This devotion is a weekly ministry of the Pee Dee Baptist Association, comprised of 32 Southern Baptist churches in Dillon and Marlboro Counties. For more information call 774-8062. Featured this week is Rev. Austin Wynn, the pastor of Piney Grove Baptist Church, Lake View.
Does it really matter if Jesus was born of a virgin?
Some find the Bible’s miraculous claims to be figurative and unhistorical, or they say the miracles are simply trying to teach us a profound truth while not actually having occurred. They say Jesus’ resurrection is a false account that is meant to teach us we can have hope even in hopeless times.
Whenever some skeptics come across a miracle in the Bible, they try to explain it away with human reasoning. The crossing of the Red Sea? The water at that point was only a couple feet deep and the wind blew it to either side. (It’s even more amazing if Pharaoh’s army drowned in two feet of water!) The feeding of the five thousand? They say the number was rounded up a lot and the people weren’t that hungry so they didn’t eat but a crumb or two. (But then how did they end up with more food afterwards than when they began?)
But there is no claim more ridiculous to skeptics than for Jesus to have been born of a virgin. After all, as we all know from having “the talk” with our parents in our younger years about the birds and the bees, it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. But the Bible says more than once that Jesus would be born of a virgin.
In Isaiah 7:14, the prophet states, “Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” Then two chapters later, Isaiah says that this child’s “name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
What about the actual story in the Bible of when Jesus was born? Does it claim He was born of a virgin? In the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, we read that the angel Gabriel came “to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.” Then the angel tells Mary that she will give birth to the Messiah, and her response is, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” As the angel explained this to Mary, he decided to add the statement, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
It certainly is humanly impossible for a baby to be born without the necessary male and female processes working together. Trying to grow a money tree by burying a dollar bill in the ground might be easier than trying to create a baby without the normal fertilization process. But isn’t the point the angel is making is that what is humanly impossible is divinely possible? After all, if God can’t do anything more than humans and is limited in His power by the greater power of scientific observation, how is He God at all? If Jesus were born of a man and a woman, how would He be any different than you and me? But if Jesus were born of a woman and of the Holy Spirit, by the Father’s will, then this is something profound and He would be like no other human ever born.
If you and I were drowning in a lake, it would be foolish for us to expect someone else who is drowning to rescue us. When someone is drowning, they cry out for a person who is standing firmly on dry ground who is not in the same crisis they’re in. We are all drowning spiritually in the sea of our sinful choices and habits, and nothing else can help us outside of a Divine Redeemer. If you deny the virgin birth of Jesus, you are denying the very purpose God sent His Son into this world: to save sinners. Jesus’ virgin birth means that He can be 100% God and 100% man. If Jesus were not fully God, He would not be able to carry out God’s plan to save us. If Jesus were not fully man, He would not be able to bear our sins in His body on the cross.
Praise God that Jesus was born of a virgin and that He perfectly fulfilled God’s plan for saving sinners like us.
If you have never trusted in the God-man, Jesus Christ, and turned from your sinful ways to the Savior, you can do that right now.
The same God who came in human form thousands of years ago can come and dwell within you, changing you from the inside out, and never leave you if you will simply receive God’s gift of salvation: Jesus Christ. He is truly the Gift that keeps on giving.
