my sinfulness in which I was conceived.
Now we are back to humanity’s greatest problem, the problem there is no self-help manual for.
This is the initiating love of God: we are in sinful rebellion against God. We cannot fix ourselves. And so, God, in His divine love, took it upon Himself to enter our world. Because He was fully God, He had no sin of His own to pay for. Because He was fully human, He was a suitable substitute for the rest of us.
And so, only Jesus could go to the cross and make atonement for our sin. Only Jesus could fix our greatest problem. Only Jesus could lift us out of the muck and mire of this broken world.
Only Jesus. Conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only Jesus. Born of the Virgin Mary.
